S2. Chapter 22: Harness Your No

Minneapolis. January 2026. Lloyd Dobler drops a chapter that refuses to “perform coherence” while the empire insists your eyes are lying.

This is The Tao of Lloyd: a zen-punk mixtape meditation where Lloyd duct-tapes each of the 81 chapters of the Tao Te Ching to the collapse of American empire like a sticky note that says: Be kind. Rewind. Revolt. Meaning: refuse to cooperate with the lie.

In Chapter 22, Lloyd reads the Tao Te Ching’s paradox like a message in a bottle that just washed up on the shore of Minneapolis:

• If you want to become whole, let yourself be partial.
• If you want to become straight, let yourself be crooked.
• If you want to be reborn, let yourself die.

Then he tries to live that teaching in real time: grief that won’t clean itself up, rage that wants certainty, and the question underneath everything—what does wu-wei (not forcing) mean when the machine keeps calling murder “just doing its job”?

This isn’t “five steps to inner peace.” It’s practice that doesn’t gaslight you: breathe, stay present, and choose what you do next—without branding your grief.

Topics: Tao Te Ching Chapter 22, wu-wei, nervous system, propaganda, legitimacy crisis, noncooperation, refusal, late-stage everything.

Transcript

Minneapolis, and soon a city near you, is where an ICE army funded at $11.3 billion (big enough to buy smaller nations’ whole defense posture) invades and occupies and murders in cold blood while a chorus Karoline Levitt’s and Stephen Miller’s and Kash Patel’s and Donald Trump’s are out here doing some fascist barbershop quartet of 1984 karaoke, telling you your eyes are misinformation receptacles. 

So if your nervous system feels crooked, if your grief feels partial, if your rage can’t find a clean sentence… good. That might be the only honest thing left.

I’m Lloyd Dobler, and this is The Tao of Lloyd—a zen-punk mixtape meditation where I duct-tape each of the 81 chapters of the Tao Te Ching to the collapse of American empire like a sticky note that says: Be kind. Rewind. Revolt. Meaning: refuse to cooperate with the lie.

I’ve been trying not to make a habit of chasing breaking news on this show, because this chapter-by-chapter Tao thing is supposed to travel across time, not just react to whatever’s trending in the blood-soaked present. And yet… as I’m making notes for Chapter 22, Minneapolis is all-consuming—the kind of “Late Stage Everything” moment where your phone buzzes like that casino slot machine designed by a sociopath, and the reality you can see on video still gets overwritten by the reality you’re told to accept. 

So what have I got for you? A sort of meditative Molotov cocktail you can toss at the Overton window to help us all see a new world. I’m not here to tell you voting for better Democrats in the midterms will save the day. Because it won’t.

Alright. Let's settle in for a little meditation.

Close your eyes. Surrender to the moment. Or to gravity. Either works.

Look, I don’t have any meditation teacher certificate and in truth I'm not qualified for this meditation leader thing. But a sexual predator, grifter, reality TV show bully and walking pile of excrement is the duly elected President of the United States of America so, maybe including these sorta guided mediations from a fictional ex-rom-com boyfriend and Gen X icon turned middle aged dissident and spiritual seeker into your podcast listening habit makes about as much sense as much sense as buckling your seatbelt while the bus is actively on fire… you’re not pretending this ride is safe, you’re just choosing not to go through the windshield when it hits the next pothole of reality.

So yeah: put this in your podcast rotation. Not because I’m enlightened, because you deserve a practice that doesn’t gaslight you.

Okay, so: Close your eyes.

Take a long, slow, deep breath in.

And… let it go like you're fogging up the window between now and the future we're apparently not preparing for.

And if your mind goes, "This isn't enough, Lloyd," we can’t meditate our way to a new world.

All I have to say is:
You may be right. 
I may be crazy.
OH!
But it just may be a lunatic you’re lookin for.

But seriously, this is no time rehash 80s Billy Joel lyrics, man. Shit is getting real out here and shit.

And so, Take a long, slow, deep breath in.

And don’t worry. 
This isn't a spell. This isn't a cleanse. This isn't a "five steps to inner peace" carousel slide.

This is just... practice.

Because when the world is on fire, your nervous system wants certainty.

And the Tao is like: Clinging is why you’re choking. Release, you will.

And I’m like: Why does the Tao always sound like Yoda from Star Wars?

And Yoda from Star Wars is like “Stop dragging me into your spiritual homework, Lloyd. Breathe, you must. Stop narrating, you will.”

And the voice that is trying to guide us through meditation is like: “Hi, yes—hello—welcome to Guided Meditation by a man who once thought emotional maturity was holding a boombox outside a window. Please keep your arms and legs inside the present moment at all times.”

We're going to listen to Chapter 22 today. And I need you to hear it like it's a message in a bottle from 2,500 years ago that just washed up on the shore of Minneapolis in January 2026.

Because this chapter is about how you get to wholeness by admitting you're broken. How you find truth by accepting you only see part of it. How you become yourself by letting go of who you're supposed to be.

( Bell Chime )

This is Chapter 22 of the Tao Te Ching.

