The Useless Tree

The I Ching Does It Again

    The holiday season has been busy here - that's why blogging has faded a bit.  And it's the time of year for looking back over the past twelve months. So, let me reminisce-blog a bit.

    Exactly one year ago today I consulted the I Ching on what might lay ahead of me for 2007.  In particular, I was wondering about the book project I had planned.  The question was: "will I make some good headway on my book in the coming year?"  And the answer, as I wrote at the time: "...was quite positive: 'it furthers one to undertake something,' among other good omens.   Perhaps it will be a happy new year."

    I then waited what I thought was a respectful six months (you do not want to ask the oracle the same kind question too often) and posed a related question: how do I get started on my writing (my one-semester sabbatical had just started and I could really focus on my work.)  To my pleasant surprise, the the original prognostication was confirmed - different hexagrams but a very similar positive sentiment.

    So here I now am, finishing up my sabbatical, looking back over a period of concentrated attention to my book. How did it go?   I can say the I Ching was right, again.  It has gone quite well.

     Here's what I have: a short draft introduction (which will certainly change) and four draft chapters.  I have developed a prospectus for the book as a whole and I foresee seven chapters.  Half way done! 

     Just as importantly, it looks like I have secured an agent to help me get the book published with a commercial press (one of my goals is to continue to write and publish outside of academia as I did with Aidan's Way).  Getting an agent is not easy, but it went better this time than last.  I was rejected by a couple of people (par for the course).  A few took it quite seriously.  And two offered to represent me.  The agency I chose (the contract sits on my office desk ready to be signed and sealed) is Creative Work, based in Hong Kong.  What intrigues me about this company is their expertise in moving between the Chinese and American publishing markets.  A year ago I was thinking how great it would be to write a book that connected with people in both of those places - and now it may be possible, or, at least, a little more possible than last December.

     Oh, and I have renamed the project.  Titles, at this stage, are always tentative, but right now the book is called: The Useless Tree: Ancient Chinese Thought in Modern American Life.  Maybe that familiar name brought me some luck!

     In any event, the I Ching saw it all coming. 

      Happy New Year!

Requiem for Benazir Bhutto

This life we're given comes in its own season, and then follows its vanishing away.  If you're at ease in your season, if you can dwell in its vanishing, joy and sorrow never touch you.  This is what the ancients called getting free...

- Chuang Tzu

Is the US "Surge" in Iraq Working? Sun Tzu would not be impressed

     A few days ago a reader named Jeff, who has a Sun Tzu site, suggests that the US "surge" in Iraq is working. Is it?

     At one level, the increase in US troops in recent months seems to correlate with a reduction is violence.  We have seen various reports that the streets of Baghdad seem quieter and fewer people are being killed.  That sounds great. 

     But Sun Tzu would ask us what the reduction in violence means for our ultimate goal in Iraq.  "Victory, " whatever that might mean in particular circumstances, is the whole point, after all.

      The stated goal of the surge, the purpose it was supposed to serve, is to provide breathing space for political reconciliation.  As with any war, the surge is not simply a military exercise; it aims at a political goal, and the violence can be justified only in relation to a political goal.  In these terms it is not at all clear, at this point, that the surge has "worked."

      A big front pager in the NYT  on Sunday delved into this question:

The Americans are haunted by the possibility that Iraq could go the way of Afghanistan, where Americans initially bought the loyalty of tribal leaders only to have some of them gravitate back to the Taliban when the money stopped.

 The problem, of course, is that the US has been arming Sunni groups to fight against al Qaeda in Iraq, or whatever name that strain of the insurgency is using these days, but these Sunni groups are still very much at odds with the dominant Shiite forces which are central to state power.  And the Kurds are still looking out for their own sovereign interests.  We may, therefore, be buying time for a larger clash in the future. 

      Fred Kaplan took up this topic on Christmas eve.  He reminds us of what everyone knows: the US will have to start drawing troops down in the next few months as tours of duty expire and there is no political will to press more soldiers into this deadly service.  The various factions in Iraq know that the military dynamic is moving toward a reduction in US forces, and they may well be biding their time to take advantage of whatever the situation might be as the new year unfolds.  We will know better what the "surge" accomplished a year or two from now.

