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THOUGHTS ON DIFFIRENT CULTURES AND NEW AGE

JENN ZHU

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JENN ZHU

Author: Jenn Zhu, also Zhouqin Zhu, has engaged in life

science research and teaching of business, as well art

practice, with rich life experience in both eastern and

western cultural environment, and has gotten her unique

insights in some popular tops of the social and art studies.

She has previously published a book Chinese Painting – A

Showcase to Chinese Culture before, also published some

articles with some well-known journal

To readers,

This book was published in an urgent manner. The author sent the electric

copy to the printing house in the middle of this March, however, didn’t

get the book until late April due to the new Lock-down by the city of

Toronto. Because of the very limited time for proof- reading, there could

be some spelling errors and possibly other minor problems that didn’t get

fixed. The author sincerely apologize for that and thanks for the reader’s

precious time to go through the journey of her thoughts on different

cultures as well as on some most concerned issues in our current society.

Education on Cultured Way of Life

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Content

Title

Page No.

Foreword------------------------------------------------------------------3

On Test --------------------------------------------------------------------7

Individualism -----------------------------------------------------------13

On Integrity -------------------------------------------------------------22

On Conditions ----------------------------------------------------------33

On Relationship --------------------------------------------------------45

On Education ------------------------------------------------------------61

Job And Career ---------------------------------------------------------72

Beauty And It’s Elements --------------------------------------------80

When East Art Meet with West Art -------------------------------96

Move Away from Bad Practice of Politics ----------------------109

Hello to Burden-Off -------------------------------------------------115

The New Legend of a Mouse – Hunting Dog ----------------- 121

Mr. Rende And Mr. Gongde ---------------------------------------127

The Manifestation of The Beauty of Humanity ---------------135

The Crisis of Civilization

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Title

Page No.

On Proper Naming --------------------------------------------------144

The Reflection of Ancient Asian Philosophy

upon Current Society

Appendix---------------------------------------------------------------154

The Philosophers ---------------------------------------------------------154

Related Abstracts from some well-known western people -----155

Some of the common English proverbs -----------------------------160

Related Abstracts from ancient Chinese philosophical books --168

Some of the common Chinese proverbs -----------------------------182

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Foreword

As an Asian female immigrant to North America, I have

travelled more miles than most people for personal reasons,

instead for employed work purpose. I travel because I had to,

otherwise I could just be eliminated from this modern and

civilized world. I traveled from East to West and from West to

East by crossing the Pacific Ocean, or traveled from North to

South and from South to North both in China and North

America in order to find the proper position for myself.

Superficially it seemed what I am looking for is nothing but a

job position, actually it is a life- death matter position for a

human being in this upgraded survival-fighting game, which

has never been granted to me no matter how hard I try, due

to the endless and unreasonable intervention in my life by

some privileged people who had claimed to “help”. Until now,

my life is still hanging by the edge of precipices.

During the past decade, I have gone through unbelievable

turbulence and hardship in my life, and encountered

countless failures, as well as fell into many unexpected

troubles and setups. For an innocent and ordinary

nonpartisan woman who strives hard with a humble aim to

live a normal and moderate life, life has treated me very

unfairly.

Why is that? This is the most frustrating thing that have been

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eating up my confidence on this civilization. When I was

young, I was told, as long as you are equipped with enough

skills and have good qualifications, you would always have a

way in your life. Now I have two master’s degrees, one from

China, the other from U.S. I speak and write both Chinese and

English language well, and I even have studied Chinese

painting in a renowned institute and tried hard to launch a

career as a painting artist after all my opportunities in my

two diplomas related fields were ruined by some selfish and

ruthless people, however, only to meet unreasonable

restriction and sabotage in my new career again. I tried all

what a decent educated person could do in this architecture

of human civilization. Still, I found myself being deprived of

all the surviving chances. Has it ever been worse than this in

human history? the most dangerous crises in human morals

and the loss of basic conscience of a social being, which made

lots of people, whether the educated or the illiterate, so

easily degraded their behavior to the that of savages, simply

in order to get what they want, or build the security of their

own life on the sabotage of others.

Finally I began to put aside my anger and wound, and started

to ponder on what is really wrong with this society. I can see

the material and tech world in this society are prospering and

expanding, but it seems that something truly valuable in the

spiritual world has been lost or ignored. We are surrounded

by people with the high wisdom lost, but only equipped

with the petty minds of tricks that can’t even rival with wild

animals, because they are too much depending on exterior

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power of devices while very easily surrendering to will of evils

or anarchism, and lost their inner strength. This exactly

explains the failure of this modern civilization and the

suffering of modern people.

This fact has posed great threat to this current world,

especially as members of which are closer to one another

than any time before in human history. Physical boundary

could be removed by technology, but psychological and

cultural gap between now and before, as well as between

different nations haven’t been bridged, which situation is

beyond the ability of machinery and politics to deal with.

Meanwhile, people have lost control in the tech power which

is produced to help but comes with great side effect. It means

that humans have to calm down and search inside

themselves to make some basic change in their way of

thinking and living, in order to come up with the solution for

current global problems to ensure the security of individual

people, and minimize the conflict between different nations,

different ethnic groups, different races, and different interest

groups, if we want to build a healthy environment in the

process of globalization.

I felt that this might be approached by raising awareness of

people to some issues of the society, as well as promoting the

good cultural tradition of humans and learning from wisdom

of ancient people. I grew up in a family which has received

great influence from ancient Chinese cultural tradition and

this influence also passed on me. I sincerely feel that there is

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great wisdom that could be learned from ancient Chinese

philosophy and culture which had once made Chinese empire

prosper and brought wealth and peace to the other part of

the world. Having also studied in western countries, I realized

there are equally great wisdoms that we could learn from

western cultures which had for a period of time spread the

influence globally. Even though time has changed, and some

wisdom came up thousands of years ago, still just as the

genuine gold will pass the test of fire, the true wisdom can

always endure the test of time. I hope this book will be

beneficial to all readers who are interested in issues brought

up in the book.

Jenn Zhu March 2021

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On

Test

Chinese people are very fond of tests to demonstrate the

qualifications and skills of the candidates. It could be traced

back to the Sui Dynasty, when Chinese government had

already established a system of examination to select the

political talents. Before that, all the government officials were

picked up from the aristocratic families with the titles

inherited from their ancestors, or occasionally from

recommendations of current court officials, which I guess was

what Europeans were practicing before the Universities came

up. And when it got to Tai Dynasty, the Imperial examinations

was further developed to an almost perfect level according to

standards then, and even expanded to the military field

where they set up exams to test the full skills of militants and

use them to select and promote cadres or generals, which

system was carried on through all the feudal dynasties.

We have to give this system some credits even though during

the New Culture Movement in China, many new educators

had mercilessly attacked this system by pointing out its many

defects. Because as the exams went on, many candidates

who were sophisticated in the test skills while ignoring the

true knowhow of things had gotten their ways while the true

talents without knowing the tricks of tests were screened out.

However, if we had never used this system, many talents

from ordinary families would never have chance to serve the

countries, and the nobles would always take it for granted for

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the privilege they had and wouldn’t feel any competition of

their peers from humble families, and wouldn’t try hard to do

their job properly. In the western countries, I guess that after

the universities came out, exams also started to become

popular.

In modern society, exam/test has become a fashion in

education and culture field, with various professional Exams

so well-established and results of which so well accepted by

the society, that it has become a unavoidable part of life for

most people. It is like a key to door of career, a ladder to the

promotion in their job, and a“Swiss watch” to show up their

inner wealth. That is all good until test gets proliferated in all

areas of our life. There appeared pioneers who started to test

the personalities of people, the faith on the religion, the

honesty and the loyalties of their partners, friends or their

subordinates and employees, the behavior patterns of the

public, the favorite food and clothes, and the consummation

tendency of customers, all kinds of things. It is true that the

latter two types of tests might have demonstrated its

usefulness in directing the marketing strategies. Now days,

people could very frankly and boldly throw a word ‘It’s a

test!” for any wrong doing they have placed on others. As the

technology develops, now the professionals can even test the

subconscious behavior pattern of people in their dreams.

Very intelligent!and a lot of fun in doing it!It seemed that

every part of humans, physically, mentally, or spiritually can

be tested. Sure it can be done technically, but should we do it

to ourselves? And would it be beneficial to do such a thing?

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Why should human want to test their own kind on things

beside their technical skills, because they don’t have faith on

them, the people who have grown up in similar social

environment, and have gone through similar education of the

same civilization of themselves. They would rather believe

the devices which are developed by others who may not

think the same way as they do. Even though the device

developer thinks very much like the average person in this

civilization, it would only mean he follows the rules instructed

by the same social system, and the same knowledge taught

by the same education system, and applied them to the

device to make it work. In this perspective, this device is no

different from the person to be tested who have been

fine-tuned by this same system. Why do we want to use

developed physical device to test the biological being, both of

which are either developed or shaped by the same system. It

is like saying that we would rather have faith on machines

than on people, which is sad. Some people may argue that

physical device is usually more steady than biological being in

their way of behavior. It could be true, or may be wrong,

electronic and digital devices are rather unsteady also, just as

the biological being who are easily influenced by others and

affected by minor things from their surroundings, and

suddenly forget the positive behavior patterns they had

learned before. In this sense, people can’t be tested by

physical devices.

Then should we plan a scheme to test another person

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without using device? That is like saying we don’t trust the

person, so we design a trap for that person to jump in, if he is

smart enough to jump over that trap safely, then he passed

the test, which, however, could only prove he was lucky to

have escaped from the fate of being prey of others, and even

if the person have unfortunately fallen into the trap, there

was no sustainable evidence to approve that he was guilty

either. So any man-made test is unnatural and non-practical.

The artificial thing itself is a hint to the being-tested to make

them behave differently from normal pattern. The true test is

from life itself which can’t be planned. And time is the most

authentic test and the final speaker of anything.

If we can’t wait to get to know somebody, what should we do

then? I suppose if the fate lets the two parties or persons run

into each other, there could be a reason. Firstly, there should

be some indication somewhere that people can detect by

their instincts; secondly, people always have that sense of

telling right from wrong no matter they are considered as bad

people or good people in the society. That’s how the people

are made, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to survive the

infanthood. I guess people can have a very good feeling about

one person after a period of interaction by carefully

examining what he/she is doing in real life. Nevertheless,

there is always possibility that we may miss some important

characters of one person due to our habit of prejudgment, as

people are brought up to see things with colored glasses – all

culture or background of upbringing is tinted with colors. Not

to mention in a environment of constantly exposing to

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mental manipulation through devices, which is a new

phenomenon at our age. So, in some cases, we may misjudge

one person even after long-time of communicating with them.

If we happen to think that this person is not easy to be with,

or have many bad qualifications from the normal point of

view, while being anxious to make a conclusion, the planned

test shouldn’t be considered as the prior choice either,

because the condition of the test is different from that of the

real life, also the test procedure with its silent yet fishy crafty

nature could confuse the being-tested and make the person

act abnormally, also the result could be misleading if the

interpretation was not done in a reasonable manner even the

procedure has been implemented in a sophisticated way.

It seems that people can’t be tested by human themselves.

Just as a thief can’t say that he is a better person than a

robber. He could try to approve that by testing the degree of

the bad behavior they have done to the victim, but only from

the point of view himself, not from view point of the robber,

neither from the view point of the victim. The judgment of

the degree of bad conduct may vary according to the specific

situation known or unknown at that time being, and as time

changes. In another way to put it, the planned testing on

people could be an unwise action, because the tester

themselves, including both the testing people and device

have flaws or defects just as the to-be-tested does.

People who are born in the society, coming along equipped

with all the necessities to live up to the standard of this

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civilized society. Just like what ancient Greek philosopher

Socrates said, people are born knowing all the knowledge in

them, and his role as a teacher is like a mid-wife to bring out

the knowledge from them. So it is not necessary to test them,

they are basically made of the same materials. Why people in

the society performed so differently, because they have run

into different mid-wives and thus come out as babies of

different traits. Thus, we should say that people should be

guided and educated rather than to be tested. If they have

been guided in the right direction according to the standards

valuated by the society, they could become someone we

would trust, if not, that’s when we started to doubt them,

test them and eventually give up on them. If we should just

spare some effort from testing on people for educating and

guiding people, then this society could ended up as being a

much better and desired one.

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Individualism

In some Asian countries, the idea of collectivism is deeply

rooted into people’s life. Most of them probably had never

heard of the concept of Individualism before the second

world war. It was the scholar pioneers studied from western

countries brought back such idea to their nations. To people

who believes Utopia or communism, individualism is the

by-product of capitalism, which is focusing on and put

personal interest beyond communal interest, and could be

the cause of many crimes going on in a country of capitalist,

while, to some westerners, the true individualism could

contribute to personal development in not only material

wealth, but also spiritual growth in their pursuit of realization

of personal values.

Before the new China, we could see that many families lived

in a style of four generations together in a complex of house

with a four- squared courtyard in the center where they could

gather for chatting and having fun. For those people, family is

the base of their life. The elders were responsible for raising

the youngsters, and the adults were supposed to take care of

the kids, as well as support the life of their parents and

grandparents. They all knew, they can’t survive without the

family, the prosperity of the family is the final goal of all their

endeavor for life. There was a popular saying originated from

the end of Qin dynasty: The first thing to do after one made

success in their career is to return to their hometown in

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expensive and gorgeous apparel to glorify their family. The

children would pay their proper filial to their parents, and the

parents would do their best to help establishing their sons in

both their personal life and career. Even though it is a culture

of respecting the seniors, the youngsters and the new

grow-ups were pretty much always the centers of the family.

It’s true that the sons of the crown seemly had never ceded

to fight hard among themselves for their respective interest,

however, in most cases, they felt they were doing so for the

benefit of their dynasty - the royal family , and only the best

one deserved to inherit the throne. If anyone dared to

mention that they were fighting hard to make fame for

themselves or demonstrate their personal values, it would be

very likely to attract verbal attack and sneers from their

superiors or peers or even get expelled from their professions.

It was far from a Utopian society, however, individualism was

the last thing to be accepted in such social model.

It doesn’t mean that people couldn’t pursue some of the

basic personal values in such a society. That’s why there are

Buddhism and Daoism temples and monasteries for some

devoted people to go and learn contemplation on life and can

also return home to practice alone, through which they could

achieve enlightenment in life and integrate the wisdom

learned into their daily practice. They don’t have to count

their life on the after-death, but practice a enlightened life

right away. Maybe there is variation on the concept of

personal value between different cultures.

People from most cultures seemed fond of judging people’s

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success by the amount of material wealth they have gathered,

and fame they had achieved. However, if it was the

main-stream of the culture that decide the attitude of the

public toward that high-profile demonstration of personal

achievement. In ancient time, the most popular way to show

off one’s success was to organize a parade and let people

around know about it and admire the person. A lot of people

only see the glory of the success of people, which is the

superficial side of what was obtained through hard work,

continual personal growth and empowerment, and support

of their family and friends, of course, with some part of luck

also included in it. This type of culture too much focuses on

demonstration of the success itself, but has neglected the

silent part - the cause of the success, and makes many people

feel that fancy parade is all they should care, and if they cling

to the protagonist of that parade, then they already have

made a gigantic step toward success themselves.

Fancy things are like the fireworks, they are beautiful and

attractive, but disappears in a moment of time, while the

hard work and all the preparation to make that success is a

long and arduous journey. Why can’t the main-stream culture

teach people how to make that journey, instead of misleading

the inexperienced people to get superstitious in the

successful people. It was exactly the failure of the culture in

this part that made many people believe in fast and big

success without wanting to make good preparation and great

effort to achieve it. They would try hard in the beginning by

watching the success of their friends or peers which is a

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sort of the encouragement to them, but if they failed, a lot of

them would lose patience, that’s when to make the

difference of people. Some of them would change strategies

and try again, some of them would start to suspect others or

their own ability and give up, and some of them might start

to hate the people and society and go astray from normal

social practices.

We suppose, in a well-mapped modern social model, if

everybody acted to the norms of the society by being

well-behaved, this model should have sufficient capacity to

let everybody making ends meet. That’s why in the tribe of

aboriginal people, they have better sense of happiness since

they have less fight among themselves, because everybody is

only engaged in their own duty, without much need to

compete with their neighbors, or strive to have a high-profile

life. That could be a more harmonious society that keeps

people stay in that preserved zone far off from the

cacophonous modern world. The truth is that as modern

civilization develops with the growth of self-consciousness of

humans, the desire for personal freedom, independence and

social recognition gained a much greater weight in western

culture, the idea of individualism were more and more

accepted by people who were not content with their previous

life, some of whom made it out and became well-known

through all sorts of endeavors. Those pioneers probably

didn’t mean to gain fame at purpose, but accidently became

so, and attracted more people to follow them - This led to an

idol culture. And it was probably the relentless pursuit of

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individualism that caused extreme polarity of wealth, and

destroyed the possible social model of an Utopian society

that could be realized at the achievement of high-level

productivity in manufacture and agriculture, which should

make everybody happy with their material need, however,

instead, made the poor become more poor in reality.

Thus, should we stop the individualism? Then how about the

realization of personal values? Humans are not like animals

which are easily content with the satisfaction of their

appetite. Do we need freedom and independence of life? Do

we need social recognition which is mostly manifested by the

accumulation of material wealth and acquisition of good

reputation? They are not bad things. But I am afraid that the

architecture of this civilization isn’t designed to make those

things as necessities for all people. It’s true though that there

are many people who want to have them, and this caused

tremendous troubles to the society when the want doesn’t

go along with the need of others. Nobody is destined to have

fame or have fortunes. The society is only designed to satisfy

the needs of the people in order to get this civilization going

on. When people who are not in the position to get what

they want, however, try hard to obtain it, it would make

other ones suffer damage and loss.

Should we just leave ourselves to the arrangement of our fate?

First, we need to answer this question: Is the fate fixed for

anyone? Absolutely not! In antique time, the life is

progressing in a much slower pace and made the fortune

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teller gained their market, because those experienced people

could learn some patterns about human life and make some

reasonable prediction about other’s future. However, in now

days, the life pace is so much faster while people and things

become so unpredictable, if the fortune teller’s role is still

necessary, that’s for its provision of psychological incentive to

the clients, but less of its function of true foresight. We

currently live in the every moment of presence, which is

unstable, Nevertheless, also provides the opportunities to

change our fate. If people have already achieved the basic

security of their life, they sure can strive to obtain a higher

status in the society. However, just as the ancient Asian

philosopher Confucius said: The gentlemen may have fortune,

if acquired in a legitimate way. Which means people should

follow the rules and stick to the basic values of the society to

obtain those things. While the first point to be emphasized is

that you shouldn’t do things to other people that you don’t

want others to do to you. This value is coherent with the

principle of equality of people, which is stressed in all

democratic and republic countries. If people don’t follow

rules and let themselves go their own ways beyond the

tolerance of the society, or more and more people are

engaged in this kind of practice, then a chaotic situation

would inevitably occur in this society. In a world under the

surveillance and control of advanced technology of

informatics, anything happened would so easily get exposed

to the public, and it would immediately bound the

perpetrator of crimes or demeaning conducts to take their

responsibility. Eventually, this could make all parties of the

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society become losers.

