The Useless Tree

Confucian Civil Unions, Perhaps?

   I've been thinking more about the California gay marriage decision and Confucianism.  Thanks to the comments from my last, brief post, I have a new idea: a modern Confucian would be more likely to accept civil unions for gay couples than marriage.  This is a tentative conclusion, the reasoning for which I spell out below, and I welcome all comments and criticisms.

     Justsomeguy and the Western Confucian raise some good points.  Let me take Western Confucian's first. 

       He argues, from Analects 7.1, that Confucius understood himself to be a defender of tradition, not an innovator.  Confining marriage to heterosexual couples is generally recognized as the traditional practice; so, Confucius would likely be against the innovation of gay marriage.  I generally disagree with this argument. 

     First, while Confucius does present himself as against innovation in 7.1, various commentators (Hall and Ames; Leys) have argued that, in fact, Confucius was very creative in his thinking.  The idea that hereditary status was not a sufficient claim for legitimate rule was quite radical in its time.  To the extent to which Confucius and Mencius looked toward a moral meritocracy (i.e. the morally good should rule), they pushed against the political status quo.  This is especially evident in Mencius.   Indeed, Mencius is so problematic to established powers-that-be, it is said (pdf file!) Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of the Ming Dynasty, decreed that this line from Mencius be deleted:

The people are the most elevated, next comes the state, the sovereign comes last.

    We could also invoke Analects 9.3, in which Confucius creatively adapts specific elements of Ritual to suit his immediate purposes, to suggest that Confucians do not simply defend tradition for tradition's sake.  Tradition is important, to be sure, but it must be enacted in relation to the contemporary ethical context.  If Humanity is best served by revising tradition, then tradition must be revised.

      Yet even if we accept (and I suspect not everyone will) that Confucius was, in fact, more of an innovator than he lets on, I think Western Confucian's point should give us some pause.   Modern Confucians would be careful in how and when and how far they revise tradition.  They might be more comfortable with incremental steps: choosing a silk cap instead of a linen cap (Analects 9.3), not throwing out the cap altogether.   And gay marriage is a rather significant socio-cultural change.  It's big.  And that might mean Confucians, in seeking some sort of balance between contemporary Humanity and established tradition, might gravitate toward civil unions, at least for a time, instead of marriage.

      One of the students in my tutorial this semester also raised in interesting point when I broached the possibility of Confucian gay marriage: does it violate the rectification of names (Analects 13.3)?  The idea here is that "marriage" generally is taken to connote heterosexual unions.  To move to gay marriage delinks the practice from the name.   I don't see this as an insurmountable problem, insofar as I understand the rectification of names to demand that we live up to certain standards of Humanity (i.e. if a "father" is not living up to the duties of a "father," then he should not be allowed to use the name "father").  If the moral purpose of marriage is a life-long commitment to a particular loving relationship, and the family building possibilities that it brings, then it would seem that the practice of gay couples committing themselves to one and other and raising children in a supportive and loving environment meets the Humane (ren) standards of "marriage".

     The issue, however, might be a matter of time and timing.  It takes time for society to come to understand that gay marriage is as much marriage as any other sort of marriage.  This would not absolutely disallow gay marriage, but it might militate for some transitional period during which gay couples could enter into civil unions (with all the legal recognitions and rights of "marriage") that would establish a broader social understanding of the good of gay marriage. 

     I could see how gay people would chafe at this, arguing, as the California Supreme Court does, that there is no compelling state interest in denying them all of the benefits, cultural as well as legal, of marriage.  But  the problem here is to derive a Confucian position on the issue, not one that simply puts a Confucian facade on a California perspective (full disclosure: I am perfectly comfortable with extending the practice of marriage to gay people - but this post is not about my personal position, but what the most plausible modern Confucian position might be).

      Bottom line: Confucians would lean toward civil unions at this point, but would be open to gay marriage in the future, perhaps after more states have taken similar moves.

       Justsomeguy also raises an important point when he raises the yin/yang thing:

Yin/Yang cosmology. While the Analects are fairly silent on this issue, Confucius's appreciation for the Yijing can be taken as an endorsement of that formulation. While they are both ultimately divisible into further aspects of yin and yang (a possible work around), I'm not sure how he'd view double yin or double yang relationships given the way this system is devised. They would be unbalanced.