      There is another possibility as well.  Everybody also knows that next year is a US presidential election year.  If anyone wants to create a political message out of the violence in Iraq - and that is what fourth generation warfare is all about - they will have a bigger media stage as the presidential race heats up.  This could play either way: with those who have an interest in the US staying or with those who have an interest in the US remaining.  Politics is the determining the ebb and flow of military action.

     The political situation in Iraq is still dire.  The surge has not changed that.  And as long as that is true, Sun Tzu would question not only the tactical achievements of the surge but, more importantly, the strategic rationale of the entire Iraq war.

Another Taoist Christmas

     Too busy with holiday commitments to blog.  But here's some recycled thoughts on a Taoist Christmas:

    I have blogged on a Taoist view, or my Taoist view, of Thanksgiving.  But what about Christmas?  What would a Taoist make of that?

    First, and most obvious, a Taoist would stand apart from the central function of the holiday: celebrating the birth of the earth-bound expression of a singular, transcendent God.  On both the question of birth and the question of God, a Taoist would have reservations.

    Philosophic Taoism does not recognize a transcendent God in the manner of Christianity.  God might be found in Taoism (i.e. we could read Him into Taoist texts), but God was not a part of the Taoist worldview in ancient times, and need not be a part of a modernized Taoism.  As to birth, the Tao Te Ching tells us that Tao (Way) encompasses both being and non-being; so, the passage from pre-birth (whatever that might be) to birth, and from birth to death, are not all that important: we (or the stuff we are made of) are still part of Tao even as we make these transitions.  That is why Chuang Tzu was able to get over the death of his wife fairly quickly: he realized that she had simply moved into another form along a ceaseless path of continual change.  Birth, then, need not be celebrated, and God need not be celebrated.  Not much room there for Christmas.

    But there may be one element of the Christmas story that a Taoist could relate to: the child in the manger.

   Taoism views the infant as closer to Tao than most adults.  As we grow, we fill ourselves with all sorts of human learning, much of which takes us away from our natural selves and catches us up in shallow social conventions.  The mind of an infant is empty, and it is precisely that sort of emptiness that Taoism strives for.  Thus, in passage 55 of the Tao Te Ching, we read:

Embody Integrity's abundance
and you're like a vibrant child

hornets and vipers can't bite,
savage beasts can't maul
and fierce birds can't claw,

bones supple and muscles tender, but still gripping firmly.   

  The child, in all of his innocence, cannot be harmed by human knowledge and practices, which are utterly alien to him.  The child, then, is something to celebrate.

    And the idea of a poor child, a child of meager means, born in a manger, resonates with the Taoist notion that the low will be high, the dark light, etc..  All the more reason to rejoice at the Christmas scene.

    But the purpose of Taoist rejoicing (which, in any event, would be circumspect) would not rest on the promise of the ultimate transcendence of the Christ child.  Rather, the child would be celebrated for his immanence; that is, in recognition that each thing holds within itself the fullest expression of itself and, under sufficient conditions of freedom, will grow into itself fully.   

    This may not be too far off the Christian message of the equality of all things before God, just without the God.  Chuang Tzu tells us that in Way (Tao)  everything "moves as one and the same."  Each thing has its place in Tao, its Integrity, and Tao is the perfect summation of all things.  Each thing thus deserves equal respect.  Furthermore, we should strictly limit our actions, lest they interfere with the integrity of other things.  The meaning and significance of each thing comes from within it.  We cannot improve upon anything and we should nothing that might dominate or impose our expectations on it. 

    So, it would be in that spirit - a cautious, respectful, inward-looking spirit - that a Taoist would celebrate the integrity and beauty of the child in the manger.

     Merry Christmas!

   Taoism views the infant as closer to Tao than most adults.  As we grow, we fill ourselves with all sorts of human learning, much of which takes us away from our natural selves and catches us up in shallow social conventions.  The mind of an infant is empty, and it is precisely that sort of emptiness that Taoism strives for.  Thus, in passage 55 of the Tao Te Ching, we read:

Embody Integrity's abundance
and you're like a vibrant child

hornets and vipers can't bite,
savage beasts can't maul
and fierce birds can't claw,

bones supple and muscles tender, but still gripping firmly.   

