Abandon Cleverness, Discard Profit
Recommends giving up sageliness, wisdom, and calculated self-interest as a package, arguing that all three, however well-intentioned, generate more harm than the plain simplicity they replace.
Chapter 19 opens with a set of instructions that would have sounded shocking to a Confucian-trained reader: "abandon sageliness, discard wisdom, and the people will benefit a hundredfold; abandon benevolence, discard righteousness, and the people will return to filial piety and parental affection; abandon cleverness, discard profit, and there will be no more thieves." Each pairing targets a prized virtue by name and argues that pursuing it deliberately, even sageliness or benevolence, produces side effects worse than doing without: officially sanctioned wisdom breeds manipulation, and a culture fixated on cleverness and profit produces theft as its natural byproduct, since cleverness is exactly the skill theft requires. The chapter's real instruction follows: "exhibit the plainness of unworked wood and embrace simplicity; reduce selfishness and lessen desires" — not a call to become foolish, but to strip away the layers of cultivated virtue and self-interest that generate the very problems they claim to solve.
Abandon cleverness, discard profit, and there will be no more thieves.
Tao Te Ching