     Again, I do not think this is a fatal objection.  We are not talking about a very large sector of the population, after all. What percentage of the US population identifies as gay or lesbian?  And what percentage of those people seeks a married relationship?  And what percentage of all marriages (say, in Massachusetts where it is allowed) are gay marriages?  I don't have these numbers (but would love it if someone sent them in!) but I suspect in all cases they are quite small, well below 10% in all cases.   Allowing gay marriage, then, whatever yin/yang "imbalance" it might bring, would not have a significant effect on the yin/yang balance of society at large.  Indeed, the overwhelming experience in Massachusetts, where I live, is that ultimately gay marriage is not that big a deal.  It hardly effects the daily life, for good or ill, of the vast majority of people.   Once the practice is established, it's not that big a deal (it's getting it established that is big).

      But the yin/yang point might be important in another way.  It suggests that gay marriage is different from heterosexual marriage: the former is double yin or double yang, and the latter is yin/yang.  Again that difference may not be enough to reject it on Confucian grounds, but it is a difference that might have to be recognized in some manner.

     I should add here that a modern Confucian argument would not seek universal rights claims that apply to all individuals, as the California Supreme Court does.  "Rights" is not a Confucian concept, even though a certain ethical universalism might apply.  It is proper, from a Confucian perspective, to treat different things differently.  A father should shield his son from the law when he steals a sheep, but should presumably turn in a stranger who steals a sheep, because a son is not a stranger, the two are different. 

     Thus, treating gay unions in a manner distinct from heterosexual unions would be permissible for a Confucian.  And, given the various points made above, might be preferable, at least for a time.  That different treatment, however, is bounded by the general standard of Humanity (so, certain tangible benefits should not be withheld if so doing makes it harder to maintain strong and loving relationships).

     And so, I am drawn to the conclusion that a modern Confucian in California would, today, be more likely to advocate for civil unions for gays and lesbians and less likely to back gay marriage.

California Gay Marriage: Confucius Agrees

     The news today, somewhat unsurprisingly, is that the California Supreme Court has overturned a state ban on gay marriage.  What would Confucius say?

     I wrote about gay marriage and Confucianism once before, and I think the argument still holds (though it needs to be fleshed out a bit more, as I am doing in chapter 5 of my book):

...I think a modern Confucian perspective could accept a gay relationship if it was committed and constructive of lasting family bonds.  The type of sex hardly matters.  What is important is that people perform humanity-creating social responsibilities.  Genetics are less significant than caring social practices; so, adoption is fine - just as it was in ancient China.  It would seem, then, that gay marriage and child-rearing could be consonant with a Confucian-inspired ethics  (although an over-wrought homosexual identity would be frowned upon).

 I just wanted to put this out there and ask my Confucian-minded readers what they think.  Would a modern Confucian accept gay marriage?  Why or why not?

Sadness

     I have seen some deeply saddening pictures of the victims of the Sichuan earthquake.  Roland has reproduced one especially heart-rending scene; I will not print it here. 

    So much death, so suddenly and unexpectedly.  The mind reels.  I turn to my books, unable to fully grasp the depth of the grief of losing a loved one, a child, in such a manner.  Lieh Tzu offers what might be, for some, a bit of solace:

Death is a return to where we set out from when we were born.  So how do I know that when I die here I shall not be born somewhere else?  How do I know that life and death are not as good as each other?  How do I know that it is not a delusion to crave anxiously for life?  How do I know that present death wold not be better than my past life? (25)

      I remember when Aidan was just an infant, someone once said that it might be "better" were he to die.  And I also remember my passionate rejection of that idea.  Each life, whatever the circumstances, Chuang Tzu tells us, is equally valuable and real and sufficient as every other.  But Lieh Tzu reminds us that each life ends, and, however much we might grieve, we cannot know what that ending means in its fullness.  We cannot cling to life; we must accept endings.  And, perhaps, endings are better than we can know.  There may not be a promise of something like a Christian heaven, to which the souls of the departed retire.  But there is an openness to the possibility of something as good in death as in life. 

      Rest in peace.

The Tao of Neuroscience

    I'm not a big fan of David Brooks, but a friend brought today's column, "Neural Buddhists," to my attention, and it seems right for a post here.

    Brooks is thinking about the intersection of recent popular publications on neuroscience and enduring questions of spirituality.  He anticipates a new debate on science versus faith, one that puts the defenders of faith on the defensive; or, at least, challenges defenders of particular faiths.   The new science creates more subtle understanding about the human brain/mind and the creation and perpetuation of belief.  Here's a key graf:

This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might call neural Buddhism.

If you survey the literature (and I’d recommend books by Newberg, Daniel J. Siegel, Michael S. Gazzaniga, Jonathan Haidt, Antonio Damasio and Marc D. Hauser if you want to get up to speed), you can see that certain beliefs will spread into the wider discussion.

