The”Dynamically-Balanced Multi-Dimensional Whole” worldview, when applied to international affairs in a globalized world today, involves macro relations in both horizontal and vertical dimensions: horizontally, those between nation-states and between different groups of nation-states sharing respectively different cultural traditions; vertically, those between each of the nation-states and the ethnic-cultural minority groups within it, and between each state and international authoritative institutions (such as the United Nations). Among the issues affecting all such relations at present, the most troublesome one is the so-called “culture conflict” or “clash of different civilizations”. For the past hundreds of years, cultural differences between different human groups have been utilized by colonialists, imperialists, and hegemonists to facilitate their geopolitical schemes of divide-and-rule in their or their adversaries’ spheres of influence. The international monopolistic capital interests have never respected the cultures of other countries and ethnic groups but have always been pushing on with their cultural hegemony. Sometimes they pretend to advocate cultural pluralism in order, on the one hand, to pacify minority ethnic groups and secure their own domination at home, and on the other to pit the peoples in their strategically targeted areas abroad against each other so as to shift the world’s critical attention away from their hegemonic line of conduct and secure their domination over the world. Finally speaking, what they are really up to is, to convert the whole world by force to their Mammonist cultural hegemony. Therefore, it is an important part of the fight against the hegemony in academic discourse to unfold a view on culture in the light of the Eastern philosophical principle of dynamic balance and lay bare the erroneousness of prevalent Western culture theories born of a mind-matter split.
Convergence of Diverse Cultures: Or, the Ultimate Universal Human Value
In light of the dynamic-balance worldview, human culture shows itself both as diverse and converging at the same time.
The diversity of human culture, material and spiritual, can be traced back in history to that of the immediate natural environments, i.e., living conditions of different human groups in different areas.
The Western culture that originated in southern Europe and West and Central Asia, and the Arabian culture located between the East and the West – both of them grew out of hilly and/or coastal regions or from dry grasslands or even deserts, that is, regions not favorable to agriculture but suitable for marine trade or a nomadic life. These conditions gave rise to a very tough pioneering and adventurous spirit and an individualistic view of macro social relations. The maritime and nomadic way of life tends to induce pirating and looting activities or even predatory wars.
Whereas, the Chinese culture has grown out of the thousands of years of fully-matured agricultural life nourished by vast expanses of flat fertile land and a mild agreeable climate on the East Asian plains. These natural and material conditions have shaped a spiritual-cultural tradition that cherishes the native land, gears human activities to natural cycles, local geographical conditions and the need for balanced human relationships, and lays emphasis on cultivation of one’s inner soul by purging it of greediness, aggressiveness, recklessness and any other impulses against the Dao.
In spite of the above differences between the cultures of different continents, the remotest ancestors of all human races who lived in the prehistoric period shared the same rough conditions of that time (such as the big floods faced by Noah in the biblical West and the Great Yu in ancient China) and the same primitive survival skills for wild fruit picking and group hunting for hundreds of thousands or millions of years. It was at a much later time that farming and cattle breeding were started. Before that time, the intuitive kinship consciousness of sharing the same fate of life or death was strongly prevalent among all the members of a clan and within all the tribal communities wherever they were.
In spite of the fact that there were fights between different tribes driven by the instinct for survival and the fact that, with the development of human capabilities for production and subsistence, of private ownership of means of production, and of greediness among the advantaged few, the highly integrated tribal communities came to be divided and polarized on both the micro (family) and macro (state and beyond) levels, causing continuous conflicts and wars dealt with in both barbarian and “civilized” ways on all levels of human existence for the past thousands of years -- In spite of the above facts, that fate-sharing consciousness, which was consolidated through a period of time hundreds of times longer that of the civilized history and which has been lying dormant in the collective unconscious of mankind, has asserted itself in human ethical sentiment as universal love. This is evidenced in the classical literature of all civilizations, such as “It is the Way of Heaven to diminish superabundance and to supplement deficiency” (Dao De Jing, Chap 77, Trans. by James Legge), Buddhist mercifulness, Confucianist benevolence, and the true spirit of Jesus Christ -- “Love thy neighbor as thyself” as jointly advocated by Christianity, Islam and Judaism.
Relatively speaking, the “civilized” history of mankind has only been a trice. Since its beginning, while on one hand conflicts stirred up by a handful of people have never ceased but have been intensifying on an ever-widening scale with ever more disastrous consequences, yet on the other hand, with the socialization, globalization and even extension into the outer space of human economic and all other activities, the degree of interdependence among all human beings has also been increasing – more and more people are realizing day by day that all people beyond the family, nation and race, or even all living things beyond the human kind are inseparable from each other in their fate. This consciousness of interdependence is much more widely shared beyond comparison than that parochial sense of unity of the primitive clans.
