The Useless Tree

Daoism is not a Strategy

A rather odd blog post over at Huffington Post College, by Keith Weigelt, a Professor at the Wharton School, gets off to an incongruous start:

I am a strategist in the Daoist tradition. One tenet of Daoism is that individuals are responsible for their reality.

I am not sure what it means to be a "strategist in the Daoist tradition," since Daoism, generally - or, at least the Daoist principles I find in the Daodejing and Zhuangzi - are not really "strategic" in the common sense of that term.  And for that common sense meaning, I would turn to the OED: "....a plan for successful action based on the rationality and interdependence of the moves of the opposing participants."

On the face of it, Daoism urges us to eschew planning precisely because we cannot really control the complex reality that surrounds us (which we might take as dao - way).  Let's go to passage 24 of the DDJ:

Stretch on tiptoes and you never stand firm.  Hurry long strides and you never travel far.

Keep up self-reflection and you'll never be enlightened.

Keep up self-definition and you'll never be apparent.

Keep up self-promotion and you'll never be proverbial.

Keep up self-esteem and you'll never be perennial.

Travelers of the Way call such striving 'too much food and useless baggage.'  Things may not all despise such striving, but a master of the Way stays clear of it.

I take this as a rejection of self-conscious definition of interests and preferences and, thus, an undermining of the first stage of any sort of planning.  

And I am completely aware that this could also be seen as a king of meta-strategy; that is, by avoiding "strategy" in the first instance, you actually come out in a better place.  A sort of anti-strategic strategy.  Very Daoist that.

But that sort of anti-strategy strategy is not what Weigelt seems to have in mind.  He is a game theorist:

We all have the power to change our reality because of what game theorists call interactive payoffs. When you interact with others, the consequence of your decision depends on the behavior of others. One's world is not filled with solitude. Because consequences depend on one's actions and those of others, you must consider their actions in choosing yours.

This is a good starting point for understanding game theory but, again, it has virtually nothing to do with Daoism.  Of course a Daoist would agree that the consequences of our actions depend on the behavior of others.  But a Daoist would also assert that we cannot know what the actions of others might be and that there are myriad other unforeseen factors that can disrupt any expectation of the behavior of others.   Zhuangzi is the antithesis of a game theoretic strategist:

Birth and death, living and dead, failure and success, poverty and wealth, honor and dishonor, slander and praise, hunger and thirst, hot and cold - such are the transformations of this world, the movements of its inevitable nature.  They keep vanishing into one another before our very eyes, day in and day out, but we'll never calibrate what drives them. (5.4)

死生存亡，窮達貧富，賢與不肖，毀譽、饑渴、寒暑，是事之變，命之行也；日夜相代乎前，而知不能規乎其始者也.

Instead of Hinton's "we'll never calibrate what drives them," Graham gives us: "knowledge cannot measure back to where they began."  We cannot know the origin or development of the most basic human forces: life, death, failure success, poverty wealth....  That last pair - poverty and wealth - is especially telling for Weigelt, who is ultimately interested in understanding and reversing economic inequality in the US.  That is a noble cause, one that I certainly support.  But it is not at all clear how his game theoretic approach to that problem has anything to do with Daoism.

Weigelt also states:

Daoists believe since interactions define the future, they must be actively managed.

To which we have to reply: No. Daoists do not believe that our interactions with others must be actively managed.  Quite the contrary, we have to let go of conscious management and let relationships emerge and unfold in context as they will, without our purposive effort to steer them in certain directions.  

We'll let Zhuangzi (5.5) have the last word:

聖人不謀，惡用知?

The Sage never makes plans, so what good is understanding?

Thinking about Nothing

In a punchy book review in Sunday's NYT, philosopher David Albert takes down physicist Lawrence Krauss:

Lawrence M. Krauss, a well-known cosmologist and prolific popular-science writer, apparently means to announce to the world, in this new book, that the laws of quantum mechanics have in them the makings of a thoroughly scientific and adamantly secular explanation of why there is something rather than nothing. Period. Case closed. End of story....