No doubt, it is very important to stick to the basic values on

which the civilization is built upon, and from which the rules

are derived. The nature goes in the same pattern. Each

species has their own assigned territory and their own status

in the food chain of the animal kingdom. The sheep and

buffalo only eat grass, while the carnivals such as wolf and

tigers eat meat. If some sheep get ambitious, and want to

hunt the rabbit for food, then the wolf would suffer in their

food. Both the tigers and loins are strong and intimidating

mammals. They could have a real good fight if they stay in the

same territory, that’s why the nature nominates the tiger as

the king of the jungle or mountain, while the lion as the king

of the prairie, and let them “govern” different territories. In

the human society, people are born with different gifts. Some

of them may be very good at doing one particular thing,

some of them can be trained to do well in different things

and could only succeed in the area where they are allowed to

and the destiny leads them to, and some of them are made to

only be able to possess one unique skill. This doesn’t mean

they can only work in one domain, as many domains require

the similar qualifications. However, it tells us we don’t need

to be jealous of others, since each person has their own

stroke for survival. It would be much more beneficial if we

just spend the wasted time to find out what we are really

good at and shine our tools other than ruin others. It is also

not wise to compete with other’s advantage by deploying our

short side.

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From time to time, the competition could get really nasty

either in animal kingdom or in human society. No matter how

hard you try, and also the society maybe have functioned to

its best possible, it still seems that majority people can hardly

get on their way to achieve the personal values such as

gaining fame and accumulating wealth, etc al. It could be a

very frustrating situation. In such circumstance, we may still

find that in some places, people do better and have higher

factor of happiness than those of other places if the former

don’t take those personal values mentioned above so

seriously as the latter. Maybe, personal value can also be

manifested in other ways. In western culture, they build the

magnificent cathedral which is tall and grand, standing by

itself in absolute solitude, so that worshipers feel awe of the

divine power and immediately realize that they are sinners

and inferior to the God and need to be forgiven. Those

believers think that they are doing all the things in their life to

make themselves look good, in order to honor the God for

redeeming their inborn sins. There are seemingly less

devoted Christian disciples now, however, this idea generated

from belief in religion still has its influence today, even

though some people don’t know exactly that they doing it for

God, but everybody knows that they want to look good, and

they need wealth, originally, so that they can make donations

to church or charity, to serve the God, though some of them

don’t do this part at all in now days. That’s why the word of

Philanthropist came out in western culture. Ancient Asian

people also make donation, as a way of doing good deeds for

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gaining social credits, sometimes with a wish of return of the

personal favor.

We suppose compassionate God will definitely not punish

their believers if they can’t present a good worship materially

due to the hardship of bad times and he would rather let

their believers live a happier life than to fight hard to obtain

those material things. En-powering yourself, enhancing your

inner strength to resist the temptation of evil and selfish

conduct, respecting others, helping the needy, and doing the

good deeds with sincerity could also count as pursuit or

achievement of personal values, and the true individualism is

the manifested by the maturity of the personality and

personal responsibility for the communal society and can

only be achieved when their values are accepted by the

others and recognized by the society. As mentioned above,

fame is just like firework, shines and dies in intervals of

moments, and it is only the apparel of the achievement, but

not the nature of achieved personal values, while the good

deeds which have true positive impact on the society would

be memorized for ever.

One can’t achieve real individualism without the background

of the community, and the community can’t do well without

the support of the individuals. The two are not in conflict but

need to learn to cope with each other, so that both can end

well and can get through difficult times and come out strong.

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On

Integrity

The original meaning of Integrity means the state of being

wholeness and complete. If that’s the case, it seems that, in

this world, the lower position in the food chain of the

ecological system, the better integrity of the life they would

have.

By looking at a geographic map, we will learn that the most

territory of the earth is covered by water, then the plant of

prairie and mountains with/or without forests, then the

habitation zone of the humans. It is obvious that plant is at

the bottom level of the food chains and constitutes of the

majority population of earth life. Various levels of

meat-eating animals feed on the plant-eating animals or

other carnivals, and humans is on the top level of the

food-chain chart, who mostly rely on meat for their

nutrition which is supplemented by grains and vegetables.

Some people may argue that there are more and more

vegetarians showing up in now days, and it would make that

statement off a bit. It is true that many people started to

realize the negative impact that the high-protein and highcalorie

food such as meat has caused upon our health and

tried to engage in a more healthy life-style of diet. However,

we still can’t ignore the fact that the meat contains most

nutrients including the much-needed amino acids and

minerals that the human body relies on for the regular

metabolism activities. And our first ancestors and some latest

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primitive people still depend on hunting the fouls for their

main food.

No doubt, the plant is a very much different type of life from

human. We know that there some plants that propagate

through self-pollination, which means that a single plant can

produce its own fruit and reproduce the off-springs through

the seed of the fruit without needing a “mate”. And we can

also make a tree twig growing into a complete new plant

through proper fertilization and cultivation. However, those

are totally impossible things for humans. Just as one single

person can’t give birth to a baby, we can’t cut off the arm of a

human and make it to grow into another person. To make a

baby, people first have to match a woman with man, then

make them to have intercourse at the right time of ovulation,

in order for that meeting of the sperm and ovum to happen,

which is the integration of the power of Ying and Yang of the

life. It indicates that plant still remains that integrity of a

whole life in itself, while animals, especially mammals have

lost their integrity of life, and in order to propagate, they

have to find out the lost part of their original life and become

one whole unit and be able to reproduce their off-springs

again.

Most plants don’t savage on other lives, but produce their

own nutrition by utilizing the carbon dioxide from the air,

water, and sunlight, as well as necessary minerals. They do

their due diligent day and night, silently and down to earth.

They may compete for sun and water sometimes, by

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stretching out their branches longer or roots deeper, but not

by biting or cutting into each other. They are the ones who

have the true and eternal integrity. No one can eliminate

them on earth without deliberate sabotage by employing

destructive weapons or devices. Of course, they are also

leading a much simpler life than that of humans. The

plant-eating animals rely their life on grass or variety types of

plants, at the same time being preys of meat-eating animals,

the later of which could also be the source of food for other

carnivals themselves. Originally, the lower position of the

animals in the food chain chart, the larger population it

would be. This could make the primary humans theoretically

have no problem to get sufficient food. However, there were

always bad times when they couldn’t have enough to get by,

especially as human population grew bigger, and it means

that humans had owed too much to this ecological system

and jeopardized its integrity.

However, that was how this species is made - they had stood

up, and learned to utilize many weapons, hence, was able to

avoid being the victims of other savages most of time. And

they are destined to be the master of the kingdom of all lives

on earth. Nevertheless, If they don’t want to continue to be

indebted to the life chain circle, they’ve got to do something,

otherwise, they would starve and make themselves weaker.

That was why human began to grow their own crops and

started their own animal farming, which alleviated the stress

of this food situation while to some degree have contributed

to the ecological system by raising other species or helping

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the growth of the plants through the recycling wastes of

human and farming animals, however, the source of nutrition

for greens. In this way, human came to build a civilized

society and separated themselves from the wild world in a

long way of relentless trials.

Nobody would object to the idea that human is the most

complicated and sophisticated life style on earth. They are

also the most differentiated life being. When the

impregnation is completed in the female body, the germ cell

recovered its full life and started to grow into an embryo with

each cell remaining the same vitality at the beginning stage -

if the germ cell splits into two cells and gets completely

separated from each other, each of which would grow into

an individual life - explaining the birth of twins, until the cells

begin to differentiate and grow into different types of cells

and then gradually completes the process of producing the

organs of the human body, also with the sex organs coming

into being at its late stage. Most mammals follow the same

course of pregnancy and development stage inside the womb

of the female, and come out with the babies of different

sexes – the male and female, and resultantly would lose part

of its integrity of life compared with that of plants.

Being highly differentiated is not always a bad thing. It has its

advantages, that is to make each differentiated cells and

organs to do its job in a more effective and efficient way.

However, those cells can never recover its full vitality, and

can’t grow into a complete life again. And they tend to have

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lower stability and more difficulties in its self-recovery

process once got damaged. Animals evolved into the duo-sex

biological status, probably for the adaptation to the

environment and for the match of their life style. Since nature

created the plants by utilizing the energy of sunlight and

available water and other sources, and made it crowd this

planet, then it has to create something else to limit it, and

the animals with the active life style could be a good option,

so that everything could remain balanced and can go on for

long term.

The two sexes of animals are not only distinguished by its sex

organs, but by its different capacities and characters. Even

though neither sex is capable of reproducing off-springs

themselves, they are perfect together to adapt to the

environment, to modify the plant life circle and make the life

chain cycle going on smoothly in this ecological system on

earth. Males, especially for mammals, are usually stronger

and responsible for hunting the food and protecting the

babies as well as the pregnant females, while the females are

responsible for raising the babies, because the environment

can be much more dangerous for the vulnerable ones in

animal kingdom than that of the plants, since there are

numerous predators lurking out there any time to prey on

them. After humans have built a civilized world, their

behaviors are apparently more humanized in all ways of their

life, however, the competition continues and slowly changed

from physical fighting with iron weapons to mechanical

weapons, and then to electrical and electronic and nuclear

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weapons. With game rules of honest declaration of wars and

fighting in defined battle fields, to be replaced by the upfront

diplomatic interaction backing up by secret dirty tricks and

extremely sophisticated maneuver of new strategies

equipped with various dedicated devices. That demonstrates

that humans have evolved into a highly complicated life being,

as its language evolves to help the development of their

thinking while vice versa, and have created a very advanced

modern civilization, with a much developed hierarchy of

social structure, and many differentiated domains which

require very different qualifications and skills from

candidates.

The employment of the advanced machineries further

stimulated the differentiation of their brain functions. There

are so many things that each person has to learn and

memorize in each domain, and they are pushed to get into

the job market after the regulated years of education in their

concentration of study due to the financial stress. A maybetalent

in their own domain, however, an almost-illiterate in

other areas, they are trained to be the wheels and gadgets of

this giant machine of modern civilization, which is built on

ancient civilization, however, floated up into the air due to its

unprecedented fast advancement in late years, and got lost

with its original roots. To this point, humans have lost most

part of its integrity, when honesty lost its market, and

scandals invaded in all territories, trustworthiness of

institutions in the society almost dropped to the lowest level

in history. Human’s biological disadvantage has come to its

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complete manifestation by this specialization of areas and led

to the disastrous dis-integrity. Nobody cares about the overall

result, It is all about doing jobs and getting involved in a game

of fighting and defeating, not just for winning, because after

defeating the adversaries, the winning is for sure to come,

even though, it is a sad and bleak victory at end.

This civilization was built by men and women in their

respective ways and is also printed with the signature of sex

on it. And all these, including the above-mentioned, make the

humans going far off from the integrity of a decent life. In

order to raising the kids and taking care of the families, most

females stayed at home during the course the development

of civilization until late last century, and made males

becoming the dominant role of the society. And it seems to

be the human nature that they normally won’t let things go

as long as they have possessed them, especially the things

like wealth, authority and political power. In a male-dominant

society, man has the absolute authority in many things, and

made them believe that they have grasped the true power of

this civilization. When men get superstitious in the authority

they have in hand, they tend to sneer at the rules valued by

the civilization and stressed by the society. By looking

through the history of all nations, it was not difficult to find

out that men has much higher criminal records than that of

women. It is true that in antique times, the men who were

engaged in much more active social life had higher risk to

expose to a suspicious situation of crimes. However, in

modern world, women in many countries were just as active

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as men in most of domains. This record still sustains. Maybe

it explains that men are inclined to be less stable and more

likely to lose their integrity than women. Of course, there are

always exceptions in any thing.

If we view any created civilization as a vital life, and if the

male dominates the society even under the condition that

both sexes have gone through the same education and both

have to work to support their own life, it means the life of

this civilization has suffered in its integrity, and it would

inevitably lead to a phenomenon of social dishonesty and

manipulation, which is exactly what is going on in current

world. Before the electronic revolution of industry of last

century, women weren’t able to work in many domains due

to the relative lower physical capacity and the

under-development of social system to provide necessary

family care services, and made man to become the

dominating force in the society. However, it doesn’t mean

that, in current time, women have to fight bitterly for each

position with men, in order to get back what they have

suffered before? It doesn’t have to be that case. No matter

what, women are still different from men, and are equipped

with somewhat different types of aptitudes. Women don’t

have to be the president or primary minister in order to gain

equal power as men, neither shouldn’t they do so never. It is

really depends on the cultural and historical background of

that particular nation. However, the final power of the

women should be equal with that of men in this new age, so

that this society would be more stable and function in a

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better way. It has to be made clear that power is not

necessary the same thing as authority. An official position

would give a person the authority, but not necessarily the

true power. Authority could lead to the power, but bad

authority could also jeopardize the power. Power could be

manifested in many ways of the society. When the proper

right of the women is respected by the society, and when the

women don’t feel the violence against them is a issue again,

and when a job position is considered for a women in a same

way as it is granted to the men, etc al, the power of women

has gained its weight. This world is in a status of constant

interplay of two opposite power with one party growing

stronger while the other party become weaker, and they

could get to one point that both powers match with each

other.

Thus, it means that it is time that men should listen more to

women. It is a fact not to be contended, that well-educated

women tend to be calmer and act in a more righteous way,

instead of fighting for personal or group interest, than men in

urgent or important issues. Women are born to give birth and

raise the off-springs, and are more likely to care about the

fate of human race and the whole community than men

whose original role is to donate(the sperm) and protect(both

the baby and women), through which they find their dignity

which can’t be challenged by other males, and could fail their

role when challenged by women. It has been the case for

over two thousands of years in some cultures. Genetically,

women possess two sex-chromosomes XX, while men possess

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only one X-chromosome, with Y-chromosome, losing a

fragment of it compared with the X-chromosome, which

could contribute to the less stability of men in some

circumstances from biological perspective, however, itself

also provides the base for the male unique characteristics

that works to the advantage for the propagation of human

species, though exhibition of strength and explorative

character in their job of protecting and expanding of the

territories.

In a modern society with advanced technologies and

information at reach of fingers’ distance, women can pretty

much handle most of the things just as well as men do.

Maybe it is time for men to give up its long-held arrogance

and sense of superiority and to talk to woman with soul to

soul. Not all women want to fight for the highest position in

their domain of career, however, the woman should be given

sufficient respect whether as a person or as a colleague in

their profession. If the women have truly been treated as an

equal partner in the society, then the society would have

showed great progress in this power-matching and

re-integration game, this social integration of male and

female power, if well done, would produce great impact upon

the society, just as the proper biological integration of male

and female germ cells recovered the integrity of the life and

comes out enormous power to create a new life. It would

enhanced the integrity of the society as a whole, bring back

the vitality of the ancient wisdom and revive the current

cultural and social life, which could truly works to the benefit

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of the human world and is inevitable for a society of

advanced civilization.

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On

Conditions

Things exist under conditions, just as they happen in certain

condition. The state of matter could change from solid to

liquid, and then to gas, as condition of temperature changes.

For example, under the normal air pressure, the water can

only stay as water if the temperature maintains between 0 to

100 degree centigrade. If the temperature goes above 100

degree, the water would disappear and become the vapor; if

it goes below 0 degree, then the solid ice would replace the

water. The movement of the object will also change as the

applied force on it changes with its strength and direction.

Things in physical world are like this, in biological world, as

well as in world of creation by human such as the civilized

world, they also follow the same rule of condition.

On earth, many things have happened and become bygone as

the condition of the environment changes, and it’s got to

have the proper condition met before anything good to take

place. Perhaps, not so many people have put a thought into

the fact that most of the aboriginal people in the continent of

America still lived at the stage of tribal life when Columbus

accidently found this place in year 1492 while searching for a

new route going to Asia, and Australia remained pretty much

a same status as that of North America by then, when the

nations in Asian, European and north African countries had

developed much higher civilized societies. Maybe it was the

heaven who blessed these combined continents, before the

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navigation skills matured enough to find the new continents,

with the highest mountain of Himalaya erected by the south

side of Asia, one of the largest mountain range of Kunlun and

Qin Ling crossing the middle part of China from west to east

side, the famous Alps mountain located at south side of

Europe, crossing Italy, France, Austria, and Switzerland, as

well as other well-known mountains near this region, to

connect the heaven with the earthly beings. The habitants on

these continents could eventually find ways to communicate

and trade with each other and exchange the fruits of their

scientific discoveries, the products of their finest work, and

wealth they produced and extracted from earth. The most

important thing is that the very popular beliefs including the

religious beliefs are born and developed in those lands. And

those religions and spiritual beliefs united their followers and

created stronger civilizations which are less vulnerable to

either internal riots or external threats. As the common will

and amalgamated power and wisdom of humans made them

able to conquer many of the devastating natural disasters and

overcome the greatest social turmoil, and eventually to

revive again.

Why are the mountains so important? One main reason is

that many rivers inside the continent are originated from the

high mountains which are covered with snow on the top

through the year. The melted water of snow as well as the

water comes out of the mountain side due to the water

pressure from the underground of earth become the source

of the river, and irrigates the soil along the way it runs

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through. The rich soil with proper irrigation made the

agriculture possible, while the agriculture made a stable lifestyle

possible and propelled the development of economy,

which laid the foundation for the creation of a prosperous

civilization. If we look upon all the oldest and greatest

civilizations in human history, we would found out that they

were very likely developed by the long and grand rivers.

While in America, they have big mountain ranges also, mostly

gathered at the west side of the continent, such as Cascade

range, the Rocky Mountains, the Coast Pacific Range and the

Alaska Range, with the Appalachian Range located by the east

side, and do have led to some streams coming along the land.

As the same rule of condition plays, on the regions of the

Mississippi River, the biggest river of the country, there had

appeared a prominent civilization formed by several tribes

based on agriculture and hunting. However, unlike the Asian,

European and some African countries, no empire has ever

been built in North America. They had spiritual beliefs also,

but only enacted a small scale of influence upon people

limited within one or a few tribes, which were almost without

written script, nor the formal doctrine, nor the

well-established system of rules to practice it, and had never

evolved into a influential religion to all the people in this

territory. That means, there was no main-stream culture

established, and there was nothing that could get them into

alliance or become a unified and stronger nation which

would make it possible to evolve into a more prosperous and

advanced civilization so that they could better defend

themselves and have a richer or more diversified life style. In

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this sense, to have a strong belief is something fundamental

to the development of civilization, or in another way to put it,

the development of civilization is based on spiritual belief as

the condition. The constant moving around and fighting for

tribal interest made both the spiritual accumulation and

practice of religion much more difficult, and made the

heritage from their ancestors easily get dismissed. Maybe it

explains why most of the aboriginal people in North America

had to rely on hunting as their main food source, and led a

nomadic life style due to change of weather and availability

of food. Thousands of year have passed, the aboriginal

people are no doubt just as smart and wise as the people on

the other side of this globe, but they could never evolve into

a bigger scale of civilization before they were discovered by

the European explorers. The isolation from other

continents which made them unable to share the fruits of

civilization developed by other cultures, as well as the lack of

incentive to strive for a more rigid style of civilization due the

sufficient food supplies and easy game hunting in a

geographic condition of most prairies and vast highlands in

the middle area of this continent very possibly caused this

situation. That demonstrates the importance of the

conditions, while the necessary physical environment and

strong spiritual belief are two conditions for a sound

civilization.