If you want to become whole,
let yourself be partial.
If you want to become straight,
let yourself be crooked.
If you want to become full,
let yourself be empty.
If you want to be reborn,
let yourself die.
If you want to be given everything,
give everything up.

The Master, by residing in the Tao,
sets an example for all beings.
Because he doesn't display himself,
people can see his light.
Because he has nothing to prove,
people can trust his words.
Because he doesn't know who he is, 
people recognize themselves in him. 
Because he has no goal in mind, 
everything he does succeeds.

When the ancient Masters said, 
“if you want to be given everything,
 give everything up,”
 they weren't using empty phrases. 
Only in being lived by the Tao
can you be truly yourself.  

And that was Chapter 22.

( Bell Chime ) 

Open your eyes.
Okay.

So now we’re here—Minneapolis.
Two decent humans murdered by a police state machine that keeps insisting it’s “just doing its job.”

And my rage wants to become a hammer.
It wants to become a take.
It wants to become a certainty I can swing at the world so I don’t have to feel the tremble underneath.

So let me say it clean:

Right now, revolution feels like the only way out.

I mean the revolution that actually scares power: noncooperation.
The quiet, contagious refusal.
A General Strike is one way to coalesce around and respond to this moment. 
The kind that makes the machine stutter because the machine only runs if enough ordinary people agree to keep it running.

And I’m not here to hand out gold stars for “approved resistance.” I’m not your ethics cop.
I’m a middle-aged fictional ex-rom-com boyfriend reading a 2,500-year-old book while the empire melts.
So yeah—diversity of tactics.
Because who am I to know what breaks the spell?
Who am I to know whether the lever is a strike, a blockade, a sanctuary network, a boycott, a thousand small refusals, or one enormous “no” that finally echoes, or something that history books might remember as a civil war?

The Tao doesn’t move in one straight line. Water doesn’t either.
And if you ask me for a single pure method… you’re asking for control.
And control is the empire’s love language.

Because if the state can kill people on camera and then tell you your eyes are lying—
then this isn’t a “policy disagreement.”
This is a legitimacy crisis.

And you don’t fix a legitimacy crisis with a smartly worded Facebook post.
You don’t fix it with a calmer tone.
You don’t fix it by begging the lie to please be honest.
And you don’t fix it by donating to Democrats. Or by winning the mid term elections. 

You fix it when enough people stop feeding it.

That’s why Chapter 22 matters right now, because the Tao isn’t asking you to be polite—
it’s asking you to be real.

It’s basically grabbing you by the collar and going:

Let yourself be crooked.
As in: don’t rush to straighten this into something digestible.
Don’t rush to “make sense” of it in a way that lets you go back to sleep.
Let yourself be partial. 
Let yourself be unfinished. 
Let yourself be wrecked.

Because the demand right now—especially online, especially at work, especially in the empire’s little algorithmic church—is:

Perform wholeness.
Perform coherence.
Perform the exact correct sentence at the exact correct time.

And the minute you do that, you’re not grieving anymore—you’re branding.
You’re trying to look right.

But the Tao is saying: the truth isn’t “right.”
The truth is alive.
The truth is crooked.
The truth is your breath catching when you picture a person holding a phone, documenting power, and then gets 10 bullets emptied into them, killing them instantly, or when Renee Good gets assinated by some punk ass hockey goon whose words after killer her were “Fucking Bitch.”

So if you’re listening and you feel helpless, or angry—good.
Maybe. Me too.
That’s the honest starting point.

Now breathe.
Not to calm down.
Not to “move on.”
Just to stay present long enough to choose what you do next.

And if what you do next is small—one call, one donation to a jail defense fund, one conversation, one refusal, one act of solidarity that costs you something—that counts.

Because empires don’t fall from one heroic act.
They crack from millions of people who stop cooperating with the lie.

Here's where I'm supposed to tell you what the Tao would do. How wu wei applies here. How yielding is the answer.

But I'm stuck.

Because part of me—the part that's been reading Lao Tzu for years, the part that wants to believe in the way of water and the power of emptiness—says: the more they lie, the more obvious the truth becomes. The more they display their authority, the more we see through it. The more they insist on their version, the less anyone believes them.

That's the paradox of Chapter 22 playing out in real time. Their attempt to be whole through force is making them more broken. Their attempt to be straight through lies is making them more crooked.

But the other part of me—the part that just watched two people get murdered on video and then slandered by their own government—is like: Okay, but they're still dead. And the agents who killed them are still out there. And Operation Metro Surge is still happening. And how many more people out there protecting their neighbors from ICE have to die before the Tao's paradoxes actually change anything?

I don't have an answer to that.

The Tao says: If you want to be reborn, let yourself die.

And I think—I think—what's dying right now is the ability to believe the official story. What’s dying is the myth of the United States of America as a force for good in the world. 

Good. Let it die.

What gets reborn on the other side?

So here's your practice for today:

Let yourself be crooked.

Let yourself be partial.

Let yourself be empty enough to see.

And then ask yourself—quietly, without performing it for anyone:

What would my life look like if I stopped cooperating with the version of reality that needs me numb?

And also: what would my life look like if I fully cooperated with the version of reality that can usher in the revolution we all deserve?

From the edge of empire and the center of self—

this is The Tao of Lloyd.