Today, an awareness of the inseparableness of all humanity and that between man and nature is fast growing in resistance of the extremely egocentric way of doing things of some people and helps promote mutual understanding between different cultures, thus bringing new hope for the world. It is the spirit of universal love based on this awareness that is the loftest, or the ultimate, or the truly universal, value standard. All other self-styled “universal values” should be tested by this ultimate standard. No matter how twisted the future history of mankind will be, this ultimate sense of value, to be sure, will gradually remove misunderstandings and bring about great harmony between all different cultures.
Interactions between Universal Dao, Macro Society and Personal Soul： The Path towards Realization of Ultimate Human Value
As to the way to realize the spirit of universal love in all social relations, there has been essential differences between the Chinese Daoist-Legalist school on the one hand and the Buddhist, the Confucianist, and Western Religions on the other. The former looks at things from the topmost height of the Dao, which unifies mind and matter as one and penetrates everything. The Daoist-Legalists see that the law abides by the Dao, and that, through enforcement of the law, social morality is enhanced, which in turn makes the law function even more effectively, which in turn makes the whole society follow the Dao even more closely. In other words, this would help realize a comprehensive dynamic balance between the multiple macro and micro levels of existence through interactions within and between nature, human society (at various levels) and human individuals. Of all the levels, the macro human society is the pivotal one. The so-called “dynamic balance of the multi-dimensional whole” essentially refers to a) the balance between the macro human society and nature, of which latter the former is a part, b) that between the macro human society and all human individuals, of which latter the former is made up into a whole, and c) that between the various levels and aspects of the macro human society itself.
Social relationships also exist on different -- macro and micro – levels. Macro relationships are those between large social groups involving basic economic and political rights and interests, such as between different classes, or between the government and the governed, or between different racial/ethnic groups, or between nation-states. Micro ones are those purely personal relationships not directly related to the above macro ones, such as those between kinfolks, friends, neighbors, colleagues, or casual acquaintances or even strangers. To the society as a whole, the macro ones are of primary importance. If they are relatively balanced and harmonious, then the micro ones would not be too far from being the same. That is why historically social order used to be at its best during the early years of a new dynasty when law and order and honesty prevails, and also why criminal and civil cases usually drop sharply when rational and ordered popular political movements are surging. Conversely, even if micro social relationships look smooth and civilized, it does not necessarily reflect a balanced and smooth pattern of macro social relationships internally and externally. But, if micro relations are worsening off prevalently and chronically, then the root cause must lie in macro social relationships. Micro problems would not be alleviated until those on the macro level are squarely dealt with and solved.
Daoist-Legalist (the Huang-Lao school) classics Dao De Jing and Yellow Emperor’s Four Canons indicate clearly that Daoist-Legalists look beyond micro human relations for the realization of harmony in such relations; they do not talk about universal love, compassion, or benevolence among individuals, about moral education, and about how to tell true saints or sages without relating these issues to social relations on the macro level between large social groups and between man and nature, but consider all macro and micro relations as living embodiment of the Heavenly Dao, not as purely subjective or even over-zealous pursuit of certain individuals out of personal goodwill.
Meanwhile, the cultivation of one’s moral character with a view to lift it towards the height of the Dao, while requiring one’s own self-motivation and conscientious effort, also depends in an even greater degree on the enlightening influence of the macro environment of the ever evolving society and nature as the living embodiment of the Dao through limitless space and time, even if one may not be aware of it. The successful transformation of a person into one with a noble moral character should result from a combination of that external impact on his consciousness with his willingness to face up and submit to Nature’s way, not exclusively from one’s soul-searching through meditation in solitude (though also necessay).
The Daoist-Legalists also think it inadequate to limit one’s efforts to verbally preaching the spirit of universal love. In order to realize this spirit in actual socio-politico-economic relations on all levels (from micro to macro), it is absolutely necessary to maintain through the rule of law such institutions proven to be effective as the Social Merit System, the All-Society Mutual Supervision System, regulation of capital, and the Regulatory State Granary and other new institutions to be developed in line with the Dao of dynamic balance in the multi-dimensional whole of a society. Only thus can those virtuous and capable individuals be naturally recognized, elected, supervised and supported by the people and stand out as representatives of public interests on various social levels, making sure through the operation of the above mentioned institutions that all individuals and social groups can equally enjoy their due rights and benefits through equal labor relations.