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

    My peculiar critique - peculiar, that is, to my interest in ancient Chinese thought - would be: why label these ideas as "Buddhist?"  They may be Buddhist, to some degree, but they are also to be found in other systems of thought, particularly Confucianism and Taoism.

     Take those first two points, for example: self is relational and morality is inborn.  This is right out of Mencius.  For example:

We are, by constitution, capable of being good....That's what I mean by good.  If someone's evil, it can't be blamed on inborn capacities.  We all have a heart of compassion and a heart of conscience, a heart of reverence and a heart of right and wrong.  In a heart of compassion is Humanity, and in a heart of conscience is Duty.  In a heart of reverence is Ritual, and in a heart of right and wrong is wisdom.  Humanity, Duty, Ritual, wisdom - these are not external things we meld into us.  They're part of us from the beginning, though we may not realize it.  Hence the saying: "What you seek you will find, and what you ignore you will lose."  Some make more of themselves than others, maybe two or five or countless times more.  But that's only because some people fail to realize their inborn capacities.   (11.6)

     The "we" here is not confined to any particular cultural or national group.  Mencius means all of us, anywhere in any historical time period.  It is an argument about universal human qualities.  Barbarians, uncivilized people who do not realize their inborn capacities, can learn to be good.  They can learn to express their innate moral sensibilities.   And those notions of Humanity and Duty are all about social selves: individuals  embedded in social relationships.  Indeed, the self, from a Confucian perspective, is literally meaningless outside of its social context.  As the context develops and changes over time, as we move from one set of relationships and duties to another, the self, too, changes.  The self is social and dynamic.

     And take that last line of the Brooks excerpt above: God is "...the unknowable total of all there is."  If a Taoist read that phrase, she might say, "that's not God, it's Tao."  And so it is.  Transcending boundaries is what Taoism is all about, as is accepting the infinitude of Way.  The love part is a bit more difficult, since Chuang Tzu might ask us to reduce our emotional attachments to life generally, but there is certainly the possibility of joy and happiness there.

     In any event, my point is simple: it's not just about Buddhism.  I suspect Brooks' invocation of Buddhism simply reflects a certain ignorance of ancient Chinese thought.  Americans just don't know enough of it to bring it into these kinds of conversations, even when the reference is obvious.

     Oh well, I guess I have a lot of work to do in my calling to bring ancient Chinese thought into modern American life.

     And one more thing.  I think, for the purpose that Brooks has created here, Confucianism and Taoism might be better references than Buddhism.  They provide most of what the was searching for in the Buddhism reference but without the additional matter of reincarnation, which I suspect, the neuroscientists might question...

UPDATE: Commenters have raised the question of a Mencius bumper sticker to raise his visibility in the US.  It's a branding thing.  Well, here's an image; we might have to spice it up a bit, but it's a start:

In Sympathy for the people of Sichuan

     It is difficult to respond to a terrible tragedy on the scale of what is unfolding in Sichuan.  Unlike Burma, there is no hard political edge here, just awful human suffering.  So, I turn to Tu Fu (Du Fu), the poet.  In a volume of some of his poems that I keep on my desk there is a section titled "Chengdu," consisting of verses written when he lived in and around that city.  Since Chengdu is near the center of the current disaster, I thought a poem from there might be appropriate today.  There is sadness in many of Tu Fu's poems, but I tried to find one that had a bit of uplift to it, something to focus our attention on survival and appreciation for small things:

Morning Rain

Sounding cold dawn skies, steady winds
Tatter visions of cloud over the river.
Ducks take refuge along the island.  Among
Thickets, swallows find shelter from rain.

Huang and Ch'i both refused and emperor,
Ch'ao and Yu an empire.  A cup of wine,
A thatched home - that I am here as today's
Flawless morning passes gathers me in joy.

    Let's hope that the people of Sichuan will soon find joy again in another morning.

The Tao of "The Tempest"

     We went to see a performance of Shakespeare's The Tempest last night, put on by the students here at Williams.  It was a fine performance.  Prospero was aloof and callous, Caliban was Gollum-like in his torment, and Ariel was airy and angular.  The drunkards stole the show. 

    It had been a long time since I last encountered this play, and I noticed anew last night the Taoist resonance in Prospero's lines in Act 4, scene 1:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

 The image of the insubstantial dissolving brought Chuang Tzu to mind (no, not the butterfly dream...):

We set out like ingenious machines declaring yes this and not that.  Or we hold fast like oath-bound warriors defending victory.