  The child, in all of his innocence, cannot be harmed by human knowledge and practices, which are utterly alien to him.  The child, then, is something to celebrate.

    And the idea of a poor child, a child of meager means, born in a manger, resonates with the Taoist notion that the low will be high, the dark light, etc..  All the more reason to rejoice at the Christmas scene.

    But the purpose of Taoist rejoicing (which, in any event, would be circumspect) would not rest on the promise of the ultimate transcendence of the Christ child.  Rather, the child would be celebrated for his immanence; that is, in recognition that each thing holds within itself the fullest expression of itself and, under sufficient conditions of freedom, will grow into itself fully.   

    This may not be too far off the Christian message of the equality of all things before God, just without the God.  Chuang Tzu tells us that in Way (Tao)  everything "moves as one and the same."  Each thing has its place in Tao, its Integrity, and Tao is the perfect summation of all things.  Each thing thus deserves equal respect.  Furthermore, we should strictly limit our actions, lest they interfere with the integrity of other things.  The meaning and significance of each thing comes from within it.  We cannot improve upon anything and we should nothing that might dominate or impose our expectations on it. 

    So, it would be in that spirit - a cautious, respectful, inward-looking spirit - that a Taoist would celebrate the integrity and beauty of the child in the manger.

     Merry Christmas!

Winter Solstice - reprise

     I don't recycle too many posts here, but this is the busy season.  I am running out the door to the store and library and who knows where else.  So, let me re-post something that goes back to 2005, some Taoist reflections on the Winter solstice.  The light is coming!


     Let me step back a moment from my political blogging on Dongzhou and turn to an odd little question, which may be philosophical, about winter solstice: are we, at some deep unconscious level, afraid of it?

     For readers in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore - nice warm places this time of year - this may seem a remote topic.  But for those of us sitting in the darkening north, the impending longest night of the year cannot but demand our attention.  And we have historically made a lot of it culturally.  To escape the dark, northern Christians throw themselves into Christmas.  We (I am including northern agnostics and atheists here as well) get together at holiday parties (perhaps in unspoken hope that being with other people will keep the dark at bay), we drape our homes with lights inside (on trees) and outside (on eaves).  When I think about it, however, it strikes me that the "season of joy" is actually driven by a certain fear:  of all of the cultural referents that attach to darkness, especially death.

     OK, that seems rather morbid.  But I think it's true.  To distract ourselves from our fear of the dark, and of death, we seek out close companionship and light. 

    I mention this because I have begun to think about what a Taoist would make of Christmas, and I am having some trouble.  The first thing I noticed, however, was how a Taoist would likely remark upon our apparent fear of the dark.  Why do we chose to do Christmas at roughly the Winter Solstice?   A Taoist would probably answer with the observation that we desire to distract ourselves from the dark. 

     This would amuse a Taoist. He/she would find it familiar: after all, in ancient Chinese culture, "light" (the yang side of the Yin-Yang complement) has a more positive rhetorical valence than "dark."  This, at least, is something we could take from many I Ching passages (I am sure my I Ching friends might differ with me here).  The "dark" cannot be, and should not be, denied or overcome, but the "light" is stronger, more dynamic, more creative and powerful than the "dark." 

     Taoism struggles against the cultural preference for the "light."  The Tao Te Ching, especially, champions the low, the dark.   Darkness is an attribute of Tao (Way).  In passage 21 (Legge translation), Tao is referred to thusly: "     Profound it is, dark and obscure; Things' essences all there endure."  Dusky, obscure, dark are all words used to describe Tao.  So, why be afraid, if dark is Tao?

    A Taoist would not be afraid of Winter Solstice.  Nor would he/she celebrate it as the imminent return of the light.  Rather, a Taoist would embrace the dark in and of itself, knowing that it is not permanent (nothing is in Tao) but that it is essential and, in its own way, beautiful.

    Whatever my Taoist sympathies, I do not follow its path this time of year.  I am not afraid of the Solstice or the dark - I rather like the Winter, in fact.  But I give myself over to the dominant cultural practices: I like the lights on our Christmas tree, and the lights framing our big picture window outside.  And I like the cooking and people and all.  The real test would be: what if all of that was taken away?  Could we be happy in the dark? 