But Confucianists and Buddhists, as well as Western religionists, share a contrary position – they believe in an absolute spirit, or a “mind” detached from the material world, which can bypass the medium of the macro society and cosmic space-time, directly and universally penetrate into people’s hearts and take root there as seeds of love and compassion, or just through the verbal and exemplary influence of a few half-saint, half-human preachers, and then automatically yield positive results in the form of a society with macro human relations full of universal love and benevolence. This is philosophically why Confucianist and Buddhist ethics usually does not deal with issues beyond micro human relations just as Western sociology also limits its study within the narrow boundary of micro social issues, excluding from its academic scrutiny macro holistic relations between social economy, politics and culture. In the article entitled How Confucianism Departed From the Dao of Dynamic Balance, this author has pointed out the atomistic nature of the methodology in this way of thinking and its inevitable consequences which might go against those thinkers’ original good intention.
Even if the majority of a population cherish the spirit of universal love and compassion while this spirit is not at the same time embodied in the social structure defining macro economic-political relations, the society on the whole is still not a benevolent one. This is because a mechanic aggregation of any number of separate parts does not add up to a “whole”. And their approach based on a kind of mind-matter split would only result in the degeneration of the mind, the decline of social morality, i.e., less and less people would remain to be loving, benevolent and compassionate and the human society would be going to disintegrate, just like today’s world.
Now let us look back and see how the Western Christian way of thinking has led humanity step by step to the dilemma facing us today.
IV. Mainstream Western Culture Theory：
From Mind-Matter Dualism to Mammonist Hegemonism
(1) From the Divine-Secular Split to Unreal ”Universal Value”
The medieval European theologist Augustine designated an ideal spiritual world as the “City of God” and the existing secular world of his time as. the “City of Man”. The City of God is marked by people who cherish mutual love out of their shared love for God, while the City of Man consists of people who each only love their individual selves. Laozi of ancient China also contrasted the “way of people” (i.e., to “take away where there is needand add where there is surplus”) with the “way of Heaven” (to “remove where there is excessand add where there is lack”, Dao De Jing, 77. ) But the “love” and the “Dao” (way of Heaven) mentioned by the two thinkers are two different things. With Laozi, human love is only a reflection of “the way of Heaven (a synonym for Nature)” in man’s world, as the latter is a part of Nature, while with Augustine, the City of Man is not part of the City of God and that City of God is only a dreamland that has nothing to do with the macro human society. Therefore, it is only a kind of wishful thinking, a myth, to cultivate human love and prevail that fallen City of Man through the illusory “love for God”. And this myth is a story totally different from the ideal Laozi cherished.
As the blind worship for a supernatural spirit such as God is a heritage from the worshippers’ far remote primitive ancesters, the City of God and the City of Man has never mingled together as one but remained apart like oil over water. The spiritual “oil” has never been able to penetrate into the deep “water” of the secular macro world. This is, so far as the nature of the siprit itself is concerned, because of the following two reasons:
Firstly, any sipritual belief, be it religious or non-religious (such as that in the non-religionized Dao), is in essence to have one’s spiritual soul holding onto and sustained by an all-comprehensive supreme form of being. But the Christian God is not such a form of being, because He cannot comprehend Himself: He creates everything but not Himself. Omnipresent as declared to be, He is not part of the world of all existence but always a supernatural spirit separate from, outside of and hovering over the secular world. Where has this sipirit come from, then? It should be derived from some other form of existence, a real supreme one. This supreme form of existence is the Dao, or the Way of Heaven, as was recognized by the Chinese. The Dao cannot be explained by the Western God but can explain Him. That is because the Dao is not something separate from and outside of all existence like God, but penetrates in and between everything either macro or micro, either known already or not yet known by human beings, either as objects or as subjects of consciousness. Dao is everything; everything is Dao – inseparable as ONE.
If explained in Western philosophical jargons, the Dao comprehends both mind and matter and is a monistic conception, not differentiationg the two. That is why there have never been debates in Chinese tradition about so-called materialism vs. idealism. Whereas, Western God represents a spirit or mind that is split from matter, the world. He is not an all-comprehensive supreme being. It is theoretically illogical, inconsistent and unable to stand the test of history to say that He is supreme and omnipresent: The practice in macro social relations in the City of Man has never been that of “Love thy neighbor as thyself” or “to diminish superabundance and to supplement deficiency”, but istead “only love their individual selves” and “take away where there is needand add where there is surplus”, that is, to try to satisfy the insatiable greediness of the super rich. Though there are a few people like Saint Augustine, who are dedicated to the purification of individual souls, either their own or others’, while paying little attention to practical problems. They shared the same approach with Confucianists and Buddhists, who fail both to tackle macro social problems on the secular level and to reach the topmost level of truth that can unify the metaphysical with the physical, the spiritual with the secular, though they do have awareness of some partial truths, for instance, the recognition in Buddhism of the monistic intangibility (性空) of all existence, which transcends the mind-matter split. So, on the whole, much of their discussion is just scholasticism or ivory tower speculation playing with abstract and useless concepts. God is extrinsic to the secular world; He is but an imaginary supreme being, or rather an "idol" himself.
