I was reading through my copy of the Tao Te Ching and came across this chapter which seemed strange to me. This is taken from Chapter 5 of the Red Pine translation:

"Heaven and Earth are heartless

treating creatures like straw dogs

sages are heartless too

they treat people like straw dogs

between Heaven and Earth

how like a bellows

empty but inexhaustible

each stroke produces more

talking only wastes it

better to protect what's inside"

Please keep in mind I'm fairly new to Taoism as a whole so I'm likely misunderstanding much of this.

The idea of sages treating people like a straw dog seems strange to me. This comes across as only seeing people as tools in the moment, or as not holding any respect or appreciation for them past their usefulness. I've often seen the sage represented as someone who is very kind and "full of heart" in the sense that they have loving tendencies.

The second thing about this chapter, and this one is pure confusion and not preconception on my part, is the last two lines of it. Red Pine adds comments on every chapter clarifying specific meanings, but they didn't elucidate these lines in a way that was very clear.

Again, lots of these concepts are still relatively knew to me, and people I know and can learn from personally regarding this subject are few and far between. If anyone can help me with these concepts I would really appreciate it, and thank you for reading this!