Albert is having none of it, rejecting the very idea that physics can explain nothing, or how the universe arose from nothing (which for me, and for Daoists, is an odd question: why assume the universe had to come from nothing?):

...It happens that ever since the scientific revolution of the 17th century, what physics has given us in the way of candidates for the fundamental laws of nature have as a general rule simply taken it for granted that there is, at the bottom of everything, some basic, elementary, eternally persisting, concrete, physical stuff. Newton, for example, took that elementary stuff to consist of material particles. And physicists at the end of the 19th century took that elementary stuff to consist of both material particles and electro­magnetic fields. And so on. And what the fundamental laws of nature are about, and all the fundamental laws of nature are about, and all there is for the fundamental laws of nature to be about, insofar as physics has ever been able to imagine, is how that elementary stuff is arranged. The fundamental laws of nature generally take the form of rules concerning which arrangements of that stuff are physically possible and which aren’t, or rules connecting the arrangements of that elementary stuff at later times to its arrangement at earlier times, or something like that. But the laws have no bearing whatsoever on questions of where the elementary stuff came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular elementary stuff it does, as opposed to something else, or to nothing at all.

He is aware that quantum physics poses a somewhat different understanding of the "elementary stuff," describing it in terms of relativistic quantum fields.  But, Albert argues, the same problem applies:

...Relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical vacuum states — no less than giraffes or refrigerators or solar systems — are particular arrangements of elementary physical stuff. The true relativistic-quantum-field-­theoretical equivalent to there not being any physical stuff at all isn’t this or that particular arrangement of the fields — what it is (obviously, and ineluctably, and on the contrary) is the simple absence of the fields! The fact that some arrangements of fields happen to correspond to the existence of particles and some don’t is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that some of the possible arrangements of my fingers happen to correspond to the existence of a fist and some don’t. And the fact that particles can pop in and out of existence, over time, as those fields rearrange themselves, is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that fists can pop in and out of existence, over time, as my fingers rearrange themselves. And none of these poppings — if you look at them aright — amount to anything even remotely in the neighborhood of a creation from nothing.

Thus, Albert contends, we cannot explain nothing using relativistic quantum field theory.  

To press a bit further, it seems like he is saying we cannot explain nothing in reference to something.  That is, the purported nothing cannot exist without reference to something.  Nothing, then, cannot really exist independent of something and, therefore, the scientist's quest for explanation is rendered impossible, since the thing to be explained (the explanandum - in this case "nothing") cannot be analytically and temporally separated from the thing used to explain (the explanans - in this case "something").

I haven't studied that far into the philosophy of science to know if the explanation of "nothing" poses a fundamental problem.  From Albert I surmise that physics is inadequate to the task and that leaves room for religious and metaphysical speculations regarding nothing.  Nothing, perhaps, is the limit of science.

But it is territory where Daoism dares to tread, at least the Daodejing.  Think of this excerpt from passage 2:

All heaven knows beauty is beauty only because there's ugliness, and knows good is good only because there's evil.

Being and nonbeing give birth to one another, difficult and easy complete one another, long and short measure one another, high and low fill one another, music and noise harmonize one another, before and after follow one another....

That line - "being and nonbeing give birth to one another" - seems to get at Albert's point.  If we want to understand nothing, we can only do so by reference to something.  Passage 11 also suggests this sort of mutually constitutive relationship of something and nothing:

Thirty spokes gathered at each hub: absence makes the cart work.  A storage jar fashioned out of clay: absence makes the jar work.  Doors and windows cut in a house: absence makes the house work.

Presence gives things their value, but absences makes them work.

What is not there - the hole in the middle of the wheel; the emptiness in the center of the jar; the space within the house - gives definition to what is there.

And maybe that is the difference: scientists seek to explain, they want to analytically isolate things, declare one an antecedent and the other a consequent, and that's perhaps where a limit is reached when encountering nothing.  X might logically yield -X but -X is still framed in terms of X.  It is not really absence or nothing, which by definition would seem to be unrepresentable.  It is a negation.  Nothing is more than (less than?) negation. 

But this is a problem only if explanation is the goal.  If we are simply looking to describe, which is more in keeping with the correlative sensibilities of Daoism (and most classical Chinese thought) then there is less to sweat.  We can't explain nothing.  We can't really understand it.  We can only get a general sense of it in relation to something.  There is no certainty in our understanding of it.  And physics really can't explain it to us....

Breaking News! Zhuangzi is right: there is no human nature

Over at the NPR blog (ht Sullivan), Cosmos and Culture, Barbara J. King, biological anthropologist, tells us:

...I would assert that there is no set-in-stone human nature.

Anthropological studies show that humans respond with incredible plasticity to the social and environmental forces around us. As biological anthropologist and blogger Patrick Clarkin aptly puts it, our abilities for cooperation and conflict, love and hate are "triggered under given circumstances, facilitated or hampered by social conditions and structures."

