China’s soul under scrutiny
Modern philosophers say the country’s rich history will help chart a path for the future.
Choking pollution. Grim competition. Education by rote. Authoritarian rule. Untrustworthy bureaucracy. Business cronyism. Rampant consumerism.
Mainland China — largely in light of waves of negative articles in the western media — does not have the greatest international image.
But many people in the East and West believe ancient Chinese philosophy has the potential to lift not only the world’s most populous country, but the planet, out of a downward spiral.
Through a recent burst of industrialization, China has obtained the economic might to match the United States or Europe . But many ask: What does China have to offer the world culturally?
As one Chinese thinker bluntly answers, “China is in urgent need of a soul.”
Whether China has a soul — or what diplomats call the “soft power” to influence the world — is a question many people, including China’s political leaders, are desperately trying to answer.
One prominent thinker who sees potential in China rediscovering its 2,500- yearold philosophy is Edward Slingerland, an Asian studies professor at the main University of B. C. campus in Metro Vancouver, where more than one in five residents are ethnic Chinese.
Another network of scholars bent on re- invigorating China’s ancient wisdom is spread across Asia and North America. They see great possibilities in Chinese officials’ recent promises to create a peaceful new “ecological civilization.”
Both Slingerland — and the worldwide members of the Institute for the Constructive Postmodern Development of China — believe China would become more “harmonious” by combining the wisdom of Taoism and Confucianism with western philosophy and scientific knowledge.
Slingerland has just released an engaging book based on ancient Chinese thought, which he hopes will help people in the West and East become more alive and satisfied.
It’s titled Trying Not to Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity ( Crown). Like a highend self- help book, it combines Slingerland’s insightful wit and knowledge of brain science with the philosophy of Lau Tzu, Mencius and Confucius. ( He maintains Confucius’s sayings have “influenced far more people than the Bible.”)
Trying Not to Try hinges on the concept of wu- wei ( pronounced oo- way), which is an “effortless” way to be in the world; “the source of all happiness.” Slingerland connects the state of being in wu- wei to everything from successful dating and joke telling to effective leadership and “charismatic power.”
One of the refreshing things about Slingerland — and others who are trying to make Chinese officials flesh out their idealistic rhetoric about an “ecological civilization” — is they don’t succumb to romanticizing the East or its traditions.
“As a historian of early Chinese thought — and, not incidentally, someone raised in New Jersey, with a Jerseyite’s low tolerance for B. S. — I get a psychosomatic headache from people who glorify ‘ the East’ as if it were an exclusive and unfailing source of wisdom,” writes Slingerland.
Slingerland believes the value of wu- wei is “still alive in the contemporary Chinese mindset” and has incredible potential for combating excessive western “rationalism.” But he acknowledged in an interview that modern Chinese culture is a minefield.
“The hyper- competitive, memorizing, workaholic stereotype has quite a bit of truth to it. … When I was in Taiwan in the late 1980s and told people I was there to study classical Chinese philosophy, they were vaguely flattered, but overall thought I was kind of a kook, like someone studying parchment making. They all were studying useful things like engineering or English or business management,” says Slingerland, who is also co- leader of a $ 3.8- million study into global religion and morality.
“But there has been a resurgence of interest in traditional Chinese thought in China, partly driven top- down by the government, which is looking for a new guiding philosophy now that Maoism seems defunct. … Their interpretation of Confucian ideas about a ‘ harmonious society’ fits into their governing philosophy.”
Given China’s recent rush toward western business practices and consumption, Slingerland admits “it’s not clear that Chinese society — or any society — has ever really embraced the ideals of spontaneity and non- coercive harmony” that are associated with wu- wei by blending them into political or economic institutions.
Like Slingerland, the teams of scholars associated with the Institute for the Constructive Postmodern Development of China also avoid acting as if eastern wisdom is inherently superior to western thought.
“We do not want to romanticize Confucianism and Taoism, pretending that they have all the answers to the world’s problems,” says Jay McDaniel, a prominent American philosopher who frequently takes part in Chinese conferences on “ecological civilization.”
Still, McDaniel and his colleague, Haipeng Guo of United International College in China, are excited about combining what they call western “constructive post- modern philosophy” with Taoism and Confucianism.
McDaniel and Guo are among a large cohort of thinkers who hope China will be able to do what the U. S., Canada and most western countries have failed to in the face of rising consumer culture and environmental degradation — create sustainable communities.
“It would take four Earths to provide the raw resources necessary to bring China to a level of resource and energy consumption equal to that of the U. S.,” maintain Californiabased Wang Zhihe and Fan Meijun, who are directors of the Institute for Constructive Postmodern Development of China. So far they have organized hundreds of conferences in East Asia and helped create 23 affiliated centres in China.
The thousands of scholars associated with the Institute for Constructive Postmodern Development of China base their tempered optimism on dramatic declarations by leading Chinese officials, including Xie Zhenhua, vice- chairman of China’s National Development and Reform Commission. Zhenhua says China has to combat pollution and global warming and create something the world has never seen — an “ecological civilization.”
Xiabo Lu, of Columbia University, sees the emerging new vision of leaders like Zhenhua this way: “The challenge has become more pressing as Chinese society gets wealthier and more restless after three decades of rapid economic and social change. China is in urgent need of a soul, a set of dominant ideas, as the efficacy of the Chinese Communist Party’s official ideology diminishes.”
Given the swirl of competing world views within China, the Institute for Constructive Postmodern Development has received a great deal of support from Chinese officials for the way it’s bringing together ancient Chinese wisdom with post- modern western philosophy, particularly that of the late Harvard mathematician-philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead.
Like early Chinese thinkers, Whitehead did not separate the mind from the body in the same way as most western philosophers, led by René Descartes. Whitehead also emphasized the value of “harmony” almost as much as Confucius, although he worried Confucius’s thinking was too hierarchical.
Given the different insights that have come from the East and West, people like Slingerland, McDaniel, Guo and other experts in Chinese philosophy seek a new middle way. They support harmonious relations among people and with the Earth, but they don’t want “static” Confucian societies. They seek societies that are dynamic and evolving.
Will China find its “soul” and contribute to international harmony? Will it some day help create a global “ecological civilization?”
Somebody has to.