     OK, that seems rather morbid.  But I think it's true.  To distract ourselves from our fear of the dark, and of death, we seek out close companionship and light. 

    I mention this because I have begun to think about what a Taoist would make of Christmas, and I am having some trouble.  The first thing I noticed, however, was how a Taoist would likely remark upon our apparent fear of the dark.  Why do we chose to do Christmas at roughly the Winter Solstice?   A Taoist would probably answer with the observation that we desire to distract ourselves from the dark. 

     This would amuse a Taoist. He/she would find it familiar: after all, in ancient Chinese culture, "light" (the yang side of the Yin-Yang complement) has a more positive rhetorical valence than "dark."  This, at least, is something we could take from many I Ching passages (I am sure my I Ching friends might differ with me here).  The "dark" cannot be, and should not be, denied or overcome, but the "light" is stronger, more dynamic, more creative and powerful than the "dark." 

     Taoism struggles against the cultural preference for the "light."  The Tao Te Ching, especially, champions the low, the dark.   Darkness is an attribute of Tao (Way).  In passage 21 (Legge translation), Tao is referred to thusly: "     Profound it is, dark and obscure; Things' essences all there endure."  Dusky, obscure, dark are all words used to describe Tao.  So, why be afraid, if dark is Tao?

    A Taoist would not be afraid of Winter Solstice.  Nor would he/she celebrate it as the imminent return of the light.  Rather, a Taoist would embrace the dark in and of itself, knowing that it is not permanent (nothing is in Tao) but that it is essential and, in its own way, beautiful.

    Whatever my Taoist sympathies, I do not follow its path this time of year.  I am not afraid of the Solstice or the dark - I rather like the Winter, in fact.  But I give myself over to the dominant cultural practices: I like the lights on our Christmas tree, and the lights framing our big picture window outside.  And I like the cooking and people and all.  The real test would be: what if all of that was taken away?  Could we be happy in the dark? 

Lee Myung-bak as a reminder that Korea is not as Confucian as some would want us to think.

     Lee Myung-bak, the candidate of the conservative Grand National Party, won a significant electoral victory in South Korea's presidential poll yesterday.  The elections were free and fair, though turnout was relatively low (about 63%), and Lee captured about 48.7 % of the vote, which gave him a historically high 22.6 or so percentage point lead over his nearest rival.

     He is described as a pragmatist with ethical issues.  Vowing to ramp up the country's economic growth, he faces an investigation into manipulating stocks of a company, BBK, he founded.  As one voter, interviewed by the NYT, said:

“I voted for Lee Myung-bak even though I think he’s a little corrupt,” said Kim Cho-rong, 21, a college student studying interior design. “I figured someone who is a little guilty but competent was better for our society than someone who is innocent but incompetent.”

     And perhaps, given the messy world of politics, that's OK.  But one thing we can say about Lee's election is that it would likely draw a frown from Confucius.

      This thought comes to me as I read lines like this, from the Marmot's Hole:

The election of Lee Myung-bak (assuming it survives the ongoing BBK investigation) is break from the ideologically-driven politics of Korea’s past. His campaign has explicitly said that “economic considerations must receive higher priority than political considerations.”

     Giving so much priority to economic issues, especially in the relatively well off South Korea (something like the 13th richest country in the world), strays from the path of the Master.  Think about this man-on-the-street comment from the WaPo:

"No one is absolutely clean when you strip-search successful and wealthy businessmen in Korea," said Ahn Jae-woo, 54, an insurance executive who voted for Lee early today before going Christmas shopping with his family in a Seoul mall. "This election is not about ethical issues, it's about who is really capable of making Korea prosperous."

      It's all about "prosperity," making people richer, allowing them to live more comfortable lives.  Forget the ethics.   Now, I will not criticize Koreans for making that choice.  It's perfectly understandable, especially coming after a president, Roh Moo-hyun, who overplayed the political ethics card and let the economy sag.  But, whatever we think of Lee's victory, it is not in keeping with Confucianism.