For me, this immediately brought to mind a passage from chapter 5 of Zhuangzi:

"Can a person really have no nature, asked Hui Tzu of Chuang Tzu.

"Yes," replied Chuang Tzu.

"But if you have no nature, how can you be called human?"

"Tao gives you shape and heaven gives you form, so why can't you be called human?"

"But if you're called human, how can you have no nature?"

"'Yes this' and 'no that' - that's what I call human nature," replied Chuang Tzu. "Not mangling yourself with 'good' and 'bad' - that's what I call no nature.  Instead of struggling to improve on life, you simply abide in occurrence appearing of itself."

....

As usual, the above in the Hinton translation and there are some word choices that could be challenged, but I don't think those choices disrupt the general idea here.

Hinton uses the words "nature" and "human nature" for the character 情, qing, as in Hui Tzu's opening question: 人故無情乎.  More common translations are: "feeling;" "emotion;" "passion."  Thus, Legge goes with: "Can a man indeed be without desires and passions?"  And Graham settles on: "Can a man really be without the essentials of man?"  Although "human nature" is usually reserved for translations of xing - 性; or ren xing - 人 性;  I think Hinton's use of it here for qing is not off the mark. 

My sense of what Zhuangzi is talking about here is that he is rejecting the idea of an essentialist, continual, settled quality to human behavior, a human nature of sorts.  Our lives need not be determined by some a priori quality of goodness or badness, or passions or desires.  Rather we can and should simply respond to circumstances as they arise: "appearance occurring of itself" - ziran - 自然.

Or, as King says: "...humans respond with incredible plasticity to the social and environmental forces around us." 

Of course, Mencius and Xunxi would have something different to say on the topic....

How to lose a culture war

In a speech given last October, and published in a Party theoretical journal on January 1st (Happy New Year!), China's President, Hu Jintao, throws down the cultural gauntlet:

“We must clearly see that international hostile forces are intensifying the strategic plot of Westernizing and dividing China, and ideological and cultural fields are the focal areas of their long-term infiltration....  We should deeply understand the seriousness and complexity of the ideological struggle, always sound the alarms and remain vigilant, and take forceful measures to be on guard and respond....”

I guess he really didn't like that last Lady Gaga song...

But seriously, it is obvious what is going on here, and it is not really anything new for China or for anywhere else in the (post)modern world for that manner.

Hu is expressing a certain anxiety regarding the instability and fluidity of national cultural identity.  Rick Santorum is pretty much with him on this, except, of course, Santorum blames "liberalism" and "hedonism," instead of "Westernization," and also would find the primary source of the problem in domestic politics as opposed to "international hostile forces" (although those European socialists are pretty dangerous....).  But the rest of it - the fear of some sort of cultural corruption; the need for vigilance in protecting the most essential aspects of cultural identity; the cultural division of the nation; the nostalgia for a purer cultural past - it's all pretty standard culture warrior talk.  Wonder what Santorum would say if he realized he was down with the CCP party line....

The quesiton, then, for Hu and Santorum and anyone who thinks he or she can somehow stop cultural change is: what is to be done? 

For Hu the answer is top-down, state control of cultural production and exchange.  That is why they are banning inane TV shows and working hard to gain "soft power" for the PRC (big PDF!).  But this strategy will certainly fail, and it will fail because it misunderstands how "culture" is produced and disseminated.

First, let's just note that the term "culture" is problematic.  What are we including in it?  I think most uses of the term tend to idealize certain practices and ideas and traditions as being essential to certain cultural identities.  In China, "Confucianism" invariably is invoked when talking about "Chinese culture."  But we need to be careful. Culture is always and everywhere larger and more dynamic than any one referent (like "Confucianism") or time period.  Culture changes; indeed, culture is always and constantly changing.  What Chinese culture is now is not what it was in the time of Confucius, much less the time of Mao, or even the time of Zhao Ziyang.  We must be open to a definition of "culture" as what people are actually doing now.  And by that definition the Carsick Cars - a popular Chinese rock band - are as much of Chinese culture as Confucius.

With that understanding of "culture" in mind, we should realize that many, many cultural products and productions are created not by the state but within civil society.  Joseph Nye, the great guru of "soft power" reminded of this last year:

After my lecture at Beijing University, a student asked how China could increase its soft power. I suggested that he ask himself why India’s Bollywood films command far greater international audiences than do Chinese films. Does India have better directors and actors? When Zhang Yimou, the acclaimed Chinese director, was asked a similar question, he replied that films about contemporary China are neutered by the censors. I told the student that much of a country’s soft power is generated by its civil society and that China had to lighten up on its censorship and controls if it wished to succeed. But I also admitted that he would probably not find my answer very helpful.

