The Zhuangzi’s useless tree retained worth by escaping exploitation

Evidence

To me, this sounds like a real-life version of a story—the title of which is often translated as “The Useless Tree”—from the Zhuangzi, a collection of writings attributed Zhuang Zhou, a fourth-century Chinese philosopher. The story is about a carpenter who sees a tree (in one version, a serrate oak, a similar-looking relative to our coast live oak) of impressive size and age. But the carpenter passes it right by, declaring it a “worthless tree” that has only gotten to be this old because its gnarled branches would not be good for timber. Soon afterward, the tree appears to him in a dream and asks, “Are you comparing me with those useful trees?” The tree points out to him that fruit trees and timber trees are regularly ravaged. Meanwhile, uselessness has been this tree’s strategy: “This is of great use to me. If I had been of some use, would I ever have grown this large?” The tree balks at the distinction between usefulness and worth, made by a man who only sees trees as potential timber: “What’s the point of this—things condemning things? You a worthless man about to die—how do you know I’m a worthless tree?” — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 23

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the precise content of ‘the useless tree’ parable — the load-bearing philosophical referent for the whole chapter.
• ADDENDUM: The useless tree’s refusing-to-be-timber strategy maps onto the grafting/sentient-tree threads of the ‘Grafting & Growth’ article.