      This passage from the Analects seems to speak directly to not only Lee himself but to Korea voters in general:

The Master said: “Wealth and position – that’s what people want. But if you enjoy wealth and position without following Way, you’ll never dwell at ease. Poverty and obscurity – that’s what people despise. And if you endure poverty and obscurity without following the Way, you’ll never get free.
“If you ignore Humanity, how will you gain praise and renown? The noble-minded don’t forget Humanity for a single moment, not even in the crush of confusion and desperation.”  Analects 4.5

     Even when times are bad, even when the economy is growing slower than it might, you can't forget the ethics, you can't ignore Humanity.

     Confucius would not have voted for Lee.

The Tao of Virtuality

     Found an article on the China Daily site reporting on the Pew  Internet and American Life Project (which I had just noticed on the AP wire). 

     The report is large and covers a lot of ground, but the US wire agencies decided to lead with this theme, which CD picked up on:

Teenagers still value phone calls and face-to-face meetings with friends even as they frequent online hangouts like Facebook and MySpace, a new study finds.

Nearly 40 percent of teens say they talk to friends on a traditional wired phone every day, and 35 percent say they do so on cell phones, the Pew Internet and American Life Project said Wednesday, analyzing its phone surveys from late 2006. Thirty-one percent of teens say they spend time in person with friends every day.

Fewer teens say they communicate daily using instant messaging, text messages or internal messaging systems at Facebook, News Corp.'s MySpace or another social-networking site.

 Perhaps this is supposed to be reassuring to old fogeys, like me, who might fret about what is becoming of the kids...they spend all day on those damn machines and have no time for "real" human interactions.

       But not so fast... First of all, internet or wireless or other non-face-to-face electronic communications might actually be good, insofar as they complement other live and together interactions.  Whoever has been afraid that the kids are becoming computer zombies (not me, really; I think the kids are all right...), may have been overestimating the time and effect of on-line conversations. Turns out, for American kids at least, texting and Facebooking (yes, all now verbs!) are not nearly as big or important to their social lives as some parents may have feared.  The young ones have always had it figured out: the on-line links are only one facet of their social webs.  Face-to-face has always mattered to them.

     Second, however, China Daily really should make more of a point that this report reflects American cultural trends, and these may not be the same as Chinese practices.  As I noted a couple of posts ago, there are reports that suggest the Chinese young people understand and socially utilize electronic communications differently than their American peers.  We need to keep that in mind.  It should not be supposed that American practices will become common in China, or vice versa.  The world is not that flat...

     Which brings me to my final point for today.  I have, thus far, been wondering out loud what Facebooking and texting might mean for Confucian values. And the Pew report would be reassuring along those lines.   But what about Taoism?  What do these new means of human connection suggest for Taoist views of the world?

      Quickly and crudely, my first sense is that Taoists would not be enamored of the possibility of increased and intensified interconnectivity.  What has happened to solitude?  Taoism does not place as much importance on social relationships in defining an individual.  Rather, a person is what his or her te (inherent nature) and tao (evolving immediate context) determine.  Being a part of social networks can be a reflection of one's tao and te, but such connections are not necessary for the full expression of one's place in the broader cosmic Tao.

     Taoists, then, would neither celebrate the new technologies nor fear them. Electronic messaging is simply another human invention and intervention into the unfolding of Way.  A Taoist might warn against getting overly obsessed about this or that new gadget, since none of them are really essential to Way.  We could live, and have lived, without them.  But there would be no sin in using them and finding some fleeting joy and momentary satisfactions.  No big deal.

      After all, the evanescence and impermanence of digital communications is rather like our existence in Way.  Chuang Tzu does not know where the dream ends and reality begins.  The virtual is similarly interstitial. 

More Taoist Cosmology

    A story today in the NYT describes some of the debates among physicists over the apparent order of the universe.  Is the seeming law-like "order" something that transcends space and time - something timeless and absolute - or is it something that emerged as the universe developed, something perhaps more immanent?

If the laws of physics are to have any sticking power at all, to be real laws, one could argue, they have to be good anywhere and at any time, including the Big Bang, the putative Creation. Which gives them a kind of transcendent status outside of space and time.

