Friday, January 22, 2010

Why CHINA must seek and chart its own path -- in renewing and revitalizing Confucianism

China must learn to stand on her own feet; that is, on her own culture. I am pretty happy to see that China is now promoting Confucianism all over the world; pretty soon there will be 500 some Confucian centers (or missions?) all over the world.
In my emails, I always beg the Chinese leaders to behave, work and talk more or less according to Confucius' teachings so that they may become role models to all world leaders. On the other hand, the Chinese have a lot to learn from the West in its physical or materialistic culture which China has very little, but should always keep in mind that old Chinese saying, "Western study and culture are good for utilization and applications, but Chinese study
and culture must serve as the base to check and balance it." (Xixue wei yong, Zhongxue wei ben.)
For your comment as well as reading pleasure, here is a description of that culture that I have discussed in fragments many times in this space and
that I sent to Martin Jacques earlier who wrote the famous book, "When China Rules the World."
PLEASE kindly correct me!

Richard
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Taking the required course of the Chinese history as a college freshman, I learned that broadly speaking human civilization consists of two interrelated components: human or spiritual culture and physical or materialistic culture. While the former is created by the humans' mind and heart, the latter developed by their five senses. Generally speaking, the East is rich in the former, whereas the West in the latter.
Yes, the imported Christianity has provided the West with some spiritual culture; unfortunately, so far it has been used only as a tool to keep the common people obedient or faithful and to cover up the hypocratic behavior of the upper class. For instance, Jesus told his followers to love their enemies in his Sermon on the Mount. I am reasonably sure that the common folks would certainly try to follow it most of the time, but not necessarily the upper or ruling class. Thus, when led by their hypocritical ambitious leaders, more Christians were slaughtered by Christians than by the Roman pagans during the fight over the adoption of Trinitarianism, according to Edward Gibbon in his "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Ditto in the case of the Thirty Years War brought about by religious and political conflicts,
according to the section on church history in Henry Halley's "Pocket Bible Handbook," some 10 to 20 million Christians were killed by Christians. How about the poliitcal game the ruling class played against each other as described by Machiavelli in "The Prince?" Here were game rules: "Dog-eat-dog; the end justifies the means; keep pledge only so long as it suits your purpose to do so; lying, stealing, and murder are sins in the lives of the ordinary men, but they are necessary in the conduct of politics." Even in this nuclear age, while peddling democracy and human rights all over the Third World, the most segregated institution in the US is its Christian church. The "Time" magazine in its 01/11/10 issue reported, "Surveys from 2007 show that fewer than 8% of American congregations have a significant racial mix." What a shame!
Not being their own indigenous religion, the Westerners are suffering an inferiority complex. How wonderful it would have been had Jesus been born a European! They might not have killed one another so mercilessly and so soullessly, and they would have welcomed the African-Americans to join them in worshipping their own "white" Jesus in the same sanctuary.
Sadly and unfortunately, Jesus was not! So, the naive less educated common folks found John Wilson's "Our Israelitish Origins" (1840) telling them that nearly all Northern Europeans including the German, French, Scandinavian and Swiss were the lost tribes of Israel. Then, came Houston Stewart Chamberlain's "The Foundation of the 19th Century," (1899) in which he declared, "whoever maintains that Christ was a Jew is either ignorant or dishonest." Furthermore, few years ago in my neighborhood library, I came across an article in the "Biblical Archeology" magazine or some name similiar to that reported that a German Kaiser threw a huge party to welcome an archeologist returning from Jerusalem because he had just discovered archeological evidence showing that Judaism was non-existent.
It is not surprising that it is this kind of culture that is dominating the world today - a bully world where you do as I tell to no matter what the cost, but do not as I do. So, my lackeys and I can own thousands of nuclear warheads, but you cannot even have one or two because yours will threaten world peace and security.
What a joke, if not arrogance and hypocrisy! The Western leaders almost never look at themselves in the mirror nor do their media.