People like to say that everything happens for a reason,

which only said part of the truth. Things take place, firstly, if

they are needed, or are the inevitable outcomes of

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something related, which explains the “reason” part, and

secondly, only if some condition has been satisfied. If there

were no water on earth, there would never have life

originated from this planet; if human didn’t discover the

technique to make fire, they would just eat like savages, and

would have no way gotten out of the condition of wild life; if

the paper hadn’t been invented in Ancient China, the

literature and exchange of cultures would have suffered

greatly in its course of development, and it wouldn’t be

possible for the Tang monk to go to India to learn and copy

the Buddhism scripts and take them back to China; if Watt

had never invented the steam engine, the industry revolution

in Europe wouldn’t be possible; if Edison hadn’t invented the

electricity, all the modern civilization would only be a illusion.

For anything to happen, there must be a premise, and

premise is the basic condition supplemented by other

auxiliary factors to make the possibility come true.

Human itself also exists under certain conditions, whether as

an individual or as a group. Humans came into being, only

when the climate on earth has gotten friendly to mammal’s

life, and there had been sufficient food supply from nature

when human being was still in its cradle stage of evolution.

As human grew up and matured to an adult, which should be

its current status that humans can now produce its own food

and all the necessities for their life, and even make the luxury

goods to upgrade their material life to a higher lever. Also

they have started journeys to search for more opportunities

and freedom in the universe, just as an adult person has

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gained his independence financially, he would started to look

for more personal freedom. Still, they are living in conditions.

First, the modern human being must live in a society

equipped with the public facilities and services, as well as

backed up with the source of life supplies, in order to sustain

its life, no humanly person can live in a wild jungle alone for

long without weapon or device. The source of supplies could

either from nature or human production. Second, human

must learn the necessary skills and/or acquire the mandatory

qualifications of the society, as means to support their life

and fit into the society. Third, human lives in a unique social

environment which requires them to build their own network

of people, in order to develop their career and expand their

horizon of social life. This social environment could be quite

different according to the cultures. Fourth, modern human

lives in a fast-pace of life style, and rapid changing conditions

of social, economic and political environment.

In ancient time, when the medical condition was not as good,

and the women were not well guided during their pregnancy,

the fatality rate of birth were very high, so the baby had to be

lucky in order to survive its infanthood. When they grew to a

certain age, the wealthy family would send their kids to

private school opened by learned scholars as prevailed in

ancient China and/or church school as in western countries,

or hire private teacher at home, in order for them to have a

good career or better life in the future. The ordinary family

would also do so if they could afford it. During the Han

dynasty of ancient China, a great Confucian scholar Dong

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Zhongshu helped to establish the Confucianism as the

number one teaching of the nation by replacing the Daoism.

It happened under the condition that China had been united

in Qin dynasty when the Emperor banned pretty much all

schools of learning developed during the Spring and Autumn

period, as well as the Warring states period, then, after a

short reign of 15 years by Qin, was taken over by the Han

dynasty which favored the Daoism at the beginning, and

gradually built a stable and strong country, making it

necessary to promote a national teaching suitable for the

current political and economical situation. While

Confucianism came into being during the Spring and Autumn,

and warring states periods, and was created by Confucius

who tried to revive the legacy of Zhou dynasty, when facing

the decadency of the morals and desolate situation of the

constant conflicts among all the states. Hence, the once

disappointed Confucius who has been dead for hundreds of

years until then, should finally feel content to be able to

make his preaching officially accepted by the court and to

prevail.

Since then, all the school education followed the system of

Confucianism, such as four books and five classics. In ancient

Europe, the religion had been playing a key role in society,

especially after the establishment of Christianity. Church was

a very important part of life to almost all people, and

provided many sorts of services to their believers including

the church schools. No doubt, the moral teaching is closely

connected to the preaching of religion. Many westerns think

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that Confucianism is also a kind of religion, the four books

and five classics to disciples of Confucianism are just like the

bible for Christians, bounding the people to behave the way

as being preached by Confucius and his followers. Those

books did mention the issues of worshiping spirits and

ancestors, and mourning for the dead family members, but

only as a ritual to show the respect to their ancestors, which

belongs to the part of filial piety and social etiquette

advocated by this school of learning. Along with other related

teachings, its purpose is to make people learn to behave in a

proper manner in the human society. However, there are

many of the things are aimed to teach students the history of

past times, the wisdom of ancient saints, the correct

understanding of social and historical events, as well as how

to appreciate ancient poems and music, how to deal with

personal development and social relationship, and how to

deal with issues between a political career and moral

standards in their life. All those things are derived from life

stories and talk of ancient or late kings, saints, as well as

ordinary wise people, and are meant to make the students to

learn by heart and could extend to other issues by learning

one thing. Confucius is not only a great philosopher, but also

a very good teacher.

Confucianism, together with its new versions from later

dynasties, as the orthodox school of teaching in China,

dominated this country for almost two thousands years. It

has never been taken as a religion by Chinese, because they

don’t practice it in temples as Buddhism and Muslim do, or in

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churches as Christians do, however, it penetrated into the life

of every person, and all aspects of the society. Why is that?

The deciding factor would resort to the economic situation of

Ancient China. As having been mentioned earlier in this

chapter, that ancient China developed an agricultural

civilization based on its mountainous geographic condition

which is also rich with fresh-water source. It was exactly this

type of economy became the reason to develop a

power-centered government, that is the royal family with the

emperor who was supposed to be the son of heaven, and

functioned as the mundane representative of the heaven,

while heaven was the most important thing for Chinese

people, on which they depended on the good harvest of

crops, and they had to learn to live in harmony with heaven,

otherwise, they could starve due to the consequences caused

by bad weather, accordingly, they had to be a loyal and

obedient citizen to the emperor. The Emperor was bestowed

all the land of the country by the heaven. He had all the

decreed power he needed to distribute the land to whoever

he wants to and possessed the highest and undisputable

authority to deploy anybody he intended to put at his service

inside the nation, as well as supposedly make any necessary

policies he decided to, which is a very important thing for the

development of agricultural economy, and it indeed achieved

great success during the feudal stage in China, however,

under the sacrifice of democracy. We would say that this

school of teaching created a very good social condition for

this type of economy to prosper rather than being the

opposite. While this type of economy became the reason for

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this Confucianism teaching to prevail, which had taken quite

some stuff from the traditional culture originated from Zhou

dynasty, including Yi Ching. This book illustrated the principle

and relationship of Ying and Yang power, as well as how to

follow the way of heaven in order to avoid troubles and live a

easier life. It tells great wisdom in dialectic way of thinking

and living, and is a book of simple philosophy, even though

many people had bragged it as the bible for fortune tellers

and could help to tell the fortunes for people in a magic way,

which, however, is not the case. It is just so easy to

understand now that why Confucianism gained its position

not to be replaced among all schools of teachings in ancient

China. It helped the court to establish a system of hierarchy

under the call of heaven, and made the emperor as the

legitimate ruler of the kingdom under the name of son of

heaven. It seems, to some people, as if Confucianism was just

like a religion, since “heaven” is a concept that means things

of supernatural, which, in many myths, is true, however, is

not so when you view it as a term for this profound school of

philosophy, where heaven means the way or the law of

universe.

Isles or peninsula by the ocean could also develop great

civilization based on commerce and shipping industry due to

its oceanic condition. The ancient Greek civilization was just

such a brilliant example. The geographic condition of oceanic

environment shapes people in a different way from that of

inland agricultural one does. Chinese people are usually more

introspective, quieter, more flexible, more modest and

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relation - oriented, while they are also hardworking and

intelligent, and could get schematic sometimes, with

tendency to live in harmony with the nature and other

people. The indigenous culture takes it as the highest life goal

to obtain unity with nature. Europeans including English

people tend to be mingled people, even though the ancient

Greek people and Italian people lived by the ocean, and

should have different culture style from that of inland French

and Germans, but, they were the ones who laid the

foundation for the west European culture, and spread it to

many other European countries through royal marriages,

businesses, deployment of jobs, and religions. Rome has

been the center of Catholic churches all the time and the

Pope had once been the spiritual ruler of all Christian

countries of Catholic churches. This explains why the ocean

culture dominated most European nations. Those people are

more open-minded, adventurous, high-spirited and brave,

physical strong and self-confident, business-oriented, and

could be crafty sometimes. They take conquering the nature

as the enjoyment of life. Thus, the characters of people were

shaped by the geographic conditions.

There are people who may ask why Koreans who lived in a

peninsula and Japanese who lived in islands seem to share

some inland characters of Chinese people. This looks like a bit

different scenario here, only if we refuse to accept the great

influence of ancient Chinese culture to many Asian countries.

Ancient Japanese and Koreans had great cultural, commercial

and political interaction with China and had paid tribute to

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this country, while taking back the gifts, traded goods and

learned crafts to their own countries, especially during the

Tang dynasty, and there were many Chinese people who

immigrated to the island of Japan and peninsula of Korea

during the war periods, including the civilians who tried to

avoid the war and the defeated officials or generals who

didn’t want to surrender, and who brought influence to the

local people while trying to integrate themselves into the

local culture. So those countries are usually under the

influence of both their geographic condition and the

prevailing culture of their neighbors. The powerful influence

of other cultures become another condition for them, and

this situation happened again after Western countries

extended their business to Asian countries, and brought

further influence to Japan and made people of this country,

who are more open to new things than ancient inland

Chinese people, to feature some unique characters of

themselves.

Different geographic condition and historical background

made people of different characters. It was fine before

they’ve become discontented with their current life and/or

wanted to extend their arms to other territories by other

different reasons. When that happens, there could be issues

of confrontation between different cultures. The different

characters tend to lead people to think and do things

differently. As above-mentioned, occidental people and

oriental people have quite some characters against each

other. Many Asian people value the unity with nature, while

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westerns enjoy conquering the nature, which is the main one

that leads to other differences. For example, there was an

ancient Chinese story talking about a natural disaster of

flooding, in which story, the people started to pray to the

river god, by paying sacrifices of animals or humans to him

and begging to stop the flooding, then a hero came out to

deal with the flooding by building the canals to contain the

water. However, in western culture, the things would be dealt

with in a quite different way. Perseus is a famous hero in

ancient Greek mythology, who had killed the villainous

Medusa whose stare could make people instantly become a

stone and whose hair is made of numerous poisonous snakes,

a figure apparently represented as the vicious power of

nature, and saved the beautiful Andromeda, the princess of

Ethiopia, by killing the water monster sent by the god of the

sea who had applied cruelty to innocent humans. Andromeda

was contributed as a human sacrifice also in this story,

however, this hero choose to fight with the evils and showed

great bravery and strength in his battle with violent force of

nature, and had won his victory, which also showed the

distinct characters of people who created him. Both stories

have its base of the reality from their culture, however, did

tell a quite different approach in their dealing with nature.

Asian people want to get along with nature, have benefited

from the harvest under the blessing of nature before, so

paying sacrifice of animals is a very normal practice in this

culture by showing their gratitude to the benefactor, while

always chose to settle things with others first even facing the

true difficult situations. Western people would try to

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eliminate whatever force of the nature in their way, in order

to get what they desire. Neither was wrong, when we look at

the issues in each of their own boat. The problem is how to

bring the two at one table and make them talk effectively to

come out one solution working for both sides, which seems

to be an urgent issue in a world of global village. They can’t

just close the door to one another for ever.

Once characters have been created in their episodes, it seems

there is not much you can do to change the show. However, if

the show can’t go on due to the improper characters, maybe

the latter should be fixed. In physics, the state of matter will

change as condition of air pressure or temperature changes.

In society, if social and economic pressure increases, people

are more likely to change their behavior, and if the national

and international issues heat up, the policies are likely to

make changes also. These are the automatic adjustment

triggered by the system to make the game going on. However,

if those adjustments still fail us, due to the overall failure of

the system. The issues could be much more severe. Then

something has to be done to create the right condition for

the seemingly more and more urgent task by using whatever

available sources and all possible efforts, to make the

necessary change for our society so that things would work

out for all. The globalization has become an inevitable reality

and made the earth people practically become one unity. We

all live in conditions, and people need a condition to fit into

this globalization, which makes it just rational for some

greater condition functioning above the smaller ones, as has

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already been demonstrated in the human history. This

condition can be created by people if it hasn’t come out itself,

and human can do it if they put minds into it.

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On

Relationship

People have to deal with all kinds of relationship in their life.

The most primary one is the relationship with the universe,

then with the human society and with community, further

with family and partners, as well as with colleagues and

friends.

Westerners tend to believe in God. Those believers think

everything was created by God who is supposed to be

omnipotent and omnipresent, and functions as the number

one representative of the Universe. The relationship

established with God just means the relationship with the

universe. They pray to God for everything, for blessing of

future, for forgiven of sins; for the ones alive and also for the

ones dead. The God listens to it and more or less will give

some response, only those response may not always be

noticeable to human’s eyes, or comprehensible to the

human’s mind. So Christians especially emphasize the

importance of faith on their belief. Whether you understand

it or not, you’ve got to hang on to your belief. Believe in your

creator, have faith on him, and leave things to the

arrangement of God. Some people may think that Ancient

people was doing this, because they were not well-learned,

and lack of knowledge of science and technologies, so they

need asking for the protection of God. That isn’t the case,

neither means that modern people have no reason to

practice it again. It is a wonderful thing to have faith on

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something that has undergone the true test of time, and

approved by witness of people. The witness isn’t necessarily

pointing to the wonders executed by Jesus Chris, but that

feelings of transcending the mundane life and becoming rest

assured with everything as you know that there is always

someone there ready to take care of you as long as you

believe in him. In that sense, this belief is the source of

happiness, so if you have good relationship with God, you are

near the happiness.

For Ancient Chinese people, they worship both heaven and

earth. The earth is the cradle that raised them, providing the

food and shelter to make them survive, but in order to have

reliable life, they realized that they need have someone to

guide them through the difficult times, since earth is below

the heaven, and thus is under the governess of heaven. The

“sky” is the more concrete concept that is sometimes used to

replace the word of “heaven”, where people see the sun, the

moon and stars, which tell them when they should get up to

work, when they could quit work and go back to rest, when

they should start to plant the crops, and when to harvest. The

movement of the sun and moon in the sky( ancient people

think that it was the sun and the moon going back and forth

in the sky, instead of the self-spin of the earth that caused the

alternation of day and night), gives them the sense of time

each day, and the change of position of the constellation of

starts in the sky tells them the seasons. Thus, the idea of

heaven, a more philosophical term, came into various schools

of learning and was used to indicate the law of the universe ,

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final wisdom of the world, and the most superior power to all

beings, long before the birth of Christ.

The heaven not only tells the Dao, the law of the universe or

the way of life, stressed by both Confucianism and Daoism,

but also represents as a superior being, though it was a

person without figure due to various reasons. Just like

westerners often like to cry out “oh, my god!”, Chinese

people like to say: ”Oh, my heaven!” The heaven is everything

to them, the protector, the holder of justice, the true reign,

the one who decides their destiny. However, there was no

temple built for worshipping the heaven, it was more of

belief in their heart. Since the ruler of the nation is the son of

the heaven, it was just reasonable for them to transfer all

their loyalty to and faith upon the emperor and the regime of

the royal family. And a interesting thing is that ancient

Chinese people who were mostly constitute of farmers were

very practical people, realized that the emperor- the son of

heaven was so far from their reach, they started to create

some small gods with figures, so that they could worship

them in temples, or at their home on daily base. Such as the

god of earth, god of fortune, god of family, god of longevity,

and god of agriculture etc al. These things are derived from

traditional Chinese culture and beliefs, mainly practiced by

the non-scholar types, as they were not the things

emphasized by the Confucianism teachings which had

dominated ancient Chinese ideology for all the feudal

dynasties.

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All these things brought hope to people’s life, and created a

rich and diversified life style, which is the manifestation of

wonderful imagination and creativity of ancient people, and

laid the foundation for modern civilization. Now days, people

don’t create gods as reason to have relationship or do things,

but do so by creating a lot of new holidays and other things,

such as Mother’s day, Valentine Day, and Environment Day

etc al. More or less, they share some similarity, and express

the desire of people to built relationship with other things in

the universe and society, in order to make their life more

meaningful.

Since Christianity has played a very important part in western

culture, the believers are taught to love the Father in the

heaven, then love their brothers and sisters in this religious

community. The Father in the heaven is the center of their life,

and they are all equal before him, and this probably lead to

the of idea of equality of people in western society, especially

among protestant believers, and demonstrated why this

principle was so much earlier established in western politics

than in that of eastern nations. The way of religion practice

also made the western society become the type with the

community as the center of people, instead with the family as

the center of people as what Asian people do. Everybody is

supposed to show their support to their own community, by

making donation or doing volunteer work.

In ancient China, the center of the society was the emperor. A

very rigid social hierarchy system was established to

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demonstrate their relationship. The emperor, as the son of

heaven, had the unchallenged highest authority in this nation,

and was placed at the first position of this system. After that,

came different ranks of officials, then the landlords and

gentry class people, then the ordinary people and peasants.

Since ancient China was an agricultural country, which

favored the agriculture more than the trades, so the

merchandiser didn’t gain much social recognition by then.

The true talented scholars whether arose from wealthy and

powerful family, or from poor family were both respected by

people and the court, especially after the imperial

examination was established since Sui dynasty. While inside

the family, there was another structure to indicate their

relationship– we call it the feudal propriety system, which put

the father of the family in the center position, and the wife in

a subordinate position to the husband, then the sons,

daughters and daughter-in-laws. That is how the agricultural

countries function, with the men as the main physical labors

who contributed most to the economy of the family, they

were entitled to make decisions for all major things, while

wives only got to say things of household. This lead to a very

masculine culture, which was also explained by the things

from nature. Chinese people think that everything in the

world was originated from Taichi, from which first came out

the two adversarial powers – the Ying and Yang. The sun, just

like the man, represents the power of Yang, while the moon,

just like woman, represents the power of Ying. In economy of

agriculture, it needs strong physical labor, especially in an era

of no advanced technology for farming, and also needs sun to

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help grow the crops, which is more important than the moon.

Somebody may say that it needs water too, but the water is

not the match of the sun in this matter.

In western culture, especially after the congress with election

system appeared in politics, and after the independence of

America and other countries, it seems that all people under

the God are at a horizontal relationship. Husband and wife

can call each other the name directly, just like the colleagues

can call the names or even given names of other ones

without a title needed, even if to their direct superiors. Also

everybody is supposed to get involved in the activities of their

community, no matter you have official position or not, or

even encouraged to participate in the national affairs, which

made the federal election such an exceptional phenomenon

every some years. Obviously, they all feel that they are

almost just like those candidates campaigning for the official

positions and have got to implement their right to make the

country hear their voice and understand their equal position

before the God.

