Don’t Speak of Cuts; Speak of Love

Euphemisms are especially frequent when the economy is bad. Photo by Samuel Sánchez.

Don’t Speak of Cuts; Speak of Love
Euphemisms have been part of public discourse ever since there has been public discourse, but times of crisis can bring their abuse to a comical extent or sometimes even a cynical one
El País: No digan recortes, llámenlo amor
By Amanda Mars, March 5, 2012

Never fear, my friends; no one is going to lower your salary. All that international organizations like the European Central Bank (ECB) are asking from Spain is a “competitive devaluation of salaries.” As you know, we are going through a time of crisis – or “severe deceleration” – and cuts – pardon me, we meant to say “reforms” or “adjustments” – are necessary in many places. But don’t put your head on your hands: Catalonia has absolutely not considered a co-pay for public sanitation; it is merely looking at the idea of introducing a “sanitary moderating ticket.” And the government has not increased income taxes – as they promised they wouldn’t during the election campaign – rather, the Vice President has made it clear that this modification of the IRPF consists of a “seasonal recharge of solidarity.”

They say that this period of “negative economic growth” (only alarmists hawk it as The Great Recession) has not given the same invoice to everyone; it has been pricier for the working class than for the wealthy and powerful. This is not only “the asymmetrical impact of the crisis.” Though workers continue to swell the ranks of the unemployed, it’s not because their companies laid them off, but rather because these companies are immersed in processes like “rationalizing the office network”: for example, when they fused their strongboxes.

Circumlocutions, periphrases, roundabouts, ambiguities, unintelligible jargon, unnecessary foreign words…they have a long relationship with power and seduction. The persuasive use of language has been part of the public discourse ever since there has been public discourse, and in this delicate frontier, and it dances on the thin line between makeup and masks. But the use of euphemisms intensifies in times of crisis. When all the news is bad, language abuse can verge on the comic or the grotesque.

The basic idea is that the important thing about a rose is its name, that things are what we say they are. This linguistic turn explains that language is not just a vehicle to express a previous thought but the formation of a thought in itself.

Or, to go all the way down the rabbit hole, calling something love convinces us that it is love, and not vice versa, and that’s why we say “I love you.”

“The War of the Words overpowers wars between policies and has an anesthetic effect, most of all during recession periods,” states Antón Costas, chair of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Barcelona (UB). “Euphemisms has that function, (we can’t call it a virtue,) of anaesthetizing, but from there we can abuse them in a cynical, crude, and even perverse way,” he adds.

The risk of this abuse, argues the chair, is that, as Newton’s Third Law says, every action creates an equal and opposite reaction. Or, to use a medical image, “we should take care with euphemistic language because these words can numb us for a time, but when the sick man wakes up and sees what happens, he could beat the hell out of us.”

For Darío Villanueva, secretary general of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), “the phrase “negative growth” is the height of all this, an anti-phrase that represents the absurd. It’s like saying “hot ice”. Poets can play those games and talk of the sound of silence, but as prose, negative growth is an anti-phrase.”

Luis de Guinos, when he took over as Minister of the Economy last December 26, gave the first demonstration of his language management style. De Guindos stated, without saying “recession” a single time, that Spain would enter 2012 with a “negative growth rate” that would “determine the profile into which we are going with greater depth” and that – why not? – it would be “relatively decelerated” (sic). But this should not be just an incentive – he said – to launch the “reform agenda”.

Soon after, he put one of his reforms in black and white. Guindos himself let slip that labor reform would be “extremely aggressive” in a conversation with EU Commissioner of Economic and Monetary Affairs Olli Rehn; his words were captured by cameras and microphones.

Fernando Esteve, Professor of Economic Theory at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM), reiterates that economics “is not scientific about usage; there are very clear elements of persuasion, and depending on how you express something, you can cause one impact or another.” For example, “you could call the same decision a savings method or a cut, and the sensation you generate is different: saving makes you think of something good and prudent, while a cut is a loss of rights.” Saving, when you put it that way, sounds more like love than reduction.

Every era has its fetish words. At the dawn of this crisis, it was no more than an economic “deceleration”, as ex-President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero pawned it. The real estate bubble – which was only recognized as such when it burst, as happens with bubbles – was only going to bring about “a smooth landing of prices”, to use the words of some developers.

Villanueva casts his view farther back: “During Francoism, we could also seem any euphemisms. Democracy, for example, was a taboo word, but in time it came into use. They said the regime was an organic democracy. What was inorganic was bad. Strikes were labor conflicts, and political parties were associations,” he recalls.

The risk of euphemisms – besides the risk that a user’s scheme will be exposed by a traitorous microphone – is that they lose their influence as time goes on. This is a theory of many linguists. “When people become so accustomed to a word that they immediately associate it with the concept it’s supposed to sweeten, it’s no longer a euphemism, and another word must be found to fill in for it,” explains journalist and writer Álex Grijelmo, president of the press agency Efe, who has studied the field of euphemistic language and gives some examples: “‘concentration camp’ was, in principle, a euphemism. It portrayed a remote place. Puta (“bitch” in modern Spanish) was used to avoid saying mujer (“woman”) in public.”

The media rides the euphemistic wave. “They are totally contaminated. They are now referring to information services when they are really talking about espionage,” he argues. In the economic camp, Grijelmo agrees that “I’m sure you could establish correlation between the GDP of a country and the use of euphemisms.” The author of books like La seducción de las palabras (The Seduction of Words) gives another example: a headline from the newspaper Diario de Burgos last November: “financial entities redefine their presence in small towns”. Or high-end fashion companies, which never announce “discounts” in newspaper pages, but instead “special sales”.

News reports refer to “encounters” with prostitutes and sometimes substitute the word “sex worker” for prostitute.

Political correctness in language has also lead to euphemisms like “developing country” rather than “undeveloped country”. Darío Villanueva mentions this and specifies that the key: “One way to confirm something is negative is to negate something positive.”

Economic language has been used for determined ends since days of yore, Fernando Esteve explains. “Think of all the wealth that a business creates, the entrepreneurial profits; they are called entrepreneurial surpluses, which would signify something good. But the profits for the workers are considered labor costs,” he points out. “Nobody wants to raise costs. That’s a common feeling. And we all end up in agreement that the more surpluses a business has, the better…We’ve already incorporated this into our language [and our subconscious as well],” Esteve explained. When we speak of education or public health, for example, we can forget that they are paid for with taxes.

The professor also finds a very persuasive bias or purpose in the use of certain metaphors. “When a politician or economist speaks like a dietitian, you should tremble in fear,” he says. “What he says is, ‘You have a lot of fat; you need to go on a diet, and then you’ll start to get better.’ If you give this image to citizens who don’t understand the economy, they’ll blindly believe that, in effect, they have eaten too much, and now they have to slim down, and that this diet, although it hurts, is the best thing they can do.”

The same thing happens with hangovers. Using this image for the crisis, in some way, puts the blame on someone who suffers, for being drunk. “For me, one of the most cretinous things about this crisis is the talk of hangovers. It implies that things are going badly now because of your excess, and we cannot fall for the tricks inside these metaphors,” he argues. Journalists, he critiques, “should stop carrying these facile metaphors.”

Technical terms can also make great allies for sweet talk. Referring to collective layoffs as “expedients for the regulation of employment” is a good example. Another is the “creditors’ competition”, which was a term a 2003 law chose for what was previously known as suspension of payment by a business, a much cruder and more explicit term.

Financial jargon, which is sometimes very complex, can also make communication hazy. Debt exposure and asset allocation often refer to real estate has been seized because the proprietors could not pay for credit. A little while ago, the airline company Spanair announced that it had seized operations because of “a lack of financial visibility”; that is to say, it didn’t have money, and no one would give it any more.

In this chapter of the interminable crisis, we never stop hearing the word “sacrifice” used for cuts to programs (seeking a “fiscal consolidation”). The European project is staggering because of budget disequilibria and sovereign debt crises.

It’s interesting to listen now to the Javier Pradera’s analysis published in this same newspaper August 1, 1993. The negotiations between government and social agents on an employment plan went beyond euphemisms. “The Byzantine wording the executive branch is using to convince Spaniards that convergence with Europe will demand effort but not sacrifice has nearly exhausted its reserves of verbal gunpowder,” Pradera wrote. “The useless semantic struggle to determine whether the rigor of the new government’s budgetary politics will lead to a cut in social spending sometimes distracts from the summertime blues, but it won’t do much to help negotiations progress,” he continued.

Miguel Boyer presented the budget like so May 17, 1983: “The fight against inflation will be facilitated by an attitude of salary moderation.”

This type of language is expressed not only by the lips of public powers, Antón Costas points out. “Corporations also use them when they have to defend certain pacts, such as those for salary moderation.” Moderation moderates: it tempers, tightens, and cleans up to avert excess.

Some debates and their linguistic resources are timeless. There will be more bad years, some melancholy poet said. Businessmen, on the other hand, evade “problems” in their interviews and instead speak of “challenges”. There will be cuts for some and adjustments, reforms, or fiscal consolidation measures for others, but a third group will call it love.

“This Crisis is Counterspiritual”

Álvaro Pombo, winner of the 2012 Nadal Prize.

