The Useless Tree

China: No Longer a Legalist Society

    A recent news story reminds us of the essential Legalism - of the Han Fei Tzu lineage - that lies at the heart of the PRC government.  But it also shows us how China is no longer a Legalist society.  (For those of you familiar with the book banning issue, scroll down to see what I mean by "no longer a Legalist society.")

    The Communist Party has recently decided to ban eight new books  These books  "...mainly have to do with reflections on 20th century history by Chinese intellectuals."  Thus, in prohibiting their sale the political elite demonstrate once again its fear of Chinese history.  It cannot allow for the free exploration of the past because it refuses to face up politically to the horror of the Great Leap and the chaos of the Cultural Revolution.   Destroying books was, of course, a favorite political past time of that avatar of Legalism, the first Qin Emperor.

     It would all be a sad replay of standard Leninist-Maoist-Legalist repression if it weren't for the fact that at least one of the writers is fighting back.   Zhang Yihe, author of the now banned Past Histories of Peking Opera Stars (sounds like something the Party should really have to fear!), issued a statement in defiance of the prohibition.  Roland, as usual, has a translation and links.  Here is some of what she has to say:

Let me solemnly me repeat this once more: I will not give up the defense of my basic civil rights, because it affects the   dignity and conscience of a person.  What Mister Wu did was completely in violation of the constitution!  He did not follow the spirit nor the procedure.  In officialdom, you can have a "unanimous consent" and you have to "listen carefully to the instruction" from the superiors. At the same time, can you leave a small space for common citizens: leave them a mouth to speak; leave them a pen to write?  A harmonious society is constructed not through tightening; it needs precisely relaxation.

    She is claiming her rights in the face of authoritarian fiat, something that might shock Emperor Qin and Chairman Mao.

      The Party cannot allow someone they have labeled a trouble-maker to stand up and demand equal rights under law - real equal rights, not just the usual Leninist window dressing.  So, they strike back with bluster.  Here, again thanks to Roland, is what Peking University professor Kong Qingdong, who claims to be a direct descendent of Confucius (whose family name is Kong) but who seems quite comfortable with old-line Communist polemics (is he a Party member?  Sure sounds like one):

Kong Qingdong said that "her class was the enemy of our government," "the Communist Party was magnanimous towards them, but they keep dreaming about changing the facts and saying that the anti-rightist campaign was wrong."

Kong Qingdong said: "You (the rightists) think that you are proper heroes, so why are you asking the Communist Party for vindication?"  "Your cases have been overturned after the reforms began, but why do the big rightists want to demand hundreds more times in compensation from the people.

    But the "big Rightists" - or we might say bourgeois liberals - are not being cowed.   Other writers and bloggers are coming to Zhang's defense.  Here is a CDT translation of a blog post by Pu Zhiqiang (original Chinese here):

So I want to speak up. Not only for Zhang Yihe, but also for the other seven authors, as well as for myself.

Ms. Zhang Yihe’s three books were banned one after another. She didn’t speak up when her first book was banned, nor did she at the second ban. When her third book was banned, she struck the table and rose to her feet, and finally had to say something!

I hope everybody will speak up. This is our right and our dignity. Otherwise, the next one being locked in concentration camps might be you.

    (I can hear Bob Marley in the background: "get up, stand up: stand up for your rights.  Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight...")

    The China Media Project is wondering if this unfolding affair illustrates the Chinese public's general opposition to censorship.

    From my perspective, what all this suggests is that Chinese society is slowly shedding its Legalist qualities.  Don't get me wrong: the Party is still very much Legalist in its governing style.  They still rely upon selected and focused repression to instill a sense of fear in the general population.  People know that if they cross the government, they will pay dearly for it.  And it is precisely that sort of psychology of fear that Han Fei Tzu and Qin Shi Huang Di believed was essential to the maintenance of power.

    Legalism is thus designed to have a continuing social effect.  It is meant to live in the minds of the people, to cause them to avoid confrontation with the state, to press them into compliance with laws and practices that they may not agree with.  And that was the effect of the first few decades of Communist Party rule in China.  The Great Leap and the Cultural Revolution crushed opposition and engendered political passivity in the population at large.  I could sense this when I first lived in China in 1983.  People were very conscious of unspoken and unwritten political boundaries.  They were wary of the smallest transgressions of government policy.  Legalist psychology was at work.

