This is part 1 of what may be many parts.
Those who reclused themselves in ancient China left the court and city with their families for rural simplicity. (The solitaries, hermits, sages, and monks came later.) These were the elite and educated of Chinese society who had listened to the fundamental advice of Confucius: “When the emperor is good, serve; when the emperor is evil, withdraw.” If we apply the advice to the modern world, we must view the emperor as authority contrived by wealth, power, violence, lies, robbery, exploitation, and hypocrisy. The only authority for the solitary is nature, the universe, and God — however one chooses to define these. It can never be human society. It can never be some contrivance imposed by another. We might, perhaps, contrive a life for ourselves in this complex world, and we might conform ourselves to contrivances out of sheer practicality, but let our lives always be flooded by the light and healing waters of what transcends us.