“This Crisis is Counterspiritual”
The recent winner of the Nadal Prize calls for people to “take to the streets to denounce institutionalized egoism”
El País: Pombo: “Esta crisis es contraespiritual”
Carles Geli reporting from Barcelona January 7, 2012

Here he goes. Tireless, he cites quotes from one philosopher after another early in the morning although it’s been just six hours since the conclusion of the award gala for the 68th Premio Nadal, which he won for El temblor del héroe (The Shaking of the Hero), about the worries (or lack of them, rather) of a certain Román, a retired university professor who isn’t the least bit concerned about the misfortunes of others, as dramatic as they may be, and which he criticizes in one way or another. “I’d thought about titling it El furor heroico (“Heroic Fury”), in honor of Giordano Bruno, for that delirium to achieve divinity, beauty, the good, but I left it as it was,” drops Álvaro Pombo (born in Santander in 1939), who has an aquiline nose and a beard on a booming chin, a face like a reflected half-moon from a reflective short story; he has defined “the poetry of the good”, and it pervades his almost thirty titles. And he’s not tired of it all despite the limited effect his sermons have had on Spain society. “Yes, my Román is tired and frustrated with the world; I am not, which might mean I’m an idiot; I have spikes, but I enjoy good health, and perhaps that’s what lets me keep thinking about the Platonic world: I believe that we should do good, otherwise we’ll be unfinished creatures; the problem is that today we’re really installed in a philosophy of unfinished business, of letting everything flow really quickly, everything on the Internet…what I don’t know is how to redirect this; that’s why I write, because the novel is fizzy with its dynamite: you can do emotional experiments without causing too much damage.”

Pombo admits, nevertheless, that he feels “pretty much alone” in his crusade in Spanish letters. “I see it more in English fiction, in Ian McEwan, Iris Murdoch, Graham Greene…in Spain, perhaps the person who’s closest would be Javier Marías.” It could be that what Pombo has denounced many times is not alien to him: the predominance of the paralyzed intellectual, like Román, who feels “blocked up” after his retirement, “without feedback, flirting with boredom” and also a young digital journalist for a site symbolically named The Non-Current, “which could interview me, as well…yes, the intellectual paralysis of Spain is notable, and in part it’s because of our politics, which have intervened badly: our political discourse is paralyzing, as well, with the repetition of slogans and over-discussion of topics; today, here and in Europe, the conservative discourse seems less paralyzing – perhaps because it’s not monolithic? – than the social democratic movement, which has not thought to rethink labor and the duality of the rich and the poor…”

“We don’t have any intellectuals like Ortega y Gasset.” The author of The Platinum-Iridium Meter, a reader of essays, drops Ortega y Gasset’s name twice; he quickly clarifies that he also monitors two or three other good authors – “Villacañas, Pardo, and Marina”, but he does so in the context of a society where “we cannot make exquisite culture, where everything has to be divulged because 50% of youth would need someone to explain Plato and the steam engine to them.”

The economic crisis has not facilitated the solidification of the liquid society that Pombo has already advanced (“much earlier than Kundera and Bauman”) in Relatos sobre la falta de sustancia (Stories on the Lack of Substance) in 1977. The crisis has accentuated this: “this crisis is counterspiritual; the philosophy of the personal salvation of the soul rules over that of the city, and is so distant from that of saying that I don’t save my circumstances, I won’t survive…we can see it now: Ortega continues to be seminal.” Solutions? “I can’t accept everything as it is; we have to take to the streets and denounce it, but we can’t leave the discourse like this either; we have to get up, and to get lively, and that’s why I joined Union, Progress, and Democracy; for that and for Fernando Savater.”

Hard times require a different kind of literature. Pombo admits that he has changed his way of writing, shortening it, as if it were dictation. “Now I make my works much more brief; in Spain we have constructed a very large and heavy kind of fiction; The Shaking of the Hero [which will be published February 2 by Destino] will be a short novel, 200 pages long, to avoid becoming a sprawling reflection; it’s a bit like the works of Henry James, following the Borgesian idea of having self control and a powerful image,” he says while, without realizing it, he shakes the table. Like he shakes his readers.

大眾電信與人際關係 ~ Mass Communication and Interpersonal Relations

大眾電信與人際關係
作者：史杰輝
編輯：紀壽惠

從人類開始使用電起，長途通訊一代比一代方便，甚至於現在我能每天跟母國的朋友聊天，可以隨時看見父母的臉。有些iPhone主人以爲全世界就在他們的手裏。

不能不說大眾電信的發展有許多好處，不過這樣的根本改變也帶來一些壞處。根據不少社會學家及作家的觀點，大眾電信對我們的社會技能與社會制度是一個障礙。簡單地說，看銀幕的時間越久，面對面説話的時間越短。

你不想認識鄰居或是親近家人，就不用做，反正在網路上有意思的事情五花八門。有人一連幾天都不説話。在這樣的私人社會制度下，我們沒有辦法知道誰需要精神上的安慰。有時候那些人因太焦慮而自殺或是瘋狂地傷害陌生人。

去年聖誕節，一個四十二嵗自己住的英國女生故意地過量用藥，同時在臉書上告訴她一千多朋友她正在自殺 。有的離她住得很遠的朋友擔心不過沒辦法救她。有些離住得較近的朋友卻不幫她忙，並回覆說她在騙她們，她很好笑，如果她想自殺她就應該自殺。隔一天她母親跟社區醫院才發現她的情況，不過，已經來不及了 。

上個星期六，一月八日，在亞利桑那州圖森市公共政治機會一個二十二嵗的男生突然向陌生人開槍。造成六個人死亡 ，包括一個九嵗的女孩子，以及十四個人受傷 ，包括一個美國眾議院代表。

政治解説員一直爭論兇手的政治觀念。其實，我們不了解他的情形，就不能了解他這樣做的理由。根據我的觀點，他的行爲跟政治沒有多大的關係。按照精神病醫生所知道的，好像他是精神分裂症患者。

他跟父母同住，同學説他是喜歡獨處的人。看起來安靜，不過把網路當作布告欄。他登錄著好多錄像，文章等等，顯示他很焦慮，對政府不滿意，此外他也會用武器。不過沒有人發現他有問題，才會造成這樣的悲劇。

我們很快從農村社會變成世界社會了，不過，我個人覺得非保存社區精神不可。簡單的說，跟鄰居彼此照顧就是農村的保險制度。

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Mass Communication and Interpersonal Relations
Author: James Smyth
Editor: Ji Shou-hui

Since we discovered how to produce electricity, long distance communication has become easier with each passing generation, to the point where even though I live abroad, I can chat with my friends at home every day, and I can see my father and mother’s faces whenever I like.  Many an iPhone user feels like the entire world is in the palm of his hand.

There’s no doubt that the development of mass communication has done many good things for us, but such a fundamental change in our lifestyles has brought its share of problems, as well.  Quite a few sociologists and writers believe that the use of mass communication devices damages our social skills and social cohesion; to put it simply, the more time we spend looking at screens, the less time we spent talking to people face to face.  If you don’t want to meet your neighbors or have close relationships with your family members, you don’t have to, because everything that you could want is on the Internet.  Some people go days without speaking.  Under this kind of social system, we don’t have a way of knowing who needs psychiatric care.  Some of these troubled individuals commit suicide or snap and injure others.

Last Christmas, a 42-year old Englishwoman intentionally overdosed, then informed her 1000+ Facebook friends through her wall what she had just done and that she was committing suicide.  Some people were worried about her but were too far away to help her.  Others lived closer, but instead of helping, they replied that she wasn’t serious, that she was ridiculous, or that if she wanted to die, that was her own choice.  A day later, her mother and the hospital finally heard about the situation, but by the time they reached her apartment, it was too late.

Last Saturday, January 8th, at a public political assembly in Tucson, Arizona, a 22-year old male suddenly opened fire on strangers.  He killed six people, including a 9-year old girl, and injured 14 more, including a U.S. Congresswoman. Political commentators ceaselessly debated the shooter’s political views.  In reality, you couldn’t understand his motivation just by understanding his opinions.  I believe his political views had very little to do with the attack.  According to psychiatrists with knowledge of the situation, he is schizophrenic.

He lived with his parents, and his classmates said he was a troubled person.  He seemed quiet, but he made the Internet his bulletin board: he posted recordings, writing, and the like online; his work made it clear that he was unstable, unsatisfied with the government, and able to use weapons.  But no one realized he was crazed enough to cause this tragedy.

We’ve changed very quickly from a local agricultural society to a global one, but in my opinion, we have to nurture local community spirit.  Mutual concern between neighbors was the safety net of rural society.