On the other hand, many thinkers — all the way back to Augustine — suspect that space and time, being attributes of this existence, came into being along with the universe — in the Big Bang, in modern vernacular. So why not the laws themselves?

   This gets my Taoist hackles up.  The Platonists, or neo-Platonists, seem to me to have a distinctly non-Taoist attitude:

...As far back as the fifth century B.C. the Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras and his followers proclaimed that nature was numbers. Plato envisioned a higher realm of ideal forms, of perfect chairs, circles or galaxies, of which the phenomena of the sensible world were just flawed reflections. Plato set a transcendent tone that has been popular, especially with mathematicians and theoretical physicists, ever since.

 This seems to be assuming the thing that needs to be explained: order.  It also assumes that we are capable of fully and truly apprehending cosmic order.  How arrogant!  If Taoism teaches us anything it is the limits of human knowledge and language.  I tried to capture this in a previous post; here's an excerpt:

Way is, of course, the grand totality of all things at once now. It is the "everything" that string theory aims at explaining.  But the simplicity of Way comes not from our effort to impose a singular explanation upon it, which is, for a Taoist, simply impossible.  Rather, its simplicity comes from its straightforwardness: it is everything.  And since each thing has a certain integrity unto itself (Te), the totality of all things (Tao) is simply the numberless summation of everything.  We might say Tao is all Te. Its unity is simply a matter of coincidence; that is, the simultaneity of all things at this moment.  It is beyond our description and, certainly, beyond our explanation.

      Seems to me that a Taoist sensibility would be closer to this description of quantum mechanics, from the same NYT piece:

Plato and the whole idea of an independent reality, moreover, took a shot to the mouth in the 1920s with the advent of quantum mechanics. According to that weird theory, which, among other things, explains why our computers turn on every morning, there is an irreducible randomness at the microscopic heart of reality that leaves an elementary particle, an electron, say, in a sort of fog of being everywhere or anywhere, or being a wave or a particle, until some measurement fixes it in place.

 "Irreducible randomness," that's almost it...  But there continues to be this impulse, among modern scientists, to find a singular answer:

Dr. Wheeler has suggested that the laws of nature could emerge “higgledy-piggledy” from primordial chaos, perhaps as a result of quantum uncertainty. It’s a notion known as “it from bit.” Following that logic, some physicists have suggested we should be looking not so much for the ultimate law as for the ultimate program.

 But if randomness is really irreducible, why would we think there is an ultimate anything?  Why not just accept dynamism and change and  uncertainty, at some cosmic level at least?  The author of the article seems - ultimately - to come to this kind of openness:

...Since cosmologists don’t know how the universe came into being, or even have a convincing theory, they have no way of addressing the conundrum of where the laws of nature come from or whether those laws are unique and inevitable or flaky as a leaf in the wind.

 That last image could be something in Chuang Tzu.  And, happily, the writer makes a final apt observation, not lamenting the absence of a singular, universal law of nature but discovering it in its own negation:

The law of no law, of course, is still a law.

 That comes pretty close to the Tao Te Ching...

Instantaneous Interaction: More on Confucian Facebook Friends

     A while back I posted some thoughts on what Confucianism might make of the social networking sites like Facebook. My initial sense was this:

While, for Confucians, our family obligations are primary, we need friends, face-to-face friends, to fully enact and extend our Humanity in the world.  And, in a way, Facebook friending may facilitate this kind of Humanity.

     That is, social networking sites like Facebook might promote Confucian sociability if - and this is a very important if - such internet-mediated interactions are merely complementary to continued and sustained face-to-face relationships.  Humanity, in other words, cannot be disembodied.

      Two recent stories, however, might demand some further refinement of my initial thoughts.

      First, it seems that Facebook is being researched by serious sociologists (ht Crooked Timber).  And here is one of their preliminary findings:

An important finding, Ms. Ellison said, was that students who reported low satisfaction with life and low self-esteem, and who used Facebook intensively, accumulated a form of social capital linked to what sociologists call “weak ties.” A weak tie is a fellow classmate or someone you meet at a party, not a friend or family member. Weak ties are significant, scholars say, because they are likely to provide people with new perspectives and opportunities that they might not get from close friends and family. “With close friends and family we’ve already shared information,” Ms. Ellison said.