However, it is not the case in ancient China, not even now in

some occasions such as the work environment. Chinese has

been used to a hierarchy relationship due to the two

thousands’ years of influence of Confucianism which

emphasized the things such as people should serve the king

the way as what a king should be, while the king should treat

the officials below him in the proper manner that match his

status; the son should respect the father like a father, while

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the father should love his son like a son. They always use

titles to call their superiors and people in professional

occupations, and the title gives a psychological suggestion of

a relationship of non-equality. The one who use the title to

call others is suggesting to the being- called: you are superior

than I am, or more learned than I am. In now days, it

becomes a fashion to call people of any management

position the Executives in formal enterprises, or the

self-employed as the Boss, no matter they are or not. If you

are working in the school, no matter you teach or not, the

parents of the students would call them as teachers. This is

one of ways of Chinese people trying to smoothen up the

work or social relationship by putting others to a higher

position, while lowering themselves. While, in other side,

even though the things have changed greatly in now days,

many Chinese people still believe it is better not to engage in

something that doesn’t belong to the official duty of their

jobs. The family - centered relationship to the society still

retains a great weight, and the sense of community is not

strong enough yet, which is not a great thing considering the

economic and political environment has become quite

different from before. However, since the ancient China,

under that very rigid social and family structure, people

didn’t seem having much complaints, with many of them still

felt that they lived with a human dignity. It means that there

must be something there making all people to get along with

each other while feel content.

That is the achievement of moral teachings, for which

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Chinese people are indebted to Confucius. Confucius is a

great educator, and is claimed to be the first Chinese who

started private school where he recruited students from all

background without bias. It was this moral teaching that

helped Chinese people maintain a stable and harmonious

relationship. Confucian scholars advocate that the society

should be built upon an ideology of the benevolence and

righteousness, while the nature of benevolence is the kinship

that the son should serve the parents, and the nature of

righteousness is the brotherhood that the younger brother

should listen to the elder ones. Because people naturally felt

that the older ones are usually more experienced and wiser

than the younger ones, thus this relationship could be

extended to other people who are just like their elder

brothers; and the father is the center of the family whose

orders should be followed in order to make things work out,

hence it could be extended to other social figures who are at

a superior position to them. Confucius and his disciples also

said that people should respect the elders of other families

just like their own ones, and care about the youngsters of

others just like their own too. And for the well-educated

people, they think if the court is truly working toward the

benefit of the society, then they should try to find a position

in the government to help the king; if the court is too

corrupted to be helped, then they should stay away from

politics, otherwise it would be helping the villainous few to

ruin the life of mass. So the basic family relationship and

social relationship are clearly mapped out in such a way that

is to make sure the society would stay in the right track, and

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function in an efficient way while maintain a harmonious

relationship. Even though, the current social and economical

patterns make it impossible to stick to those rules exactly the

same way, still those ideas can be borrowed and incorporated

into current system.

For relationship between individuals, the most famous maxim

is: treat the others the way you want them to treat you,

which has been mentioned in other chapters, and won’t be

explained further here. Confucian scholars advocated that if

one wants to gain from something themselves, they should

first make the other related parties - including both the

society and other individual, benefit from the situation,

otherwise, things wouldn’t work out for them; if one wants

to achieve success in a cause, they should help other ones in

the same boat achieve success first. Only through this way, a

win-win situation and a true long-term relationship could be

established. They also advocated that a true gentleman

should try to help others to achieve good endings in their

endeavors, but not to interrupt and ruin, and lead to bad

consequences which wouldn’t do any good to others, neither

to themselves, and that behavior shouldn’t be encouraged.

As for the friendship between true gentlemen, they felt it

should be like the nature of water, clean and delighted, no

condition attached, while the friendship between the mean

people are usually built on the exchange of benefits behind

and wouldn’t last long. As they believed that the true

righteous people would be willing to die for their bosom

friend who share the right life belief with them.

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Even though ancient confucianists thought that the wife’s

role was to assist the husband and raise the kids, however,

they also required the husbands to respect their wives, as

well as their rights. There is one popular saying that says:

don’t ask the ugly wife without good upbringing to leave the

guest room when with reputable visitors inside, which means

that even the bad-looking wife with low upbringing

background should still be allowed to receive the reputable

guests in order to show the proper respect to them. It was

usually the case when the previous humble husband

obtained an official position through imperial examination or

gained fortune by other means. And they advocated a

marriage with true companionship of every day intimacy

from the beginning to the death of their life, just as what the

mandarin ducks do, which wasn’t always possible for

merchants on long business trips, low rank officials or

militants assigned to other location for their deployment.

During the history, the women’s status in society has it’s ups

and downs, but women have never gain their equal status,

mostly due to their duty in the family to raise the kids, which

can’t be replaced by men and made them lose a good start in

career in many cases, especially the society has that tendency

to position women in that way, which makes talented single

women who have just fresh -started in a new place very

difficult to make out without strong family or community

support. The society has always try to match the women with

men in any place where they go, however, for reason of

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accidental arrangement of fate, or the consequence of some

irrational intervention from some privileged people, some

women can never find out the right match in a place, then

the life would become extremely difficult for them, no matter

how hard they try. Even thought the society has made a great

progress in protecting the right of individual person, the

women’s right of independence seems has never been taken

seriously enough, as there seems an unwritten law in the

society that a single woman has to cling to somebody in one

place before she can start off their life there. However, for

man, the situation would be different, as most of the

businesses are run by males in this world, as long as a man

suit their need, would be very likely hired by them, while for

women, the situation would be much more unfavorable to

them, especially for good women whose talent would be

envied by man, and whose look could be of a target to other

women, if they are not lucky enough to run into a nice and

strong knight on horse on time, their chance would be

eliminated there for sure, or they simply become the victims

of some selfish and villainous people.

Men tend to help men for business reason, so the skilled and

talent men obtained some security of life in this part, and

gained them quite some advantage in this human survival

game, while men help women usually for personal reasons,

especially in a masculine- culture dominated society, so it is

not a good picture for women at all. Since the established

men who can offer help to others are usually married, and

whose help would likely lead to ruin the personal relationship

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of the female benefiter of herself. So the strong masculine

culture has become more and more of an obstacle to the

social advancement of the civilization, because in men’s eye,

women’s professional position can be completely replaced by

men, and the sole reason for them to hire women is that the

latter have to keep a personal relationship with them, or they

are the spouses of their male confidents. However, that is not

the case at all, women represent the Ying in the power of

Ying-Yang duo, according the ancient eastern wisdom, these

two powers are equally important, even though they are

playing different roles in the society, it not necessarily means

the women’s role is always at home, especially not the case in

current time, when men so easily lose their cool facing the

frenzy status of chaos and upgraded schematic social and

political games, as well as powerful technologies which drive

the male hormones level high and out of control, and make

them to become more aggressive and go extremity in their

behavior. Women tend to be calmer, more patient and more

socially friendly arising from the reason of their nurturing

mother nature. The equally well-educated women with

similar working experience usually behave in a more

righteous way than man and more community-oriented, and

more tactical in their handling with the subtle and frustrating

situation and diplomatic relationship, the tribute of which

they possessed inborn for their job of raising kids. They are

more suitable for work in cultural, diplomatic and educational

fields, and if without the interruption and forceful influence

upon them from men, they are supposed to do better job

than men in those fields. Men have been dominating the

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political and military fields all the time, which represent the

power of Yang in the duo of Ying-Yang, versus the cultural and

educational fields, however, have reached the peak of the

power which was speeded up by the high tech. It is time to

slow down and make a shift of power right now, any

resistance to this change is no different from deliberately

putting up the barriers for the progress of the society and

would only make things much more difficult for all people.

Good women are like beautiful sceneries that attract the

tourists, who attract the investment and establish the

foundation, reputation and confidence of the place and make

that place prosper. Whenever a good woman moves to a new

place, it is the bless of that place, because she brings with her

the new opportunity there. and It is just reasonable for the

society to protect and establish the women and raise the

status of the city. Any action to harm them is like trashing the

beautiful sceneries, and would only bring bad luck and

troubles to those perpetrators and the surrounding people.

Even though, after the last dynasty, Qing dynasty, in China

was overthrown by the democratic revolution at the

beginning of last century, Confucianism was slammed by both

the activists of New Cultural Movement during that time and

those of the Great Culture Revolution after the new China

was established by the communists, some of those ideas,

especially some teachings about how to deal with personal

and social relationships are still taken as the legacy of Chinese

traditional culture and are inherited in a silent way by many

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Chinese people. Now, the Confucianism find their recognition

again, of course, through some screening process of modern

civilization. Chinese culture is relationship – oriented, after

the economic reform of China by opening its door to the

outside world and surfing along with the ocean culture for a

period of time, it may find their new orientation in dealing

with relationship in this new era. For western people, who

had been business-oriented, maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea

to start to learn swimming in inland river culture and

innovate their relationship style a bit.

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On

Education

仁而不学 , 其弊也愚 ; 智而不学 , 其弊也荡 ; 信而不学 , 其弊也贼 ;

直而不学 , 其弊也绞 ; 勇而不学 , 其弊也乱 ; 刚而不学 , 其弊也狂。

Whether in eastern culture or western culture, there were

some of the ancient sages, who have declared that there is

knowledge that people don’t need to learn and just comes in

born, like intuitions. For example, a baby will cry to cause the

attention of adults when it is hungry or cold, or facing the

intimidation. And a less than two – year-- old child would

know to run away from a dangerous or unfavorable situation

and hide themselves, or play trick with adults, and imitate

adults even if they were not taught to do so. There are some

people who have never been through formal education, they

would still be able to tell the right from wrong for many

things. Some birds have natural ability to build nest, and it is

the instinct of some mammals to hunt for food. Nevertheless,

teaching and learning are always the issues that can never

been put aside in both animal kingdom and human society,

the original activities of which are themselves the very

instincts of many species of animals and are inborn. In animal

kingdoms, it is usually the female adult to teach the young

ones to learn the survival skills. We suppose that the animals

are probably more keen in their study than human

youngsters, because they are surrounded by dangers for

every day of their life, whether the mother or the babies

understand it very well that if they are not good enough to

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defend themselves or to hunt for food, they would either be

killed by their predators, or starve to death without

exceptions.

Teaching and learning are the two opposite sides of

education. However, the ancient Chinese sage Confucius said

that the teaching and learning are reciprocal, as when the

professors are coaching the students, they are also learning

from the students, and make themselves better prepared for

the future teaching. For the teacher, his job is to pass on the

wisdoms and deliver the knowledge to the students, and help

them to understand things of which they have doubts, the

purpose is to make the students be ready for their future life

in a civilized society, by equipping them with essential skills,

or helping them build necessary qualifications, and guiding

them to find out their proper career.

Each person is unique. People are born carrying with them

the unique genetic codes, except the identical twins. All the

people in one place are supposed to constitute a group of

sufficient diversity of personalities and capabilities, in order

for this place to develop in a healthy way. However, it takes

the teaching and study to make that happen. Even people are

born knowing quite some things already, with many of them

in a subconscious way, and those things may function like

instincts which comes and goes quickly, and they are not

stable enough for human to accomplish the demanding jobs

in a more and more complex society. In ancient time, variety

of knowhow of trades was taught by the masters to young

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people through apprenticeship, the same thing was for some

crafts which requires highly sophisticated skills and

exceptional expertise. And it took years’ or over a decade of

training before the masters let their apprentices go to

practice their own. It means that nothing is easy in this world.

Sometimes, we may feel that we do know something, and we

may even be able to succeed once or twice by luck. However,

it doesn’t mean they have made an expert of themselves, as

long as the condition changes, or there is interruption, they

could fail. It explains how important the rigid education is for

a society full of competition and weaved with complexity.

The good education is supposed to bring up the personality

of each student and create the right characters for the society.

However, it is not something that can be achieved in one year

or two years, especially not so in modern society. Current

world is at a stage of knowledge explosion, and high- tech

soaring. In ancient time, life was much simpler, though the

people were never lack of wisdom, as most sage liked life of

solitude, the temple in the distant mountains, or the hut in

the quiet countryside of antique time would suit their life

style, which helped them to sort their thoughts and

connected with the universe without interruption. Since the

society was simpler, the young people didn’t need learning so

many things as now days. It was not unusual for a more than

ten- year old became the general in the military, 20 year old

became the marshal, or became the teacher of the princeto-

be-the-king. We suppose they were very good at what

they were doing too, only they didn’t need to go through

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school after school, one academy to another academy,

because the architecture of human civilization hadn’t been

structured to such complexity, neither decorated with so

many fancy stuff. It is not a bad thing, neither a lucky thing

that humans have decided to go this direction, sort of being

pretentious way, to brag their success before other creatures.

The truth is that they have to make sure this new mansion of

civilization is built in a safe and reasonable way. Each

revolution in human history would destroy some part of its

previous structure and add new parts to it, but if the new

parts weren’t built in the right way, then it would become

unstable or even go collapse. That’s why we need have very

reliable people to accomplish this job, and the people

training business falls on the responsibility of education of

the society.

Just as building a mansion needs have very reliable

underground work as the strong foundation, primary and

secondary education are very important for any students if

they want to have a good career, or establish their own

enterprise in the future. Primary education is for teaching

some basic knowledge and cultivation of personal interest in

their study. Secondary education should enable student

well-prepared for their daily life, this including the basic skills

and qualifications. It seems that some education system has

neglect the education of qualifications. Starting from the

secondary high school, the students are just hurried to decide

their career orientations by selecting either art or science

courses. For art students, some of the science courses such as

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physics, biology and chemistry may not be helpful for them to

apply for universities, but they help to train the scientific

thinking, a reasonable way of thinking, of people, and would

equip them with some basic knowledge in those disciplines

which are applied in our life activities and everyday utilities,

etc al. And for science-oriented students, history, geography

and economy are equally important to them as to art

students. Because those courses are supposed to be designed

to give young people just enough but not too much

knowledge to help them understand their physical

environment and economic environment, and what had

happened to their own country and other places in the past,

which would make them getting more well-rounded in their

way of doing things, and could be very important in their

decision making for many things, of course including the

decision making in their future jobs. Because many jobs are

intertwined with things from different domains. Some people

may argue that high school students are just some kids, it is

not such a good idea to push them too hard to study while

deprive them of time to have fun with friends, which is not a

bad idea. Then why not lengthen the time of second

education, since people are living much longer than before.

No matter what, some basic things have to be done,

otherwise, the society is going to take the consequences

sooner or later. The English philosopher Francis Bacon had

written a wonderful essay about study, in which he said that

histories make people wise, poem makes people witty; the

mathematics subtle, natural philosophy deep, moral grave,

logic and rhetoric able to contend. He thinks study in multiple

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disciplines can enhance people’s ability of judgment and

disposition of business.

Colleges are expected to train students and prepare them to

work in specific domain after graduation. With so many

advanced technologies, no wonder it would take the science

students four years to finish a bachelor degree, which, some

decades ago, was still qualified to get a decent job, but is now

only marginally knowledgeable in their concentration, can do

the internship, or be an assistant in some occupation.

Master’s degree becomes more and more mandatory in

some profession, in order to obtain a position that matches

your concentration. If it is because the schools have really

raised their standard of education, that would be a good

thing. however, that is not the case. It is not the school that

don’t let students to leave, but the students who want to stay

in school longer, while waiting for job opportunities. Many

on-job engineers and accountants will know that what they

are doing in their jobs relates only a fraction of technical

knowledge that they have learned in school. Look at those

fortunate job practisers and job keepers, they may be skilled

enough for the technical part of their job, would they be able

to handle things arising from an unusual situation which is

more and more likely to happen in now days. It seems that

many people would fail in that case, even if there are written

rules for them to follow, they would still fail. When you asked

them why they would do that, they wouldn’t know, suppose

that somebody else had influenced them at that critical

moment and made them mess up with the basic logic of

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humanly way of thinking and totally lost their mind. Those

mistakes may not even have anything to do with morals, but

just basic logic thing, but still there are people continue doing

it, hurting others while ruining themselves. If people just get

selfish and try to ruin others for their own good, that may be

a moral issue. But if people do things to harm both others

and themselves, that is the failure of the education in basic

qualifications.

It is a common problem that the current universities too

much focus on teaching the technical knowledge of each

concentration, but ignored the qualification education which

should have been prepared in high school, and need to be

reemphasized in the college in order to get them ready for

practice in real life. Many basic things may seen easy for

experienced people, however, need be emphasized and

exercised again and again in order for them to be memorized

well enough and not easily be forgotten in no matter what

occasions. However, for many majors, whether in art design,

or engineering, or business accounting, schools are interested

in teaching students the fashionable things in industry, such

as the popular programs or software, which have been well

furnished, and only require students to learn to find and click

the buttons inside the program and would get things done

quickly. For art design students, it is for sure not a bad thing

to study those programs, since a lot of job ads ask for those

programs from candidates, but how about the original

creativity if all the students go to study software art design

since many art programs not suitable for current labor

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market have been cancelled. And if the university acts just

like the technical vocational school, make their students

flocking to the currently available job positions, it means the

university has lost many of its original significances. Those

course’s purpose is to get the students a high-end job, but

would that work for long? Those programs are designed to

increase the working efficiency, which would be a very good

thing if the labor markets are digging hard for available

talents, which, however, presents a totally opposite situation

with dozens or hundreds of people are applying for one

professional job position while waiting for months with no

response.

We suppose the education domain should share some

responsibility to guide the labor market, instead only being

toiled and pulled by the job market and let the universities

become the servant of the enterprises. Each individual

enterprise is working toward their own profit. They want to

cut down the expenses, and increase the profit margin, and

won’t see the whole picture of the society, neither give it a

dime to what consequence it would cause to the society for

any activities they are engaged in. It’s true that the

government should be in charge of those issues, but they can

only control the businesses and make sure they are running

right, while having to take care of a lot of politics and

lobbying of different interest groups, but they won’t know

the students as well as the schools. The schools are in charge

of the students, and it is the responsibility of schools to

watch out the way for the people under their control, and

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think toward their interest. They should participate in

designing the careers for the society and plan the courses

accordingly for the students and make sure that their

disciples would live up to their expectation, and who would

be proud of their education experience there.

Of course, it is not an easy thing to make that happen.

However, it is practically possible. Universities which are

havens of scholars and researchers of all disciplines, they are

thinking tanks of the civilization, the cradles of all talents that

have gone into the society. Most politicians and business

gurus are from the universities, and would like the school

from which they have graduated be proud of them. It is really

depend on how the schools establish their rapport, if all the

universities’ presidents could act as what ancient Greek

philosopher and educator Socrates did, who stood to his

belief with his life, or may not even need to go that far, then

they would have all the students, as well as some elites in the

society, supporting them. Whether or not the students could

give the school the true support really depends on how well

they were taught, and would mostly rely on the success of

the qualification education - whether they are stable enough,

persistent enough, brave enough, faithful enough, devoted

enough, and socially matured enough that help them to

make right judgment, so that they can really make a good

change to the society and better their own life.

A good teacher should fulfill his/her job by teaching the new

knowledge, patiently reminding them of the old ones, and

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bringing out of the fresh ideas, while helping them to build

right way of thinking, improve the problem-solving skills, and

developing a healthy view of life. The ancient Greek

philosopher and educator Plato, the student of Socrates, was

well-known for his debate style of teaching to guide students

to think in a dialectic way. Only through different creative

ways and strong devotions could they accomplish their task

as a educator who would truly benefit the students. And

students should never forget to do their due diligence timely.