太陽的聲音 ~ The Sound of The Sun

太陽的聲音
有一個人生來就雙目失明，對於世間各種東西的顔色，形狀和性質，完全不知道是怎麽一回事。
有一天，他聽見幾個人在一起談論太陽。
甲說：「前幾天一直下雨，每天總是陰沉沉的，叫人心裡很煩悶。今天晴了，又看到了太陽，我真高興。」
乙說：「現在是春天，天氣不冷不熱，暖和的陽光照射在我們身上，太舒服了。」
丙說：「到了夏天，我們在田裡工作，談熱的太陽曬得人滿身大汗，我們就希望躲開它了。」
丁說：「無論如何，如果沒有太陽，人類恐怕就不能生存。」
那個瞎子聽到這些話，覺得很有趣，就走到他們面前，很客氣地問他們說：「請問各位；太陽到底是什麽樣子阿？」
那幾個人都被他問住了，不知道如何回答。過了一會兒，
一個人告訴他說：「太陽是一個圓圓的東西，就像一個發亮的銅盤子。」
但是什麽叫「圓」，什麽叫「發亮」，什麽叫「同盤子」，瞎子也都不知道。
那個人無可奈何，只好敲敲手裡的銅盤子說:「就是這個東西，你懂了吧？」
瞎子點點頭，表示他董了。
第二天，瞎子從廟門口經過，正趕上和尚在敲穜。她聽到鐘聲，覺得跟他昨天聽到的聲音一樣。他非常高興，大聲喊道：「你們聼，這時太陽的聲音！」

The Sound of the Sun
There once was a boy who had been blind since birth. He couldn’t comprehend what the colors, shapes, and properties of objects were.
One day, he heard some people talking about the sun.
The first said, “It’s been raining the last few days, and the gloomy weather made everyone depressed. But today the sun came out, so we’re all feeling great.”
The second said, “It’s spring, so it’s not too hot and not too cold. The sunshine feels really comfortable.”
The third said, “But when the summer comes, and we’re out working in the fields, the sun will make us sweaty and uncomfortable, and we’ll want to get away from it.”
The fourth said, “Even so, if it weren’t for the sun, I’m afraid we wouldn’t be here.”
The blind boy was intrigued by their conversation, so he asked them very politely, “Excuse me, sirs, could you please tell me what the sun is?”
They didn’t know what to say to him. Finally, someone ventured,
“The sun is round and shiny, like a cymbal.”
But the boy didn’t understand the words “round,” “shiny,” or “cymbal.”
The man had no choice but to bang a cymbal he was holding and say, “It’s like this. Do you understand?”
The boy nodded in affirmation.
The next day, the boy was passing by the temple gate at the very moment the priest struck the gong. The boy remembered the sound he’d heard the day before, and he ecstatically shouted, “Listen! It’s the sound of the sun!”

太陽的光亮
作者：史杰輝
編輯：何宇薇

《太陽的聲音》的課文提醒了我，希臘的哲學家柏拉圖的作品《理想國》跟這課很像。現在請讓我說一說。
傳説，洞裏有一些俘虜。他們生來就一起被鐵鏈拴著，在他們前面是墻，在他們後面是火。因爲他們靠在屏幕上，所以不論火還是後面的東西都看不到，他們能只看前面墻上的影子，談論那些是什麽。捕獲者搬動洞裏的東西的時候，俘虜會談論影子在做什麽。
有一天一個俘虜忽然被釋放，先到外面。陽光亮得他眼睛痛得要命，雙目失明了好長時間。可是他越來越習慣新環境，終於看得知道顔色，形狀，和性質是怎麽一回事了。發現世間的美麗讓他快樂得很。
過了幾天，他希望給朋友看看這真正的世界。但是，除了抵抗捕獲者以外，他恐怕朋友寧願留他們自己的世界，而不願逃走。到底怎麽辦？
這好像在世間，太陽是真理。我們是俘虜。教育讓我們向真理靠近了。我們覺得既不舒服，又有孤獨的感覺，想躲開它回去以前的生活。可是習慣了以後卻也會充分地高興，覺得以前的生活陰沉得不得了。我們到底敢不敢釋放我們的朋友？
我認爲《太陽的聲音》有這樣深刻的想法。太陽是真理。我們是瞎子。銅盤子是宗教。因爲我們的感知有限的關係，連聖賢也無可奈何，只好用寓言故事那樣的事實解釋實情。雖然我們不能完全了解真理，可是宗教和思想讓我們近了一點。
太陽是一個既大又亮，既重要又恒久的東西，對我們的想法有很大的影響。可見它象徵跨時代和文化。

The Light of the Sun
Author: James Smyth
Editor: He Yu-wei

“The Sound of the Sun” reminded me of a similar story from Plato’s Republic. Allow me to explain.
A long time ago, there were some captives in a cave. They’d been chained together since birth, and there was a wall before them and a fire behind them. Since their backs were leaning against a screen, they couldn’t see the fire or anything else behind them, merely the shadows that the fire projected on the wall. The captives talked to each other about what the shadows were. Whenever their captors moved things around in the cave, the captives speculated about what the new shadows were.
One day, one of the captives was suddenly freed and taken outside the cave. The sunlight hurt his eyes so much that he was blinded for a time. Yet he slowly adjusted to his new environment, and he came to understand what colors, shapes, and properties really were. He saw the beauty of the world, and he was joyful.
Some days later, he thought of his friends in the cave. He wanted to show this world to them, but he worried about not only the resistance of his captors, but that of his own friends, who might want to stay in the cave because it was the only world they’d ever known. What to do?
This is an allegory. The sun is the truth. We are the captives. Education brings us closer to the truth. At first we’re uncomfortable and lonely, and we want to escape back to our old lives. After we’ve gotten used to it, though, we’re happier than ever and feel like our previous lifestyle was dark and gloomy. Do we have the courage to free our friends from that same captivity?
I think “The Sound of the Sun” is also philosophical. The sun is the truth. We are the blind person. The cymbal symbolizes religion. Since our perception is limited, even the sages don’t know how to explain things to us, so they have to use parables to explain the real state of things. Though we cannot completely understand the truth, religion and philosophy bring us closer to it.
The sun is big and beautiful, vital and ancient, and it has greatly influenced our thinking. Its symbolic importance transcends cultures.

Confucius’s Birthday Ceremony

My article has been included in the 35th ICLP (International Chinese Language Program) Bulletin!

http://iclp.ntu.edu.tw/epaper/index.php?volume=28

一個不容易回答的問題 ~ A Difficult Question

September 28th was Confucius’s birthday. The President of Taiwan and I (and a few hundred other people) celebrated at a dawn ceremony at the Taipei Confucius Temple. More on that tomorrow, but today I’ve translated a tale from my textbook that I liked. I should print this and post it so it can wave at me in warning when I write.

一個不容易回答的問題
孔子遊歷各國的時候，經過一個地方，看見路旁有兩個小孩兒，站在那裡爭論。當時孔子坐在車上，距離他們相當遠，聼不清他們講些什麽。只見他們爭得面紅耳赤，説話的聲音越來越大，幾乎要動武了。孔子下了車，走到他們面前，想為他們排解排解。他問他們說：「你們爲了什麽事爭吵啊？」
一個小孩兒說：「老公公，您是誰？您懂的事情一定比我們多，請您給我們評評理吧！」
孔子說：「我是魯國的孔丘。先告訴我，你們究竟爲什麽爭論？」
另一個小孩兒說：「您既然是孔子，就一定能給我們解決這個問題，因爲人人都知道您是世界上最有學問的人。」
孔子說：「快把你們的問題說給我聼。」
一個小孩說：「我認爲太陽在清早剛出來的時候離人近，中午的時候離人遠。」
另一個小孩說：「他說得不對。我認爲太陽剛出來的時候離人遠，中午的時候離人近。」
孔子說：「你們每人再講講自己的理由。」
一個小孩兒說：「早晨太陽剛出來，又大又圓，和車輪差不多，中午就小得像盤子。東西離得越遠，看起來越小。可是太陽早晨離人近，中午離人遠。」
另一個小孩兒說：「一點兒都不對。早晨太陽出來，我們覺得涼快，到了中午，太陽把人曬得真流汗。人站在火旁邊，就覺得熱，離火遠些，就沒有感覺。所以我說太陽中午離人近。」
這個小孩都講完了，就問孔子，究竟他們誰說得對？
孔子似乎被這個問題難倒了，一時不知如何回答。他告訴他們說：「我不能斷定你們誰說得對，因爲我還沒有研究過這個問題。」那兩個小孩心裡想：孔子是最有學問的人，連他都回答不出這個問題；我們才知道多少事情，就以爲自己的想法一定對，實在太不應該了。

A Difficult Question
While Confucius was touring the countries of China, he saw two children arguing on the side of the road. Since he was sitting inside his cart, he couldn’t make out what they were debating, but their faces were beet red, their voices were getting louder and louder, and they were on the verge of fighting each other. Confucius came down from his cart, stepped in front of them, and told them to break it up. He asked them, “What are you arguing about?”
One boy said, “Grandfather, who are you? You must know more than us, so please tell us who’s right!”
Confucius said, “I am Kong Qiu from Lu. Please tell me, what were you debating?”
The other boy said, “You must be Confucius. You can definitely settle our problem, because everybody says you’re the most educated man in the entire world.”
Confucius said, “Quickly, tell me what your problem is.”
One boy said, “I think the sun is closer to us at dawn and farther away from us at noon.”
The other boy said, “He’s wrong. I think the sun is farther away at dawn and closer at noon.”
Confucius said, “Each of you, please give me your reasons.”
The first boy said, “At dawn, the sun is as big and as round as a wheel, but at noon, it’s as small as a dish. When things are far away from us, they look small, but when they’re close to us, they look big. So the sun must be closer to us in the morning and farther away from us at noon.”
The other boy said, “He’s completely wrong. At sunrise, we feel cool, but at noon, we sweat. When you’re close to a fire, it feels hot, and when you’re far away, you don’t feel it. So I think the sun is closest to us at noon.”
The boys asked Confucius who was right.
Confucius seemed flummoxed. For a while, he didn’t know how to reply. Finally, he said, “I can’t tell you who is correct because I haven’t studied this question.”
The two boys thought, “If Confucius is the most learned man in the world, and he doesn’t know the answer, then how could we have been so sure that we did?”

To Be Rather Than To Seem

“Be yourself,” we always say in America. Uniqueness goes a long way in our culture, be it university admissions, tryouts for Broadway musicals, or national politics: John McCain, Sarah Palin, and Barack Obama distinguished themselves with their personalities rather than their records. Kids hear from both teachers and media that they should be genuine, and noisy personalities like Donald Trump and Terrell Owens get more media attention than their more accomplished and introverted peers. Hypocrisy is the greatest sin a politician can commit – it seems better for one’s reputation to always be an evildoer than to do evil while claiming to uphold good.

