The Useless Tree

Stop Thinking

NYT sports columnist George Vecsey has some Taoist advice for Alex Rodriguez:

The instinctive A-Rod of the first two rounds seemed to have vanished. He was squeezing the bat. Gone was the guy who lashed home runs in the postseason, attacked the bases, dashed home on defense when it was momentarily left unprotected.

Instead, he was, omigosh, thinking.

...

Not that he needs to be told — these people are professionals — but the message should be clear to Rodriguez. He was thoroughly unconscious during the first two rounds of the postseason, playing up to his immense abilities. The most impressive part of him in those rounds was his instinct, the freedom to get beyond thinking, and just do. He was unleashed.

But players can get out of their rhythm, particularly in these long autumns when teams sit around and wait to be told by the networks that their services are required on such-and-such days. It’s easy to lose instinct, to have time to think.

He ends the piece with a simple statement: Rodriguez "...should henceforth stop thinking."

Indeed.  How does passage 20 of the Daodejing start?

Give up learning and troubles end.

Confucius in Congress

The US House of Representatives filed a resolution (H. Res. 784) on September 29 honoring the 2,560th anniversary of the birth of Confucius. I'm really not sure of the politics here, but it would seem, to me, that this has something to do with showing respect for Chinese-American voters in various constituencies. 

Is this a soft power victory for the PRC?  Perhaps.  But, as I have argued before (here and here), it is not at all clear that Confucianism can be made to serve exclusively nationalist purposes.  Of course, historically, Confucianism was combined with Legalism to function as an ideology of state power in China.  But the danger for nationalists is that Confucianism contains an imminent critique of power and power-holders.  That is why, for example, 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.

But excising this line hardly saves the apologist who is searching for a historically distorted nationalist narrative or a rationalization for established power structures.  The entire text of Mencius is an extended critique of wrong-headed and immoral leaders.

So, members of Congress should take this resolution seriously and consider what Confucius and Mencius might have to say about their own behavior.  It would not be pretty...

Full text of the resolution here for your consideration:

Resolution

Honoring the 2,560th anniversary of the birth of Confucius and recognizing his invaluable contributions to philosophy and social and political thought.

Whereas September 28, 551 B.C., is recognized as the date on which Confucius was born in the town of Qufu, in what is now the Shandong Province of China;

Whereas Confucius, who is one of the greatest thinkers, teachers, and social philosophers in history, developed a philosophy that has deeply influenced, and continues to influence, the social and political thought of countries around the world, including China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Vietnam;

Whereas Confucius counseled introspection, self-cultivation, sincerity, and the observance of respect within social relationships as a means of achieving justice and attaining morality in personal and public life, reflecting a moral fiber of the highest degree;

Whereas the teaching of Confucius that `what one does not wish for oneself, one ought not to do to anyone else; what one recognizes as desirable for oneself, one ought to be willing to grant to others' is a model for ethical behavior and for the promotion of harmony among us;

Whereas Confucius taught that an ideal government is founded upon loyalty, respect for elders, and recognition of the importance of family; and Whereas Confucius taught that politicians must be models of truthfulness and morality, which serves as a reminder to all of our duty to serve with the utmost honor and respect: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives honors the 2,560th anniversary of the birth of Confucius and recognizes his invaluable contributions to philosophy and social and political thought.

Wang Meng: From dissident to minister to....Daoist?

I just received a message from CC Huang, directing me to a blog post she wrote about Wang Meng's book on the Daodejing.  This is a revelation for me (it made my day!) because I did not know Wang had moved toward Daoism.  He is famous for his early literary dissent in the 1950s.  Unfortunately, he doesn't have much of a presence on the English language web, most likely because the time of his greatest prominence (he was rehabilitated from his status as a "rightist" and gained a place on the CCP Central Committe in 1977; he served as Minister of Culture from 1986-1989) came before the internet was common.  In any event, CC, on her blog, provides a translation of Wang's gloss on the first passage of the Daodejing .  Here's Wang's opening thoughts:

The Dao is not easily explained, and if it is explained, it loses what is most fundamental, most natural, most primal, most eternal, most deep and also most abstract about the Dao, instead it would become a cheapened, on the surface, momentary, and plain insight.