Culture, and especially cultural change, is driven by creativity, and creativity is not simply planned and executed by bureaucrats, whether state or corporate.  It emerges from workshops and theaters and garages, from within the minds of small groups of creative individuals.  

Hu Jintao does not get that.  He also does not get that a lot of what is created culturally will be bad, at least as judged by the standards of "high cultural" elite intellectuals and impresarios.  Rock and Roll, when it was first created, was seen as degenerate, even dangerous (I remember my father reacting to the Beatles when they first appeared on the Ed Sullivan show, shouting: "Apes, apes.") .  Now, of course, rock and roll is a completely mainstream cultural medium, an element of global popular culture.  

Culture can also be produced from the top-down.  States can sponsor artistic and academic work that spawns significant and popular cultural products.  But that is, I suspect, a lesser element of the broader phenomenon than "popular culture" or "low culture." 

Long story short: Hu wants to try to control culture, but in doing that he stifles it.  Yes, passage 29 of the Daodejing comes to mind here: "try to improve it and you ruin it.  Try to hold it and you lose it."  He wants to censor and manage from the top down, a move that will stifle the wider and more dynamic potential for cultural creativity within civil society.  He wants to blame the "West" for the inevitability of cultural change.  He wants to instill fear in Chinese people, fear of cultural change, in order to bolster the political power of the authoritarian regime.  He wants to deny that what many Chinese people are actually doing now is legitimately a part of "Chinese culture."  

And he will lose.  Because you can't stop cultural change.  You can't blame it on foreign bogey men.  You can't deny people their cultural expressions, even if they don't align with some ossified definition of "culture."  For example, here is a video of the Carsick Cars doing their now classic tune "Zhongnanhai" on this past New Year's Eve in Beijing (i.e. just as Hu's speed was about to be published).  A person who was there reported: "The doors to the club closed at 10:30 when there was a line of at least 200 people still waiting in the frigid weather to get in.  They had been in line for nearly two hours and many had said on various websites that they were taking time away from studying for final exams just to catch them." 

I would argue that this now counts as "Chinese culture:"

The Multiversal Dao

Seems like theoretical physicists have worked themselves into futility.  Or that, at least, is the sense that emerges from Alan P. Lightman's piece in Harper's Magazine, "The accidental universe: Science's crisis of faith." 

The search for ultimate theoretical explanation of the universe has, essentially, hit a dead end.  Actually, it might be better to say it has reached point of infinite, and inexplicable, variation: the multiverse. In short, if I understand this correctly, in order to adequately account for the dynamics and development of the universe, it is now necessary to invoke the existence of an infinite number of other, alternate, universes, each with its own unique and self-consistent set of principles and parameters.  The total of all these universes is, then, the multiverse.  Lightman highlights the problems this possibility poses for science:

Alan Guth, a pioneer in cosmological thought, says that “the multiple-universe idea severely limits our hopes to understand the world from fundamental principles.” And the philosophical ethos of science is torn from its roots.....

Evidently, the fundamental laws of nature do not pin down a single and unique universe. According to the current thinking of many physicists, we are living in one of a vast number of universes. We are living in an accidental universe. We are living in a universe uncalculable by science.

Science strives for explanation and calculation.  When it encounters what appears to be an inexplicable and incalculable problem it has failed in its most fundamental mission.  And that seems to be where physics is now.

Of course, none of this is surprising from a Daoist point of view.  Daoism tells us that our knowledge, indeed our language, will always be insufficient to capture the fullness and complexity of Dao (Way):

Longing to take hold of all beneath heaven and improve it... I've seen such dreams invariably fail.  All beneath heaven is a sacred vessel, something beyond all improvement.  Try to improve it and you ruin it.  Try to hold it and you lose it.... (DDJ, 29)

As Lightman points out, when science fails at cosmology, a door is open to religious interpretation, in this case "intelligent design."

If such conclusions are correct, the great question, of course, is why these fundamental parameters happen to lie within the range needed for life. Does the universe care about life? Intelligent design is one answer. Indeed, a fair number of theologians, philosophers, and even some scientists have used fine-tuning and the anthropic principle as evidence of the existence of God. For example, at the 2011 Christian Scholars’ Conference at Pepperdine University, Francis Collins, a leading geneticist and director of the National Institutes of Health, said, “To get our universe, with all of its potential for complexities or any kind of potential for any kind of life-form, everything has to be precisely defined on this knife edge of improbability…. [Y]ou have to see the hands of a creator who set the parameters to be just so because the creator was interested in something a little more complicated than random particles.”