Variety is the spice of life, and a heart full of love, freely expressed, warms everyone who gathers around it. But what if what’s inside you is bad? If your true feelings will hurt others, should you still express them? If your heart is twisted, wouldn’t it be better for everyone if you tried to be someone else?

The fathers of Japanese society must have thought about this a lot. Social interaction, especially between strangers, is heavily constituted of set phrases, language, and rules which create a minimum floor of courtesy only encountered in high society in the West. Every radio interview sounds exactly the same, from the words to the tone of voice between the host and the guest. In fact, Japanese-level politeness is linguistically impossible in English because there are five modes of speaking the language: plain Japanese between friends and family, which often follows the local dialect; polite Japanese between associates (this is the kind taught in textbooks), honorific Japanese addressed toward social superiors (service workers are drilled into treating their customers as social superiors, for instance, which shocks Westerners), humble Japanese used when talking about oneself to social superiors, and finally, imperial Japanese, which you get to use if you’re the Emperor. Americans can try to express these degrees of respect through their bearing, their tone of voice, and so forth, but it’s more difficult without the natural cover of the language. Even if you know nice and polite things are said to everyone, not just you, they’re comforting to hear.

Young people, especially girls, learn that being shy is considered attractive. Various love songs, even in rock music, praise women for their “quiet smiles” more than any other endowments. Class clowns are sometimes quietly disliked by the rest of the class for taking attention away from the teacher. You’re more likely to teach a group that’s too quiet and introverted in Japan than one that’s too rowdy and impolite, and when I run into my students with their parents at the grocery store, they’re always too shy to say anything, even if they talk a lot at school. Instead of asking them how they’re doing, I should just read them their Miranda rights.

Of course, artifice can only hide so much of a telltale heart. In Japanese, there are several ways to say you couldn’t help doing something, or feeling a certain way. Not coincidentally, negative feelings are often held inside, and problems are not mentioned, until they either disappear or explode. One of the section heads at the Board of Education had been having financial problems for a while. No one at the office offered to lend him money, so he got it from the yakuza instead, and he got so deep that last week, he was arrested for breaking into and robbing an old neighbor’s house. Polite as public servants may be, they’ll still steal from the people; deferential as children may be to their parents, there will still be family murder cases in the news.

The dark side of Japanese society is well-documented by Western journalists. If you know anything about Eastern pop culture, chances are good you’d heard of “otaku.” Otaku are super-fans of anime, manga, and video games: not those who enjoy them an hour a two a day, but rather those who spend all their time consuming pop art, hentai (animated pornography), and online games, never leaving their parents’ basements or producing anything of value – besides those who are paid to write reviews and run web sites for the rest. Shows, pop idols, and now even politicians pay lip service to this demographic to drive their own sales. Before he became a widely hated Prime Minister, Taro Aso was an avowed anime and manga fan who went to Akihabara and addressed the crowd as “dear otaku.” However, the existence of so many indolent youth in a country that already can’t replace its present work force is a problem. Otaku spend all their time embracing their own interests, and the language of “being yourself” and personal independence imported from America helps them stay comfortable with choices that violate Confucian ethics of hard work and sacrifice for past and future generations.

More worrisome than the young men is the unbalanced relationship between work, school, and family evident in the country’s demographics. Schools and families drill children to work very hard, to be competitive, and to try to finish projects no matter how long it takes. They grow up, go into the work force, and pull extremely long hours without complaint. For this reason, Japanese schools and companies are extremely successful, and an island nation with no natural resources has the second largest economy in the world. However, family life is suffering. These workers are often too busy to get married, or too tired to have children, and so the country has to get more and more production out of fewer and fewer people. Because most jobs are in the city, the modern family is more often than not split apart, with the elderly living alone in the countryside they love too much to leave. “Tokyo Story” is Japan’s classic movie about this, but for a more commercial example Yakult, a probiotic milk company, has been making a lot of money in the countryside because its delivery people hang around their elderly customers’ houses and chat with them for a while. If the Japanese do have children –there are plenty of perfectly domestic couples who don’t – there often isn’t the time to properly raise them, so the schools have to carry more classes about morality and home ec, distracting the kids from academic subjects and forcing them to go to cram schools at night to get ahead. The teachers become superheroes, often covering both the parents’ emotional and PTA volunteer-type duties. The children write diaries every single day for their homeroom teachers, who read them and discuss problems with the kids. In all cases, whether there are family fights or students committing crimes, things are kept as private as quiet as possible between teachers, parents, kids, and victims to avoid reflecting badly on the community.

Here’s where I come into the story. The JET Program is nominally about teaching students English, but really it’s about internationalizing small towns, and the way to get foreigners there is to have them teach English. I didn’t know any Japanese, and I hadn’t taken any education classes in school, but I was accepted in front of a lot of people who had both, presumably because I looked bright, outgoing, and adventurous, which are the qualities an international exchange program would be seeking. I received a couple hours of training in teaching and Japanese, and no information at all about the Japanese education system and the rhythm of school life, before I was put in front of my students for my self-introduction lesson.

In a sense, anyone can be a teacher as long as he knows something the students don’t, so there’s nothing criminal about what the Japanese government did. The program has run for 20 years so in their estimation it’s a success. Some of the best education foreign teachers do here, I think, is unconscious. The Japanese value system on everything from art to beauty to language is extremely complex but also quite limited from a Western perspective. The easiest analogue is the language, which is over 2000 years old and has untold levels of depth but only five vowels and ten consonants. The vocabulary is greater than 20,000 but foreign words like “the” and “year” cannot even be accurately written in their alphabet. I am “Jehhh-mu-su Su-ma-ee-su.”

Because foreigners have been raised outside the Japanese value system, the way they look, talk, walk, play sports, and laugh (well, especially the way –I– laugh) are completely new, even incomprehensible to the students, or else something they’ve only seen portrayed facetiously on television. When I tell a teacher she looks good today, she’ll turn to one of her male counterparts and say, “See, the –foreigner– thinks I’m beautiful!” When I dressed as Santa Claus and surprised the kids at a kindergarten with loud merriment and presents, some were excited and jumped up and down, but most were shocked! They stared at me and received their presents shyly, so amazed were they by a white-bearded foreigner in red throwing his personality around. Most applicants hope for the city, but the most life-changing work is done in the places no one else goes because no one knows they exist.

Regardless, the distinctions between the responsibilities of the Alternative Language Teacher (that’s me) and those of the other teachers create tension. My job, contractually, is easy. There’s a 35-hour work week with 20 vacation days and a 3.6 million yen salary, which covers cost of living in the big cities but could cover three years of expenses when you live where I do. You’re teaching your native language, something you already have decades of experience with, and there is always a native teacher in the room with you, technically in charge and often literally so. You can’t grade or discipline the students. The Board of Education handles your legal paperwork and often your living situation. The responsibilities are intentionally played down in order to make the position more attractive and the application process more competitive. These ALTs, however, invariably share the office with the actual Japanese teachers who are running the school. Being a Japanese school teacher is hard. University education programs are competitive and challenging. When you get out, you become a teacher, parent, and coach at the same time. Everyone works until 5:30 every day, most until 7 around half the time, and the youngest one will have ridiculous hours, often ‘til 10. Not only that, the native teachers don’t make as much as the ALT until they turn 35, at least in my state. So there is a strong sense of camaraderie between teachers, and the ALT is often left out of it.

To begin with, ALTs, alone among adults in Japanese society, are referred to by their first names. I am “Mr. James.” This is friendly, and my social superiors have the right to call me whatever they like, but it also has a patronizing tinge that I’m not entirely comfortable with so I am really happy with the class of 7th graders that calls me “Mr. Smyth.” More crucially, there’s a lot happening at school that isn’t communicated to ALTs, and not necessarily for language reasons because the English teachers could translate for them. This goes from school activities (many a teacher finds himself abandoned in the staff room while everyone goes to the auditorium) to work parties, a central part of Japanese culture that the foreign teachers sometimes aren’t invited to. I alone among the teachers was left out of the math teacher’s wedding this winter, which was totally understandable because he had a lot of friends and not enough room but still a little awkward. Because teachers want to avoid conflict, feedback about ALTs goes up to the Board of Education, not down to the teachers themselves, so ALTs often don’t hear the complaints and criticism about them until much later, if at all. Everyone at my 200-student school seemed perfect. Then I learned Japanese and realized that when morning meetings go long, it’s because the teachers are talking about students’ mental illnesses, shoplifting, deaths of parents, fights between family members, and the like. They’re telling each other things to be sensitive of and deciding what to do about it, and awareness of these issues would help me do my job better, too, but they would never actually tell me. The communication gap even extends to the administration of JET. At a meeting for first-year teachers and their supervisors last week, in its concluding remarks about Japanese-ALT relations the coordinators held up a poster-board that said in Japanese, “Errors and difficulties are opportunities for growth.” They then turned the page to their English translation, which breezily stated “Enjoy the difference!” To understand your environment, you can’t just hear what Japanese people are saying to you: you have to understand what they’re saying to each other.