     The economic, social and cultural changes of the reform era have underminded the basis of Legalist fear.  The government now no longer controls as much of an individual's life as it did in the past.  People can find jobs, create meaningful lives, have fun beyond the reach of state power.  Of course, the state is still very powerful, but not as powerful, relatively speaking, as in the past.  People are thus less afraid.

    They are standing up for their rights.  The state cannot control the flow of information, or even the production of certain texts (how many of these books will now be published in Chinese in Hong Kong, Taiwan, the US and elsewhere and circulated back into China?  How many of them will find their way onto the internet and the screens of PRC readers?).   The Legalist state is losing its capacity to instill fear. 

Modern Love: Another Taoist Parent

     I have blogged before on Taoist parenting and I have found a new example.  Although she may not intend to be, Suzanna Paola, writing today's NYT "Modern Love" column, comes pretty close to being a Taoist parent.

    Her essay reflects upon her adopted eight-year-old son's decision to change his name. It is a bit mystifying and she wonders whether we can ever really know our children.  Indeed, from the very outset, she reveals a Taoist sensibility in recognizing our inability to influence the unfolding of Way:

But I suppose the arrival of children should clue us in that we must abandon any sense of certainty about how things will unfold.

     This was not my own first impulse.  I thought that, when Aidan was born, I knew exactly what I was doing and, within certain limits, precisely where we were going.  I had to learn - Aidan had to teach me - how wrong that impulse was, and how right Paola's understanding is.

    But if we cannot shape the unfolding of Way - of our futures, our destinies - then what are we supposed to do with children, who obviously need guidance and assistance in apprehending the world around them and finding their places in it?  A Taoist parent does not completely let go of his or her child.  Oviously, there is much that must be done.  What might distinguish Taoist parenting, however, is the recognition of certain limits.  There is only so much you can do - and sometimes perhaps you should do less - when it comes to influencing your child's life.  This recognition of limits comes through in Paola's appreciation of what she cannot know, and thus what she cannot do:

I suppose I’ve come around to the beginning, to the anxious and delicious waiting and who-is-this-going-to-be? We know these children in the way we know the heavens, basing our knowledge on the lights that arrive in our orbit possibly already extinguished at the source.

Like a star’s light, the flickerings of a child’s mind may well be gone by the time they reach our understanding. We fumble with our faulty equipment to find that they love dragons as they discover Bionicles and robots. We remember their care for animals as they suddenly become, like a niece of ours, a poet. We besiege their fort with our questions, little harmless arrows breaking against the portcullis. I find myself doing it.

   Children are not now what they will become.  Way is dynamic and fluid and we, all of us tossed by the shifting currents of Way, cannot know our circumstances of the next moment.  Perhaps we cannot even see what we are right now.  Instead of assuming static consistency over time, we have to embrace the inevitability of personal change.  Instead of attempting to impose a preconceived notion of a "good childhood" or a "bright future" on our children, we need to step back and take time to see them as they are in this moment.  It may not be what we thought this morning; it is almost certainly not what they will be a in year or two. 

    As parents, we want to think that we are leading them.  Taoism would tell us to follow.

More on Stem Cells and Taoism

    I have written before on the debate in the US about stem cell research.  I want to return to the topic today by way of a critique of an op-ed in today's NYT, "A Middle Ground for Stem Cells," by Yuval Levin.  I will analyze his argument and then offer a Taoist response, along the way considering the criticism that this is not really a "middle ground".

     Here's what I think is the core of his argument:

...It is a simple and uncontroversial biological fact that a human life begins when an embryo is created. That embryo is human, and it is alive; its human life will last until its death, whether that comes days after conception or many decades later surrounded by children and grandchildren.

But the biological fact that a human life begins at conception does not by itself settle the ethical debate. The human embryo is a human organism, but is this being — microscopically small, with no self-awareness and little resemblance to us — a person, with a right to life?

Many advocates of federal financing for embryo-destructive research begin from a negative answer to that question. They argue that the human embryo is just too small, too unlike us in appearance, or too lacking in consciousness or sensitivity to pain or other critical mental capacity to be granted a place in the human family. But surely America has learned the hard way not to assign human worth by appearances. And surely we would not deny those who have lost some mental faculties the right to be regarded with respect and protected from harm. Why should we deny it to those whose faculties are still developing?

At its heart, then, when the biology and politics have been stipulated away, the stem cell debate is not about when human life begins but about whether every human life is equal. The circumstances of the embryo outside the body of a mother put that question in perhaps the most exaggerated form imaginable, but they do not change the question.