We can say that to fade away day by day is to die like autumn into winter.  But we're drowning, and nothing we do can bring any of it back.  We can say this drain is backed up in old age, full and content, but a mind near death cannot recover that autumn blaze.

Joy and anger, sorrow and delight, hope and regret, doubt and ardor, diffidence and abandon, candor and reserve; it's all musing rising out of emptiness, mushrooms appearing out of mist.  Day and night come and go, but who knows where it all begins?  It is! It just is! If you understand this day in and day out, you inhabit the very source of it all.

      Of course, much - indeed, most - of the story is rather un-Taoist in the play of ego and revenge and manipulation.  So maybe someone who knows Shakespeare better than I can answer me this: why is it that Prospero turns away from being an "oath-bound warrior" and forgives those who deceived him in the past?  How is it that he is able to get free from his anger and rage and inhumanity?

The Face of Legalism Today

    I know, I am beating a dead horse but I couldn't not post about the sad and frustrating stories coming out of Burma.  It seems that the military dictators are more interested in going forward with a sham referendum, which they feel will give them some shred of political legitimacy, instead of doing the hard work of saving the people afflicted by the horrendous cyclone:

One of the first official announcements after the cyclone struck, killing tens of thousands of people and leaving close to a million homeless, was that the referendum would proceed as planned.

Since then, the government has relented a bit, postponing the vote for two weeks in 47 townships in the worst-hit areas, where some villages were obliterated by the storm.

The junta's plan to go ahead with the vote while restricting the delivery of disaster aid from the United Nations and other relief agencies has drawn widespread criticism and amazement.

On Friday, almost a week after the cyclone, Myanmar continued to block all but a trickle of foreign aid, barring large-scale deliveries by the World Food Program and other United Nations relief agencies.

In one of the gentler comments, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki Moon, addressing the generals, suggested that due to the scope of the disaster, "it may be prudent to focus instead on mobilizing all available resources and capacity for the emergency response."

As an analyst noted, some of the same soldiers who could be rescuing survivors are likely to be dispatched instead to guard polling places and help carry out the balloting.

"It is one of the best examples of the disregard for the people by the military," said the analyst, Josef Silverstein, an expert on Myanmar at Rutgers University.

    They are more concerned with political power than the needs of the people.  Seems like they are reading Han Fei Tzu and not Confucius:

Nowadays, when scholars counsel a ruler, they do not urge him to wield authority, which is the certain way to success, but instead insist that he must practice benevolence and righteousness before he can become a true king.  This is, in effect, to demand tht the ruler rise to the level of Confucius, and that all the ordinary people of the time be like Confucius' disciples.  Such a policy is bound to fail.   Han Fei Tzu (103)

    The military dictators in Rangoon have obviously opted for authority over benevolence.  Their notion of "success" is defined strictly in terms of their ability to hold on to power, and that clear means a failure to serve the people.  That's what Legalism will get you....

Work, Work, Work

     I'm behind in posting here due to the end-of-the-semester crush.  Makes me think of Chuang Tzu:

Once we stumble into the form of this body, we cannot forget it.  And so it is that we wait out the end.  Grappling and tangling with things, we rush headlong toward the end, and there's no stopping it.  It's sad, isn't it?  We slave our lives away and never get anywhere, work ourselves ragged and never find our way home.  How could it be anything but sorrow?  People can talk about never dying, but what good is that?  This form we have soon becomes others, and the mind vanishes with it.  How could it be called anything but great sorrow?  Life is total confusion.  Or is it that I'm the only won who's confused? (20)

      I very much feel like I am "grappling and tangling with things" and working myself ragged.  OK, I know, it's not coal mining.  The life of a college professor, while hectic and pressed at times, is generally fairly sweet.  So, in fact, I am not as sad as the above Chuang Tzu quote suggests, just harried.   I am a happier sort, more like this Chuang Tzu passage:

We're cast into this human form, and it's such happiness.  The human form knows change, but the ten thousand changes are utterly boundless.  Who could calculate the joys they promise?

And so the sage wanders where nothing is hidden and everything is preserved.  The sage calls dying young a blessing and living long a blessing, calls beginnings a blessing and endings a blessing.  We might make such a person our teacher, but there's something the ten thousand things belong to, something all change depends upon - imagine making that your teacher! (87)

      It's all about Way....