I’ve shot the communication gap because I learned Japanese so quickly. I don’t need anything to be translated for me so lack of communication isn’t a problem, and I have a more normal working relationship with my teachers and faculty than the other ALTs might. I’ve worked until 6:30 several days since I came here so I have a reputation for work ethic. Since I work at exceptionally friendly schools, the kind I’d like to stay in forever if my calling were primary school teaching, I probably would have been accepted regardless of language ability. However, I’ve also been exposed a lot to the other foreigners, too: one weekend with 200 new teachers out of the Chicago consulate, Tokyo Orientation with a thousand more newcomers, two 2-day seminars for my state, the 120-person Halloween party at my house, and seemingly weekly get-togethers with the teachers in surrounding towns. So I’ve been watching the other foreigners react to things quite a bit. That’s been interesting itself.

As an ALT, you’re teaching your native language at a basic level, you’re educating others by expressing yourself – the perfect job for Americans – and negative feedback isn’t given in order to avoid conflict. What this all means is that after the frantic move-in, the job can get very, very cozy. Like other teachers, you can repeat the same curriculum year to year, but you don’t have all the other responsibilities they do. Some ALTs treat the job as a vacation or as an extension of college and fill their leisure hours with partying and traveling. The re-contracting deadline is halfway through the contract year, before locking up future employment is even possible for most people, so people who applied to the job because they were aggressively seeking adventure are encouraged to be defensive and cautious; the combination of adventure, decent pay, and low stress creates a mantra of “You don’t know how lucky you have it here.” One year becomes two, three, four, or five, all blissful but not necessarily funneling toward a higher-paying opportunity or a marketable skill. (Most JETs leave the program without literacy in Japanese.)

Another problem the Japanese have with some foreigners is in their attitude toward institutions. Many Westerners, in contrast with Japanese, react to institutions with hostility and to moral authority with cynicism. Only the worst ALTs let these feelings interfere with this job, but one of those bad eggs was in my county the last two years. He was the type who always wanted to see how much he could get away with at work. He regularly showed up late for school, watched “24” in the teachers’ office, went to Thailand without telling anyone, had a shouting match at the Board of Education, got in trouble with the yakuza, fought another teacher over a girl and let his depression over her into the classroom, and on his departure brought two 14-year old girls to America with him, with the permission of their parents but without the permission of their school. The BOE over-retaliated by making things difficult for all the other teachers, too. They refused to give legal help to my predecessor when he got in a car accident, and they didn’t give any of the foreign teachers the mandatory annual physical. The Americans joined the problem teacher in opposing the Board, and eventually the year was ruined for everybody.

Now we have mostly new teachers in the county; everyone has good intentions, and there is peace and happiness. My reverse culture shock was benign, and it came from a Thanksgiving party. The meal was a potluck, and all the traditional Thanksgiving fare was eaten, including turkey ordered from a Costco a couple hours down the road. There were too many people to sit around a table so we stood and ate from paper plates, luncheon-style. After the meal came a good-natured drinking party. It was a pleasant evening, but I laid down to bed that night and realized we hadn’t said a single prayer, and indeed we hadn’t expressed anything we were thankful for at all, besides thanking individuals for bringing certain tasty dishes.

Thanksgiving, the Founding Fathers, Christmas, the Church: all are flawed, but if you cut down everything that tries to embrace higher concepts, you’ll be left browsing in the grasses for food, shelter, and sex, like everything else that lives on this earth. Because customs and traditions are so carefully guarded in Japan, there are rarely debates about whether people are losing “the true meaning” of a festival day. Newspapers, without commentary, run haiku submitted by readers. The country’s history, language, and culture are taught confidently but also truthfully, at least at my school. Japan’s Emperor was humiliated in war and thrown down from his seat in Heaven by the United States Military, but the Royal Family is still greatly respected and has the loyalty of the people. Genji looks like a womanizer to today’s reader, but the novel about him, now celebrating its 1000th anniversary, is still greatly revered. Sarcasm is one of the strong points of American writers, but perhaps we would benefit from a little more reverence.

To be, rather than to seem, “esse quam videri,” is the motto of North Carolina, where I went to college. So much of what I’m facing now revolves around it. I have to reserve judgments about people, knowing that each day as I understand more they could be completely different. I have to keep pushing myself to improve in an apparently consequence-free occupation, remembering Father Time will hold me accountable even if no one else does. Most importantly, I have to be Christ in an environment where many are too afraid to express themselves at all, and remind myself what that means when no one else can provide an example. To seem faithful without having to be so: that is the lotus that is offered to me every day in this foreign land.

This Friday, which would be the middle of the night on Thursday for most of you, I have to tell my Board of Education whether I intend to re-contract for August 2009-July 2010. Please pray for me to choose wisely!

Happy New Year

Unlike its neighbors, Japan celebrates New Year’s on January 1st. Everyone gets a week off, the only long vacation some people will take all year (during “Golden Week” in May, there are holidays on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday but NOT Thursday and Friday). This is so much time off for Japanese people that everyone comes back to work super happy and refreshed, excited to log 12-hour days for the rest of the year. During these nine long days, people depart the big cities for their tiny furusato, or hometowns, to reunite with their families. If a parent or grandparent died that year, the holiday is passed in mourning and black; otherwise it’s a big party. Since I’m living in one of these small towns, everyone I know just stuck around, but I’m sure my Tokyo friends could tell you about how strange the subway feels when there aren’t any businessmen in it.

I hear this New Year’s was awesome, but I wasn’t actually there, as I returned back to my own furusato, Carmel, Indiana, to pass the twelve days of Christmas with my family. It would have been fun to see the Japanese holidays firsthand, but that would have meant imposing on someone. Here’s what happened: people wrote New Year’s cards to all their friends, which the post office holds until delivery on January 1st, wishing each other good health and mentioning important events like marriage or the birth of a child. They cleaned their houses to make a fresh start and keep the demons away. People ate a lot of good food which is only cooked on this one day of the year: different sweets, fish, and vegetables (sometimes I can’t tell if I’m eating a vegetable or a fish, by the way). Everyone drank traditional New Year’s sake, too, but the kids didn’t like the taste very much. Grandparents, parents, aunts, and uncles gave money to kids, who received 3 man yen (or $300) on average. Some families watched the annual New Year’s Eve singing contest between various enka (think Frank Sinatra) and J-pop stars. This year, the white team (men) beat the red team (women). At midnight at Buddhist temples, the bells rang 108 times to rid humanity of each of its one hundred eight plagues. At some point in the night, people went to shrines to pray for good luck. It snowed at the stroke of midnight here, which is good luck in my opinion. My junior high school 9th graders had a little less fun than everyone else. Their high school entrance exams are quickly approaching, so they attended cram school every day of vacation, and at some point each of them took a 90-minute trip to the shrine for the God of Knowledge in Fukuoka to pray for success.

New Year’s Day is the biggest holiday here, and it’s not hard to understand why. The Japanese calendar, and much of Japanese culture, is centered on the passage of time. First of all, years are marked not by the Western system, which could count from Jesus’s birth forward and backward into infinity, but by the number of years the current Emperor has reigned. This is Heisei 21, the 21st year of the reign of Akihito, who calls himself Heisei (becoming peaceful). I was born in Showa 61, the 61st year of the reign of Hirohito, or Showa (brightness + “wa” which means either harmony or Japan, befitting his nationalism). Heisei will not last forever: even when the Emperor was a god, he was still a man in this way. Time itself follows the rhythm of life and death.

As for the non-New Year’s holidays, there’s Seven Five Three, which celebrates children who have reached (more traditionally, survived until) those ages, Children’s Day on May 5th, and Coming of Age Day to celebrate those who have turned 20, the legal age of adulthood. Birthdays are celebrated, too, particularly the Emperor’s Birthday, which currently falls on December 23rd and is a day off of work for everyone. On Respect for the Aged Day, people visit or call their elders, and on Obon they visit the graves of the dead. The Vernal and Autumnal Equinoxes are official holidays as well. In days of yore, they were big Shinto festivals, but now the passing of the seasons is cause for introspection itself. Besides these holidays, there is “Hanami,” or flower-viewing, a time for romantic picnics or introspective walks which occurs whenever the sakura blossom in your town. That should be late March here and early April in Tokyo. Sakura are predominant in Japanese art, music, and poetry, remarkable for their stunning beauty but more so for their transience. For fifty weeks of the year, you can’t tell the cherry blossom trees apart from the others. Then for two weeks they bloom, and almost as soon as they flourish their leaves are falling. Hence sakura can be a metaphor for life, or relationships, or any number of things, because everything is transient. People may not be devout Buddhists in deed but the Buddha’s attitude is well-understood in culture. Day by day, the bells ring without fail at seven, noon, and five, the birth, peak, and end of the farmer’s work.

Etiquette blooms from this concept. If our time on this earth is transient, then every moment is sacred. Every moment a person spends in your company is irreplaceable. So you must give polite greetings to everyone you encounter throughout the day, apologize for taking up people’s time when you ask them for help, arrive to everything on time, and say things at the beginning and end of each activity and each meal to formally acknowledge the value of that time. Even if you were doing something menial and commonplace, the activity was sacred because you spent time on it. Work, because a person spends most of his daylight hours there, is a sacred thing. “Otsukaresama desu,” maybe translated as “your hard work is honorable,” is overly formal to Western ears but appropriate here.

Japan, like other Confucian societies, highly valorizes old age. The young shoulder most of the workload and are unquestionably obedient to superiors. In official language, younger students have to refer to older students as “senpai,” or elder/teacher, even if the difference is only a year or two. This subservient relationship often continues for the rest of their lives. In this way, too, time spent is rewarded. I’m not sure, however, that elders in other Asian societies say “Wow, you’re so young!” with the same fervor that they do here. I’m 22, so the other teachers talk about my youth all the time, and I thought it was just politeness. Last week, though, one of the bosses at the Board of Education said to me last week, “a new year when you’re 56 is a lot less happy than a new year when you’re 22,” and one of my 14-year old 8th graders said “Wow, you’re sooo young!” to a 12-year old 7th grader, and it became clear: there is a cult of youth in Japan. In the relationship between old and young, social expectations and responsibilities are ways to cover up that the young person is the luckier one because he has so much more life ahead of him.

