-- A translation from the book in Chinese:

Where is the Mankind Heading for:

Contests and realignments between ideologies in the new century

EDITOR’S NOTE: Here is the author’s preface from the book in Chinese on philosophy and social theories published in 2013. The book partially summarizes the results of the author’s decades-long exploration in the realm of ideology and is rich in ideas both old and new at the same time – new expositions in modern terminology of traditional Chinese thought as applied to social issues and ideologies of the world today. Any comment and criticism and any offer to help improve the English translation of the whole book will be welcome and appreciated. For a list of contents of the book with links to other translated parts, please see:

Where is the Mankind Heading for: Contests and realignments between ideologies in the new century: List of content

THE TEXT

In the past eight years, this author has posted a considerable number of articles in his personal columns on the two websites http://www.xinfajia.net/ (The New Legalist) and http://www.chinavalue.net/, including Eastern Wisdom Can Help Solve Today’s Global Problems -- A Study of the “Dynamically-Balanced Multi-Dimensional Whole” Worldview and Bring Social Science Back onto the Daoist Path, which were published in print, and many more re-posted on other websites. While they were written in answer to day-to-day social issues raised by the public, there is underlying them one unified and consistent philosophical view of the world, the society and history. Therefore, this author started to select from them those related to basic theoretical issues and put them together in a systematic way into a unique piece of work, which runs through both the metaphysical and physical realms, the Chinese and Western civilizations, and the ancient and the modern times, with emphasis on issues regarding social realities in present-day China and the world. The result is greater depth, consistency and clarification.

Though the ideas presented in the book were first publicized in the recent eight years, they are actually the fruits of the author’s life-long painstaking intellectual exploration. This author was born in Shanghai, China, and brought up in a poor family in the city’s rural outskirts. But thanks to the new government’s policy in 1950s of universal education and to its financial aid program, he managed to go through all the way to the completion of higher education. Inspired by the flourishing scenes in the countryside during that time when he was attending a senior high school in the city of Suzhou in mid-1950s, he wrote a short novel describing the agricultural cooperation movement entitled “Listen to Chairman Mao and Follow the Communist Party”, which won a third prize in a school-wide creative writing contest. He experienced such a strong urge to sing praise of the new China with her new look that he decided to choose his major from among liberal-arts disciplines for college entrance examination, in spite of the fact that his greatest interest and advantage had been in mathematics.

On graduation from Fudan University, he was assigned to teach English language and literature at East China Normal University. The Cultural Revolution three years later prompted his search for truth about social justice. The direct impetus was the persecution he suffered from both the “capitalist-roaders” and the Leftists for opposing their personal and ideological persecution of intellectuals in general in the name of “cultural revolution” – he was finally publicly censured as “ringleader” of a “counter-revolutionary group”, only to be vindicated in late 1970s.

After that, with the question on mind “why the Chinese, hard-working and intelligent as they are in general, have remained poor for so long” and with the purpose of getting to know more directly about the outside world, the author came to the U.S. in 1986, thus starting a new phase of his intellectual exploration. Being familiar with criticisms from Western intellectuals of their own civilization in their literary works, he was not, however, among those who thought everything in the West is superior. Moreover, before leaving China, he happened upon a philosophically profound book entitled The Tao of Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism (a Chinese version of a condensed combination of the two books by Fritjof Capra: The Tao of Physics and The Turning Point), which greatly enlightened him on the possibility of an integration between Chinese and Western cultures.

On coming to the U.S., the author did not pursue the “American dream” for personal prosperity as most immigrants have been doing but, while making a living with work, make studies through social experience, observations, reading and thinking. At the beginning, he took some social science courses at local universities but twice gave up master-degree programs just to opt for a more autonomous course of study better fitting his goal. During that time, the famous book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn, recommended by a professor, greatly opened his mind, initiating a process which facilitates a final shift in his way of thought. But at that time, he was still a long way from gaining any new understanding either about fundamental metaphysical issues or about social reality.

As to the author’s initial impressions of the American society, of its business management, political operation, academic culture, education and social life in general, while some are positive, such as “economic prosperity”, “electoral democracy”, “freedom of expression” and “civility in public places”, some others are negative, for instances: a) No democracy at all in grassroots workplaces (In contrast, in pre-reform China, except for periods of political movements, the “mass line” was advocated and in varying degrees practiced in handling non-political matters and, so, the general atmosphere at the grassroots level was more “democratic”, so to speak); b) Too much division and fragmentization in higher education and learning; c) Shallow and vulgar pop culture flooding mass media. As to how all these positive and negative aspects should be accounted for in a logically plausible way, the author was totally at a loss in the earlier years. Extensive reading of English academic literature failed to provide him any clues for an understanding of all these things as a consistently related whole. Hence, this author was disoriented and somewhat depressed for a while.

Luckily for him, an attempt to get out of the hardship of life led him to a study of Buddhist scriptures in 1996, which suddenly opened his eyes. At first, he came to understand life in the Buddhist perspective, which sees through everything as intangible in the final analysis (or “empty” in English translation of the original Sanskrit word “sunya”) and, starting from there, he cleansed his mind of the resentment and rancor which had accumulated ever since the “Cultural Revolution”, purged himself of such negative spiritual tendencies as a degree of individualistic heroism and some lurking desire for personal fame, which had come to the surface during those tumultuous years, and embraced a lifelong goal as was advocated by Master Nan Huaijin, i.e., “Serve the temporal world with a transcendental mind” (南怀谨: “以出世之胸襟，办入世之事业”) .

Then, after more years of contemplation of Buddhist and Daoist philosophies, he came to realize their underlying mind-matter-as-one principle and found that the cognitive root cause of all social problems of the Western world, including the fragmentization of its social life and academic learning, lies in the binary opposition, or lack of unity, between mind and matter.

Further later, by looking deeper below the appearance of “prosperity”, “freedom” and “democracy” into the political and economic life of Americans, he was convinced of the fundamental inconsistencies underneath. The single culprit for U.S. global hegemonism, the Iraqi war, the callousness and arrogance of the rich, etc. is, finally speaking, the capitalist system.

Hence in 2004, by adopting the man-nature-as-one and all-humanity-as-one worldview inherited from the Chinese tradition of thought, the author made the discovery of “three sources of value for all social commodities”, from which new conclusions were derived about an ideal social system based on justifiable ownership of means of production. On reading his thesis on this topic, “experts” on the editing board of a nationally-renowned university journal gave it a positive assessment, saying it “has a degree of theoretical depth”, but they had to “regretfully” reject it because it was not in line with mainstream ideological orthodoxy.

Fortunately for him, weblog was soon available on the internet. In 2005, he posted the thesis in his personal column on the “chinavalue.net” website, thus initiating a new phase of ideological exploration and innovation, one of comprehensive spread, of extension into more practical details, of refinement in logical reasoning, and of textualization. The said little book is just a succinct summary of the major new ideas achieved so far.

Although the book was written by the author, actually countless persons have contributed to its coming into being and appearing as it is today. It is impossible to list all those he feels indebted to, most of whom he does not know personally and are deceased. As a descendent of the Yellow Emperor and a world citizen as well, what he can do to repay the debt of gratitude is to keep modest and prudent, spur himself onward continually, and make still greater efforts to do good to the society.

First draft, Nov. 28, 2010.

Revised July 27, 2012.