This has never made sense to me, from a Daoist perspective.  Both the scientists and the theologians seem to believe in an absolute binary here: either there is a singular scientific explanation for the universe or there must be a god-like designer who planned out the minutia that makes our current reality possible.  Both abhor the notion of randomness.  Why is there so much anxiety about randomness?  Yes, the partiuclars of the universe, the very fine margins of the basic forces, are marvelously narrow; a very slight variation would have meant that life as we know it would be impossible.  But why shouldn't we believe that what exists now is the result of trillions and trillions of random events and interactions taking place over billions and billions of years?  

If we accept randomness we then require neither a multiverse nor a God.

Daoism, I believe, indeed ancient Chinese thought more generally, is much more comfortable with randomness and inexplicability when it comes to cosmology and cosmogony.  Here's a quote from Fredrick W. Mote's little book, Intellectual Foundations of China:

The genuine Chinese cosmogony is that of organismic process, meaning that all parts of the entire cosmos belong to one organic whole and that they all interact as participants in on spontaneously self-generating life process... Needham, analyzing that Chinese model, calls it, "an ordered harmony of wills without an ordainer."  As he describes the organismic Chinese cosmos, it emerges to our full view as one in striking contrast to all other world conceptions known to human history.  It differs from other organismic conceptions, such as classical Greek cosmologies in which a logos or demiurge or otherwise conceived master will external to creation was regarded as necessary for existence.  And it contrasts still more starkly with the ancient Semitic traditions that led to subsequent Christian and Islamic conceptions of creation ex nihilo by the hand of God, or through the will of God, and all other such mechanistic, teleological, and theistic cosmologies....(15-16)

"Spontaneous self-generating life process."  No "Big Bang," no beginning, no end, just being and non-being, time and timelessness merging one into the other... In a sense, it is a resignation that we will never understand certain aspects of the universe.  And, in fact, we do not need to know certain aspects of the universe to live our lives now.  Instead of seeking a singular theoretical principle to guide us deductively, we can very well work from the ground up, inductively, in engaging the particulars of our existence.  Yes, theoretical physics can be fun (or so I'm told...) but we needn't take it so seriously.

For me, then, the interesting question is: why are people so nervous and afraid of randomness and uncertainty?

While I have no answer for that question, it is amusing that Lightman hits upon a metaphor that brings us back to Zhuangzi.  He writes:

If the multiverse idea is correct, then the historic mission of physics to explain all the properties of our universe in terms of fundamental principles—to explain why the properties of our universe must necessarily be what they are—is futile, a beautiful philosophical dream that simply isn’t true. Our universe is what it is because we are here. The situation could be likened to a school of intelligent fish who one day began wondering why their world is completely filled with water. Many of the fish, the theorists, hope to prove that the entire cosmos necessarily has to be filled with water. For years, they put their minds to the task but can never quite seem to prove their assertion. Then, a wizened group of fish postulates that maybe they are fooling themselves. Maybe there are, they suggest, many other worlds, some of them completely dry, and everything in between.

This brings to mind this passage from chapter 17 of Zhuangzi (Watson translation):

Chuang Tzu and Hui Tzu were strolling along the dam of the Hao River when Chuang Tzu said, "See how the minnows come out and dart around where they please!  That's what fish really enjoy!"

Hui Tzu said, "You're not a fish - how do you know what fish enjoy?"

Chuang Tzu said, "You're not I, so how do you know I don't know what fish enjoy?"

Hui Tzu said, "I'm not you, so I certainly don't know what you know.  On the other hand, you're certianly not a fish - so that still proves you don't know what fish enjoy?"

Chuang Tzu said, "Let's go back to your original question, please. You asked how I know what the fish enjoy - so you already knew it when you asked the question.  I know it by standing here beside the Hao."

Hui Tzu, the logician, seeks to prove and disprove.  Zhuangzi, the skeptic, understands better the limits of knowledge, even his own.  So when challenged, Zhuangzi embraces a kind of perspectivalism: he knows what he knows based on his particular position in a specific context.  Writ large, that is what the fish in Lightman's metaphor also suggest.  We really can't know much beyond our circumstances, whether that is a universe or the River Hao.