As an agnostic society, Japan knows only this life. Its monks, at their deaths, write haiku – and not particularly comforting ones – as their souls fade to black. The ashes of relatives are kept close at hand, often kept in shrines at each person’s home, regularly given rice and sake and treated as if people still lived in them. The national anthem, “Kimi ga yo,” reads, “May your reign / Continue for a thousand, eight thousand generations, / Until the pebbles / Grow into boulders / Lush with moss,” eternity realized in this world. The most popular current song about death is “Sen no Kaze,” a translation of an American poem from a gravestone: “Do not stand at my grave and weep; I am not there. I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain. I am the gentle autumn rain…” Christians, however, believe Christ triumphed over death with his resurrection, and they believe in the existence of heaven, a perfect and eternal place too wonderful to imagine. This is a beautiful and joyful thing, the most wonderful thing in the world. If it is not embraced passionately, though, it can lead to a passive assurance that God will bring us to paradise, that death is a parenthesis rather than a period, and that we need only think about these things at funerals.

The axis of the Christian calendar is community. The Anno Domini system naturally connects everyone born after Christ as one group. The clock was invented so monks could meet at set times each day to pray. Every Sunday, people met together at church. Ancient village festivals, celebrating the gods of particular towns, were converted into saints’ days, which themselves celebrate a specific group of people. Pentecost, the biggest holiday on the calendar that doesn’t derive from Christ, celebrates the founding of the Church through the coming of the Holy Spirit. Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter: the Church, like Japan, has seasons, but they lead us not to the passing of time but rather to Christ and a sense of eternity. Lent is 40 days, the number of infinity.

As for the American calendar, it’s a grab bag, with many good ideas but no overall theme. Also, America has a very strong culture of looking forward to the future – the new Halo game, the new President (our election took two years!), the next sports season – which often discourages enjoyment of the present.

It’s been easy for me to accustom myself to the Japanese perspective of time. In fact, I think I feel it more intensely than anyone else. To begin with, I just graduated from college, so I’m off the safe track and have to make my own way: every day must be used well, since there’s only a limited amount of time until I’m 30 and settled down somewhere. Also, I came to Japan with a one-year mindset, so time is more fleeting for me than it is for anyone else here. One cycle of the earth around the sun, I thought, and I’m off to the next place. Each festival and school event and holiday was only happening once. Eventually I re-contracted, but even two years is a short time best approached with a sense of urgency.

Every Japanese speech and letter ends with an official conclusion of some kind – “and that’s all,” “I’m finished,” or something like that. In America we end with “Thank you,” and I think that’s more appropriate and easily adaptable to this theme. Thank you for bestowing your time on this piece when there are so many other things for you to do in this country. I hope that what I wrote can give you wisdom, and may God bless you over the coming year.

Daoism, The Tillers, Yang Chu, The Primitivist, and Zhuangzi

I-2: Tillers and Daoism

Communication between the Tillers and the Daoists was certainly possible; some scholars consider the utopian Laozi 80 a tract borrowed from the Tillers (Graham 82). “Oh for a small country with few people!” it exclaims.  The people have boats, carriages, armor, and weapons, but do not need to use them.  Other states are within sight, but the people are happy with their own food, clothes, and customs, so they grow old and die without leaving their borders.

The School of the Tillers, as reconstructed by Graham, also shares the following arguments with the Laozi: (1) a leader should not interfere with his people through laws, regulations, or punishments; (2) a leader should humbly place himself below his people; (3) covenants should be faithfully and unselfishly honored.

According to the Tillers, the ideal ruler Shen-nung did not write any laws; he merely promulgated certain agricultural injunctions which the people thought were practical (84).  He did not put anyone to death, and he eschewed punishment of criminals in general (72).  The House of Shen-nung made sure to never conscript its people during the critical harvest season (84), a relevant critique since Mozi accused his contemporaries of ruining the people this way.  “Shepherding the people was easy,” say the Tillers, echoing the wu-wei attitude of the Laozi: “Tao invariably Does Nothing, and nothing remains not done” (37[1]).  The Laozi, in turn, contends that rules and restrictions make people poorer (57).  The state is like an Uncarved Block; cutting it up with rules and names will ruin it (32).  The death penalty is also ineffective (74).  If the ruler does not tire the people with taxes and restrictions, they will not tire of him (72).  The Tiller histories and Laozi 31 both condemn the warlike for the suffering they bring to the world.

“If in the prime of life a man does not plough, someone in the world will go hungry because of it,” notes the Law of Shen-nung, so the king and queen of the time worked alongside the people (67-68, 76-77).  This image is a direct challenge to the lavish rulers of the Tillers’ time.  The Laozi itself says a farmer would be the ideal governor: because he starts early and works diligently, he can eventually accomplish anything (59).  By working for others, he increases what he himself possesses (81).  The king excels by making himself and his speech low, even last among the people (66).  A ruler is best if people are not aware of his existence (17), which is one better than the humility of Shen-nung.

According to the Chuang-tzu, Po Yi and Shu Ch’i reject the state of Chou because it does not meet the standard of Shen-nung.  In his time, people faithfully kept their contracts and covenants, and there was no need to record promises in triplicate because everyone trusted each other (87-88).  The Laozi instructs us to repay our debts and fulfill our contracts without thinking of what is owed to us (79).

I-3: Yang Chu and Daoism

I think the loneliness the Daoist recounts so movingly in Laozi 20 is the best evidence of Yang Chu’s influence on the text.  Emerson credits Yang Chu with the “discovery of the body,” or the distinction between the individual and society.  People of this time did not think of themselves as anything more than the sum of their family, work, and political relationships, but the narrator does not mention his family at all.  He says he is all alone not only because the lacks the traits society values but also because of his beliefs: “I am alone, different from others – treasuring the nourishing Mother.”  The Daoist thus follows the individualistic bent of his predecessor Yang.

It is also of interest that the narrator mentions the “ceremonial feast” given Emerson’s use of the feast as a symbol of the elaborately ritualized society that Yang Chu calls on the Chinese to disregard.  Laozi rejects wealth, fame, and reputation as worthy goals of the wise person (13, 44).  The ritual entertainment of the elite “makes people’s minds go mad,” and classical standards lead them astray (12).  Nor does he consider etiquette important: “’Yeah’ and ‘yes sir’ – is there a big difference between them?” (20)  Respecting something just because others respect it is “craziness” (20).

Yang Chu also cautioned his followers to “Preserve life, maintain the real, don’t get entangled in things.”  The Dao in turn advises its readers to embrace emptiness and stillness (16).  It also contends that there are thirteen life-givers but also thirteen death-bringers, and living lavishly makes the body parts into death spots (50).

It was also said that Yang Chu would not serve in the army or in a besieged city.  This is compatible with Laozi 31’s condemnation of war, and it is sounds much like Laozi 73: “One who shows bravery by being daring will get killed / one who shows bravery by not being daring will survive.”  Further, the best soldier is not warlike, and the best fighter shows no anger; because he is rational, he can survive longer, and a living soldier is certainly more productive than a dead one (68).

Mencius’s famous accusation that Yang Chu “would not sacrifice a hair from his leg to profit the whole empire” indicates a potential conflict with Daoism, however, because the Laozi often admonishes the reader to put others first, a classic example being the passage that Heaven and Earth last so long because they do not live for themselves (7).  Whereas Yang Chu advocates ignoring social norms in order to better benefit oneself or possibly one’s family, Lao Tzu thinks inaction is what most benefits society.  The revolution starts with the individual and then inspires everyone:

Cultivate It in your person, its Te will be pure

Cultivate It in the clan, its Te will be abundant

Cultivate It in the village, its Te will be lasting

Cultivate It in the state, its Te will be ample

Cultivate It in the empire, its Te will be all-embracing. (54)

II-2: Wu-wei or “non-action” in leadership

“Governing a large state is like cooking a small fish” (Laozi 60).  The Daoist’s statement that government intervention harms society is also of the premises of American conservatism, and it seems like the most practical application of wu-wei in the era of the welfare state.  As I noted in the section on the Tillers, Lao Tzu advocates freedom of movement and from taxation (72) and opines that rules and restrictions make people poorer (57).  He would reject Great Society-style social projects, saying “the world cannot be worked on” (29), and might even advocate social regress, as he calls on rulers to abandon education and focus merely on sustenance (3, 19).

Daoist foreign policy would probably not make the Republican platform, however: the great state, the author says, is like an easy woman, because it embraces, serves, protects, and yields to others (61, 66).  Such a nation might participate in international peace accords (UN), donate to suffering countries (Asia post-tsunami), and give in to the monetary demands of aggressors (North Korea).  Lao Tzu’s admonition “Do not use weapons to change the world” (30) seems especially applicable to the current administration.

The text does not wholeheartedly advocate incompetent leadership.  It upholds a diligent farmer as the ideal leader (57) and defines good management as “excellence in setting things right” (8).  A great ruler makes no rules just as a great carver does no cutting (28), but since slicing meat is the carver’s job, Lao Tzu must mean the lawmaker’s work is so subtle and natural that it seems effortless.  In this light we can understand Lao Tzu’s challenge to “take over the world by not working” (48, 57) as taking care of official business without breaking a sweat about it (73).

