Paul Farwell： I have also done some thinking about liberalism and western perception. I think history has a place in this as well. For most of Chinese history, China was stable and unified, thanks to the legalists and the others. Westerners have no legalists, they have only Christianity. As a result, western history is made up of decentralized states, all fighting one another (Medieval Period). Even when things were unified under the Roman Empire, it was a feudal empire which was fractured into parts. Europe had no history of unification and so the concept of holism is foreign. Unlike China, Europe is a fractured mess of different languages and cultures, while China is made up of largely Han Chinese. Even the law system is based on dualistic perception.
But I think that dualism and holism is more related than one thinks. When we look at the Yin Yang, we see two parts functioning as part of a greater system. Yet, the dualist does not see this aspect. They see only the division between the two opposites. Therefore, without understanding that the system is linked, they perceive the relationship between opposites as being one of competition, not coexistence. For example, dualists see evolution as the struggle of one species over another, but fail to realize this struggle is part of a greater system for improvement. So they see only the negatives of this, the good and evil, not the system as a whole. They see the individual only, not the relationship the individual has within a system. Ultimately, they fail to realize that there are systems within systems and all of them are interconnected like gears in a machine. To truly understand one gear, you must understand the others.
But western education is formed from this perception. Each subject is studied independently and everything has a label attached to it. Yet, when I study independently, I find that economics cannot be studied without studying history, which cannot be studied without politics, and it goes on. Yet, due to strong euro-centrism, no western teacher realizes this.
Another problem is the western perception that they are better. Euro-centrism and American exceptionalism are two parts of this. They fail to see the perception of others, and rather than try, they assume they know best. Why? Their success stories. Europe overtook China in the late 1800s with the Opium Wars, and America overtook Europe after World War II. Therefore, they assume that success=right (Similar to the saying that "might is right").
One would think that after two world wars, Europe and western perception would change. You would think a little humility would set in. Wrong. They fail to see that Hitler and Napoleon were the logical extension of their dualism complex and rather than try to understand these people, they simply label them as outliers of the system and crazy men. Nothing to do with western perception, yet they have everything to do with it.
Sherwin Lu: I agree with almost all you have said here. Only one further explanation about Yin Yang, that is my personal interpretation but with some clue from Legalist classics: Yin Yang is no plain unity of opposites -- to me, basically, Yin represents the relatedness of an entity to all other entities and the whole with all entities included, while Yang the relative independence of an entity, and from this distinction are derived all other contrasting distinctions they usually represent in varying contexts -- one example in one of the chapters in Yellow Emperor’s Four Canons, http://www.xinfajia.cn/4510.html for your reference. I haven’t been able to translate the whole passage in my book on this topic, but will do it some time later. |