Anachronist Legalism

    In February I posted three times about the New Legalists, a web site that takes as its motto: "End capital's hegemony in the name of liberty, build a new world with original Chinese Taoist-Legalist civilization as a prototype."  As I argued before, I am repelled by this modern nationalist revision of Legalism.

    In the last couple of weeks I have been reading Han Fei Tzu with my class on ancient Chinese philosophy.  It's always a bit depressing slogging through ideas such as: "In a strict household there are no unruly slaves, but the children of a kindly mother often turn out bad." (125).  But an idea arose in a paper by one of my students: on its own terms, Legalism is wholly inapplicable in a modern context. 

       Here are two quotations that can serve as a starting point:

Those who have no understanding of government always tall you, "Never change old ways, never depart from established custom!"  But the sage cares nothing about change or no change; his only concern is to rule properly.  Whether or not he changes old ways, whether or not he departs from established customs depends solely upon whether such old ways and customs are effective or not. (93)

For the sage does not try to practice the ways of antiquity or to abide by a fixed standard, but examines the affairs of the age and takes what precautions are necessary. (97)

     These statements get at the Legalist emphasis on effectiveness as the primary standard for judging political arrangements.  Unlike Confucians, Legalists do not look to the past for an ideal "prototype," as the New Legalists seem to want to do.  The past can tell us something, but there is no need, for Legalists, to feel compelled to justify current political actions in terms of the past.  All that matters is effectiveness, and effectiveness has a rather narrow definition of maintaining the personal political position of the ruler.

     What a ruler must do, from the Legalist perspective, is focus on contemporary conditions and construct a political order in response to immediate circumstances.  That is why Han Fei Tzu was so quick to jettison Confucianism: it was a system of thought, he argued, that might have applied to an earlier time but that was, by the third century BCE, hopelessly out of touch with the competitive scarcities of the late Warring States period.

     If we take this seriously, then the present-day despot, looking perhaps to invoke Legalism as a guidebook for dictatorship, must quickly realize that Han Fei Tzu must now be consigned to the historical ash heap, hopelessly out of touch with contemporary political conditions.

     First of all, Han Fei Tzu understood the agrarian basis of state power in his time.  Legalists rather famously demanded that agricultural production was absolutely essential for maintaining political order and the ruler's position.  How, then, can this speak to a modern industrial economy?  Or, to make it even harder for an economically nationalist variation of Legalism, how can this apply to a modern post-industrial economy in a globalized world system?   

     Let's take contemporary China.  Its current economic success is a function of openness to world markets.  It depends upon foreign investment to finance its manufacturing boom; it depends upon foreign markets to buy its exports; it depends upon foreign sources of raw materials to fuel the whole thing.  Although agricultural production still matters for China, this, too, is now globalized, with soy bean production in the US feeding Chinese demand. 

     Not only is the world well past the era of territorial-agrarian economic life, but any attempt to impose territorial political limits on de-territorialized economic flows will certainly undermine the financial basis of state power.  There is no alternative to economic openness, unless North Korea and Cuba are to serve as models of some sort.

     In short, the political-economic context of modern/post-modern globalization renders Legalism anachronistic in fundamental ways.

     And it gets worse for modern Legalists.  Politically, there is no notion of popular sovereignty in Han Fei Tzu.  He says that the ruler must be willing to contradict popular opinion and he characterizes the "people" as "stupid" and "slovenly."  There is no real sense that average people have any role whatsoever in the selection or legitimation of the ruler.  Han does recognize that the ruler must take care not to over-exploit the population at large, lest political conditions be created for rebellion or coup d'etat, but this hardly amounts to a significant role for popular will or popular participation in the political process.

     All of this makes Legalism politically anachronistic.  Again, think about China.  While the CCP certainly practices authoritarianism, it does so with elaborate justifications in terms of democratic legitimation.  In 2005 the Party published "Building Political Democracy in China," asserting that:

China's socialist political democracy has enabled the Chinese people, who account for one fifth of the world's population, to become masters of their own country and society, and enjoy extensive democratic rights. This is a great contribution to the development of the political civilization of mankind.

      A Legalist would scoff at such an idea.  "Extensive democratic rights" and the people as "masters of their own country" are antithetical to a Legalist mindset.   The CCP makes such claims because it must: in the modern era virtually all political systems invoke some sort of democratic ideals as a means of legitimating state power.  The PRC's signing of the UN covenants on human rights are another indicator of the power of modern democratic norms.