Sounds right to me.

Thanks CC, and keep up the great translating work!

  

Language map of China

Just found this map (via Languagehat via Roland.  It is important to note that the different "dialects," the different colored areas on the map, are really different language groups.  The variations within the green area are better referred to as "dialects" of Mandarin.  The other areas are basically disstinct spoken languages.  Which reminds us of both the extraordinary cultural diversity of China historically and its continuing cultural diversity today.  More maps here. 

Another Sad Reminder: Bush Lost the War

Massive, coordinated car bomb attacks in Baghdad. The loud right-wing Obama haters will no doubt jump on this to argue that Obama is losing the war in Iraq.  But that is not true.  Iraq was lost long ago and it was lost due to the initial failures of Bush and company.  Sullivan gets at some of this:

...But the surge failed in its core task: to create an environment in which the three major sects in Iraq could form a national government, a national army, and a stable balance between the three major centrifugal forces in the country and in Baghdad. Maliki's bid for a post-sectarian polity rests fundamentally on his claim to have restored some semblance of security. But how easy it will be for that semblance to be wiped out by violence of the kind demonstrated today.

From a Sun Zi perspective, the US, from the very get go, failed to understand the adversary as well as ourselves, and while perhaps initially taking the state intact, let that momentary advantage slip away with an overbearing occupation.

The Iraq war was ill-advised from the beginning.  It was based on false premises (WMD!) and driven by misinformation (which the movie "In the Loop" captured well).  The cavalier attitude of the Bush administration toward the loss of Iraqi life in the pursuit of their neo-con obsessions stands as a horrible monument of immorality.  And it has left a continuing tragedy for Iraqi people. 

But it is important for us to remember how it all started and why it has turned out so badly:

Bush lost the war.

The New York Yankees and the Mandate of Heaven

For those readers who follow US sports, you'll know that that the New York Yankees have been winning of late.  For a Taoist Yankee fan like myself this is a pleasant thing.  For followers of the Boston Red Sox, however, it is something like purgatory.  But even they (via Drezner) have to admit that history seems to be on the side of the Bronx Bombers this year.

Of course, I tend to agree with the historical analyses that point to ultimate Yankee victory.  But I would like to add a somewhat different perspective on this, the ancient Chinese idea of the Mandate of Heaven.   `

The general idea here is that legitimate political rule is authorized by "Heaven."  The Chinese notion of heaven, Tian, is not a place where God or gods rule, nor a place where human souls are redeemed.  It is more a sense of destiny and fate.  It is more than humanity, it is open and high, and it has a tendency and movement that is beyond our comprehension.  And in that movement lies certain implications for human-kind. 

The Mandate of Heaven, Tian ming, is the something like the tendency of destiny; not in a divine predestined sense, but in a natural unfolding sense.  Some things will be and, thus, in being are meant to be.  If a flood or earthquake happens, it was meant to happen, and the consequences of such disasters are meant to signal that the actions of some people are out of keeping with the natural unfolding of things.  Heaven thus signals to humanity a diffuse sense of right or wrong.  We are supposed to try to understand these signals and interpret them as the Mandate of Heaven, the general sense of heavenly agreement with the activities of the human world.

What does this have to do with baseball? 

First, the fact that the Yankees have been winning should thus be interpreted that they were meant to win. There have been some difficulties along the way, but Heaven is signaling that Yankee victories are consistent with the natural unfolding of things. 

Second, the return of the Yankees to their rightful place as winners of the American League East division follows another precept of the Mandate of Heaven:

Tian would bless the authority of a just ruler, but would be displeased with a despotic ruler and would withdraw its mandate. The Mandate of Heaven would then transfer to those who would rule best.