     There is much to respond to here.  First, we can dispatch with his invocation of "appearance."  No seriously argument that favors stem cell research would hold that embryos are not persons because of their appearance.  He is making straw men of his opponents here by suggesting that they are swayed by mere appearance - as opposed to his access to moral reality. 

    Next is his assertion of the "uncontroversial biological fact" that "human life begins at conception."  There is, of course, much controversy surrounding this "fact," something he recognizes in the very next paragraph when he invokes the distinction between "human organism" and "person."  His opponents would argue something closer to the assertion that an embryo is a potential person and that its moral status differs from that of a "viable" person.  He does not engage this point but slaps it aside in the last sentence quoted above, which is a not-so-veiled rejection of the argument about "viability" in the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision.   

     Mr. Levin is certainly entitled to his opinions.  But the way he is framing this analysis is clearly not about finding a "middle ground."  It is about rejecting out of hand strongly and reasonably held opposing arguments in order to shift the discussion toward his side of the debate.  I don't know why the NYT's op-ed editors came up with, or acceded to, this title (since it is usually editors who title such things).

    So, Levin is obviously an opponent of stem cell research (and abortion too I would suppose) and he is offering an argument from that point of view.  He does not make a religious argument; he does not invoke a divinely granted sanctity of life.  Rather, he reaches for a secularist, liberal basis for opposing stem cell research, grounding his case in a defense of equality:  embryos are persons; all persons should be treated equally; therefore, embryos should not be killed.

    He is obviously trying to turn the analytic tables on liberal supporters of stem cell research.  But this move ultimately fails, when we think about it a bit more.  A Taoist position might, then, offer stronger grounds for opposing stem cell research (not that I necessarily agree with that position; I am just using this opportunity to explicate it for your consideration).

    More below the jump....

Sun Tzu on Counterinsurgency

     As I mentioned last week, I am teaching a Winter Study course on Sun Tzu.  One of today's readings, suggested by one of my students, is a great example of how ancient thought can still have something to contribute to contemporary questions.

    The article is by David Kilcullen, who was profiled in the New Yorker  here, on which I commented here.   The piece, from the May-June 2006 issue of Military Review (Warning PDF!), is entitled, "Twenty-Eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-Level Counterinsurgency."  It is thoroughly infused with Sun Tzu's thinking.

     Take Kilcullen's first point: "Know your turf."  This suggests one of Sun Tzu's primary concerns of getting to know the ground or terrain.  For Sun Tzu, this means a direct and detailed understanding of the physical surroundings and how they relate to the enemy's capabilities and deployment.  It also has implications for a broader geo-strategic understanding: how the potential battleground might relate to the possibility of crafting alliances to strengthen a strategic advantage.  Kilcullen moves even further, but in ways still consistent with Sun Tzu, when he includes the social and cultural facets of terrain:

Know the people, the topography, economy, history, religion, and culture. Know every village, road, field, population group, tribal leader, and ancient grievance. Your task is to become the world expert on your district. If you don’t know precisely where you will be operating, study the general area. Read the map like a book: Study it every night before sleep and redraw it from memory every morning until you understand its patterns intuitively

     This is obviously the kind of attention to preparation and knowing the enemy that Sun Tzu emphasizes.

     There are many other resonances with Sun Tzu.  Here are two of the more evident.

Start easy. If you were trained in maneuver warfare you know about surfaces and gaps. This applies to counterinsurgency as much as any other form of maneuver. Don’t try to crack the hardest nut first—don’t go straight for the main insurgent stronghold, try to provoke a decisive showdown, or focus efforts on villages that support the insurgents. Instead, start from secure areas and work gradually outwards.

     Or, as Sun Tzu says, "attack a place the enemy does not protect," and "do not attack his elite troops."

    And, as a last example, this point of Kilcullen comes directly from chapter 3 of Sun Tzu:

Fight the enemy’s strategy, not his forces. At this stage, if things are proceeding well, the insurgents will go over to the offensive. Yes, the offensive, because you have created a situation so dangerous to the insurgents (by threatening to displace them from the environment) that they have to attack you and the population to get back into the game.

     Seems pretty clear to me that Sun Tzu can inform modern counterinsurgency.  Too bad the US did not think in these terms four years ago.

Confucian Pragmatism

    A nice little piece in tomorrow's Seoul Times (because today is tomorrow in Korea!), by Taru Taylor, considers the modern utility of Confucianism (hat tip: Western Confucian): 

Confucianism is much misunderstood. The United Nations, for example, classifies it as a religion. Big mistake. Confucianism is a philosophy, not a religion. What's the difference? Religion believes in god as the final answer.