     I could go on to point out how modern social and cultural practices and understandings are also fundamentally at odds with the Legalism of Han Fei Tzu.  But I think the economic and political points are sufficient, because what they lead us back to is Han Fei Tzu's own dictum to "examine the affairs of the age and take what precautions are necessary."  The modern age, the age of the 21st century, is wholly different than the age of the third century BCE.  While we may argue about the effectiveness of authoritarianism, in its modern guise authoritarianism cannot be based upon the political and economic assumptions of Legalism.  Authoritarian effectiveness requires economic openness and assertions (however implausible they may be at times) of democratic legitimation, neither of which will be found in Legalist texts. 

     If we take Han Fei Tzu seriously, we have to come to the conclusion that his book now is anachronistic and inapplicable to contemporary conditions.  It cannot serve as a "prototype"  for a "new world."

Life, Meaning

    I was talking with a friend today.  She felt a bit overwhelmed: so much going on, so much to do, and so hard to see the significance in it all.  It was a variation on that age-old anxiety: what is the meaning of life?   A big question, to be sure.  One that contemporary thinkers shy away from.  But one that sparked some thoughts for me today, thoughts shaped by my generally Taoist sensibilities.

     Basically, I think it is the wrong question.  When we ask what is the meaning of life, we run the risk of looking for something we will never really find.  The question points to a certain totality of life, one's whole life, the big, big picture.  How does it all add up, how does it all sum up to some sort of grand meaning?  Perhaps there will be some marvelous "ah ha!" realization at the moment of death, but I am not banking on it.   

      The question assumes a singularity to an individual's life, and this is not my experience.  Life changes from one time to the next, maybe even one moment to the next.  What might have counted as important and significant when I was 18, is not what I would find compelling now that I am 51.  For me, life before Aidan and after Aidan are distinctly different experiences.  He fundamentally altered my  understanding of meaning.  And I imagine the same is true, in different ways, for everyone.

      A better question might be: what is the meaning in life?  This framing of the issue might turn us toward the immediate and specific circumstances we find ourselves in at the moment.  It might also turn us away from the search for a transcendent source of meaning somewhere outside of our lives, and focus our attention on the ways we can create meaning in our lives right here and now.  What is the best I can do with this particular person with me now?  What is the beauty that might surround me here?  What extraordinary and uncontrollable things are swirling around me as I write these words?  That is where we can make meaning, not in totalities but in moments, not of but in....

Realizing our Parents

    Laura, at 11D, calls our attention to an article in the Sunday NYT Magazine by Bob Morris, in which he reflects upon his desires to push his elderly father to physical activity beyond what the older man wants.   Laura sums it up nicely in her title, "improving our parents."   The story Morris tells ends with some regret that he pushed his father too hard.

     I know this feeling, having watched my mother die slowly, over the course of two years or so, of cancer (my father died suddenly of a heart attack years before).  There were times during her illness when I pressed and prodded her to do more and better than she was.  And there were times when I had to make big decisions that she resisted.   Morris gets at the selfish undercurrent of such anxieties:

...What he really needed was more affection, not exercise. Yet I kept trying to impose my will on both my parents right to the end. How dare they become so old?

I think about them now, when I go out walking with such determination it’s almost as if I’m trying to walk away from myself....

     The demise of our parents, inevitable as it may be, is a picture of our own demise, and that is one reason why we are so uncomfortable with it.  When faced with the physical decline of a loved one, we have to walk a fine line between doing what is best for them and what is most pleasing and affirming to ourselves.  Knowing the right action is not easy.  But we have to struggle to find the right thing.  Mencius comes to mind, my mind at least.  In describing one of the great sage-rulers, Shun, Mencius says that he

...knew that if you don't realize your parents you aren't a person, and if you don't lead your parents to share your wisdom you aren't a child.

 I like that rendition, "realize your parents."  What he means is that in our own actions, as we perform our daily duties, we are not only doing for ourselves but we are enacting the honor and respect of our parents.  That sounds like a heavy burden, and Confucians mean it to be a conscious responsibility.   But it is precisely in that activity that we make ourselves human.  Notice, too, how Mencius expects us to lead our parents to share our wisdom.  In other words, as we grow to adulthood there will be things we know better than them, and these things we must share with them, that is our responsibility as children.

      Whatever his regrets in pushing too far, Morris was right to seriously engage the question of what it was that his father needed.  He tried to do the right thing.  The biggest challenge is to keep our own expectations about what we think they want from getting in the way of realizing them.

Nationalism, Globalization and "Three in the Morning"

 Chuang Tzu's happy irony came to mind when I saw this story the other day:

Police in southern China have discovered a factory manufacturing Free Tibet flags, media reports say.