Clearly, the brief reigns of Tampa Bay (2008) and Boston (2007) in the American League East both proved despotic and wrong.  Each quickly lost the Mandate in turn and it has now been restored to a just and honorable ruler.

Finally, consider this aspect of the Mandate of Heaven:

In its early form, this political theory asserted that Heaven, was primarily interested in the welfare of human beings. For this reason it has established governors and rulers who assume the responsibility for the welfare of their people. It mandates that certain people be in charge; while they rule justly, fairly, and wisely, Heaven maintains that certain rulers or dynasties remain in power.

Obviously, Yankee supremacy serves the welfare of the people. The people are happy!  Prosperity is returning.  The Heavens are serene.  All of this points to a long and fruitful reign.

There only remain the small matters of the Angels and the Phillies.  In time, the Mandate of Heaven will shine on New York.

Go Yankees!

UPDATE: That took a bit longer than I thought....but, of course, I cannot know the Way of Heaven, which is beyond human comprehension.

Taoism in Texas

Every so often I write "Taoism" (or "Daoism") into Google just to see what pops up.  And today that search took me to the newspaper of Longview Texas, The News-Journal, and an article, "Line up: Taoism advises believers to align themselves with the universe."  The opening line is a good one: "East Texans might know more about Taoism than they realize."  I'd like to think so... 

Confucianism between the Philosophers and the Psychologists

David Brooks has a thought-provoking piece today, and the thoughts it provokes in me are about Confucianism.  It is a continuation of another of his recent articles, and is related to this review in the New York Review of Books.  All of these are about the differences between how philosophers and psychologists understand virtue and character.  In today's piece Brooks sums it up this way.  First the philosophers:

In this view, what you might call the philosopher’s view, each of us has certain ingrained character traits. An honest person will be honest most of the time. A compassionate person will be compassionate.

Versus the psychologists:

...According to the psychologist’s view, individuals don’t have one thing called character.

The psychologists say this because a century’s worth of experiments suggests that people’s actual behavior is not driven by permanent traits that apply from one context to another. Students who are routinely dishonest at home are not routinely dishonest at school. People who are courageous at work can be cowardly at church. People who behave kindly on a sunny day may behave callously the next day when it is cloudy and they are feeling glum. Behavior does not exhibit what the psychologists call “cross-situational stability.”

The psychologists thus tend to gravitate toward a different view of conduct. In this view, people don’t have one permanent thing called character. We each have a multiplicity of tendencies inside, which are activated by this or that context....

And when he holds them next to each other he comes up with this metaphor:

The philosopher’s view is shaped like a funnel. At the bottom, there is a narrow thing called character. And at the top, the wide ways it expresses itself. The psychologist’s view is shaped like an upside-down funnel. At the bottom, there is a wide variety of unconscious tendencies that get aroused by different situations. At the top, there is the narrow story we tell about ourselves to give coherence to life.

OK, so where does Confucianism fit into this picture?

Some well respected scholars suggest that Confucianism is closer to a "virtue ethics" ideal, which would place it on the philosopher's side of Brooks' distinction.  I have thought about his idea in another post (three years ago!).  But Brooks' funnel image is making think about his again.

I would like to think about how Mencius might come close to the psychologists' view; that is, he sees that, at base, we have various and contending elements to our humanity.  Of course, we must first recognize that Mencius believes that we all have within us an innately good human nature.  That is the "heart" that makes us all human:

Mencius said: "Everyone has a heart that can't bear to see others suffer..."

"Suddenly seeing a baby about to fall into a well, anyone would be heart-stricken with pity... (3.6; 2A.6)

What I want to draw out of this famous passage is the "everyone" and "anyone."  That could suggest the funnel-shaped notion of character: we all have a fundamental human character that tends toward the good, unless it is pushed toward the bad.

