"The Way of the Mean" has only one way to go - to the confine of mediocrity
lo yeeOn
The Doctrine of The Mean:
In the book of this title written by Confucius' followers:
The Master [Confucius] said, The virtue embodied in the doctrine of
the Mean is of the highest order. But it has long been rare among
people
According to the Wikipedia page on this subject:
In China prior to the twentieth century the Doctrine of the Mean was
integrated into the education system state wide. As well, one of the
prerequisites for employment in the imperial government was the study
and understanding of the Four Classics, included in this is the
Doctrine of the Mean. The imperial state wanted to reinforce the
three bonds of society; between the parent and child, husband and
wife, and ruler and subject. This was believed to emphasize a
peaceful home and an orderly state.
First notice that such a doctrine is irreconcilable with the Confucian
place theory which legitimizes the distinction between a unitary ruler
and his multitude of subjects, the disparity between the husband and
his many "wifes", and the strict order placed between a father and his
children. It assumes people to be robots too so that a 20-year old
child must not argue with a bull-shooting dad just as a 3-year old one
is required to. In fact one of the casualties of a Confucian society
is the stiffness, emotion-deprived family structures of many memberes
with conflicing educational backgrounds and ideals.
One need only read Ivan Turgenev's well known novel: Fathers and Sons
to get a sense of the dynamic of human relationship. And this is
where Nietsche, or Camus, or Sartre come in.
Time doesn't stop for us to be provincial and sentimental and to try
to cling to something "Chinese" at all costs.
In case someone who is eager to justify this ultra-provincial idea of
searching for anything originally Chinese to regress back to, from the
thought modern Chinese have come to be exposed to as a result of the
May 4th Movement (1919), by seizing on Aristotle's Golden Mean ethics,
one needs to first survey broadly his total output and second observes
that the Europe under his Golden Mean spell was in fact the Europe of
the Medieval age, which had kept the people on that continent ignorant
and enslaved for a thousand years, just as China was (for two thousand
years) which began with the Han Dynasty which saw fit to soldify its
rule by institutionalizing Confucianism.
Aristotle had many good ideas but most of them turn out to be obsolete
and was superceded by Descartes, Newton, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Mach,
and others and that's why Europe is the continent of developed nations
but China is still only a developing one.
And ideas are often cheap unless they are backed up by facts.
The China with a Confucian legacy is notoriously averse to performing
experiments on ideas and doing them systematically (with well-drawn
plans).
Europe saw fit to leave Aristotle and his Medieval adherents behind
and moved forward. (Now he is just one of a thousand flowers on the
humanistic horizon for the European education system.)
They didn't say:
" we have to have our ancient Greek and Roman thoughts to be who we
are."
They didn't because they wanted and want better things for themselves
and their children.
Even Japan has long recognized since the early 1800s, after feeling
humuliation somewhat similar to that the Chinese feel, that they
needed to move on.
They had their Meiji Reform
and never turned back.
Their University of Tokyo was able to cultivate first-rate physicists
and mathematicians the world has had no choice but to recognize and
learn from: Yukawa, Tomonaga, Ruogo Kubo, to name a few I am well
familiar of who were never educated in the West to reach their
pinnacle status. And Japan also have facilities similar to the old
Bell Labs of the US the world has long known and come to envy for its
successes in producing first-rate scientific discoveries.
And at least a few of the Japanese universities are competitive in the
world ranking of research institutions in hard sciences, starting with
Cambridge and Oxford of England, MIT, Caltech, Princeton and Harvard
in the US and Max Planck Institutes, and others in Europe.
Chinese universities are nowhere visible. To this day, they have not
produced students beyond pre-graduate level college students which
have gone on to be first-rate researchers. We've seen no pedogogical
writings in mathematics and physics coming from academics/researchers
from China. And cronyism and mediocrity continue abound, as Fields
Medalist mathematician Yau Shing Tung has pointed out.
China fortunately has a space program which is world class. But it
was a Mao legacy and depended heavily on the good-faith of a top-notch
Caltech educated applied mathematician by the name of Qian Xuesen, who
was persecuted in the US, a gift from Herbert Hoover to Chairman Mao,
and the fervor of a new crop of Mao-thought motivated scientists and
engineers working on that well-funded program.
(We can see how our security chief could be such a traitor to America
now, can't we, by virtue of his personal zeal? A bit like Inspector
Javert of Victor Hugo: Les Miserables, no?)
Now China has just barely managed to set itself free from the era of
famines and chronic starvation and malnutrition!
Now China is holding a lot of USD it doesn't know what to do with!!
Now the US is riding a beast of George W Bush's legacy which has
forced it to be critically dependent on cheap imported goods from
China to survive while keep on financing a bunch of wars that it can't
win!!!
But all these are hardly the facts long-term stability and prosperity
of China can count on.
China's still a developing nation, not a developed nation.
At best it might be said to be an emerging developed nation, but there
is no reason to gloat or be confident.
And its temporary wealth comes from the not-so-glosing fact that it
has a temporary advantage over say Australia that it has a massive
number of low-paid workers willing to better their lives by working
for the "foreigners", in a way somewhat similar to though a little bit
better than the Phillipino maids who are helping out their families by
spending a hard life in Sheikdoms of the Middle East.
It's only a little bit better, maybe, but not much better, because
many of them still have to leave home and relocate to live in crowded,
basically just a place to sleep in kind of dormitories, hundreds of
miles away from home and loved ones, in order to earn the slave wages.
But even with the trade surplus China has been amassing under such
harsh conditions for untold number of its people, it's still far
behind in many measures of success for a country and its people -
success they will critically depend on for long term survival.
For example, its ability to excel in frontier science and technology
achievements is still sorely lacking.
It's no time for China to brag about its susccess and its people to
beg for a return to the destructive way of life!
Who, actually, are the people who are talking about bringing China
back to its own dark ages via Confucianism?
Its President, who has not been seen as an articulate or persuasive
leader in his communications with his people;
A few most likely scientifically illiterate academics who need
publication quotas;
A woman academic who found a way to popularize the Analects in
contemporary Chinese and who is thus a convenient object for
exploitation;
A horde of China-hating political pundits who are ready to seize on
China's trade-surplus, China's provincial pride, and China's poverty
of intellectual achievement except two thousand years of scholarly
achievement in beating the dead Confucian horse to a still deader
state;
And a few illiterate people in our newsgroups who have an axe to
grind against Mao.
The Doctrine of the Mean is exactly what brought China closer and
closer to its dead center of mediocrity the world witnessed in 1919.
The thoughtful ones in China worked so hard to wake up the rest of
their fellowmen and they were communists and anti-communists alike.
They managed to work together in a single purpose and got enough to
eat and leave malnourishment behind. And then you hear the ghost of
Confucius knocking at their door again, like the one who haunted the
Danish prince.
Leave the ghost alone!
lo yeeOn
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