The factory in Guangdong had been completing overseas orders for the flag of the Tibetan government-in-exile.

Workers said they thought they were just making colourful flags and did not realise their meaning.

But then some of them saw TV images of protesters holding the emblem and they alerted the authorities, according to Hong Kong's Ming Pao newspaper. 

     Oops.  This only really matters, however, if you believe that nationalism can be distinguished from globalization.  I don't think it can.  Let's think about it in terms of contemporary China.  What China is now, what it has become in the era of economic reform, is a society and culture fundamentally different from Maoist times and imperial history.  Things that are now taken as perfectly fitting expressions of Chinese-ness - like modern Olympic athletic competition - would be reject by Mao and Confucius.  The former understood the Olympics to be a venue of the global bourgeoisie; and the latter said that "gentlemen do not contend."  But neither of those sentiments reflect the China of today.  "Opening to the world" has transformed the country.

    So what difference does it make, really, if Tibetan flags are made in China?  It simply follows the logic that has made China into world economic dynamo: find the low cost producer.  Making plastic Christmas trees and pirated DVDs and paper dolls of Elvis Presley are what China does now.  What do a few thousand Tibetan flags matter?   It only matters if you are a nationalist, bound to be frustrated by the reality of a globalized China.   Makes me think of Chuang Tzu's little story of "three in the morning:"

To wear yourself out illuminating the unity of all things without realizing that they're the same - this is called "three in the morning."  Why "three in the morning?"  There was once a monkey trainer who said at feeding time, "You get three in the morning and four in the evening."  The monkeys got very angry, so he said, "Okay, I'll give you four in the morning and three in the evening."  At this the monkeys were happy again.  Nothing was lost in either name or reality, but they were angry one way and pleased the other.  This is why the sage brings "yes this" and "no that" together and rests in heaven the equalizer. This is called taking two paths at once.

Chuang Tzu (24)

     He seems to be saying: Chill.  Take two paths at once, let nationalism and globalization merge together, and don't worry about who is making the Tibetan flags....

To wear yourself out illuminating the unity of all things without realizing that they're the same - this is called "three in the morning."  Why "three in the morning?"  There was once a monkey trainer who said at feeding time, "You get three in the morning and four in the evening."  The monkeys got very angry, so he said, "Okay, I'll give you four in the morning and three in the evening."  At this the monkeys were happy again.  Nothing was lost in either name or reality, but they were angry one way and pleased the other.  This is why the sage brings "yes this" and "no that" together and rests in heaven the equalizer. This is called taking two paths at once.

Chuang Tzu (24)

     He seems to be saying: Chill.  Take two paths at once, let nationalism and globalization merge together, and don't worry about who is making the Tibetan flags....

Thinking too much

    I have been falling behind in my blogging.  This work thing can really get in the way.  The myriad daily tasks and demands distract me from this space.  Oh well...I'll just try a bit harder (or, if I were a good Taoist, try a bit less...) and find time to write more here.  One topic on my mind, due to all the upheaval in Texas, is  polygamy.  No, I am not planning to take another wife (indeed, the notion of multiple wives has always baffled me...), rather, I am thinking about what Confucians and Taoists would think of the practice in general.  If time allows I will get to that this week.

     In the meantime, I noticed today an article on language and thought in the NYT.  A couple of lines:

In stark form, the debate was: Does language shape what we perceive, a position associated with the late Benjamin Lee Whorf, or are our perceptions pure sensory impressions, immune to the arbitrary ways that language carves up the world?

The latest research changes the framework, perhaps the language of the debate, suggesting that language clearly affects some thinking as a special device added to an ancient mental skill set. Just as adding features to a cellphone or camera can backfire, language is not always helpful. For the most part, it enhances thinking. But it can trip us up, too.

...

Language helps us learn novel categories, and it licenses our unusual ability to operate on an abstract plane, Dr. Lupyan said. The problem is that after a category has been learned, it can distort the memory of specific objects, getting between us and the rest of the nonabstract world.

 In other words, language helps us make sense of and manipulate the world around us but it also obstructs our perception of the fullness and complexity of Way (the unfolding of all things now).  When we settle on analytic categories we lock ourselves into static points of reference.  But Way is constantly moving and changing, and our categories may quickly become inaccurate or insufficient.  Or, we may choose the wrong analytic categories to interpret our immediate circumstances.  That is pretty much what Chuang Tzu warned all those years ago:

The spoken isn't just bits of wind.  In the spoken something is spoken.  But what it is never stays fixed an constant.  So, is something spoken, or has nothing ever been spoken?  People think we're different from baby birds cheeping, but are we saying any more than they are? (21)

     There is no escaping the simultaneous necessity and insufficiency of language but a measure of humility regarding the limits of our capacities to apprehend Way is always a good thing....