Another Daoist Christmas

...And in honor of the day, here is my annual reflection:

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!

The Pursuit of Happiness

An op-ed in the English edition of the Global Times today asks: Are Chinese people truly miserable? It opens:

"Misery" is a regular word today. From emotions reflected in the media and online, the Chinese sense of misery is increasing while happiness seems to be dwindling. Here are two questions: Firstly, is the sense of misery in Chinese society beyond normal? Secondly, what can the government and society at large do to stop this?

The conclusion is often that most Chinese people feel more miserable than before. As various conflicts break out, the public faces more social evils than before and have more ways to express their distress. Consequently the impression of their lifestyle is badly affected and negative assessments on society are flocking in.

But it is not proper to say the Chinese sense of misery has become unbearable. According to several surveys, Chinese are rather optimistic in their worldview. China is not an angry country or on the cusp of revolution.

I imagine they need to put in that last line about no revolutions to distinguish their argument from the upheavals in North Africa and the Middle East, which are continuing apace.  Beyond that, this piece seems to be a fairly standard reflection on the social and cultural disruptions caused by rapid modernization.  Misery sets in when individuals cannot find a job in the new economy, a place in the new society, or meaning in the new culture.  That misery might be offset by the discovery of new possibilities and an openness to change.  But these sentiments are by no means particular to China.

In raising the "what is to be done?" question, however, the author moves in a decidedly Mencian direction:

However, the government should bear the burden to reduce public misery, bringing dreams and hopes to society and encourage people to move in the right direction. Chinese people should believe that a better life awaits them and that the next generation will embrace a brighter future. People should also be confident in a more democratic and fairer society with less corruption.

Mencius, writing in a time of bewildering change and turmoil, had his own vision of what the government should provide to ensure secure and happy lives for the common people:

.....Let mulberry trees be planted about the homesteads with their five mu, and persons of fifty years may be clothed with silk. In keeping fowls, pigs, dogs, and swine, let not their times of breeding be neglected, and persons of seventy years may eat flesh. Let there not be taken away the time that is proper for the cultivation of the farm with its hundred mu, and the family of several mouths that is supported by it shall not suffer from hunger. Let careful attention be paid to education in schools, inculcating in it especially the filial and fraternal duties, and grey-haired men will not be seen upon the roads, carrying burdens on their backs or on their heads. It never has been that the ruler of a State, where such results were seen - persons of seventy wearing silk and eating flesh, and the black-haired people suffering neither from hunger nor cold - did not attain to the royal dignity.'

Not quite sure how that would translate into contemporary material conditions.  But notice how the op-ed calls for "...a more democratic and fairer society with less corruption."  More democracy!  This is not as surprising as it may seem at first.  The CCP has always contended that the political system it manages is a kind of democracy: a "socialist democracy."  So, there's no real contradiction here between the author and the official ideology, at least not on the surface.

Of course, if the author wants to press for a multi-party, liberal, electoral democracy, well, then, Party censors are standing by to keep those ideas from gaining too much traction in society.

But if the pursuit of happiness that is the goal here, it would seem that a critical apsect of happiness is missing: the individual.  Different persons will calculate happiness in different ways, depending on their circumstances and personalities.  The government, or society, as a whole, cannot provide it for them.  Certain material conditions and social opportunities can be made available, and these might increase the likelihood of happiness for a greater number of people.  But individuals need to have the freedom as well as the wherewithal to create their own happiness. 

That is not a feature of "socialist democracy," but it does have some grounding in ancient Chinese thought, especially Zhuangzi.   As I have mentioned on other occasions, Burton Watson, translator of many ancity texts, including Zhuangzi, understands freedom to be the central theme of Zhuangzi.

And the link between freedom and happiness might best be captured by this passage (Hinton, p. 41):

A marsh pheasant has to walk ten paces for a bite to each and a hundred for a sip of water.  But still wouldn't want to be tamed and put in a cage.  Even treated like a king, it could never be happy and content.

澤雉十步一啄，百步一飲，不蘄畜乎樊中。神雖王，不善也

But that might be too politically incorrect, in the context of CCP power, for op-ed writers at the Global Times...

Daoism as Soft Power?

For a long time now there has been talk about how Confucianism might figure, or not,  in the soft power strategy of the PRC state.  And now it seems Beijing is starting to look toward Daoism for the same purposes:

China hosted a high-profile International Taoism Forum here on Sunday in an effort to spread the religion's influence on the world stage.

