If you're hoping to inhabit a quality, you better know what it really is and the price it incurs before you get what you wish for.

I've been casually doing deep dives into the concept of freedom, hoping to dissect it thoroughly.

In doing so two role models came up: Zhuang Zi and Diogenes.

The similarities between their philosophies are striking, even if their mediums are entirely different.

Zhuang Zi's 'works' took the form of parables. It's not clear what amount were written by him or his students. Meanings were cryptic, maybe that's what scholars enjoy it.

Accounts of Diogenes are about the legends of his performances, most notably what he said to Alexander. He performed his philosophies either in attempt to shock and prank, or to live it genuiously. It is said that every era needs a Diogenes to question the values of the time.

Both Zhuang Zi and Diogenes have a strong bias toward the natural order; skeptical about ill-posed man-made rules. Zhuang Zi demonstrated this through the story of the butcher with superior knife skills.

This ideal is easy to agree until you try and validate it. The problem starts with the definition of what is nature and what constitutes natural. If man is part of nature, then man-made rules are also part of nature, however badly made they are. In which case nothing is unnatural and the whole point is moot.

Software engineering though might have something to say here. When we engage in a design process we often ask "are we over-engineering?" if the problem is hard enough.

The answer to that is often a judgment call with no verifiable metric. Identifying over-engineering is an art, in other words.

I could attempt to break down that process some day but it's out of scope here. The point is over-engineering is a sign of being unnatural.

Imagine going through five processes to solve a problem when two will do. Or building in amenities to handle scenarios that would never take place. YAGNI we say.

When Zhuang Zi criticized Confucianism for being overly rigid, he's really saying that their made up protocols are unnecessary that code that are hard to delete at best, a corrupting bug at worst.