Confucius said that what a delightful thing it would if one can,

from time to time, go back to what they have learned before

and come out with new insights. Study is a life-time thing, the

school education only get people started it.

We need study to back up many of our basic life values, again

just as Confucius said that if people into benevolence don’t

study, they would get fooled by others; if people like wisdom,

but not study, they would go wild in their behavior; if people

believe in faith, but don’t like study, they would be easily

taken advantage by others; if people tend to be

straightforward, but don’t like study, they would likely hurt

others verbally; if people are brave, but don’t like study, they

would cause trouble to the society; if people are strong, but

don’t like study, they would likely do crazy things to harm

others and the society. Confucius had preached his belief to

his students, and also he followed his own belief himself. He

concluded his life shortly before he died that he started to be

seriously engaged in study at age of 15s, and established his

career at age of 30s; he gained understanding of the world at

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age of 40s without much doubt about things, and knew what

was his destiny at age of 50s; he became able to tell right

from false of what people told him at age of 60, and was

capable of doing anything at his discretion, without crossing

the boundaries or breaching any rules at age of 70s. This is

the life of a great ancient educator and philosopher, however,

it could also shed light into the ordinary people’s life and

work as a guide.

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Job and Career

Since the industry revolution started in Europe and forced

many peasants to become workers of the factory, the idea of

division of job has begun to root into this culture. Every

worker is turned into an individual post in the long

production line of products.

So for western people, anything they do is for a job. They go

to school for getting prepared to obtain a job, they eat in

order to live for a job, they dressed nicely in order to impress

the potential employer in an interview. They go to church,

partially in order to look for new job opportunities. It seems

for ordinary job goers, that they have find another god, that

is the boss, which support their life in this mundane world,

and the real God who is supposed to take care of their

after-life has been moved away from its original important

place a bit in their heart. And for the bosses, the client is their

new god, as without clients, they can’t keep the business

going. We have to say that the each revolution happened in

technology, or reforms in economy would change the

civilization architecture and turn the world around a bit.

We can’t help watching all the amazing changes that more

and more agriculture countries have been converted into

either the bases of all sorts of manufactures or high- tech

harbors, while all available human resources are turned into

job candidates, except the few enterprisers who have to be

very lucky to start off their business in the right field and right

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time, either with sufficient funds, or with good network of

people, and particularly have good relationship with

government in Asian countries. The frame of society is turned

into that of an expanded factory, which are positioned and

filled with jobs. Everybody is doing their jobs, from the

presidents of the country to the workers in the factory, with

the only difference to distinguish them by whether they are

professionals with expertise or the general labor without

need of special expertise. From the appearance, it looks

pretty neat, and is expected to give people the peace of mind

that everything is so well-mapped out, they just need to be

prepared to walk those maps, then everything would be all

set. This social setup is organized and easier for management,

however, only if the lines or shapes of the map stay straight,

without being pulled, curved or distorted by others, neither

getting themselves entangled with each other and become

too complicated to handle, which is not a possibility in reality.

Just as the job division gave a very good start for the modern

civilization, it also brought enormous problems to the society.

Why, because each person is assigned a job, and is given their

own specific task, together with their accountability. Most of

them don’t need to know, neither do they know what is the

final purpose of their job, as long as they have achieved their

goal according the job description, they would get a share of

incentives. So, they may do things to sabotage their own

comrades’ work, or even damage the group interest in order

to achieve their individual job’s goals. In addition, their

opponents will have to do their jobs too, which are

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legitimately designed and supposedly reasonable to go

against them, and further brought back luck to their work. In

this situation, there would be no accomplishers, and

everybody would be toiled and make effort in vain. If all

people can get a post, and be engaged in this hopeless, but

still get-going game, that is still a bearable situation. However,

since not so many people can get much from this game, the

enterprises have to cut off jobs. At the beginning of slow

down, this is the automatic response of this system for

enterprises to alleviate their financial stress, if succeeded,

they may start to hire again, however, if the situation has

kept worsening to a level that the government is also

downsizing due to the shrunk budget of the nation, then a lot

of posts would have diminished.

In ancient Asian culture, the best wish of parents for their

children is to get married as early as possible and on which

establish their career. This concept of job is originated from

an economy of capital operation, which has been treated

with contempt by the people growing up in an economy of

agriculture until they found out the intimidating power of the

ammunitions created by the high-spirited and daunting

colonists. However, even though some Asian countries spared

a place or completely agreed to let those colonists to do

business there, they still kept their own tradition for a long

time until the second world war which started to change the

situation of the world politically, economically and culturally.

Now the whole world is sharing some of job searching

platforms, which probably demonstrated that the concept of

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job has been accepted worldwide. Since the idea of job is

prevailing, do we still get a career? Originally, people were

supposed to establish a career through doing jobs. Those

human resource agents send out a lot of job ads to job

seekers and promise them that they would provide them

with a career. If the economy is fine and stable, and the job

market is good, which means the labor demand is higher

than or equals to the labor supply, then it is possible for job

goers to establish a career, because, firstly, they can easily

keep their job, due to high bargain power of the labor.

Secondly, as long as they stay in the same field, they will gain

more experience and have other opportunities even if the

current one is gone. Thirdly, once they stay in the field long

enough, they will establish their reputation, get good

recommendation, and make advancement in this field, then

can gain more freedom in their choice of jobs, which means a

career has been established.

However, in downturns of the economy, there are not enough

job positions out there. Even the professional job divers have

to get out the water to breathe in some fresh air, in order not

to get drowned, which means they have to get something

else so that they can get by, let alone the job explorers who

newly got by the water and haven’t gotten to know its depth

yet. They may not be able to get anything for a long-time of

searching, and have to embark on something else which has

not much to do with what they have studied in school, or

even completely different from that, and this change would

greatly jeopardize the stability of their future, and possibly

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lead many of them to a tumultuous career of life. So

establishing a successful career is totally out of reach in such

circumstance. It seems that this system of jobs are killing the

chance of careers. Especially due to the continuing

combination of companies, and monopoly of giant

enterprises, which have pushed many small-size companies

out of businesses. The same situation remains with the

professional firms. A lot of skilled people have been pushed

out of the job market, and the ones left are those who are

good at their work, but much importantly, know how to play

the politics of big corporations, and exactly match for the

position, however, some of the very talented ones in the

profession may have been gone. The ones out of the jobs are

likely to lose their original career also, if they don’t have good

contacts with people, or simply are not people’s person, and

especially there are times, when the job market gets

extremely bleak, which would eliminate their chance of

getting another job or even becoming self-employed, and

they have to find something else. Just as people can’t catch

big fish after casting their net numerous times into the water,

since they are not the divers yet who have been in the water

for a long time and know the situation, and thus they might

have to go with the small shrimps, crabs, and whatever they

can get.

In terms of its significance to the society, career is obviously

more important than Job which can be gone anytime. Careers

are the ones that can truly establish people’s life and their

meaning of existence to this civilization. However, it seems

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that more and more people are losing their careers in now

days, and have to go from one job to another in order to

make a living. Each person has their unique tributes to the

society, and not everybody can do well in all things, especially

can’t accomplish it in a short period of time, so every time

they change the type of their job, they are losing their

original accumulation of wealth in previous field. If a

significant group of people have to do in this way in society, it

means this civilization has gone beyond the control of

reasons and can’t take more input by current status, which

made the living of people harbored in it become extremely

unsteady, while facing great problems.

Maybe it is time to modify the architecture of human

civilization again, since the electronic and digital revolution

have led to dramatic innovation of the people’s life, and an

unprecedentedly great change of the relationship pattern of

nations globally. It is possible that some modification might

have been made without deliberate effort , however, was

done in a too rushed way, and made new structure partially

skewed, or has done too much damage to previous structure,

made the newly added part didn’t exactly match with the

architecture supposed to be. People’s activities together with

the outcome of their work have enormous impact on the

civilization, either to strengthen it when the two matches

with each other, or to shake it when the latter is not suitable

for the former any more. The modification could be a

long-term process of interaction from multiple aspects

between human’s activities and the feedback of the

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civilization. First of all, we need a new set of occupations and

a new labor system to get the economy going in right track.

Usually, the economy decides the other aspects of the

society.

The current situation is that, in one side, the clearly divided

jobs in each domain greatly limited the original creativity of

new occupations; in other side, the bigger group of

governmental team, as well as their stronger intervention

into business and people’ life than before make things fall

apart as mentioned above. Also as has been mentioned in

other chapter, that a too big head may make the body

collapse, maybe cutting the jobs and give incentive to create

jobs in new domains would be a good approach. When the

burden of the body is alleviated, then the body gets more

flexible and agile, and the system would function in a better

way. Any new reforms require an effective and efficient

system in order to succeed.

New occupation will create new career opportunities, and a

reasonable system would help stabilize the careers of people,

and the definition of job may also need to be corrected since

if the position of job would give the job holder the ridiculous

reasons to harass or sabotage other people’s life, then it

should not have existed in a civilized society, as it for sure

would not help building a strong and long-term career for

anybody. The society may need take back some of the

individual jobs, and integrate them into a team project so

that they can watch on each other and make sure each of

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them won’t hurt themselves and won’t screw up their final

goals. We suppose no legitimate team wants to make a mess

to the society and ruin the reputation of their own and/or the

organization behind them, otherwise, it would be much

easier to hold them for responsibility than to some randomly

hired individuals who are once fired, there is nobody to

bound for accountability for damage they have caused to

others or to the society.

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Beauty and Its Elements

Everybody likes beauty, such as the beautiful things and

beautiful people. It seems that humans are born to possess

the ability to appreciate beauty, even though not so many

people had ever thought about what it is. Obviously the

sense of beauty, and the ideas about beauty had rooted into

people’s daily life long before Aesthetics appeared as a

well-established sub-discipline of philosophy. Art is the

notable representative of this discipline.

It is certain that humans developed their sense of beauty,

one of the prominent features of human feelings before they

developed their logic of thinking. People also had mastered

the essential skills in creating beautiful things before the

theory of Aesthetics came out. I feel that the human

civilization spent thousands of years in practicing art, while

developing theories to interpret their art work, in a way

agreeable to sensible people, not excluding the possible

failure in their endeavor. Those critics might have tried to

guide artists in their process of art creation, however, mostly

worked out as a guide for appreciation or evaluation of art,

because artists are always quicker than the critics, bestowed

by their inborn sensitivity and ability to catch that artistic

intuition from life. A new art style appeared usually after the

economic, social or religious reforms, or science and

mathematics discoveries, or birth of new philosophies.

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The flourishing of art and literature during European

renaissance period was not only due to the humanist rival of

the ancient Greek culture, but also because of the influence

of the new ideas appeared in the religion notably represented

by Saint Augustine, as well as in discoveries in natural science

and mathematics that provided the premises for the

appearance of classic realism painting style, represented by

da Vinci, and Michelangelo etc. who applied the one point

perspective according to optical principle of human eyes, and

used the shade and light effect to create the realist image.

This period lasted almost four centuries. The capitalism in

Europe matured around the same period after the industry

revolution, coming along with it the global colonization,

which brought great wealth to the capitalist, as well as the

material improvement to people’s life, while it also irritated

some upright intellectuals and artists, who got disgusted with

some of the side effects of the economic growth and capital

colonization. Those artists started searching for new artistic

elements and inspiration for their art creation. Then

appeared all genres of western modern art one after another,

such as Fauvism, Impressionism, Post-impressionism,

Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Abstractionism, Dadaism,

Surrealism, etc al, under the influence of a new trend of

philosophies.

The work of those modern artists had encountered various

resistance and attacks from the traditionalists, since it

seemed either weird, ugly, or mysterious and confusing to

traditional artists, However, the most significant ones

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eventually survived and even shined at their own time, and

until now. Now days, culinary art became very popular, in

which style, the way to display the art pieces, matters equally

important as the art work itself, which combined with latter

to create a modern art concept that is what truly matters.

When Duchamp was displaying a urine tub in the museum,

which idea could be disgusting to a lot of people, it was

inevitably accepted as an art piece by people with

avant-garde mindset and thus created an unforgettable

anecdote in modern art history. Is that also beautiful thing?

But according to many philosophers, art is creation of beauty.

Duchamp even added the mustache to the picture of Mona

Lisa, seemed an irony to the ordinary artists. However, this

was just one of the modern art styles, Dadaism, the art to

protest, and marked this period of human art history by

boldly showing their frustration about this more and more

complex society and their struggle to reach for something

new and different, and also by leaving such questions to

people as what is art and where the art is leading us.

Beautiful things should not be difficult to find. We could give

many examples which people with sensible faculty all agree

to be beautiful, however, it may not be able to be defined by

one certain concept. The pity is that modern people have

fallen into the habit to define any philosophical terms in a

fixed formation influenced by the numerous discoveries in

science and mathematics in late centuries of last millennium,

which could be accepted in any other domains, but not in

defining what is beauty. Those discoveries and creations

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brought new inspiration to the artists on one side, while

constrained the thoughts of some art critics on the other

side.

Kant argues that the kinds of ‘cognition’ (i.e. thinking)

characteristic of the contemplation of the beautiful are not

much different from ordinary cognition about other things in

the world. The faculties of the ‘understanding’ of people’s

mind is responsible for concepts, and that of ‘sensibility’

(including our imagination) is responsible for intuitions. The

difference between the two is that in the case of aesthetic

cognition, there is no one ‘determinate’ concept that pins

down an intuition. Instead, intuition is allowed for some ‘free

play’, and rather than being subject to one concept. Simply

put it this way, the human’s sensible faculty made the

intuition possible, and the sense of beauty is aroused by

intuition, as intuition is allowed for some freedom to do

some playful “games” in the mind, purporting to reach a

status of harmony with other related concepts in the mind, if

necessary, and leads to the best pleasure possible.

Thus, we have obtained the basic idea about the sense of

beauty, which is a feeling of a biological being who possesses

the faculty of sensibilities. When one says something is

beautiful, it doesn’t simply mean this thing possesses

“beauty” as its attribute, but also means this very person has

the normal sensibility according the general understanding of

our society, and/or to the common sense of this particular

culture. It explains that evaluation of art involves two parts:

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the person who executes evaluation as the subject, and the

piece of art to be evaluated as the object. And the sense of

beauty can only be produced during the process of positive

interaction between these two parts.

Humans have known the essential skills of creation of art for

a long time. There is a proverb says: Art lies in concealing art

and that beauty and honesty can never agree. In order to be

honest, people are generally required to stick to the truth of

the things, where the well-defined concepts and logic are

applied, which are the jobs of another faculty of human mind,

but the classical realism is built on the illusionary vision of

people tricked by the realism painting techniques. The

volume of the image and depth of the space that people see

from the two-dimensional painting art are nothing but an

illusion, and obviously not real. Plus, it is better to look at it at

some distance than facing up onto it by inches, in order to get

that ideal image desired. Nevertheless, most people like that

painting style, since it suits the way of human’s eyes. It would

be easy for people to tell the beauty of a classic realism

painting than of a post-impressionism one, an abstractionism

one, or a Chinese literati’s painting. It takes some aesthetical

training before people came to appreciate the new style of

beauty created by the modern painting techniques, and

meanwhile, training in traditional Chinese culture is required

to understand and see the beauty of the Chinese scholar’s art.

However, it was not that those non-professionals simply

couldn’t see anything good from those art works. Some

abstractionism art and Chinese literati’s art may not be

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comparable to the former classic style in the sense of realistic

presentation of images, but they have another type of beauty,

that is the beauty of imagination associated with the freedom

to unknown, available only from the art that had come

through the ingenious maneuver of the master’s hand and

mind.

Chinese people like to say that people need nice apparel just

as the statue of Buda needs a gold finish. People need to

dress nicely in order to attract the other sex, and gain the

respect of their friends and colleagues, that is to say, to

make the latter feel pleasant to be with them. A statue of

Buda in shiny outfit in the temple would attract a lot more

prayers than the one in shabby clothes. That explains the

psychology of ordinary people in daily aesthetics. It works on

many occasions, and came with it of some painting styles that

emphasize on the visual effect of the art. Nevertheless, I am

afraid that it is not the final beauty.

There is another proverb that says beauty’s sister is vanity,

and her daughter is lust. Obviously, the shiny, colorful,

extravagant things with fancy formality would feed to some

people’s taste on beauty, as those things could excite and

please them. Sexy pose of women and nudes are another

popular source of beauty in humans, which are associated

with the people’s biological need and the sub-consciousness

of their mind. I guess this proverb had enlightened many

artists in their art creation.

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However, there is also one proverb that says the fair face

needs no paint. I guess many Chinese painting artists,

especially the literati’s painter would agree with this. As their

painting work emphasizes on the simplicity, purity, and a

natural elegance without much need of ornaments or

decoration. It also suits with many western modern art that

focus more on ideas and concepts than colorful presentation.

I would like particularly mention one saying by our ancestor

here that is: beauty’s tear is lovelier than her smile, which

had bothered me greatly before, because it is against the

basic definition about beauty that is to bring the pleasant

feeling to people. However, when we take our time to look

into some greatest art works, whether in painting, or

literature, or music. We may find some of the tragedies from

the theatre, the blue music, the saddest painting work would

produce the most striking feeling in the audience, by making

them sad, weeping, but finally the extraordinary happiness

arose from deep of their heart,. after that amazing chemistry

connected between them and the art, and the sudden

release of that unbearable emotional burden that had

probably been hanging on there for long time, without being

noticed before. That is the beauty of tragedies. All grow-ups

have gone through unfortunate life experiences themselves

or seeing their dear ones doing so, and would be more likely

to understand that beauty.

In addition, one very popular proverb says: beauty is in the

eyes of beholder. When one is in love with another person,

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he would undoubtedly see the other one as a beauty

regardless what her real look is. In this case, the appreciator

already has a pleasant image in his mind, which only waited

to be triggered by that particular person associated with that

image. It explains that beauty is not just about skin deep.

Appearance only matters to some degree in producing the

sense of beauty. Have we heard that a beauty without virtue

is like a flower without fragrance and virtue is fairer far than

beauty. These ideas existed in almost all cultures.

And one proverb directly defined virtue as the beauty of

mind, which means that virtue itself is just one kind of beauty.

Among virtues, goodness or kindness is the most mentioned

one. People believe that goodness charms more than mere

beauty, as if goodness is a higher level of beauty. Since the

beauty’s taste is pleasure, then we may say that goodness

could cause stronger pleasant feeling among people than

superficial beauty which is more focus on appearance.

Furthermore, similar to goodness, grace is equally important

to arouse that sense of beauty among people. Graceful

people are nonetheless elegant, but pretty and stylish people

are not necessarily graceful. Grace is shown in each move

and manner of people with unspeakable charms shining out

from a magic source hidden inside them, to silently influence

and please people. As a matter of fact, grace is more lasting

than beauty in its general meaning, mere beauty may fade

and blast, however, grace will last with handsome

appearance gone. We may say that it is another higher level

of beauty.

