 The human is associated here with desire, intention, artifice, and agency, and contrasted with the non-agentive and “spontaneous” activity of tian. We have the ability to act as tian acts by following along with tian. This idea is developed in the Zhuangzi and a number of earlier texts, in which tian and dao are sometimes used interchangeably. The Huainanzi, like Daoist texts, locates the problem of human failure, in terms of individual thriving, skill and achievement, knowledge, or political organization, in the existence of specifically human agency. Like texts such as the Daodejing and Zhuangzi, the Huainanzi presents action in concert with nature (tian) and undermining of the specifically human activity guided by intention as the keys to ensuring success in all of the above measures. In order to act in this way, however, we must have an understanding of the patterns of nature, so as to align ourselves with them.