But Mencius is not quite that simple.  He also writes:

We each contain precious and worthless, great and small.  Never injure the great for the sake of the small or the precious for the sake of the worthless.  Small people nurture what is small in them; great people nurture what is great in them. (11.14;6A.14)

Hmmm... That seems to suggest that we have multiple (or at least dual) elements within us and that we must consciously cultivate the good in order to suppress the bad.  Might Mencius agree that, beyond small and great, worthless and precious, there could be other innate tendencies that might influence our response to the social world?  We all have good in us, but we also all have a lot of other stuff.

Of course, for Mencius, what matters, ultimately, is how we perform, how we enact our Duties according to Ritual to move toward Humanity.  If we think about our internal Duty, and if we commit ourselves, willfully, to follow it, and if we then actually do it, we will actively build character.  If you are going to claim good character you must enact it.  And if you act badly, you can always redeem yourself by looking inward, realizing your fault, and then acting correctly.  As he says:

There's only one way to know if people are good or evil: look at the choices they make. (11.14;6A.14)

But Mencius is not a psychologist.  When confronted with a sentence like: "Behavior does not exhibit what the psychologists call “cross-situational stability.”" he would respond that we should.  That is, the whole point of life is to work to stabilize our moral behavior, to find and enact the right thing an any situation.  Stability does not mean rote repetition; rather, the moral agent will discern the particulars of each situation and creatively perform the right thing for that specific context.  What is consistent is the intention and the effort, even when specific actions might vary depending on circumstance. 

That woud put Mencius, I believe, somewhere between Brooks' philosophers and psychologists: character is not existential, it is performative. It is not rooted in a single human trait but must be produced from the conscious cultivation of those good traits that all humans possess.

Fathers as Teachers

In the WaPo today, Patrick Welsh, a teacher in Alexandria VA, pens an interesting op-ed: "Making the Grade Isn't about Race.  It's about Parents." He takes on the question of the racial gap in US high school test scores, but shifts the focus away from race (an unhelpful category for the most part) and hones in on social-cultural dynamics:

Why don't you guys study like the kids from Africa?" 

In a moment of exasperation last spring, I asked that question to a virtually all-black class of 12th-graders who had done horribly on a test I had just given. A kid who seldom came to class -- and was constantly distracting other students when he did -- shot back: "It's because they have fathers who kick their butts and make them study."

Another student angrily challenged me: "You ask the class, just ask how many of us have our fathers living with us." When I did, not one hand went up.

I was stunned. These were good kids; I had grown attached to them over the school year. It hit me that these students, at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, understood what I knew too well: The lack of a father in their lives had undermined their education. The young man who spoke up knew that with a father in his house he probably wouldn't be ending 12 years of school in the bottom 10 percent of his class with a D average. His classmate, normally a sweet young woman with a great sense of humor, must have long harbored resentment at her father's absence to speak out as she did. Both had hit upon an essential difference between the kids who make it in school and those who don't: parents.

I have wondered before if fathers are necessary for child-rearing, drawing on observations of two mother households or single mother households where economic resources are sufficient to the task.  I suspect what Welsh is encountering is an intersection of single-mother family situations and limited material resources at home, which then requires the single-mother to spend more time out of the household with little time to monitor her kid's homework and behavior.

The fatherly role that emerges in Welsh's piece centers mostly on discipline and modeling of good behavior:

For Junior Bailey, a senior in my Advanced Placement English class, school has never been a foreign place, a fact he attributes to his dad. "He has always been on me; it's been hard to get away with much," Junior said. He also told me that hardly any of his friends have their fathers living with them. "Their mothers are soft on them, and they don't get any push from home."

On parents' night a few weeks ago, I was thrilled to see Junior's dad, Willie Bailey, a star on T.C. Williams's 1983 basketball team, walk into my classroom. Willie told me that after seeing how the guys he grew up with were affected by not having their dads around, he promised himself that he would be a real presence in his son's life.