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Beautiful things can charm people by bringing them

happiness with its enormous power that could be beyond the

expression of art itself, which might draw much more than

people can imagine. Just as if a person with full liberty would

become most powerful ever, to some people, that is God. The

final goal of beauty is the true freedom, so, to obtain the true

sense of beauty is to achieve the true freedom of a person,

that is to completely unify themselves with the universe,

more concretely, is to follow the law of the universe, and to

know what to do and what not to do. The real freedom is not

to do whatever one likes to do, but can stop their doing when

they are not supposed to do it. Especially in a complicated

environment, to stay quietly by carefully listening to the

revelation of the universe, or of God to some people, can

gain yourself more freedom than act mindlessly.

Humans are originated from the universe, and the universe

has created all kinds of models of beauties for them at the

time of their birth, only waiting for them to find those

beauties through their sensibility. Just like a new-born baby

whose sole idol of beauty is its mother, when it is hungry, the

mother’s breast is the most beautiful; when it needs to be

hugged, the mother’s arms are the most beautiful ones, and

when he needs to be kissed, the mother’s lip is the most

beautiful. All of those are to satisfy its basic needs for

nutrition and love as a baby. When the baby grows up, he

would find different beauty idols functioning as his mother’s

breast, arms, or lips, as his world is growing also. And they

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have to find out those beauties in order to achieve their

freedom as a human. But in order to find those beauties, they

need to learn about the universe, that’s why human’s

civilization has developed so many sensible(can not only be

felt by our sensors, but also make sense to our mind)

disciplines to guide them, just as the mother has guided the

new-born baby. The first time when the baby cries because it

is hungry, it probably doesn’t know where to get food, but

the mother knows why and then put the tip of her breast into

its mouth, and the cry stops. Next time, the baby would know

where to search for its mother’s breast when it is hungry. If

this baby happens to be a naughty one, and tries to bite its

mother’s nose or ears to ease its hunger, then the mother

probably wouldn’t understand that, and would just throw it

in its cradle, letting it crying for ever, and think this baby is

ugly, because a beautiful baby in parent’s eye would behave

nicely since the looks of baby are not much different at this

stage of their life.

An individual who can achieve his full liberty would be the

most beautiful one, and the very beautiful person should be

the one that has achieved great liberty. Any one can do it,

under the condition that there is no interruption of other

people and other things, just like one of the laws of physics

discovered by Newton, that a moved object could keep its

motion permanently provided that there is no resistance

against it at all. We all know that is not possible, since human

is a social being with its own existence based on the

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coexistence of others., and the world is made of things of duo

featured by its adversity. This is the dilemma of beauty, also

of freedom. However, if we take all human as a unity, or as

one person, then without the intervention of aliens, it would

be much more simple, and it is possible for the human

species to achieve its freedom to a great degree, and the

human society would be so much better and much more

pleasant to our senses. Thus the human’s beauty as one unity

matters most to all, while all humanly beings as parts of the

unity also matter in this extraordinary and inevitable task of

looking for freedom or beauty. The job of an artist is to create

beauty, and to be an idealist, we could all be an artist if we

may.

In painting related arts, there are warm colors and cold colors.

The ones close to the warm color spectrum include red,

orange, yellow. The ones close to cold color spectrum include

green, blue and purple. Nonetheless, there are much more

colors in nature or to be concocted by people than the ones

mentioned above. People have preferences to different colors,

while each color has different impact on their mood and

emotions, and gives different psychological suggestion to

people. Red color usually makes people feel exciting and

happy, which is a color of celebration and associated with

passion, power, ambition, courage; orange and yellow colors

are cheerful and warm-hearted, and could be extravagant as

well delightful, which conveys a sense of achievement or

sublimity, also associates with wealth, ripeness and maturity,

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or hope and desire; blue color represents tranquility, stability,

calmness, and loyalty; green brings a peace of mind, also

suggest growth, health, freshness and liveliness; purple is a

color of dignity, represents wisdom, integrity, solemnity and

pride; pink is a very feminine and sexy color, which signifies

beauty and love; white signifies grandness, perfection,

confidence, and cleanness; dark is a mysterious color which

conveys fear, unknown world, also graveness.

One famous painting by Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus,

just used a light yellow color to paint Venus’s naked body,

which successfully created a beautiful and lovely goddess of

love, which, with her birth, brought love and hope to the

world. In the painting of The Garden of Eden by Michelangelo,

the delightful yellow color of Eve and Adam occupies the

center of the work and might indicate the desire of our first

ancestors and hope of humans.

Those psychological suggestion of colors are not permanent

to any person, nor the same to different people. Colors don’t

carry element of emotions themselves, but only reflect

color-associated light waves of different length on human’s

eyes and cause different neuron reaction in their brain and

accordingly produce the so-called color emotions. What

people feel about different colors not only relates to the type

of color, but also the culture background of the person,

circumstance of event, health situation of the color viewer

etc. For example, the yellow could also signifies sickness or

frailness at certain circumstance, while red could express rage

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or hints violence, and green associates with weakness and

un-decisiveness quite often. White is perfection and

purity ,but sometimes may suggest arrogance. Pink color is

attractive, but can’t dissociate with being frivolous

sometimes.

Some colors carry strong message of cultures just as people’s

psychology are greatly effected by their culture background.

Ancient Europeans tended to apply white color for their

architecture, while Asian people favored red color to paint

the walls or pillars of their buildings or mansions. In some

countries of Europe, people can find many antique

architectures built by big white marble stones, with huge

white pillars holding up in the front. And in some Asian

countries, red or yellow-color painted temples, palaces could

be found everywhere in their historical scenery sites or

capital cities. European culture has got great influence from

Greeks and Italians who reside by the sea and could have

been brain- washed by the light blue color of the vast ocean

and sky, while Asian culture, most influenced by Chinese

people who originated from plains of inland with rich soil for

agriculture, and had been seeing the yellow crops and colors

of ripe fruits generation by generation, thus take it as a color

of wealth and happiness. However, In some western paintings,

we may found red color was actually used to depict the outfit

of generals or garments of religious figures such as Jesus,

Mother Mary etc al, which indicate the power and authority

conveyed through this color, but usually it is not the case in

Chinese culture.

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Different ethnic groups may also incline to the different

tones or saturation of the same color. Western culture tend

to use bright tone of the colors with high saturation in their

visual art, demonstrating the openness of their personality,

the brightness in their thinking, the straightforwardness and

boldness of their doing. Asian people like to use less light

tone of the colors with low saturation in their painting, and

very often would add water or ink to the color to make it

darker and less bright, which probably reflects the

introspected personality of Asian people who don’t like to be

seen as too sharp or too outspoken in anything they are

doing, in a way trying to demonstrate their virtue of modesty.

Of course, those Chinese painters are mostly gentry class

people or court officials or disciples of ancient saints, and

varied from the ordinary artisan people who did all the mural

paintings and ceramic decorations.

Beside color, shape is another very important element of

painting art, which has square, rectangle, triangle, circle and

polygons such as Pentagons, hexagons, octagons. For painters

who are trained in western painting schools, they are

probably told that drawing or painting images are actually the

process of drawing geometric shapes and putting all of them

together. At least the beginning stage of sketching is almost

the same thing of drawing geometric shapes and then to

round the straight lines a little bit to make them have a

natural look and a better resemblance to the real image of

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the object. In traditional Chinese painting, the painters

probably don’t go through this stage of training, due to the

perception that they didn’t think the accurate forms are

important. What matters to them were the quality and

expressiveness of the lines, the composition of the painting

and meanings conveyed through the work. Sometimes, colors

are not even necessary. Still those shapes were more or less

noticeably displayed in their work without their knowing.

Different shapes also have their own psychological suggestion

to viewers. Rectangles give people a sense of stability,

integrity, and spaciousness. Many objects in our daily life

show the rectangle shapes, such as desk, blackboard, bed,

walls, doors, etc. Squares are neat and cute, and conveyed a

sense of perfectness and centreness. Triangles with one side

based on the bottom displays the stableness and strength,

such as the Egyptian pyramid; the triangle with one point on

the bottom either indicates the threat of danger such as a

dagger, or the unsteady situation of impending fall-down.

However, sometimes, the over-turned triangle shape could

also indicate the fertile pelvis basin of the woman, which is a

good sign for the family. Also, triangles with one point

directing to right or left side gives a sense of movement such

as the road signs. Circles convey fullness and wholeness, or

indicate movement of rolling. Such as the moon, the sun and

moon cake for the former, and car wheels, balls for the latter.

The polygons are used in many things in our life. The patterns

of window frames used interlocked hexagons quite a lot while

the patterns of design for fibers for bed sheet or the table

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cover also favor the shape of polygons. Actually the shape of

human face could be done through drawing a vertically

lengthened octagon.

Lines of the short or the long; the straight or the curved make

different shapes, also directly show in the paintings or

designs as an art element itself. Long straight lines show the

strength, neatness and steadiness. Short ones or even the

ones shortened to be the dotty brush strokes, are lively and

give a sense of vitality, motion or texture if applied properly.

The curved line is also an indicator of movement, and is used

quite often in painting water and clouds in Chinese paintings.

The curved line used in painting the flowing bands around

the ancient Chinese ladies’ shoulders or arms is elegant.

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When The Eastern Art Meets With The Western Art

However beautiful an art piece might be, or however

delicious the food could serve the gourmet, people never

stopped to change their taste on things. It is because the

human’s nerves tend to gain fatigue easily when focusing on

the same thing too long. Just as if you stared at certain color

without blinking your eyes for half hour or so, you would feel

the color having lost its attraction, or even having changed to

its original hue to something different. Perhaps that explains

part of the reason that all art forms have been constantly

developing their new styles. Other reasons could be that the

economic, social and political change of the society led to

different life style and the demand for new art.

When most people were still enjoying the classical Chinese

figure painting style which had prevailed in Tang dynasty,

there appeared a Madman Liang Kai in Song dynasty who left

his official post as an painter-in-attendance from the court

and went to become a Buddhism monk. He was the first

well-known artist to paint people with broad brush strokes

while applying the techniques of splattering ink on paper

which was usually applied on modern Chinese painting, and

created distinctly different style of figure painting, such as his

Celestial Man and Li Bai Reciting a Poem(see volume 1 of

Chinese Painting – a Showcase to Chinese Culture). Even

though Liang was not regarded as the father of modern art in

China, he did make a corner stone in Chinese painting art. It

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was not until the late Ming dynasty that a revolutionary

figure in Chinese art history, Xu Wei (1521-1593 AD) founded

the genre of modern art and was worshipped as the father of

modern art by numerous followers and modern art practisers,

such as masters Zhu Da (1626 – 1705 AD) and Shi Tao (1642 –

1707 AD) from the early Qing Dynasty. The important figure

from Beijing painting style such as Qi Baishi (1864 - 1957AD)

was a great admirer of Xu and Zhu, and undoubtedly a

devoted disciple to those precedent masters. Their work all

featured with very expressive brush strokes and vivid figure,

and usually with beautiful poems.

Just like the western modern art, Chinese modern art came

to paint a lot of ordinary people and scenes of daily life, and

used distinct brush strokes. During the Tang or Jin Dynasty,

the celebrated artists are court painters or government

officials, such as Gu Kaizhi (344 – 406 AD), Yan Liben(600 –

673 AD) and Zhou Fang(730 – 800 AD) who painted mostly

figures from mythologies, emperors and court ladies, with

dedicated coloring and detailed depiction of forms, a style for

the taste of the royal family, or high-rank officials, or rich

people. Liang was brave enough to break that rule of

traditional figure painting. And the masters in Ming dynasty

made the Free-hand painting style in figures, landscape and

birds or flowers a very popular practice, which is opposite to

the style of Tang’s court painting that is called Gongbi

painting style. Xu Wei made a giant stride in the course of

development of Chinese painting, and made painting such a

approachable media to freely express the inner spirit and

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emotions of the painters, which used a lot of calligraphic

strokes in the painting and directly added poems to the

image of the work. When we see the image, one can feel the

poem; while we read the poem, one can vision the image,

such as his work The Grape and Chrysanthemum, which have

been introduced in the volume one of this book.

We may see that there are some similarities among those

painters mentioned above. Liang Kai went to become a

Buddhism monk after his political career from government,

while Zhu Da and Shi Tao(whose original family name was

also Zhu) were both offspring of the royal family from Ming

dynasty and retreated from the mundane world to become

the Buddhism monk after the Man People conquered the

Ming emperor and built the Qing Empire. Xu Wei was never

successful in his pursuit of career in government, and was

even thrown into the jail for some reason. He tried writing

drama also, but painting made him one of the greatest artists

in Chinese history. So all those artists were not happy with

their life. The loss of their home country or the huge failure in

their career associated with the great disappointment at the

old dynasty and resistance to the new authority made them

feel estranged from the current society. With angers and

frustration growing inside and pushing them to find out a way

to let out, of course, emotional display on their work would

be a reasonable solution for a painting artist. Thus,

maneuvering the ink and varying the brush strokes just came

so naturally to them. So for Chinese modern artist, they

didn’t start to search for the new techniques before they had

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that desire to express their inner emotions.

It seemed a different story for the pioneer of

Post-impressionism painting master Paul Cezanne (1839-1906

AD), equally as the father of modern art in western painting.

As western painting artists took techniques as a very

important part of their artisanship, just as they could be

bored with the old painting subject, they never gave up trying

new techniques to fine tone their work. Cezanne applied

distinct lines in his painting, which was usually avoided in the

classical realism painting due to the requirement for a

illusionary realistic look of the image, which is usually

accomplished by using the shade and light to create a

volume-like body of the object and depth of the space. The

application of strong lines for images make it look less

realistic, however, it greatly influenced the work of Pablo

Picasso (1881-1973 AD), the founder of Cubism. Cezanne also

innovated the short-brush stroke for an effect of shimmering

light in the painting, by juxtaposing the dots of different

colors of light or dark artistically to reflect the light which led

to the creation of new style of Pointillism. I am afraid we have

to credit all these to this talented painting master to make

him worthy of the title as the father of western modern art.

Zhu Da and Shi Tao lived a estranged life in their late time,

trying to void the harassment and persecution of the new

government, during which ordeal they found their inspiration

of painting. The Post-impressionist Gauguin(1848 – 1903 AD)

went to search for new painting subject in Tihiti, a distant

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island from main-stream civilization of Europe. Cezanne hid

himself for art creation while experimenting with new

painting techniques in southern France, while Van Gogh

(1853 – 1890 AD) lived a isolated life in Arles and produced

some later to become the master pieces of

post-impressionism. Van Gogh applied many strong colored

lines in his work, to create a style of painting with vibrant

colors, a contrast to his destitute life situation, maybe a

comfort to his constant depression.

Zhu Da painted most work of flowers, or birds with funny

looks and desolate landscape. He was a great master in

maneuvering the ink by producing different shades of ink

with one brush stroke. In those shades, the volume is

indicated, even may not clearly shown strictly to the standard

of classical realism; accordingly, without real colors in

painting, but we can tell “colorful” hues in the painting. This

is the feature of Chinese modern art at its beginning stage,

minimal application of colors, less endeaveur to focus on the

resemblance of the object, however, enough to satisfy the

need of the painters, luckily with no interruption of extra

labour to intervene his flow of artist input, in addition, with

poems added to further express the spirit and thoughts of

the master, aesthetic value is enhanced to the work. In

Chinese poems, there are no well-defined concepts, but

artistic conceptions. So the enormous room for imagination,

the expressive brush strokes carried with strong emotions,

the symbolic image together with the connotations beyond

the words of poem, all bring up a sensational feeling of

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beauty to the viewers. The beauty might come after that

saddest feeling delivered by the painter, combined with a

refreshing feeling prompted by the painter’s intuition from

practicing the new belief in Buddhism, and thus made it the

most impressive one. To the painter himself, the completion

of the creation of the work would bring great comfort to his

wounded soul, and lead to a complete relaxation after

pouring out all the restrained emotions and thoughts, and a

feeling to transcend the experience of his life, as well as that

of producing the art under the spiritual guidance of the new

belief. Consequently, a great pleasure and self-content that is

more meaningful and lasting than one received material

wealth or achieved career success. That is the pleasure only

associated with beauty , and nothing else.

When it came to middle or late Qing Dynasty, with Shanghai

becoming the international port for business and a major city

exposed to foreign culture and art influence, colors took its

important role in Chinese free-hand brush painting style,

especially in Bird and Flower genre. Among those painters,

Wu Changshuo was a successful example. The peony painted

by him gave a very rich color look and were favored by many

trades of people. This is the Shanghai School of painting, an

art for all class of people, a genre to paint different subjects

of every day life. Until now, the Chinese painting has come

down to the door of general people from the wall of temples,

the palace of the royals, and the study of the Confucianism

scholars. Paintings had become part of the business, started

to show up in the commercial galleries and business shops.

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Those painting works fed the taste of ordinary people,

whether they were well-educated or not, whether they were

seniors or young people.

To some degree, Chinese literati painting had the feature of

impressionism style, such as distinct brush strokes for the

outline of the image, not focusing on the resemblance of the

object, inclined to paint real people from their life. Quite

some Chinese landscape paintings, as well as bird and flower

genre even present a great deal of abstractionism element

in their work, such as the Six Gentlemen by the master Ni

Zan(1301-1374AD) from Yuan dynasty, and the Bamboo and

Rock by Zheng Xie(1693-1765AD) from Qing dynasty, or the

Orchard by Zheng Sixiao of song dynasty. Coincidently, the

abstractionism goes together with symbolism quite often, as

displayed on those painting works mentioned above. Orchard

is a symbol of purity and integrity, and bamboo is the upright

one with unbending character. Both are the so-called Junzi

(gentleman) by Chinese painters, and bear the noble

characters in Chinese culture (details also refer to Part 1, Si

Junzi – Four Gentlemen of volume 1 of this book).

Chinese literati’s painting is a very unique art genre among all

two-dimensional art forms. It was first started by Wang Wei

(701- 761 AD), a poet and painter from Tang dynasty, then

officially became a genre in Song dynasty, and reached its

peak in Ming dynasty. All the practisers had to be the scholars

in order to have that particular taste. Literati’s painting

should be simple and pure but not plain and vague, elegant

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but not too fancy, concise but not superficial, primitive but

not dull. The person was not only required to be very well

educated in Chinese philosophies such as Confucianism,

Daoism and Buddhism and so on, but also to be very

sophisticated in painting brush work and composition. You

have to know the Buddhism to understand that particular

meaning of being simple and pure, or the Daoism to know

how to be primitive and concise, and to learn the

Confucianism to grasp the essence of being elegant.

Being elegant here may take more endeavor to dig into its

original meaning here. In Chinese figure paintings, there are

some commonly used brush strokes, such as the silk-line

brush stroke created by Gu Kaizhi (344 – 406 AD), the

iron-line brush stroke by Yanli Ben (600 – 673 AD), the

willow-leaf brush stroke created by Wu Daozi(680 - 760 AD).

Wu was regarded as a “saint of painting” in Chinese history,

however, his brush stroke was sneered at by the classical

literati’s painters, and thus he was expelled from that painting

genre, because they felt that the willow-leaf brush stroke

didn’t satisfy that requirement of being elegant, not as

smooth as silk-line, neither as stern as iron – line. There was

something deliberately maneuvered in that brush stroke, in

order to enrich the painting language, which was not

encouraged in traditional literati’s painting, even though it

might enhance his individual style and charm the crowd. Shi

Tao was an great renovator in brush stroke also, he used very

bold impressionist brush stroke and smart washes in his

painting and earned him the fame of being one of greatest

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Chinese modern artist. However, he was accepted by some

orthodox art critics as a successful innovator in literati’s

painting and was highly regarded by them. One has to

carefully study their painting works before they came to

understand all that subtlety.