Philosophy comprehends life as a question. Confucianism is a disciplined ethical inquiry — a moral philosophy.

 That sounds right to me.  But then he goes off on a riff comparing Confucianism to Alice in Wonderland, which really doesn't work.  He rebounds, however, with this reference:

Confucius speaks to his role as guide, not leader, in Book 18 Chapter 8 of "The Analects." Po-i, Shu-chi, Yu-chung, I-yi, Chu-chang, Hui of Liu-hsia, and Shao-lien, great leaders of his own past, he characterizes with sincere respect. He then characterizes himself: "I am different from all these. I have no course for which I am predetermined, and no course against which I am predetermined."

    That sense of an open-ended, processual approach to ethics naturally raises a comparison with Western Utilitarians, which Taylor makes and dispatches: Confucius is not a utilitarian in that sense.  But it leaves us with a reminder of the pragmatic quality of Confucian thought.  The "right thing" is not strictly predetermined.  It must be discerned from particular contexts.  There are resonances here with John Dewey (scroll down to "ethical and social theory") :

Moral and social problems, for Dewey, are concerned with the guidance of human action to the achievement of socially defined ends that are productive of a satisfying life for individuals within the social context.  Regarding the nature of what constitutes a satisfying life, Dewey was intentionally vague, out of his conviction that specific ends or goods can be defined only in particular socio-historical contexts.

    This is getting me out of my league, but I know Roger Ames is working on the Dewey/Confucian comparison.  And, for the record, here is Ames's translation of the last line of Analects 18.8:

But I am different from all these people in that I do not have presuppositions as to what may and may not be done. 

Confucius as Prison Warden

     The Venerable Sage keeps popping up in the strangest places:

Prisoners in central China's Hubei province have built a sculpture of Confucius, the famous ancient Chinese philosopher, and prison authorities say it can inspire and educate inmates.....

......

"To correct your mistakes people have to go through the bitterness of confession and thorough introspection. Bringing Confucian culture into the prison is a way of educating prisoners, " said prison chief Shen Kanglong.

For the last four years the prison has been using Confucian philosophy, together with instruction in law, to educate prisoners.

The wall of the prison is painted with Confucian sayings such as "learning without thinking leads to confusion; thinking without learning ends in danger" and "for every three people I meet along the road, there will be at least one I can learn from."

    I wonder if that sculpture is the "standard image"?...

    In any event, I think that instruction in Confucian thought could be helpful to prisoners trying to remake their lives.  What can be better than the message of helping others - whether that be parents or children or friends?  Of course, one hopes that the kind of instruction they receive is not simple, mindless repetition of exhortations to never disobey authority, which is one form of "Confucian education."  After all, Confucius believed that ethical judgment must be cultivated from the inside out.  We have to learn how to look into ourselves and engender the will to do good.  Confucianism is not about conforming to externally created rules and regulations; it is about a personal moral understanding that shapes conscience-driven action.

     The program in the Chinese prisons does not sound promising, however:

Freudian theories of psychoanalysis also play a role in rehabilitation in many Chinese prisons, where inmates are offered counseling and encouraged to express themselves.

At Dongling Prison in Shenyang, capital of northeast China's Liaoning Province, prisoners are encouraged to talk to counselors or hit punchbags in a room with padded walls.

After fighting with their demons, the exhausted prisoners are allowed to lie down on a king-sized bed in the psychotherapy room and relax against a backdrop of light music.

 Freud and Confucius?  Not sure that quite fits.  Punching bags, padded walls and "fighting with their demons" doesn't strike me as a Confucian approach.

     Ultimately, whatever good Confucian education might bring to inmates, what is more important is what happens when they get out of prison.  If the societies into which they are cast offer powerful incentives to do the wrong thing (i.e. act upon the most selfish of motives and not care about others), then all the self-reflection in the world may not be enough.  I know that Confucius believes that we are responsible for making a good world, and that we should strive to do just that, but if you are down and out, rubbing shoulders with the most violent and desperate criminals, you might need a bit of support to find your way back the path of virtue.

     What, then, is the Chinese government (or the American government,for that matter) doing to provide job opportunities and a positive social context for people coming out of jail?  If we are going to take Confucianism seriously, we have to take it all seriously:

Out wandering with the Master near Rain-Dance Altar, Fan Ch'ih said: "May I ask about exalting Integrity, reforming depravity, and unraveling delusion?

