The maxim at the heart of the Zhuangzi: everyone knows the usefulness of the useful, but no one knows the usefulness of the useless, illustrated by Shu the deformed man, whose twisted body exempts him from war, taxes, and corvee, and qualifies him for every ration.
Documented
Shu the exempt
Documented: Zhuangzi chapter 4, In the World of Men, introduces Crippled Shu, chin buried in his navel, shoulders above his head, who sews and sifts enough to feed ten people, and when the press gangs come, Shu strolls among them unbothered, and when rations are distributed, Shu is first in line. The closing line is the maxim: everyone knows the usefulness of the useful, no one knows the usefulness of the useless.
Assessment: Documented: the chapter, the character, the maxim. The state's own arithmetic makes the argument.
Stories
The armor of defect
The political reading: the chapter is written under a violent court culture, and uselessness is analyzed as camouflage, the tree's crookedness, the cripple's body, the madman's raving (Jieyu, the madman of Chu, closes the chapter singing at Confucius). Usefulness to a dangerous state is a fatal gift; the deformed survive because the machine cannot grip them.
Assessment: Documented: the chapter's setting and its characters. The philosophy is an occupational safety manual for dangerous centuries.
Interesting claims
The talent trap
The inversion the text intends: the useful are consumed by their own usefulness, cinnamon trees are stripped, lacquer trees are cut, oil burns itself (chapter 4's closing images). Every credential is a handle. The modern resume is, in Zhuangzi's terms, a list of ways to be eaten.
Assessment: Interesting: the closing images are in the text. Twenty-three centuries later, burnout literature independently reinvented the cinnamon tree.
Sources and further reading
Zhuangzi, chapter 4, In the World of Men: Crippled Shu and the closing maxim (primary text)
Zhuangzi chapter 4's closing images: the stripped cinnamon tree, the cut lacquer tree, the self-burning oil (in-text exhibits)
Jieyu, the madman of Chu, singing at Confucius (chapter 4's closing scene)
Worth asking
When the draft board passes you over, are you broken or free?