In a message to the forum, China's senior leader Jia Qinglin urged the 500 participants from more than 20 countries, including China, the United States, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Japan, to explore the essence of Taoism and make Chinese culture more attractive in the world.

There are a couple of things to notice here.  First, "Daoism" is being taken in its religious expression:

Taoism was a 1,800-year-old religion originated from Lao Tze's philosophy. Lao Tze (BC 571-471) was the author of the book Tao De Ching, in which he pointed out that everything in the universe was born from vacuum or nothing and the balance and harmony should be achieved between human beings and nature.

The 1,800 year idea comes from the rise of more organized religious forms of Daoism in the Han dynasty.  And that's legit.  But we need to remember that key texts - the Daodejing and Zhuangzi - pre-date the Han and have been taken, throughout Chinese history, and certainly in the contemporary West, in a secular (i.e no deification of Laozi and others), philosophical manner. The history of pre-Han "Daoism" is complex - it is probably best to assume that there was no self-conscious philosophical school that understood itself as "Daoist," though the texts and ideas of what would later be named "Daoism" circulated and infused the culture at large.  Scott Barnwell has a couple of great posts on just this topic both at Warp, Weft and Way and at his own blog, Bao Pu.

Long story short: there's more to Daoism that the "1,800 year old religion" moniker reveals.

And that more complex history, and the secular, philosophical, political readings of Daoists texts, most notably the Daodejing, could pose some problems for the effort to make Daoism into a soft power resource for the PRC state.

One problem is that the Daodejing, rather like the Analects and Mencius, can rather easily become a source of critique of any state that attempts to use it for political purposes.  What might Politburo Standing Committee member Jia Qinglin have to say in response to passage 75:

The people are starving, and it's only because you leaders feast on taxes that they're starving.

The people are impossible to rule, and it's only because you leaders are masters of extenuation that they're impossible to rule.

The people take death lightly, and it's only because you leaders crave life's lavish pleasures that they take death lightly,

they who act without concern for life: it's a wisdom far beyond treasuring life.

Perhaps he'd have to say: pay no attention to that passage, and it doesn't really apply to China today, anyway... because, you know, there isn't crushing economic inequality and political exclusion here... er, can we change the subject please...

And then we would turn to passage 53:

Understanding sparse and sparser still I travel the Great Way, nothing to fear unless I stray.

The Great Way is open and smooth, but people adore twisty paths: Government in ruins, fields overgrown and granaries bare, they indulge in elegant robes and sharp swords, lavish food and drink, all those trappings of luxury.

It's vainglorious thievery - not the Way, not the Way at all.

What's that Mr. Jia? You can't quite hear what we're saying over the roar of Lamborghinis on Jinbao Street?

The Xinhua story reporting on the officially sanctioned Daoist conference also has this:

"Lao Tze said that 'big country should keep itself in a humble position,' but in the modern world, a number of powerful countries prefer to use violence to bully weak countries -- that is not in accordance with the 'Way'," said Ren Farong, president of Chinese Taoist Association.

So, perhaps we should ask Mr. Jia: Taiwan is a small country and the PRC is a big country, does this mean that the PRC should dismantle all of the missiles it has pointed at Taiwan and renounce the use of force in its relations with the island?.... But we know what the answer would be.

Just some examples of where Daoism can lead politically, none of which seem to serve the interests of the PRC state.

To be absolutely clear: I am all in favor of the widest circulation of Daoism and Daoist ideas in the world today.  It is great that there are large internatoinal conferences discussing Daoism and its contemporary relevance in China and elsewhere.  However, while the CCP might want to claim Daoism as a soft power resource, I don't think this will work because the more anyone takes Daoism seriously, the more questions he or she will have about politics and economics in the PRC.  Daoism will not bolster state power in China, it will, as it always has, undermine it....

Twenty Years

Today is Aidan's twentieth birthday.  His memory still animates my being, his presence, even in absence, a continuing creator of of my life's course.  It was Aidan who led me into ancient Chinese philosophy, especially an appreciation of Daoism, and that is something that shapes my daily experience.

I was reading the Daodejing with my students a couple of weeks ago.  Many of them seemed perplexed.  They found the text abstruse and irrelevant.  How could a stance of "do nothing" - wuwei - make any sense in their busy and well planned lives? But it was precisely that orientation - yielding to the unfolding of circumstances beyond my control - that I came to embrace as Aidan's life progressed.  I learned to let go of expectations and explanation and simply, as Zhuangzi puts it, "dwell in the ordinary." 