To achieving the effect of being pure and simple, one had to

be an excellent brush work master, to immerge himself into

the nature and follow its rules, and enable him to produce

the image that would look as natural as it is. However, it

didn’t mean to achieve the exact likeness here, but that the

image in painting should immediately remind you of the real

thing in nature, but anything else, and make you forget that it

was nothing but a painting. Because the spirit of the object

reflected from the image would immediately catch your

attention, and make you neglect all the techniques.

That type of work can only be accomplished when the

painter’s brush work has reached a highly sophisticated level

and was led by the nature itself, instead of by the painter’s

hand. Also the painter has to have very thorough knowledge

of the object, from its appearance to its inner characters, and

can call them out anytime during the process of his artistic

creation. For example, when one paints a pine tree, he should

already have its image in his mind before he takes the brush,

then he may take a deep breath to vision the spirit of the

pine tree. This vision is greatly influenced by his mindset of

that moment. As we all know the pine is an evergreen plant

that can live for many years, as well stand the cold winter and

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get even greener in snowy season. So pine is a symbol for

longevity, vitality and perseverance in Chinese culture,

however, which character the painter was going to display in

his work mainly depends on his current mood, the thoughts

propelled by that defined circumstance and his own stories.

Some painter might be inclined to express the longevity and

vitality of the pine, especially when he put it together with

the cranes in the same painting, while other painters might

like to expression the perseverance of the pine, to show their

formidable strength and unbendable integrity. Different

visions of those characters in the painter might affect the

brush language and bring up different expressions to the

image and make its display not the same.

However, the traditional literati painting finally retreated

from art battle field after centuries of glorious history when

the Qing dynasty was overthrown and replaced by the

Republic of China in year 1911. Then the following New

Culture Revolution launched by some intellectuals who had

studied abroad gave it a deadly blow by completely negating

the Confucianism who had dominated the ideology of China

for about two thousand years. Lingnan School of painting

appeared at this time of break-point between new culture

and traditional Chinese culture. It was a school created by

Gao Jianfu( 1879 – 1951 AD) and his friend Chen Shuren. Gao

first took training in traditional Chinese paintings, then went

to Japan for an exchange in art, and brought some fresh ideas

and techniques of western painting back to China, since

Japan had been one of pioneers to learn from advanced

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western European countries. Then, Xu Beihong (1895 – 1953

AD) who studied painting in France came back China to teach

western painting as a professor in Art Academies in Beijing.

Xu was also regarded as a member of the Lingnan painting

school. This school was well-known for its effort to

incorporate western painting techniques into traditional

Chinese painting. Gao’s painting kept the freehand brush

work for its expressiveness and spontaneity, while applied the

realism drawing and painting techniques to make the image

look more real. There was also inscription and seal applied in

the painting, so, maybe it could be taken as the new scholar

painting with new ideas and new techniques, to be

differentiated from the ones without inscription, which are

solely focused on the fine depiction of the work and mainly

for the taste of the image itself. Xu painted both oil painting

and Chinese painting, and was so good at painting horses in

Chinese freehand brush style that he was mostly known for

his horse painting among Chinese people, perhaps some of

them don’t even know that he was also good at oil painting.

The New Culture Revolution started in year 1915 of last

century, soon after the end of Qing dynasty, the last one of

Chinese feudal empires. Most leaders of the revolution had

studied abroad, who were strongly against the Chinese

traditional culture without reservation, and enthusiastically

welcomed the western culture without hesitation. (Politics

could be involved in the situation to certain degree). Luckily,

the Chinese brush and ink were still kept, to make the

Chinese calligraphy and painting practice still possible. It was

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not that Chinese traditional paintings are not beautiful, but

because after over a thousand years of facing the images

produced by the same set of tools had created the

sensational fatigue to the appreciators’ eye. I had tried to

show some Chinese master pieces of antique time to people

of various nationality who all responded that they were

elegant, still they could feel more attached to the type of art

produced by their own people, due to the culture habit - a

habitual way of thinking under the strong and long-time

influence of certain culture.

The interesting thing is that the western modern art were in

its feverous renovation around the same period. After the

style of new realism, new classism, there appeared fauvism,

impressionism, post-impressionism, expressionism, cubism,

futurism, abstractionism, Dadaism, Surrealism, and so on. It

was also not that the paintings from the renaissance period

were not attractive enough, the smile of Mona Lisa by da

Vinci was possibly able to catch the soul of all people in the

world, but the artists’ sensitivity made them always restless

in searching and trying new things.

According to the official record, among those modern

western masters, Picasso was probably the one who had

visited China and highly regarded Chinese painting by saying

that the true art was in China. Whether the comment was

reasonable or not, it did say a fact, that the western modern

art renovation had got influence from Chinese art, the

painting or the calligraphy. Just from the distinct brush lines

they applied whether in post-impressionism style, the cubism,

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or the abstractionism, they can’t deny this truth. Some may

argue that those masters didn’t borrow those elements

directly from China, but from the Japanese art such as Ukiyoe,

which could be true. Picasso himself just had a great

collection of Japanese Ukiyoe art at home. The same case

applied to some other modern artist. The thing is that

Chinese neighbor Japanese might also like Chinese art and it

was quite usual for neighbors to borrow from each other. We

just need to see where the root is from. As a matter of fact,

those impressionist, or cubists also learned from the

primitive art in Africa and the Oceanian culture and then

influenced the later artists.

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Time to Move Away from Bad Practice of Politics

In our society, there are people who have never been in

politics at all, why are they always forced to get into a

spectacle of acting or thinking like a politician? That is to say,

in reality, any political or governmental issues will get all

available people involved, or make people invulnerably to

support a certain political figure in their every day’s life. The

high degree of division of labor in modern civilization has

reduced the individual to an operating point on the assembly

line, or a component of a large machine; making the

organization function as the junction of a giant network. Its

purpose is to have a clear division of labor, and make sure

everybody does their own proper job and stay in their right

position The ancient Chinese also said that it was not right to

intervene into other people’s job, otherwise it is as if the

priest who should worship the God, instead takes the job of

the cook by preparing the food for worship. It would ruin the

ritual and spoil the nature of worship, and fail the things by

irritating the god. If so, why should an ordinary civilian be

forced to get involved in political events that have nothing to

do with their own duty? In now days, some politicians in

certain countries even seem to be very fond of forcing people

of other countries to get involved in their own political events.

But the thing is that if they don’t worship the same god, why

should we force them to believe the gods of other people?

We have to say that this is a very bad practice in politics. Even

the religious people know that they can’t just worship gods of

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everywhere without knowing or having true faith on them,

otherwise, they would irritate the heavenly world and receive

their retribution.

In now days, it is getting so obvious that,in a global village,

anything happened in one village member(country) impact

the life of people in other ones. Each country is more or less,

obligated to care about the important affairs of other

countries, just as what an ancient proverb said that the fire at

the gates of the city would make the pond near the gate dry

up, as people have to use the pond water to fight the fire,

thus endanger the life of the fish inside. Things happened in

one place would inevitably have impact on the other parts of

the world. The COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020 clearly

demonstrates the issue. If people saw fire broke up in his

neighbor country and just watch it from distance without

doing anything about it, the fire is likely to extend to their

own country.

Still we shouldn’t forget that the very advantage of modern

civilization is manifested by its "division of labor." Although it

has its defects that are difficult to be avoided, and the many

associated problems that still wait to be solved. But this is

one of the basic principles on which modern civilization is

established. If people cannot understand the concepts of

“professionalism” and “clear division of jobs” related to this

advantages, and does it in the opposite way, it would be like

shooting itself in the foot. Sure that we want to help our

neighbor nations and allies, but we don’t want to push all the

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people into that political battle field. If all people are engaged

in politics, who else is going to do the production and

management work; who is going to engage themselves in

pure cultural and artistic undertakings? How could we find

the belief under the protection of the heavenly kingdom of

religion, and how is it possible for us to provide the right soil

for decent philosopher in their cultivation of character of

neither humble nor arrogant? If all cultural industries are

penetrated by politics, then the law enforcement system will

inevitably fall as servant to politicians, since judges of dignity

and lawyers of eloquence who are but ordinary people

having been bathed in mainstream culture. Because the main

culture directly affects the way of thinking of general public,

so the lawyers and judges will lose their sense of justice, not

to mention direct political interference in judicial system in

some cases.

If so, won't this society be very boring, dull and disappointing?

Of course, interesting and exciting things may only lie on the

way to the door of wealthy and powerful people. The current

problem is that many people are in the status of worrying

about their bread and butter. Those people may be qualified

for a job in basic material production or various social tasks,

but they are invulnerably dragged into political swirls of all

sorts of events for no reason, and have gotten lost their jobs

or simply couldn’t find jobs because of it. I can't help but

wonder if modern people have already lost that richness and

delicacy of their taste on things, due to the fact that they eat

too much fast food? Modern politics seems to be sweeping

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the world like fast food chain restaurants like McDonald’s and

KFC, by crushing other small catering businesses and

entertaining customers in almost the same way of cooking or

service. We see more and more fatty kids showing up by

eating this type of foods, because they don't need to use

their brains while they eat, considering that they don't even

bother using chopsticks or forks, but only using hands directly

for eating. This seems to be the social impact under the

current political model which requires everyone to do the

same types of things and become the same types of people.

You don't need to know too much, and you shouldn't be too

intelligent or too strong. If anyone behaves slightly differently,

they would expect to be fixed. Needless to say, if this

society can ensure that everyone can be fed well, there is

actually nothing to complain about. It could just be that this

social style is only somewhat different from generations

before with the frame of social system remains roughly the

same demonstrating the brilliant progress and for-ever

vitality of modern human civilization, which, however, has

come to a unique stage in its magic course of human history.

But the truth is that more and more people have fallen into

the victim of this survival game, as they can’t even make a

humble living under this social model, people's ability of

original creativity is greatly reduced, coupled with the

drawbacks reflected in a environment of fine division of labor,

making people much less likely to see the whole picture of

things, thus unable to take the overall situation into account.

Consequently, it's very hard to make something great in now

days. Creative job opportunities that can be truly beneficial to

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society are far below the demand compared with the

increase of quantities in population.

In this social model, because of the “malnutrition” caused by

"fast food", the people in power are constantly in a state of

inexplicable anxiety and sometimes self-created competition.

Each skilled worker is taught the knowledge of one specific

area of this civilization, almost ignorant of any thing in other

domains. When they run into the non-technical problems

related to their jobs, they could make wrong judgment call or

simply fall into panic, and do the things just as crazy as it

looks to others. Moreover, the extremely rigid accountability

system makes them eager to prove the value of their position.

They will make effort to look for constructive work or help

people in troubles. If they are lucky, they may find something

good, then everyone might be happy. The tragedy starts from

here.

First of all, it is difficult for them to find suitable work projects,

because, with all the high-tech equipments, the material

productivity level is very high, and the work efficiency is

much better than before, so, in current social model, many

people are forced to embark on a career of politics, with

relatively less people for them to work on, and more peels to

watch on them. Secondly, with the application of various

modern brain and electronic devices, undetected mind

manipulation is proliferating globally, so even if they happen

to find a suitable work project, they may be made to fall into

psychological trap of second - guessing it. We would hope

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that they can endure more manipulation, and have made

good preparation for a project before they jump into it, so

that they would be sure that it is practical and beneficial to

do so and it is not something too good to be true no matter

what they run into in the middle of the way, and will not

easily give it up. Of course, this would require great analytical

skills, rich life experience, and profound knowledge of

different domains, which, however, are exactly what this

society is deficient. The human resource departments and

labor force market are filled with candidates of technical

workers and experts in some specialized areas, and the job

ads specifically details all the mandatory working experience

and qualifications in specific domains, which furthermore

encouraged this kind of hiring practice. This is the side effect

of this principle - division of labor that has contributed to the

establishment of modern education system and labor hiring

system which are now clearly showing its deficiency to cope

with the demand of current society.

It seems that modern people are getting confused, they are

too excited with the previous progress and thought that they

have inherited some powerful magic from their late ancestors

and can rest assured on it, without contemplating how to

make it work exactly to our current time. They have ignored it

when they should use it, while they happily stick to its

negative side which they should avoid and thus made a huge

mess to our life.

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Hello to Burden – Off

Since antique time, tribes tried to train warriors and cities

started to build armies in order to protect their own people.

When nations appeared as a phenomenon in history, army

has become a prominent feature of these civilized societies,

which is aimed to put down the riots and protect the safety

of their citizens and guard the sovereignty of the country.

The soldiers have been given great honor for their service

provided to their country, and the martyrs have been

memorized by their people eternally, the highest monuments

are built to glorify the victories and remember the sacrifice

they had made to people they serve and who had so much

faith on them and had never showed hesitation to praise

them. It was true that the military had been a subject of great

importance in human society, and had made the leaders of all

nations in history rely on its power to rule and to fight for

their people’s interest.

Nevertheless, the army was originally built for war, the very

fighting behavior of this Mister, which was generated from

the primary nature of biological beings on their survival

games for territories and food, was manifested before the

creation of the concept of “war”. Even the plants fight among

themselves for suns and soil too, only they do it in a silent

way, let alone for animals, especially the mammals who could

get really bloody and brutal in this game. We don’t know

when human started to put on clothes, and for which reason

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primarily. Was it for protection from cold and exterior injuries,

or was it for the sense of shame, developed in order to

distinguish them from the beasts, and avoided to be nude

among the crowd. Maybe, different tribes varied to some

degree for their separate reasons due to the difference of

climate and geographical environment. Decades ago, some

scientists have believed that humans became the masters of

this planet and other animals because they stood up by

walking on two legs and made their brains more developed.

But the truth is that the standing-up would make the brain

more difficult to get the nutrition and oxygen from blood

which has to resist the gravity of the earth to get up to the

brain, and actually made humans less sensitive and more

slow in their reaction the environment. It is reasonable to

speak that it was the standing-up that made human

developed self-consciousness when they could easily see the

sacred parts of their body – the sex organs and sex parts, and

further developed conscience which helped them to cope

with group activity in a better way. Self-consciousness is

something about oneself, while conscience is something

related to one’s thoughts and motivation of actions to other

ones of their own kind, is ultraistic. These are the things that

other animals could never have. Otherwise, human may not

need the clothes to keep them warm, which is what animals

do, whose feathers and furs are supposed to be warmer than

ancient man-made clothes.

Even though all animals have languages, however, standing

up did another merit to humans and made their vocal cords

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better developed to make much more complex sounds and

hands further developed that are able to write, needless to

mention all other extraordinary things accomplished by

human hands. However, it was the human language that

made human able to communicate complicated things and to

negotiate and cooperate with one another, which made it

possible for them to build a stable and advanced society,

instead of like the animals, in which world, every thing is

unstable, as the low-level cooperation wouldn’t enable them

to defend themselves from fierce predators and overcome

unexpected disasters and deal with sudden extreme bad

climates or events. The developed self-consciousness and

conscience further made human to become capable of

valuating things other than material wealth. They started to

worship spiritual things, which might not always be in a

reasonable way, however, it was the belief that bound people

together and made the group strong, and it is exactly the

common will of the group could produce marvelous power to

fight against the malign natural environment and made

human to prosper and finally become the most powerful

being of the earth. However, it was not the achievement of

one single person, but the effort of the group that did it.

When having one single person left in a wild jungle without

weapon, he/she would become the prey of most animals

there.

So, army, whose job is to start fights or fight back for defense,

could be a good thing during the developing stage of human

society, however, whose existence has never been the

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purpose of a civilized society which is built on the foundation

of order and reasons and depend on its true revival and final

prosperity through looking for common grounds of belief and

interest and seeking solution of communication between

people even during the troublesome times. Many things

would just get vanished or modified during the course of

their development, just as some physical organs or parts of

human being have lost their function or degenerated during

the its course of biological evolution by involuntarily adapting

to its contemporary environment. Now humans society is in

an era with highly developed technology and explosion of

information, and the supply of food and basic human needs

are no longer of the primary concerns of people. How to

deploy the extra labor force becomes the major problem. We

don’t need so many people in manufacture and agriculture

sectors, then squeeze them into the government and

militaries? Do we need so many people working in those

domain? Any people who have some common sense about

the concept of a society would know the answer is no, just as

a person can’t have one arm longer than the other one,

which would make a distorted figure. The overly imbalance of

interior environment of anything could eliminate itself. The

human body and all its organs live in a balanced condition,

the nature can only sustain in a balanced ecological

environment also , and it is the same thing for the human

society which can not afford to let the government together

with military unreasonably overpower the cultural and

economic sectors.

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The over-crowed government and military sector could lead

to destroy the previously divided boundary and abuse of

power. That is the nature of most beings, which tends to

develop insatiable appetite and infinite desire of

self-expansion if there is no restriction put upon them.

Imagine what our military could do right now. As ordinary

civilians, we don’t have any privilege nor device to pry into

the military insides. However, as people educated in a

civilized society, we could make a reasonable guess of what

they could and would do. In a digital era, with all the

advanced electronic and digital devices, some people of

privilege start to do it for personal or group interest,

completely breaching the rules of implementing those

gadgets set by the government and put innocent people’s life

in jeopardy. Some of those conducts have been condemned

in human history and the ideology behind them has been

thrown into the garbage bin of this civilization, however, was

somehow dug out by some scavengers and used to shame

this society again.

So the over-empowerment of the military and government

has become more of burden or even trouble, instead of help,

to our society, to themselves as well. An abnormally

empowered being will suffer itself too, just as an overly

lengthened arm, being naturally more aggressive, would

incur more injuries than the shorter one, even though it is

stronger and made it feel good about itself sometimes. Of

course, on the other side, the aggressive side of the abnormal

power will inevitably bully the weak ones and have very bad

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impact on the community and cause detrimental effects

which can’t be estimated to our society, considering the

extraordinary power of modern technologies. Don’t we think,

maybe, it’s time to reconsider the role of the military which

can never change its aggressive and combative nature and

could be catastrophic to humans given its privilege of hands

on all the modern technologies, by taking away their

excessive power which have been bestowed by the people,

those very ones who have come into an age of seeking peace

and harmony on earth. Seeking harmony with different

parties within one unified environment, is always the best

approach for the survival of a living unit, which is this global

village – a tightly connected nation groups on earth through

technologies. While we don’t need so many people to work

in government either, because a head of too big size can’t

hang on a weak body for long and it would crush the body

and kill itself.

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The New Legend of a Mouse-Hunting Dog

---- This story is merely for entertainment, and isn’t intended to

point finger at anyone, while wishing nobody would produce dogs

that hunt for mice again, as anything against nature would be

harmful to people as well as to the society.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

One day, a biological engineer who has gotten nothing

to do and was trying to kill his time by skipping over a

magazine, happened to encounter an article with a title: the

dog who chases for the mouse, is intervening in other’s affair,

which is just one of the Chinese idioms, meaning people

shouldn’t just interfere with other’s life without getting

permission or with no good reasons. However, that title

suddenly enlightened him. And he started to ponder upon an

idea: why not create a real dog that can hunt for the mouse.