Laozi 17 claims that the worst ruler is despised; the one held in awe is less bad; the one who is universally loved is good, but the best is disregarded.  Hence we can interpret wu-wei in another light: the stronger the people’s feelings about a ruler, the more he is interfering with their lives.  If they love him, he must have saved them from invasion or natural disasters which were plaguing them; if they don’t know him, then such threats were averted altogether.  The people have more contact with the local authorities to whom the ruler has devolved responsibility and power (17, 49).

A dull leader engenders pure subjects while a sharp one owns a bad lot (58).  This does not require the leader to be stupid; rather, it is a statement that even the most intelligent politician cannot know what is best for every person in a state.  “Work but don’t rely on this; preside but don’t rule” (10).  The wu-wei leader hence allows other individuals and nations to order themselves (37), and the choices they make are better than anything the leader could have imagined: “Tao invariably Does Nothing, and nothing remains not done.”

II-3: Primitivist’s denunciation of morality

The Primitivist compares morality to webbed toes or a sixth finger: it issues from man naturally, and we would feel pain if we lost it, but it is superfluous (200).  Depending on morality, like depending on the L-square or compass, weakens one’s instincts and keeps him from attaining what is truly important: contentment.  “The benevolent people of the present age get bleary-eyed worrying about the age’s troubles, the malevolent rip apart the essentials of their nature and destiny by gluttony for honors and riches” (201).

The moralist sages like to think that doing evil has consequences, but robbers often thrive: for example, T’ien Ch’eng and his family stole and held the righteous state of Ch’i for twelve generations securely (207).  The one who dies for good is just as broken as the one who dies for evil, so there is no use being a hero (202).  The sages think they follow a higher way, but they are bartering in the marketplace of ideas just like the rest of us (201).

Those who barter happiness for morality are pitiable, but the sages are horrible.  Just as trainers wreck horses to suit their purposes, sages wreck men (204-205).  Before, everyone was happy with what he had, but after the sages introduced the concept of a “better” way to do things, men became obsessed with profit (206, 209).  There are more evil men now than there were before (208), and because they have learned to circumvent the rules, they are even more dangerous than they were before, the way horses smash crossbars and gnaw through bits (204-205).  Until we kill the sages and destroy all proof of moral standards, we will never be happy (208-209).

The Primitivist tries to make a historical argument, but beyond tales of Shen-nung he has no evidence for his utopia, so it is really just a thought experiment.  I would counter his state of nature with that of Thomas Hobbes, who argued that before men made society, life was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short because individuals warred with each other in competition for scarce resources.  Whose account is correct?  The two agree that scarcity of resources or the perception of such is the cause of suffering, so methodologically they are not far apart.  I believe that every society contends with natural disasters or at least droughts.  Besides, humans are innately creative beings, so someone would have created an object to envy.  I prefer Hobbes.

The Primitivist’s analogue for morality is also shaky.  A sixth finger is an uncommon birth defect, but almost every person or society has a sense of right and wrong.  Since the Primitivist’s arguments are themselves based on sweeping generalizations about the utility of education, I have no qualms about countering with natural law theory.  Morality espouses against killing, adultery, theft, thinks the Primitivist thinks impossible in his utopia.  How, then, could morality have ruined it?
III-1: Individuals praised in the Zhuangzi

The individuals praised in the Zhuangzi seem disparate.  Some have excellent qualities: of these, some arrived at them naturally while others developed them over time.  Another group has excelled while having qualities that we would normally despise.  Finally, there are individuals who have emptied themselves but in doing so have gained great power over others.  Zhuangzi employs irony in all his accounts because he wants to challenge our opinions about what is desirable and lead us to something greater.

Zhuangzi never praises anyone in the outright style of an ode; rather, the protagonists of various tales express opinions which speak for him.  This pattern begins on the very first page, before we even know Zhuangzi is a skeptic: K’un, a massive fish, can become P’eng, a great bird, and soar over everything else in the skies (23-25).  His tiny avian critics simply do not understand his greatness.  Sung Jung-Tzu would have laughed at them just as he laughed at all his peers who tried to judge him by their own values.

P’eng is superior because that is his essence; however, most humans must work for greatness.  One such man is simply clever: he buys the recipe for a small-town medicinal remedy, employs it in a large battle, and receives a fief in return (28-29).  Another, Cook Ding, honed his craft over time (46-47).  The Cook at first saw the ox in the same way we did, but after so many years he can maneuver it with his eyes closed.  Because he follows the contours as they were meant to be cut, he never wears out his knife.  At certain complicated places, he has to work slowly and carefully, but always the ox falls apart before him.  Upon completion, he is reluctant to move on from this achievement, but he must, and he does.  No less an authority than the King says that Cook Ding knows how to care for life.  The cook for his part says he is beyond skill: what he follows is the Way.  Because it is the Way, we can apply the same principles to our own lives.

Sometimes people must overcome personal hardship on the way to honing their gifts.  The Commander of the Right, Wang T’ai, Shen t’u-Chia, and Shu-Shan No-Toes all lost feet to fate or punishment but have their minds and valor intact (48-49, 64-68).  Those who prejudge them are later scorned.  Shen t’u Chia regards his lost appendage as unimportant as “a lump of earth thrown away.”  The Woman Crookback, for her part, still looks young because she has The Way (78).  Lame-Hunchback-No-Lips and Pitcher-Sized-Wen are ministers so skilled that after talking with them, the king doesn’t notice their deformities anymore and instead compares normal people unfavorably to them (71).

“All men know the use of the useful, but nobody knows the use of the useless” (63).  A classic example is the gourd which Huizi destroyed for being too big but which Zhuangzi would have used to ride down the river (29-30).  Likewise, the oaks which have no use for the carpenters are the ones that are never chopped down, so they become respected for their age (58-62).  Because Crippled Shu can live off charity and no one makes demands on him, he can justifiably say his disability has given him a good life (62).

Finally, Zhuangzi praises those who empty themselves and know that all are one.  He first assigns this quality to those who have mastered the environment, perhaps so our awe of them will move us to do the same: Lieh Tzu in his limited power could ride the wind for fifteen days (26), while Chieh Yu and Lien Shu know of an old man who sucks the wind, drinks the dew, and rides dragons (27).  Natural disasters do not affect the True (or Ideal) Man, nor do profit and loss.  He “could climb the high places and not be frightened, could enter the water and not get wet” (73-74).  The Four Masters, on the other hand, were subject to all the cruelties of nature but didn’t let anything perturb them (80-82).  They get sick and die but simply laugh about it.

Others express their emptiness through psychological mastery.  Ugly Ai T’ai-t’o seduces others because he is like water, which guards what is inside and shows no movement outside (68-70).  Men mirror themselves in the still water or the constant mind, for in this stillness they can see the stillness of other things (65).  Clansman T’ai’s virtue is perfectly true: in his dream-wanderings, he often forgets his very humanity (89), like Chuang Chou who dreams of being a butterfly (45).  Hu Tzu bests an outwardly impressive shaman in psychological combat because he can constantly change his soul (92-94), and this power brings him closer to the true nature of man (77).

All this ties into Zhuangzi’s ideal: the sage “has the form of a man but not the feelings of a man” (71-72).  He binds with others but doesn’t let feelings or moral laws affect him.  “Knowledge is an offshoot, promises are glue, favors are a patching up, and skill is a peddler…Massive and great, he perfects his Heaven alone.”  For the Cook, this is carving; for the gourd, the river.  So in my humble opinion, Zhuangzi is not advocating total relativism but rather an intuitive personality, free of input from society, which follows the way it finds most interesting and natural.  Usually, worldly anxiety prevents us from focusing enough to have Cook Ding’s flow.  Confucius, despite his moments of brilliance (87), cannot become a true sage because his obsession with society has shackled his mind (68).  This is tragic because only fate can answer the “big questions,” and flow is too beautiful to be sacrificed on the altar of other people’s opinions.  We are so worried about life, death, love, and pain that we can never take to the skies like P’eng.

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[1] I used the LeFargue translation of the Laozi.

Mencius and Self-Cultivation

In his writing on self-cultivation, Mencius not only provides a unique perspective through which to understand the human heart but also an expansive and insightful program to develop it to the fullest. Like the Analects, the Mencius presents its arguments in aphorisms and short dialogues which are not thematically organized, so one must do some heavy exegesis to get the full picture of this theme.  First I will describe Mencius‘s conception of human nature.  Next, I will address his advice on self-cultivation through learning, family, introspection, the use of objective standards, relationships with others, environment, and will.  I will follow this with a short critique of Mencius’s thought.

What is the basic material that human beings are cultivating?  Mencius presents man as the sum of his senses and heart, which he calls organs, and an implied ego which is the source of consciousness and maker of decisions.  Our senses, which tell us about the world, draw us towards that which delights them, but the heart, our moral center, can contemplate relative value and decide what path is best (VI.A.15).  This heart concept, in addition to holding the more serious emotions, has the thinking faculty we normally assign to the brain.  The flights of fancy the West normally assigns to the heart (Cupid’s arrows, etc.) belong to senses according to Mencius.