   The question, then, (and this is a question that extends beyond Facebook) is: what do weak ties mean for Confucian notions of sociability.  On the face of it (and from a non-sociologist point of view), it would seem that weak ties, to the extent that they dilute the identity-creating power of our family ties, would negate Confucian aspirations.  And if it is true that weak ties are particularly important for modern youth - and perhaps made more important still by internet social networking - then that would be a sign of the inapplicability of Confucianism, or some elements of it, in the modern world.  C'est la vie...

      Second, a story out of China (ht CDT) further complicates the picture:

...China's Internet audience has, for the most part, given sites like Facebook and MySpace the cold shoulder. Even local Chinese sites like Xiaonei or 51.com have failed to establish big national followings. What may seem on the surface to be a stubborn backwardness on the part of the Chinese, however, could also be interpreted as a viable alternative to Western-style social networking. Many experts are starting to think that the Chinese are leading the way to a new kind of social Internet—one that emphasizes the kind of instant communication that Herman and his friends prize so highly. Recent surveys leave little doubt that a different kind of Internet culture is emerging in China—younger, more devoted, more addicted to speed and intimacy than its Western counterparts. 

 For young Chinese, Facebook is - as some of my students might say - like, so ten minutes ago...  But what does it mean to be "addicted to speed and intimacy"?  Again, on the face of it, this would seem to push against Confucian expectations, which would aim for deliberate and careful and slow and sustained social connections.  Now, perhaps "speed" could facilitate maintenance of family ties...but I imagine that manic, text-messaging Chinese youth are not interacting with their parents and grandparents on their cell phones (I could be wrong about this, so corrections welcome!).

     If we add the two stories together, if Chinese youth are rapidly interacting with "weak ties", and if that is how "intimacy" is being defined in contemporary China - and maybe even contemporary America - then a modern Confucian would frown on it. 

    But, if by comparison, slow and sedate Facebook allows for relative depth and development of social ties, and even family ties, then my initial thought might still hold up: Facebook is more congenial to Confucian sociality than other forms of internet social networking.

     Your thoughts?

Ancient Sages in New Jersey

     Today's news:

Gov. on S. Corzine signed into law a measure repealing New Jersey’s death penalty on Monday, making the state the first in a generation to abolish capital punishment.

     Confucius would be happy.  As I have argued elsewhere, Confucianism maintains a general aversion to the death penalty; not absolute, especially for Mencius, but strong enough that a formal legal ban sounds about right  (If a truly evil person was unlawfully but justifiably killed, leniency could be demonstrated in sentencing of the perpetrator...).  Here is perhaps the most famous statement  along these lines from Confucius himself (Analects 12.19):

Asking Confucius about governing, Lord Chi K'ang said: "What if I secure those who abide in the Way by killing those who ignore the Way - will that work?"
   "How can you govern by killing?" replied Confucius.  "Just set your heart on what is virtuous and benevolent, and the people will be virtuous and benevolent.  The noble-minded have the Integrity of wind, and little people the Integrity of grass.  When the wind sweeps over grass, it bends."

      Killing is unnecessary.  Exemplary rule is more effective in brining people to Humanity.  Although Confucius might not embrace the sanctity of life ideal in Governor Corzine's statement, he would generally agree with its basic sentiment:

“Today New Jersey is truly evolving,” he said. “I believe society first must determine if its endorsement of violence begets violence, and if violence undermines our commitment to the sanctity of life. To these questions, I answer yes.”

     Violence undermines our commitment to Humanity - and that would be enough for Confucius to sign on to the new New Jersey legislation.

    And that goes for the authors of the Tao Te Ching also, as suggested by this excerpt from passage 74 of that wonderful volume:

There is a regular executioner whose charge it is to kill.
To kill on behalf of the executioner is what is described as chopping wood on behalf of the master carpenter.
In chopping wood on behalf of the master carpenter, there are few who escape hurting their own hands instead.

 Death will come of its own accord, as Way (the ultimate executioner) unfolds.  No need to help it along.  Gov. Corzine can now rest assured that his hands will not be so bloodied.