As my students worked to gain some understanding of passage 29 of the Daodejing, I quietly reflected on the meaning Aidan provided for me:

Longing to take hold of all beneath heaven and improve it... I've seen such dreams invariably fail.  All beneath heaven is a sacred vessel, something beyond all improvement.  Try to improve it and you ruin it.  Try to hold it and you lose it.

For things sometimes lead and sometimes follow, sometimes sigh and sometimes storm, sometimes strengthen and sometimes weaken, sometimes kill and sometimes die.

And so the sage steers clear of extremes, clear of extravagance, clear of exaltation.

I came to learn that a profoundly disabled boy was beyond all improvement.

The Dao of Neutrinos

Last week we heard a lot about the experiment in Europe in which a neutrino was measured as traveling faster than the speed of light, a theoretical impossibility according to Einstein.  And so now we have a spate of articles asking: "Is Einstein Wrong?"  This causes anxiety for some, insofar as Einstein's theories have come to define some pretty basic assumptions about reality and knowledge:

If the OPERA result were correct it would point to some extraordinary things. We’ve all grown up understanding that the only sensible thing for matter to do is to never exceed (or indeed reach) the speed of light. It’s a fundamental piece of Einstein’s special theory of relativity, which is one of the best verified theories in modern physical science. I won’t go into the details here, but for matter with mass to exceed lightspeed there are a large number of headaches, not least of which are the most basic ideas of causality – at both the microscopic and macroscopic scales....

  Saswato Das has a nice piece along these lines in yesterday's NYT:

All sorts of strange things could happen if the speed of light can be exceeded. Causality — the relation between cause and effect — would be affected. Anyone traveling faster than the speed of light would be able to see fragments of a broken vase coming together. Faster-than-light travelers could go back in time — say, leave New York for Paris one evening and return the previous day.

Freaky...

But I don't share these anxieties (and I would be happy to arrive in Paris before I left...), and that's because I was reading the Daodejing this week. A philosophical Daoist would not be surprised at all that Einstein might be wrong.  Of course he is wrong, at least in the sense that human knowledge, generally speaking, is always less than the fullness and complexity of Way (Dao).  Henrick's translation of passage 34 gets at this:

The Way floats and drifts ; it can go left or right.

It accomplishes its tasks and completes its affairs, and yet for this it is not give a name.

The ten thousand things entrust their lives to it, and yet it does not act as their master.

Thus it is constantly without desires.

It can be named with the things that are small.

The ten thousand things entrust their lives to it, and yet it does not act as their master.

It can be named with the things that are great.

Therefore, a Sage's ability to accomplish the great comes from his not playing the role of the great.  There he is able to accomplish the great.

Way, the simultaneous expression of all things, being and nonbeing, is larger than the parameters of human language, mathematics included; thus, it is nameless, it cannot be expressed in words or formulae. We do, of course, use words and names to try to characterize and come to know some portion (always partial) of Way.  Thus, it can be associated with small or large.  But in its vastness, Way can move in ways that are unexpected: it can go left or right, float and drift.  Our names, or theories or hypotheses or knowledge, can never capture its totality.  And this goes for Einstein as well as anybody else.  We shouldn't expect the general theory of relativity to be a knowledge that is all encompassing.

Interestingly, Das makes reference to Karl Popper:

Testing theories through experimentation has always been the basis for scientific progress. The philosopher Karl Popper called this the notion of falsifiability of scientific theories.

Popper is obviously not a Daoist, but he does encourage a certain intellectual humility that a Daoist could appreciate: our knowledge is always unstable, subject to falsification; the best we can do is a kind of conjecture.  Or as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts it:

Scientific theories, for him, are not inductively inferred from experience, nor is scientific experimentation carried out with a view to verifying or finally establishing the truth of theories; rather, all knowledge is provisional, conjectural, hypothetical—we can never finally prove our scientific theories, we can merely (provisionally) confirm or (conclusively) refute them; hence at any given time we have to choose between the potentially infinite number of theories which will explain the set of phenomena under investigation.

Our knowledge is never finally established... because Way can float and drift, move left and right.

Should we give up on all science, then?  No.  I don't think a contemporary Daoist skepticism would reject all science all the time.  Rather, it would simply counsel humility.  We might reasonably determine how certain facets of Way generally unfold in time.  But we should always be open to things that exceed our knowledge.  We can never know Way and we can never control it, but we might come to learn how to move through certain aspects of Way, without, alas, arriving in Paris before we left...