Inquiring Thought: The problems of society do not come from “out there” nor from the others we call “them”; they derive from the mind’s default tendency to to establish a baseline based on us-them thinking.

From a Zen perspective, the premise points straight at the quiet engine that manufactures suffering before any laws are passed or borders drawn: the habit of mind that splits the field of experience into “me” and “not-me,” then builds a little throne for the former and a courtroom for the latter.

Zen does not treat us–them as a moral failure so much as a perceptual glitch. The mind, left to its own defaults, tries to stabilize itself by drawing lines. This side is “inside,” safe, familiar. That side is “outside,” uncertain, potentially threatening. Once the line is drawn, comparison begins. Preference follows. Judgment hardens. By the time we are arguing about society, the real work has already been done in a single thought that whispered, “I am here, and you are over there.”

In Zen language, this is the birth of duality. The world is not yet broken, but it has been sliced.

Zen points out that this slicing feels natural only because it is habitual. The baseline you mention is not reality itself; it is a stance. Mind leans slightly forward, bracing itself, measuring everything against a reference point called “me.” From that lean arise fear and desire, defense and acquisition. Whole institutions can be built on that posture, but Zen keeps returning to the moment before the lean.

When a Zen teacher asks, “What is your original face before your parents were born?” they are not being poetic for sport. They are aiming directly at the pre-baseline state, before “us” had an opposite. In that state, there is experience, but no center claiming it. Sounds hear themselves. Thoughts arise and vanish like birds crossing the sky. There is no need to patrol boundaries because nothing has been fenced.

Societal problems, from this view, are not caused by bad people on the wrong side of the line. They are caused by the line itself becoming invisible and unquestioned. When the mind believes its divisions are facts rather than habits, it seeks to correct the world instead of noticing the stance from which the world appears broken. Zen does not deny injustice or harm, but it refuses to locate their ultimate source in “them.” The root is the unexamined reflex to stand somewhere and point.

Practice, then, is not about installing better opinions. It is about relaxing the posture that needs opinions to feel real. Zazen is simply sitting in the middle of experience without assigning ownership. Breath breathes. Pain hurts. Joy sparkles. None of it belongs to a side. Over time, the baseline softens. The world is no longer filtered through constant comparison.

From this softened ground, ethical action still happens, but it arises differently. When there is no rigid “us,” compassion is not a virtue one performs; it is the natural circulation of a body that no longer believes its hand is separate from its foot. Helping does not feel like helping “others.” It feels like adjusting your own posture when it goes numb.

Zen’s quiet provocation is this: society does not need to be fixed so much as unsplit. The moment mind stops insisting on standing apart, the problems do not magically vanish, but they stop reproducing themselves at the source. The fire is no longer fed.

Or, as Zen might put it with a wink: before you argue with the world, check who is doing the arguing.