It's not at all clear to me that mothers are universally softer on their children.  I have known some pretty tough mothers in my day.  Rather, there is a range of parental roles - disciplinarian, supporter, tutor, bread-winner, role-model, etc. - and in heterosexual parenting households these roles can be divided up in different ways.  Sometimes the mom is the heavy, sometimes the dad.  If that is the case, what is important is to find some way to carry out effectively the various parental roles, regardless of pre-established gender expectations.  The challenge for single parent families is the difficulty that one person faces in fulfilling the full range of parental roles: it might just be too much for one person.

Thus, I agree with Welsh that parental involvement is key to education.  And in his particular circumstances the absence of fathers may certainly be a common and significant factor.  But that should not lead us to generalize that those roles (such as disciplinarian) that might traditionally be defined as "fatherly" can only be carried out by males.  Also, I think we should think about how single mothers are overloaded - they must work long hours and attend to education - and how relieving their economic burden might yield better education outcomes. 

In all of this I am thinking about Confucius and Mencius.  They both assumed that fathers should have a presence in their children's lives and should encourage education.  But both of them warned that fathers should not be their children's teachers, because teachers must constantly challenge students, and that dynamic can create hard feelings, something that Mencius, in particular wanted to keep from the father-son (which we can generalize to father-child) relationship:

Kung-sun Ch'ou said: "Why is it the noble-minded never teach their own children?"

"The way people are, it's impossible," replied Mencius.  "A teacher's task is to perfect the student, and if the student doesn't improve, the teacher gets angry. When the teacher gets angry, the student in turn feels hurt: You demand perfection, but you're nowhere near perfect yourself.  So father and son would   only hurt each other.  And it's a tragedy when fathers and sons hurt each other

"The ancients taught each other's children. That way father and son never demand perfect virtue of one another.  If they demand perfect virtue of one another, they grow distant.  And nothing is more ominous than fathers and sons grown distant from one another." (7.18)

And Confucius simply encourages his son to read the Songs and practice ritual.  For him doing the right thing in his own life was lesson enough for his son.  Role-modeling is key for Confucian parenting. 

Welsh sees the need for more interventionist fathers, and maybe that is true for his situation.  But its not just about gender, and its not just about discipline.

The art of emptiness

I didn't see this the other day in the NYT: sculptor Li Chen has a major show in Singapore.  He is inspired by Buddhism and Taoism:

“Li Chen is regarded as one of the leading Asian sculptors today,” said Tan Boon Hui, the recently appointed director of the Singapore Art Museum. “His works stem from a fusion of philosophies and spiritual beliefs and contemplate values that are lost or forgotten in our modern lifestyle. I find his contemporary expression of traditional Chinese iconography both interesting and unique.”

Tan Hwee Koon, the curator of the exhibition, said that Mr. Li’s sculptures are predominantly based on the artist’s study of Buddhism and Taoist philosophies, which he combines by injecting the Buddhist concept of emptiness and the Taoist concept of chi, or energy. “The inflated figures are actually a reflection of the chi, the energy inside,” she said. “He’s injecting the life force into the sculpture.”

Of course, emptiness is not only a Buddhist concept; it is also a Taoist notion, though we shouldn't demand too rigorous a distinction between the two since they merge into one another in the religious realm.  But philosophical Taoism embraces an ideal of emptiness as well.  It is sometimes tied to meditative practice, or it can be associated with the Taoist sensibility of eschewing formal "knowledge" in favor of a more direct and open experience of Way.  We need to empty our minds of all preconceived expectations and desires if we are to come to apprehend the fullness of Way.  Yes, Qi (ch'i) would be relevant here, too.  When we empty our minds we open ourselves to the flow and flood of qi.  (the "qi flood" image is from Mencius, perhaps a Taoist element of Confucianism).   

I like the way he gets at emptiness through large, billowy forms.  Here are a couple of photos from a site with his name on it, lichensculpture.org:

It looks like these figures have opened themselves to the qi flood.