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| Go beyond Physical Short-Sightedness and Return to the Metaphysical Ultimate |
By Sherwin Lu 2017-02-01
Chinese civilization never depended for the spread of its culture on military power but on the moral strength of its thought tradition. Military actions should be adopted for self-defense only, just to counter anti-Dao violence. Any thought or culture that attempts to impose itself on others would never belong to nor represent traditional Chinese civilization – it would just be an ideology. History has proved once and again that any thought, culture and civilization that embodies the ultimate moral justice would unfailingly be transformed sooner or later into undefeatable material strength which can resist or absorb any vicious force that runs counter to the Supreme Way, even though it might, possibly due to its own faults, be subjected to temporary setbacks by momentarily powerful enemies. Just as what Lenin once quoted from Krylov’s Fables, the eagle may sometimes fly lower than a chicken, but a chicken can never soar as high as an eagle. |
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| Traditional Socialism（3）: Unidimensional Political Economy & Dualistic “Democratic Centralism” |
By Sherwin Lu 2017-01-01
Marxist political economy, by revealing that capital, with its domination over labor, has usurped the whole surplus value from social production, has successfully provided in economic terms the theoretical rationale for the final elimination of the exploitation system rooted in private ownership of means of production... However, there are deficiencies in this theory due to lack of dimensions in the way of thinking... ...Just as the philosophy of dialectical materialism is dualistic in failing to unify mind and matter into a transcendental oneness, the traditional socialist principle of “democratic centralism” as an application of that philosophy, phrased as “centralism based on democracy and democracy guided by centralism [the center]” is also dualistic in evading the fundamental question: Which of the two, “democracy” or “centralism”, or something even more essential, should have the ultimate authority? |
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| Traditional Socialism（2）: Confrontational，Unidimensional, Monolithic |
By Sherwin Lu 2016-12-01
Ultimately-confrontational thinking is the application of the dualistic law of “unity of opposites” to the way of thought.... The confrontational thinking that runs though traditional class–struggle theory and practice without an awareness of the need for an upper-level-balance has led to results unfavorable to the proletariat.... This absolutization fails to see that capital may also originate in labor (i.e., savings from wage/salary income), that... that... and that... What were more damaging were those from-time-to-time nation-wide campaigns aiming at resolving ideological “deviations” by political or even paramilitary means (such as manhandling). Consequently, dedicated socialists were replaced batch after batch by all sorts of opportunists... If the individual and sub-group members are treated as “cog wheels” and “screws” on the revolutionary “machine” instead of as acting agents with relatively independent wills and thoughts as well as shared ones, this is mechanicalist monolithism.... |
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| Egocentrism in immature faiths -- A Critique of Rationalism in Modern World Ideologies (III-3) |
By Sherwin Lu 2016-08-01
Of all faiths, Eastern and Western, of the past and the present, those that hinge on the “self” in all its variations and extensions as the ultimate origin of all existence but actually leave unexplained, or unconvincingly explained, the defining internal relationship (between the perceiver and perceived) of the phenomenal world, thus falling short of reaching up to the ultimately unified “one” reality behind it, are not ultimate faiths, at least not mature ones. |
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| Motivations to Work: Socialism vs. Capitalism |
By Li Jianhong（李建宏） 2016-07-01
Capitalism plays upon such lowest-level human instincts and desires as concerns over livelihood, greediness, and selfishness.… A socialist system attempts to motivate people to work hard toward building a more just and fair human society by cultivating a sense of achievement, morality, responsibility, honor, vocation and vision, the highest-level desires and instincts in a human being.... What a significant contrast between working under capitalism as a wage slave and working under socialism as a master of the enterprise! |
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| “Where is the Mankind Heading for”: Author’s Preface |
By Sherwin Lu 2016-01-04
…China’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) prompted his search for truth about social justice…. On coming to the U.S. in 1986, the author did not pursue the “American dream” for personal prosperity but… 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…. After more years of contemplation of Buddhist and Daoist philosophies, he came to realize… While the book was 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… |
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| Encounter of Civilizations in Cycle of Alternate Yin and Yang |
By Sherwin Lu 2015-11-03
the human cultural system is a huge complex one with mutually interpenetrated, mutually generating and constraining multiple levels and branches. And people’s way of thinking, as an important mark of a specific spiritual culture, fundamentally speaking, can be generalized into two basic types: either organic holism or mechanicalism. The former promotes Yin-Yang balance in individual humans’ state of mind and behavior and in social order, while the latter triggers imbalance... |
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