"A splendid question," replied the Master.  "To serve first, and let the rewards follow as they will - is that not exalting Integrity?  To attack evil itself, not the evil person - is that not reforming depravity?  To endanger yourself and your family, all in a morning's rage - is that not delusion?"

Analects, 12.21

What Would Confucius Say?

    Another milestone in the continuing redefinition of the American family:

For what experts say is probably the first time, more American women are living without a husband than with one, according to a New York Times analysis of census results.

In 2005, 51 percent of women said they were living without a spouse, up from 35 percent in 1950 and 49 percent in 2000.

Coupled with the fact that in 2005 married couples became a minority of all American households for the first time, the trend could ultimately shape social and workplace policies, including the ways government and employers distribute benefits.

 It is a reminder of the transforming context of modern American life.  For someone interested in how Confucianism might relate to that context, it seems to me that it does no good to judge this as a "decline" or tragedy.  While it is true that, in his own time Confucius assumed male heads of households as the "gentlemen" who would work toward Humanity.  The beauty of his thought is that process of cultivating close personal and social relationships to develop one's moral sensibilities and perform goodness in the world.  We just have to expand our definitions of "family" and "social relationships" to accomodate the variety of ways in which people now choose to make meaningful lives.  To make Confucius relevant we have to adapt his thinking to changing social circumstances - or just let go and cede the field of ethics to other, more flexible, systems of thought.

    I say we adapt and keep the conversation going...

How Many More Times Will The Same Mistake Be Made?

    I know I keep saying the same thing:

The Executioner's [i.e. Way's] killing is perennial, it's true.But to undertake the killing yourself - that's like trying to carve lumber for a master carpenter.
Try to carve lumber for a master carpenter
and you'll soon have blood on your hands.

    -  Tao Te Ching,Passage 75

    But the same thing keeps happening, only in ever more gruesome forms:

Iraq’s turbulent effort to reckon with the violence of its past took another macabre turn on Monday when the execution of Saddam Hussein’s half brother ended with the hangman’s noose decapitating him after he dropped through the gallows trapdoor.

 The executioner's bloody hands only create more political problems:

Further details were left to a news conference called six hours later, when rumors were circulating among Sunni Arab loyalists of the former government, and on Arabic-language television channels broadcasting across the Middle East, that Mr. Ibrahim had been deliberately decapitated in an act of revenge by the Maliki government and as an insult to the Sunni Muslim world.

The depth of suspicion, and the readiness among Sunni Arabs to blame the United States for everything grim in Iraq, was reflected in interviews conducted in neighboring countries after the hangings. “The U.S. is 100 percent guilty,” said Turki al-Rasheed, who heads an organization promoting democracy in Saudi Arabia. “It means they cut Barzan’s head in the execution chamber.”

  When will we learn to avoid the "twisty path" of capital punishment?

Selling Embryos

       Over at Slate, William Saletan has a good, link rich, post about a woman who has created a business out of matching sperm and egg donors to manufacture embryos for sale.   I haven't absorbed all of the ethical implications yet but wanted to raise a point or two here.

      What strikes me about this whole endeavor is the desire to control and manage every aspect of human life.  It seems that we are losing our capacity to accept that some things, like the biology of child-rearing, are and, perhaps, should  be beyond our control.  Of course, in a scientific sense reproduction is more and more under our control.  We can make choices now about specific physical features our children will have; we can exclude disabilities, which is happening with increasing frequency; we can, if we want, shop for sperm and egg donors who have precisely the kinds of features we think we want.

    And that is what bothers me, at least initially, about all of this.  It seems that this sort of designer baby movement is all about the vanity of the parents-to-be.  They want a blue-eyed baby or sperm from an Ivy League graduate.  They want this, they want that, and their desires drive the production of a new child.  Is that what birth should be all about? 

    Or is birth about discovering the limits of one's desires?  Inevitably parents will have to submerge their egos and restrain their aspirations in the best interest of their children.  They will not control the situation completely, but be controlled by it.  And if they are not able to embrace and flow along with the tide of new demands and obligations, if they hold fast to their own desires and expectations, they likely will not be good parents.  So, why try to control every little detail at the outset, if the whole point of parenthood is the transformation of selfishness into selflessness? 

    I know: maybe that is not the best characterization of parenthood.  We obviously still impose certain conditions on our children.  We try to shape them into good people.  That is true.  But it is an incredibly time-consuming job, one that requires a turn away from self-interest.