If we did not have a heart to follow, says Mencius, we would be no different from beasts (IV.B.19).  He explains this in IIA6 and VIA6: man has “four hearts[1]” which are the source of our positive characteristics:(1) the heart of compassion, which leads to benevolence; (2) the heart of shame, which leads to dutifulness; (3) the heart of courtesy and modesty, which leads to the observance of rites; and (4) the heart of right and wrong, which leads to wisdom.  Mencius further mentions hao jan chih ch’i, which D.C. Lau translates as “flood-like ch’i,” and which Mencius calls the the breath of life (II.A.2, xxiv).  If the heart is like the Western concepts for both heart and mind, then the ch’i is analogous to ether or soul.

Mencius’s most famous insight is that human nature is innately good.  Any man, when he sees a baby about to fall into a well, will involuntarily feel compassion toward it, so we must have a germ of compassion, and by analogy we have germs of the other hearts as well (II.A.6).  When Kao Tzu says morality proceeds from nature like cups and bowls from the ch’i willow, Mencius retorts, “Do you have to mutilate man’s substance to make him moral, like you do plates and cups from wood?” (VI.A.1).  In other words, Kao Tzu’s connection of morality with man’s nature is still not harmonious enough for Mencius, who believes that humanity is inclined toward good like water is pulled to the earth by gravity (VI.A.2).  Morality is universal, so moral greatness attracts the majority in the same way great art and great cooking do (VI.A.7).  A gentleman delights in a healthy family, a clean conscience, and talented pupils (VII.A.20), and a benevolent man extends his love from those he loves to those he does not love (VII.B.1).

Mencius, like other Chinese philosophers, refers to the Dao, or “The Way,” as the state of moral rectitude.  He does not mention it by name quite as much as Confucius does; the term “benevolence” seems to appeal to him more.  In his writings on the benevolent ruler, Mencius emphasizes non-aggression (I.B.3), preference of worthiness over personal connections (I.B.6-7), generosity (I.A.2, I.B.4), and orderliness (IV.A.7), and it’s safe to say these are proper qualities for non-regal gentlemen, as well.  Most likely Mencius’s gentleman also displays the classic Confucianist principles like li and wu-wei, as well.  He also has mental clarity and focus: the more desires a person has in his heart, the less room he will have for ch’i, and stumbling, hurrying, and worrying will also drain it (II.A.6).

Having defined the materials we are developing and the qualities we want to develop, let us discuss how to develop those qualities.  To Mencius, change starts in the mind, then becomes policy and then becomes practice, so cultivation is often called learning, which helps us track down our hearts, which have strayed from goodness (VI.A.11).  One should learn widely and in depth so one can return to the essential (IV.B.15).  Nor should one abandon a program simply because one is not seeing results at first; the foolish man of Sung likewise uprooted his crops to find out why they weren’t growing and in so doing ruined his harvest (II.A.2).

Mencius, like his mentor, believes that benevolence begins in the home.  Serving parents is the most important duty (IV.A.27, VI.A.15).  A good man will take care of his parents, but a morally lost man cannot even do this thing (IV.A.19).  Mencius even ventures some parenting advice of his own: parents assign equal importance to moral education and to providing the necessities, for love and respect are as important to development as food and drink (VII.A.38).  With regards to technical education, however, a father should not teach his sons because his anger at the child’s mistakes could damage their relationship, and it’s better not to risk estrangement (IV.A.18).  Such a condition ruins one’s enjoyment of everything (IV.A.28).

A unique feature of Mencius’s ethics is his emphasis on introspection.  He says that one should not leave his field to tend the fields of others but instead should work on his own self (VII.B.32), and there is joy in undergoing introspection and then finding you are true to yourself (VII.A.4).  A gentleman seeks the answer to failure within himself (II.A.7) and admits a mistake rather than ignoring it (II.B.9).  If your benevolence, order, courtesy, and respect do not produce like responses from others, says Mencius, look inside yourself because you are most likely the cause (IV.A.4).  Certain sages even delighted in being reprimanded or humiliated because such an experience immediately taught them how to change their ways (II.A.8).

We should not self-assess ourselves indiscriminately, however, for Mencius warns us that a hungry heart will accept anything placed before it (VII.A.27), even harmful ideas.  Despite man’s personal qualities, he still needs tools and objective measures in order to succeed (IV.A.1, VI.A.20).  The sage is the measure of humanity, akin to a compass or carpenter’s square, for he provides a perfect guide for us to follow.  As water follows the pattern of cracks in stone, so the gentleman does not find the Way unless he achieves a beautiful pattern for his works to follow (VII.A.24).  An outstanding man seeks improvement even when he has no immediate models (VII.A.10).  For instance, he can read books to learn the ways of the sages, which Mencius calls “looking for friends in history” (V.B.8).  Once he has embraced objective standards, however, he must follow them even when they seem to reduce his benefit (III.B.1).  He will not wash in muddy water (IV.A.8), and he will abandon whatever habitual sins he wanted to limit more (III.B.8), for “a man whose mind is set on high ideals never forgets that he may end in a ditch; a man of valor never forgets that he may forfeit his head” (V.B.7), and a man is capable of doing great things only when there are things he is not willing to do (IV.B.8).

Another teacher which Mencius greatly admires is adversity (VI.B.15, VII.A.18).  Heaven first tests the great ones with hardship and exhaustion: working as a fisherman or builder or farmer, for instance.  The blood, sweat, and tears they shed cleanse them of their imperfections.  Po-kung Yu and Meng Shih-she developed courage because they were willing to fight in any situation, and these consistent tests developed their strength (II.A.2).  “As a rule, a man can mend his ways only after he has made mistakes.”  Frustration is the source of innovation whereas ease, comfort, and peace will destroy a kingdom.  Shame is similarly didactic: when we feel embarrassed by our behavior, we are more likely to change it (VII.A.7).

Mencius’s advice regarding relationships with others is some of his most insightful.  He says that one should not bother with people who don’t believe in themselves.  They will attack morality (IV.A.10) or say it is impossible to survive without ever doing something immoral and that the person who tries to do so will be a burden on others (III.B.10).  A great man doesn’t necessarily keep his word or see things through to the end.  He aims at what is right, which might disqualify these past commitments (IV.B.11).  Finally, one should make friends on account of shared virtue, not worldly benefits (V.B.3).  The worthy will gravitate toward the good: sages flocked to the government of King Wen, for instance (IV.A.13, VI.B.13).

This counsel about friendships extends to environment, which Mencius considers crucial to self-cultivation.  People react to a benevolent man’s good works with good works of their own (IV.A.4), but the reverse can happen as well.  He compares the common land exhausted by cattle to a man whose soul has been exhausted by the evil all around him (VI.A.8).  “Given the right nourishment, there is nothing that will not grow,” it is said, yet this man has fallen before evil.  As a child learns the language of the region in which he lives, so a man adapts to what is around him (III.B.6).  This would seem to make Mencius a determinist, but there is a key difference: man can choose his own environment.  The philosopher encourages us to live in a neighborhood where benevolence is (II.A.7).  So, a man still freely chooses what sort of person he becomes.

Indeed, will is an essential part of Mencius’s philosophy.  “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” is an old English proverb but it could have come from the Mencius as well.  It would be possible for everyone to become a sage, for the Way is wide, but so few have the will to carry it through (VI.B.2).  Being a Gentleman is not as difficult as walking on water or carrying a mountain; it merely requires one humble service like making obeisance to one’s elders (I.A.7).  Two of the sage kings were barbarians, so the great ones can come from anywhere (IV.B.1).

This sense of will ties into another of Mencius’s points: Tseng-tzu was the most courageous man because he realized the basis of courage is belief in the cause for which one is fighting (II.A.2).  Hence a strong moral framework can expedite the development of good character traits.  In contrast, the opulent and the village worthy are both cause for derision because they both act to impress others rather than to achieve a higher purpose (VII.B.34, VII.B.37).

How does Mencius’s philosophy hold up today?  Will the man who follows it grow to tend the four seas (VII.B.35)?  I think he has some useful advice, especially about friendships and environment, and I am impressed about the universalism of his claims: if they do not impress us, it is because they express thoughts that are now common Western knowledge, such as “no pain, no gain.”  That said, I think Mencius is overdoing his argument about human nature, and a little more clarity would be a boon to his followers.  I would propose to him that if goodness came to us as easily as water running downhill, many more people would be sages.  Certainly, humans have the capacity for greatness, and in a sense a sage is more clearly human than the rest of us because he is the exemplar of all that we can be, but man must fight his selfish desires every step of the way, so there is more than a little truth to Xunzi’s opinion on this subject.  Furthermore, it is my experience that while the good man inspires others, he does not have nearly the awesome power Mencius makes him out to have.  Confucius did not change the kings he advised, and Barack Obama, who a third of the country considers a sage, has not even changed his wife and his pastor into optimistic, pleasant, reasonable people.  People become good through the hard work of cultivating themselves, not by filling up with the ch’i of gentlemen[2].

I also missed the holism of Confucius’s concept of self-cultivation.  To Confucius, everything a man partakes in, from entering a room to listening to music, is an expression of his personality and an opportunity for self-improvement.  Much of the Analects is devoted to matters like the proper way to do ritual and the way that classical music is beautiful.  Mencius broaches these topics, but he seems to do so in order to respond to Mozi: Mencius defends the importance of funeral rituals (III.A.2, IV.B.3), and he praises music but says that the king’s obligation to share this comfort with all (I.B.1).  Perhaps he did not want to repeat Confucius’s words, but he could have given the rituals and the arts more attention, especially given the high importance Xunzi accords them in his own work.  On balance, however, Mencius’s work is thought-provoking and a worthy addition to the ethical canon.

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[1] Oddly enough, the heart actually has four chambers.

[2] And another thing: the ch’i concept could use a sight more philosophical rigor.