週日 5月 17, 2015 12:36 pm
I think the real connection between people should be like our conversation today, conversations from every individual soul with unique journey in this world. After all, we are all passers for a short journey on this planet; landed onto different starting points, with different experience of education/propaganda. I think that is one of the benefits of communicating with people from a different world view: we can see the dark side we are blind to due to our life experience. Like my friend Kevin Faulkner, a very loveable Yankee studying in China. His father said: “your people always talk about history, because you have the longest history, and all the territory you once occupied you can claim.” For sure, he also was influenced by American government’s propaganda, once he said something like: “now China was strong and thus China needs to take up the responsibility from us.” Well, I never met a Chinese who think China should take up the world responsibility. It is just American government’s propaganda that they are taking care of the world, sending people to fight outside of US. It has not been in the Chinese propaganda yet; maybe it will exist when the Chinese government wants to get more oil from another country.
Kevin said: it is easy to meet a Chinese who is friendly toward you out of politeness between American and Chinese people, but difficult to meet one who interact with you on a personal level: cheating him just as Kevin, not a American.
I believe real friendship can pierce through the illusions of identities of certain groups of people, such as race and nationality. After all, what is "China/America"? Who are "Chinese/American"? Through the history, we can see the rise and fall of the nations and the change of territory for every state. There is no fixed time and space boundary for a group of people. Often, ethnicity and nationality is just a concept created by some rulers to unite the ruled people, in order to fight against the out-group people. And people overestimate the culture difference a lot. When you are more and more familiar with an individual, when a real connection was made between an individual, her/his personality emerge out of the mask of culture. After all, what is culture? Whose ideas can represent every citizen's thoughts? The scholars are not better sinners than the politicians are, they always exaggerate the culture difference consciously or unconsciously: consciously exaggerate it for publishing their papers and books, unconsciously exaggerate it for self-enhancement of their own meaning of work. And thus we all live in certain deceptions from not only politicians, but also scholars.
Now, I am very curious about this kind of fantasy, which I believe is common among many kids like me who desire for transcendence from this world filled with competitions. The desire for this transcendence from human beings is probably like this: "I do not want to fight anybody! I do not want to ally with anyone! I am a outman from another planet! I just want to go back to my home planet which is superior than this earth planet!" Would they be higher on "universalism": cheat everybody just as a human being? Or, is this another type of prejudice and self-enhancement: cheat every human being less than himself/herself?
Now, let's think about another type of belief/collective imagined identity like "Communism" and "Catholic". How many people really understand the meaning of these concepts? To be honest, I never understand them. And in fact, I think very few people really bother to understand these abstract concepts, but just identify themselves to one of these abstract concepts. This kind of identification is more dangerous than that to a more concrete concept such as ethnicity and nationality, because it could occur inside family and friends, turning them into enemies and kill each other.
Not surprisingly, all the dictatorship power based on this kind of identification is against another type of identification: God’s children loving each other proclaimed in Christianity; every living thing is equal proclaimed in Chinese Buddhism.
Will people become less individualist and more likely to identify themselves to a group when they are more combative? And when they are less confident with their winning in the combats?
Below is an English poem I read many years ago which I like very much:
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife:
Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art:
I warm’d both hands before the fire of Life;
It sinks; and I am ready to depart.
P.S. The book I mentioned today is "The nature of prejudice" by Allport.
Kevin said: it is easy to meet a Chinese who is friendly toward you out of politeness between American and Chinese people, but difficult to meet one who interact with you on a personal level: cheating him just as Kevin, not a American.
I believe real friendship can pierce through the illusions of identities of certain groups of people, such as race and nationality. After all, what is "China/America"? Who are "Chinese/American"? Through the history, we can see the rise and fall of the nations and the change of territory for every state. There is no fixed time and space boundary for a group of people. Often, ethnicity and nationality is just a concept created by some rulers to unite the ruled people, in order to fight against the out-group people. And people overestimate the culture difference a lot. When you are more and more familiar with an individual, when a real connection was made between an individual, her/his personality emerge out of the mask of culture. After all, what is culture? Whose ideas can represent every citizen's thoughts? The scholars are not better sinners than the politicians are, they always exaggerate the culture difference consciously or unconsciously: consciously exaggerate it for publishing their papers and books, unconsciously exaggerate it for self-enhancement of their own meaning of work. And thus we all live in certain deceptions from not only politicians, but also scholars.
Now, I am very curious about this kind of fantasy, which I believe is common among many kids like me who desire for transcendence from this world filled with competitions. The desire for this transcendence from human beings is probably like this: "I do not want to fight anybody! I do not want to ally with anyone! I am a outman from another planet! I just want to go back to my home planet which is superior than this earth planet!" Would they be higher on "universalism": cheat everybody just as a human being? Or, is this another type of prejudice and self-enhancement: cheat every human being less than himself/herself?
Now, let's think about another type of belief/collective imagined identity like "Communism" and "Catholic". How many people really understand the meaning of these concepts? To be honest, I never understand them. And in fact, I think very few people really bother to understand these abstract concepts, but just identify themselves to one of these abstract concepts. This kind of identification is more dangerous than that to a more concrete concept such as ethnicity and nationality, because it could occur inside family and friends, turning them into enemies and kill each other.
Not surprisingly, all the dictatorship power based on this kind of identification is against another type of identification: God’s children loving each other proclaimed in Christianity; every living thing is equal proclaimed in Chinese Buddhism.
Will people become less individualist and more likely to identify themselves to a group when they are more combative? And when they are less confident with their winning in the combats?
Below is an English poem I read many years ago which I like very much:
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife:
Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art:
I warm’d both hands before the fire of Life;
It sinks; and I am ready to depart.
P.S. The book I mentioned today is "The nature of prejudice" by Allport.