Secondly, the Christian Bible is itself not consistent: On the one hand, it preaches "Love thy neighbor", while on the other proclaims its own folks as "the chosen people" of God (equivalent, in contemporary secular terms, to "progressive people" or "advanced nations") while degrading non-believers as "idol worshipers" or "atheists" (equivalent, in contemporary secular terms, to "dangerous people" or "rogue nations" ), as targets for discrimination, exclusion, attacks and even extinction. Obviously, the commandment "Love thy neighbor" is actually conditional: Whether to love or not to love depends on whether the target person worships their God as an idol. So long as people verbally professes themselves as such worshippers, even if they are obsessed with excessive greediness and kill innocent people for that purpose, they are still supposed to go to Heaven after death. So long as you are a "pagan" or an "atheist", even if you devote yourself to the betterment of people’s lives, you would definitely go to hell.
Because of the above two reasons, the spirit of universal love preached in Christianity as embodying the ultimate universal value of all humans has never penetrated into key economic-political relationships of the secular world and never become the dominating spirit of the macro society but only finds expression in mutual personal help between Christians or their charity activities within separate peripheral small communities at the lowest level of society. Such communities are like small oases scattered in the marginal areas of the spiritual desert land, embodying the highest human spiritual value inherent in Christian teaching and reviving and carrying on the true spirit of Jesus Christ in the human world. Unfortunately, they have never been able to develop into the mainstream of Western Christian culture. So far as the economic-political relationship of the macro society and the relationship between Christian and non-Christian nations are concerned, the dominating forces in the Christian Church have almost always stood on the side of privileged or advantaged interest groups, or they themselves became such interest groups involved in the power struggles of the secular world.
Since Christianity was sanctified as the state religion of the Roman Empire, this contrast between the micro-level spiritual periphery representing genuine Christian ideal on the one side and the macro-level corrupted mainstream center representing the distorted Jesus on the other has run through the whole Western history after that till today like a double-track system.
The modern campaign for personal freedom after the Middle-Ages Reformation has substituted conversion to the true Christian spirit with an individualistic interpretation of the Bible. In spite of its positive role in fighting feudal lords’ despotism and corruption of the Church, it has paved the way for materialistic idolatry, or mammonism, pushed for by later new privileged classes.
These mammon worshippers, in their pursuit for controlling and exploiting the whole world, have been all the time instigating conflicts and even wars of various scales between nations, races, cultures, and religions all over the globe. And the exclusionist sentiment out of superiority complex in the Bible suits their need to a fit. That is why the Christian Church, either Catholic or Protestant, has played a dishonorable role as a follower, or an accomplice, or even as a pioneer in the long evil history of expansion and plundering by Western mammonist colonialists and imperialists.
Now, with mammonist practices by "rational economic men" pursuing "maximization of self interests" becoming the universal rule of economic-political conduct not only in the West but "globalized" by big capital, the bourgeois republic with the church and the state separated has driven all factions of Christianity out of the political and cultural life of the society. This is evidenced by the obvious fact that church goers are dwindling from generation to generation, and people who consciously examine national and global economic-political relationships in the true Christian sprit are even less and less. Not only devotees to the Christian spirit but also the whole Christian establishment have been peripherized in social spiritual life. Although the present and previous Popes of the Church have been critical of the Western society and also shown the good will for dialogues and communication with other religions and cultures, the Christian Church, however, cannot withstand at all the corrupting influences of the mainstream culture, either academic or that of mass media and entertainment, all stinking of mammonism. And it can neither recognize its own weaknesses and limitations.
History has proved that, in sharp contrast to the self-sacrifice and dedication to public benefit of all sages, of the West as well as of the East, like Jesus Christ, either the illusory “love” centered round a ”god” or the ideas of “freedom”, ”human rights”, ”universal love” hinging on the individual’s personal interests have all but revealed their hypocritical and impotent nature. In the final analysis, these “universal values” are merely a sham, being fabricated from a dualistic mind-matter split worldview and/or motivated by the interests of a privileged minority. Therefore, we need to distinguish the true spirit of Jesus himself from the inconsistent or self-contradictory elements in the thought system of Christianity so as to carry on the true spirit but not to ignore the fact that certain secular forces have been taking advantage of the fatal flaws in Christian thought tradition and doing great harm to human society.