This Just In: Confucius is Right

     Here's an AP story:

CHICAGO -- Newsflash for rock stars and teenagers: It turns out everything doesn't go downhill as we age _ the golden years really are golden.

That's according to eye-opening research that found the happiest Americans are the oldest, and older adults are more socially active than the stereotype of the lonely senior suggests.

The two go hand-in-hand _ being social can help keep away the blues.

"The good news is that with age comes happiness," said study author Yang Yang, a University of Chicago sociologist. "Life gets better in one's perception as one ages."

 But for those of us who read Confucius, this comes as no surprise, as Analects 2.4 says:

The Master said: "At fifteen I devoted myself to learning, and at thirty I stood firm.  At forty I had no doubts, and at fifty understood the Mandate of Heaven.  At sixty I listened in effortless accord.  And at seventy I followed the mind's passing fancies without overstepping any bounds."

       In other words, if we know how to age, we get better with age.

Mencius on Taxes

    Yesterday was tax day in the US, the day when federal, and I believe most state, income tax forms must be filed.  For many years I used to do my taxes by myself, and this day was certainly a worry for me.  A couple of years ago, however, due to income from my writing which came to define me, in the eyes of the tax authorities, as an independent business (and my wife, due to her various forms of community involvement became an independent contractor), I turned to an accountant.  Paying someone else to figure out what I must pay the government does take some of the pain out of it....

    In any event, I realized yesterday that I should do a post on Mencuis and taxes.  He has much to say on the topic.  But the idea popped into my head as I was cleaning the dishes after dinner and my text was not there with me.  But it is here with me now, so let's jump right in.

    Mencius is a low tax man.  I suspect that he calls for limited taxes because, in his time, a serious source of injustice and inequality was rapacious abuse of state power to extract revenue from society.  Notice in this passage how he focuses on rents as opposed to taxes or tariffs or tribute:

Collect rent in the markets but no tax, or enforce laws but collect no rent - then every merchant throughout all beneath Heaven will rejoice and long to trade in your markets.  Conduct inspections at the border but collect no tax - then every traveler throughout all beneath Heaven will rejoice and long to travel your roads.    Have farmers help with public fields but collect no tax - then every farmer in all beneath Heaven will rejoice and long to work your land.  Don't demand tributes in cloth from families and villages - then people throughout all beneath Heaven will rejoice and long to become your subjects.  (3.5)

    He understands the state's need for revenue, but "rent" here suggests limited and fixed annual (or some period of time, monthly...) levy.  While a percentage of the value of production or commerce might yield higher receipts for the government, it would also impose greater burdens on society.

      We should not take from the passage above the idea that Mencius was anti-tax.  No.  He was interested in limiting taxation.  The famous well field system that he advocated, which reserved one farm plot out of nine for communal work and aristocratic requisition, could be understood as a form of taxation.  Thus, Mencius says:

In the countryside, tax people one ninth of their produce, according to the well-field system.  In the capital, tax people one tenth of their income.  (5.3)

    Notice that city dwellers, which would include businessmen and other professionals, must also pay an income tax.  It is a flat tax.  Although the overall system is mildly regressive (10% tax rate for "rich" city dwellers, and an 11% rate for poorer farmers), there is a minimum welfare that he would guarantee to all people - access to land and livelihood.

       (Notice, too, in the same passage 5.3 Mencius seems to support the infamous PRC hukou system when he says: "People should never leave their village - not when they move their houses and not when they die.")

     He also warns about not taxing enough, something that uncivilized governments do.  Indeed, "barbarians" tax at very low rates precisely because they do not have the finer institutions and practices of higher civilization to maintain   Here's how  Mencius replies when asked if a tax rate of one part in twenty (5%) is sufficient as it is for the "Northern barbarians":

    Northern barbarians don't grow the five grains, only millet.  They have no city walls or buildings, no ancestral temples, no sacrificial rituals.  The have no august lords, no diplomatic hospitality or gifts.  And they don't have the hundred government offices and officials.  That why one part in twenty is enough tax for them.  but here in the Middle Kingdom(s), how can we do without noble-minded leaders and the bond of human community? (12.10)

     Makes me think of Oliver Wendell Holmes' famous line: "taxes are what we pay for living in a civilized society."