      Many nights I step away from the writing I try to do to help my daughter with her homework.  I have to - and I want to - abandon something that I enjoy to take up something I must do.  Moreover, in helping with her homework, I cannot simply impose my way of doing things upon her (I have learned this the hard way).  I have to take some time to understand what she is doing, how she is learning or not learning, and find a way to interject myself into the process of her learning in the most productive manner.   It is not easy.  I have discovered my weaknesses in this regard and struggle to find ways of being better at it. But it is what I must do for her.  I must help her.  That's my job as a father.

    The prospective parents who spend so much money and time designing various aspects of their children-to-be will inevitably run into the limits of parenthood - the limits to selfishness and the demands of other-regarding activity.  How can they possibly know, at the outset, what kinds of physical features will be most helpful for the myriad challenges of parenting?  Will blue eyes make homework easier?  Will Ivy League sperm help with making friends?  Will their overly scientific approach to humanity ensure the happiness of their child?

    I don't think so....

Bat Mitzvah

    My blog silence of the last couple of days (I missed Friday!) was due to a brief family excursion to the Boston area to attend the Bat Mitzvah of a friend's daughter.  It was a marvelous ceremony with strong, though obviously unintended, Confucian overtones.

     We were honored to be invited.  The young girl is the daughter of a cousin of my wife's cousin's husband (get that?).  In other words, we are  not really related, though we sometimes use the term "cousin" to describe the relationship between our daughter and our friend's daughter.  We see these people only occasionally, when we visit my wife's cousin and family in Lexington.  But our daughters have kept up an electronic relationship with IMs and email.  We were pleasantly surprised to find ourselves in attendance.

     I was last to a Bar Mitzvah a few years ago, held in a small synagogue in Bennington, Vermont.  I have a fairly good memory of it: the ceremonial first reading of the Torah, the focus on the young man coming of age, the rhythmic chanting of the Hebrew.  But this most recent Bat Mitzvah struck me as having a more pronounced generational significance (I may be just not remembering the earlier ceremony all that clearly).

     The rabbi set the symbolic stage by reminded the assembled of the unbroken lineage this young girl was entering into.  Her grandfather had been called to the Torah (the rabbi mentioned that, in those days, girls were not so recognized but he was quite happy to expand the category of "lineage" to include girls coming of age), as had his father and grandfather and so on and so forth all the way back to the founders of the faith.   Of course, as an empirical matter we can never know the truth of such claims (i.e. if the family's religious observance has been consistent through all of the centuries and millennium) but that was not the point.  The point was to call to the fore the family context of the celebration. 

    This young girl had been given life and sustenance by her parents, who in turn had been raised by their parents.  And now it was time to remember all those that went before, to keep them in mind as we find the best way forward in the world.  The rabbi stressed that it was now her responsibility to make the world a better place and, given the familial context already established, this obligation was authorized by past generations.  All of this made the duty more tangible, heavier perhaps but all the more important to carry forward.

     This is where I thought of Confucius, of course.  I found myself thinking, as the happy ceremony unfolded, that this was precisely what Confucius meant when he said caring for parents is the "root of humanity."  The young girl was not being asked to care for her parents but, rather, she was being asked by her parents, and all of the previous parents, to care for herself and her world.  And in the performance of that duty, she would create and extend her own humanity.  She was embedded in the loving relationships of the family, now as an adult, and she was expected, in the name of the family, to cultivate goodness.

    There was, of course, one large difference with Confucianism.  The rabbi reminded her, and all of us, that the command to do good in the world was given by a "higher authority."  It was not simply a duty to family to do good, but also a duty to God.  And there is no God in Confucianism, not in the Old Testament sense at least.  Rather, the family is the primary moral basis.  In Judaism (or at least this is what I came away understanding) the family might be overridden by God's will.  We can imagine circumstances where following a "higher authority" might contradict familial obligations. 

     This seems less likely in Confucianism; though, I believe, there may be moments in which the duty to foster Humanity might lead one to disobey a parent's command.  Or, if the family, or parents, ignore their own duties, a child may need to seek other social relationships as a venue for the construction of humanity.   But it is not clear at all, in Confucianism, when family obligations might be overridden.  It seems so much easier to invoke an all-powerful and all-knowing God.

     In any event, it was a beautiful day.  All four of the young girl's grandparents, together with her parents, stood with her before the congregation as she completed the ceremony.  It was a powerful illustration of our irrevocable embeddedness in social relationships.  There was a great deal of love in the room.