Then, after several year’s interesting trials of experimenting,

the engineer finally produced a dog who will chase the

mouse immediately after it sees the small poor thing. He sent

the dog to one of his friends and asked his friend to take care

of it for him, as this friend had once complained to him that

the household had seen mice running inside before. He could

have gotten a cat at home, whose job is hunting for mice,

but cats are gourmet of fish, while he’s gotten some gold

fishes in a glass pot at home as pet.

This dog was no different from other ones in its figure and

behavior, but it barked in a different sound. The sound was

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somewhat like that between the shriek of an owl and the

singing of a nightingale. Every time when it saw a mouse, it

would immediately run after it and give a loud cry when it

reached within the short distance for its final jump on the

mouse. When the mouse heard the astonishing sound and

instantly becomes confused by the situation as it didn’t know

whether it was facing his nature enemy – the owl, or the

lovely girl of nightingale. Just at the moment of its confusion,

the dog had already taken the mouse in its mouth all of

sudden, then happily ran to its master for prizes. It was just

because of the high vigilance and responsibility that the

engineering dog had showed in its duty, together with its

exceptional ability of mice hunting, that, shortly after, there

was no mouse appearing in the house of this friend again. As

this dog was not only good- looking with strong built and nice

fur, further with its special ability of mice hunting, it was

elected as the champion in the pets contest of its first year’s

stay in this community.

Since then, this dog became the celebrity of this area.

Almost all the Ms. Cats and Ms. Dogs began to show their

affections to him, and tried to found chance to flirt with him.

Even the members of the dogs and cats fraternities have

gotten every impressed by his mouse- hunting skill. So this

dog, being content and proud, started to pay visits to his

neighbors whenever he has gotten bored by staying at home

with himself. Soon he has made many friends in this

neighborhood. Every time when he visited one house, he

would stand up and pat on the door bell gently, then gave out

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the sound of the nightingale, which would for sure thrill the

Ms. Cats or Dogs inside, and one of them would jump up to

push off the bolt of the lock and open the door to let him in.

Then they would start to play by chasing, jumping, and giving

different kinds of funny sounds. Of course, having fun wasn’t

the only purpose of this dog’s visit, he would sometimes

sneak into the kitchen and stole the food from the household

and enjoyed it right away by himself, when the masters were

not present. Consequently, the masters would often find the

food missing, but always blamed the mouse for it. When one

of the masters saw him in their house, he would immediately

show its obedient side and cleverly hint to them by barking

softly that his sole purpose there was to hunt for the mouse.

Once, there was a mouse with changeable color of fur

appeared in one big household. The mouse could change the

color of its fur everyday. The master of the house has never

heard of any mouse that could change its color, and thought

that might have been a bunch of mice hiding somewhere in

his house with each of them coming out in turn to steal food

from him. Honestly, this dog was very fond of visiting this

household, as the Ms. dog there was very nice to him.

Needless to say, he naturally became the hunter of this

mouse. Every time when he saw the mouse, he would do its

due diligence without hesitation, by using his usual but

unique trick to catch the mouse. At the beginning, the

mouse was extremely frightened by this dog and would run

like a hell when it saw the big dog came after it. The mouse

said to itself: I have thought that cats won’t recognize the

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mouse that change colors, and I would be able to spend my

rest life here without too much worries, however, there

suddenly appeared a dog who won’t just mind his own

business. For God’s sake, I would be finished by this dog! But

the mouse stopped to run afterwards when it saw the dog

again. It just stayed there quietly, letting the dog to catch it,

otherwise it would always feel something didn’t go right for

that day. Why was that? Because the dog wouldn’t kill his

prey, he just quickly ran over to catch the mouse in his mouth

and played a bit to scare this little thing for a while, then

threw it out of the house, by making it feel awful at beginning

which then turned into something couldn’t be described and

made the mouse attached to it eventually. After the dog

threw out the mouse, he would glance the people from the

left to the right, a way to tell others that what a wonderful

job he has done for them. However, once the dog left the

house, the mouse would immediately run back into the

house again. The master would find his food missing everyday,

while also saw this dog marching out of his house with his

head raised high, unexceptionally with a mouse of different

color in this mouth. Of course, this worried master at least

found some hope from this dog that he would sometimes pat

on the his head and praise him by saying: “Good boy! The

champion of this year has to be you again!” But slowly, he

started to feel strange by what happened at his home that

there seemed unlimited mice in his house, which could never

be finished.

One day, after this dog entered one household, the Ms.

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dog forgot to close the door, of which situation was

unfortunately taken advantage by a thief who passed by this

neighborhood and immediately followed in, and stole quite

some expensive stuff from this household, then the masters

of the house started to secure the lock and made sure

nobody else could enter if they didn’t open the door for them.

So this dog lost his chance to visit this house again. Frustrated,

this celebrity of pets visited the household of that color

mouse again. As usual, he tried to chase that mouse, but the

mouse happened to have eaten some walnuts that day, and

became smarter and more agile than before, so it didn’t wait

there for the dog to catch it, instead, it turned to one side

and ran away. This mouse’s unusual behavior instantly

irritated this dog who got very upset and made a very brave

jump after dashing over, trying to bite that mouse hard and

teach it a good lesson, but accidently flipped over an ignited

candle standing on the table before the shrine of the sitting

room, and made the fire spread to the paper products by the

side , then to the wood-made furniture and caused a great

fire in the house. The fire came at the mouse and ruined its

colored fur which could never change the color again. The

dog was shocked by the fire and tried to do something to put

it down, but only got his throat injured by the strong smoke

of the fire and made his vocal chord severely damaged by the

fire incident, a permanent damage that he wouldn’t be able

to make the sound of nightingale again. Since then, the

mouse which has lost it ability to change the color of the fur

daren’t show up in the house again. As long as the master

saw it, he would immediately recognize it, and would try to

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catch it by all the means he could find. As for the dog, he

couldn’t say sweet things to lady pets again, and gradually

lose their affections toward him. Every time he tried to bark,

it is the shrieking sound of owl coming out, and would

instantly alerted all the mice nearby who never wanted to

take their chance with him again. So this once champion of

pets in this community, has been ignored by others and

became miserably alone being left at home by his master.

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Mr. Ren De And Mr. Gong De

In some place, there are two sisters who are very well-known

for their beauty. Unmarried men from hundreds of miles

away came to court them. However, these two sisters aren’t

into powerful families neither the real rich ones, but the ones

with virtues, In the end, the elder sister who is gentle,

virtuous and knowledgeable married Mr. Ren De (meaning:

Benevolence and compassion), while the charming and

skillful younger sister married Mr. Gong De (meaning: Work

Morals).

Mr. Ren De is loyal, kind, righteous, humble and brave. There

is a pair of antithetical couplets hanging at the door of the

house. The first line of the couplet is: Only if I can have

thousands of houses; the second line is: I would make them

the shelters of all poor people and the people happily live

their life. A horizontal scroll above the door says: this is a

humble house, with fragrance of no perfume but my virtue.

Blessed with virtue of diligence and gift of intelligence

bestowed by the heaven, Mr. Ren De is engaged in the

ordinary business that is beneficial to the community and

neighborhood. Although they are not rich, being a

considerate wife and a respectful husband of the family, the

couple live a very happy life.

Mr. Gong De is a shrewd business man and an opportunist.

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He had once earned a good fortune in business before his

late failures. He lived in a big mansion. There is also a pair of

couplet hanging at the door. The first line is: Never mind the

small amount of daily accumulation of wealth; the second

line is: Keep in mind to plan big in the long- term. The

horizontal scroll says: where there is a will, there is a way. Mr.

Gong De is a man living in the infinite desire, always thinking

to glorify his family in his hometown. His wife, too, was of the

same mindset and often offers him her constructive advice.

As a matter of fact, she acted as the boss of the household

and an indispensable assistant of his business.

Mr. Ren De tends to stay away from the spot lights in order to

avoid unnecessary troubles. However, Mr. Gong De always

acts as the vanguard of his era, daring to do something

non-ordinary. He has got his own work moral which is

"nothing is better than reaching the goal, falling behind is

sadder than anything else". Once, he ventured into a coffin

business. They advertised that the coffin was made of the

latest high-tech materials, so that the bodies of dead people

could stay in the coffin for 500 years without getting rotted.

However, its biggest advantage was not here yet: One article

explained that because of the special material of the coffin,

not only the body can be well preserved, but also a lot of

information belonged to this dead people, which produced

when his was alive can be well kept in the coffin. And the

energy contained in the information of the ancestors could

react to the prayers of the descendants in front of the tomb

and bless them along with their life. Since this coffin was an

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innovative high-tech product, thus, its price was absurdly

high. But as soon as the article was published, Mr. Gong De's

coffin shop was immediately crowded with enquirers. Rich

people from the neighborhood almost all went out to see this

special coffin. Just think about it. Who doesn't wish to bring

good luck to their off-springs after their death? Mr. Gong De

was naturally very proud of his bold venture. He and his wife

warmly accepted those distinguished guests one by one and

provided them with all the detailed product information. One

young man, after having listened to the introduction, got so

excited that he almost wanted to jump into the coffin and lie

inside to try the "longevity house" that he could enjoy after

his death.

However, just as some of the guests were planning to make

an advanced purchase of the coffin for their family. A

magazine called "Observation" suddenly published a new

article, almost hilariously criticized the benefit of the coffin.

As according to the latest scientific research results, the

moment before people are going to die, they would suddenly

memorize the bad deeds that they have conducted in their

life, and show their repentance. So this thought which could

be stronger than other previous message information will

linger around the dead body, and enter the coffin with it, and

stay inside for a long time. Especially if the coffin has a good

information - energy preservation feature, the repentant

information will last for ever inside, and this energy will grow.

When the energy reaches certain level, at the moment of the

visit of the offspring, the energy field prompted by the

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confession information of the dead person will instantly

cause explosion at sensing the relationship between the

visiting offspring and the dead ancestor, as the connection

revealed during the pray of the off-spring will function as the

lead to ignite the explosion, and bring condemnation to the

visitors. This article immediately shocked all the potential

buyers and Mr. Gong De's coffin shop had to close.

Mr. Gong De was not discouraged. He immediately invested

in a real estate project in a "Fengshui treasure land".

“Fengshui” is something very important people usually refer

to when they purchase immobile properties or do the

domestic design of the house, as many Asian people believe

that the proper orientation and layout of the things inside the

space matter greatly to the people’s health, luck and fortunes.

Before he found this piece of land, no one had even noticed

its value. Needless to say, Mr. Gong De is very good at digging

deep into things, and make something really good out of it by

putting on big advertisement and boasting its enormous

potential benefits. It is said that this geomancy treasure land

is next to Sirius peaks - one of the best dragon veins in the

country. It could not only bring fortunes to the residents, but

also increase their longevity. What's more, this place is

directly facing up to the Golden Ladle constellation in the sky,

which is the closest area on earth to this constellation.

Therefore, anyone who lives here will surely have good

fortunes and lots of children and grandchildren.

Once this information was released, it no doubt attracted a

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lot of real estate speculators to come and talk to them. After

the thrilling and satisfactory conversation, some people even

paid the down payment right on the spot. As a result, the

architects began to dig the ground and build the foundation

for a big construction project at the side of a mountain, and

gradually, the frame of a big building complex is rising to

meet the eyes of viewers far away. One night, residents of

miles away were out for a walk, and suddenly saw a very

bright meteor falling from the sky. They naturally raised their

head and looked up to the sky. Unexpectedly, they found that

there was one star missing at the bottom of the golden ladle

constellation, which made it became a bottomless ladle. This

incident became extremely disturbing to this area, because a

bottomless ladle is a sign of losing fortunes. Accordingly, a

rich man died that night. Some of the residents who had

invested money in that real estate project immediately fell

into panic. Very quickly, the news of this disaster spread to Mr.

Gong De's ears. Mr. Gong De, who has always put on a calm

appearance, could not help but shuddered . He stared at the

investors motionlessly, who rushed in to ask for return of

their deposit. In his heart, he was screaming with anger: why

should the heaven treat me so cruelly?

Mr. Gong De was depressed for a month, thinking that the

dead can't be relied upon, and the heaven would betray and

desert him, then why not do something on the people alive?

People are very smart, and can come out with many useful

tricks to make great achievements in things. The problem is

that people have conscience. They would refuse to do

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something if it goes against their conscience, even if it could

increase work efficiency and temporally or partially benefit

some people in the society. So they invented a microelectron

cap, which can effect people's thinking by emitting

tolerable microwaves to their brain, and the people with caps

on will lose their conscience and act solely for the purpose of

their job. Needless to mention, the hat is excellent, as the

working efficiency of the experimental group with hats on is

much higher than that of the ordinary control group. So Mr.

Gong De immediately put the hat into the market and caught

the attention of a field team who were trying to capture a

very special animal with the most beautiful fur, which is the

best material for making some rare and luxury goods.

This animal is already on the verge of extinction. However, it

got that inborn power to emit a sort of strange wave that

reflects as a beautiful light of the color of the fur, which can

affect people by making their conscience to come back

strongly all of sudden, and stopping their urge to harm others.

But after the hat was put on, the staff could no longer feel

that light, with their conscience restrained. so they become

capable of killing without any repentance. When this animal

was killed in groups, the sadness of the tragedy left on the

body instantly energized and cut off the beautiful light of the

animal fur like a sharp blade. After the fur was peeled off, it

had completely lost its inherent nobility and beauty. Because

this kind of nobility and beauty can only exist by clinging on

life and revived by the call of human conscience. When Mr.

Ren De heard this, he was very sad and commented: the goal

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of job might be achieved, but what is truly desired has been

destroyed. Isn't it like going toward south while wishing to go

to north.

Mr. Gong De, who was on the verge of bankruptcy, almost

collapsed, even his wife’s sweet words and patient persuasion

became useless. He went to see his father, Mr. De Senior, and

told him everything that had happened. At the end, he

complained why nothing was working out now, while

everything was going well before. Mr. De Senior sighed and

answered: "when you were young, you were vigorous,

positive, and thoughtful, striving to do something beneficial

to the society, so you can make things to meet on the right

place. But now you are too concerned about your own

interest, speculating on devil’s will, becoming greedy and

goal-enslaved, so you will meet more obstacles. Go to the

brother-in-law of your wife, Mr. Ren De! Maybe he can help

you. He's actually your brother. Decades ago, this state was in

a chaos of war. I was serving his majesty by the time, and had

to leave for the expedition, so I left your elder brother, who

was too young to go with us, to the family of a friend and

asked them to take care of him for us. Your mother stayed

with me and gave birth to you several years later. Finally, we

came back to this place and found out that everything had

changed and that friend’s family had moved away without

leaving any message to anybody we know. It was not until a

year ago that I learned about your brother's whereabouts. I

had tried to tell you this earlier, but considering that you have

always been so proud and so fearless, I was afraid that you

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would not accept the fact with ease since you two are so

different, and it might hurt the brotherhood if I push you too

hard into it. But I'm getting older every day and I don't want

you two to always act in separate ways. So I really hope you

can communicate with your elder brother more and get along

well with each other. You are real brothers, not just

brothers-in-law!"

Crisis of Civilization

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The Manifestation of the Beauty of Humanity

----The Legacy of Ancient Chinese Philosophy

From Benevolence and Righteousness to Proper Rite

*This article has been published in Journal of Global Research

in August 2020

I have once written a book based on some real life stories

which might have caused some stir among the people who

happened to have read it, in which the protagonist is a gentle

and kind-hearted lady with good education, however, never

made her way out. Fortunately , she is still alive, and gained

wisdoms that enable her to see things better than before.

In her early years, she went abroad to study and work, but

didn’t find her dream career. Then she went back to her home

country to start a new life after the new millennium. It was

fine at the beginning, but a few years later, she began to feel

that her world of life was falling apart.

Although the story is far from enough to tell all the

unfortunate things she has gone through, it is already enough

to make a civilized society shudder. We can’t help but watch

the devils boldly marching in daylight, because no one could

stop them, and there is no existed law to nail them

down. Once again, human civilization is wandering in low

spirit . It is tied out by its own high-tech products, with its

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basic morals and wisdoms lost. People tend to become very

self-centered and rely on the external power of

high-technology too much which has jeopardized the inner

power of themselves. Maybe it’s time to contemplate and

bring back our self-control and our lost wisdom.

Benevolent people are compassionate and helpful. They

treat people equally and put themselves in other people’s

boats. And proper rite can teach a social person how to act in

ways of true benevolence and righteousness.

To decide whether or not we are helping others is not based

on what you say or upon your motivation manipulated by

others. People carry on things with selfish purpose would

also claim that they were helping others, while some people

who are obliged to help but were actually not helpful at all,

instead making things more difficult for others should listen

to the targeted and stop the intervention right away. That is

to say, we should follow certain rules. At least, for example,

respect others.

As the ancient Chinese sage said, the only maxim that can be

used for life is: do not treat others the way that you don’t

want them to treat you.

You should put yourself in other people’s shoes at all time.

If you are a determined and mature adult, while others

always impose their own will upon you, will you be happy

about it? If not, then you should allow others to make their

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own decisions. As the old saying goes, it’s better to respect

and listen than aggress and intervene.

Because everyone has their own different stories in this

world, and it’s usually the person himself who knows his own

story best. Even if they made wrong judgment call once or

twice at beginning, it would only harm one person. Isn’t it

said that “He who has broken his arms three times makes a

good surgeon.” ? People will learn the lessons from their

failures and improve. However, if a society encourages some

privileged people to forcefully, or even break the law

to interfere with other people’s life, sometimes under the

claim to help, it will not cause only one single victim, but lead

to a very bad chain of reactions and overall malign social

effect.

Western philosophers, started from the explanation of

nature to the study of human society, has experienced many

different schools of philosophies, with some schools as rivals

against each other. When it came to the modern society,

there appeared the concept of “egoism”, the theory of laws

that demonstrated the principle of rationalism of the main

philosophical schools, and the theory of will etc al, all of

which mark the progress of human understanding of the

nature, themselves and the human society, and especially

revealed the depth of Western analytical culture and the

endless effort and high spirit in their study of the universe

and human beings.

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Chinese philosophy is originated from Fuxi’s Primordial Eight

Diagrams to explain the principles of human society and the

nature which emphasizes the unity of man and nature.

Then Emperor Wen of Zhou dynasty established the

Posterior Eight Diagrams to further the study. Later

generations began to establish a theory based on

benevolence, righteousness, propriety and music around the

same principle which reveals the interaction of “Yin and

Yang”.

Chinese scholars continued to improve the theory by making

it to adapt to the contemporary dynasties. However, all the

new schools were rooted in the original principle. Because

almost any self-conscious individual tend to fight for the

interest of their own, which the ancient Chinese people had

known a long time ago, so they came to realize that wealth

can only be produced and accumulate during time of peace.

That is to say, only were the society stable could it prosper.

In order to maintain social stability, they must establish a set

of rules of propriety, which will not only bound its people to

obey, but also make them to follow willingly with respect.

That is what Chinese people did, and maybe this is the

difference between Chinese law and western law.

The ancient Chinese people grew up in this kind of social

rules, so even if they didn’t go through formal legal study, it

was still not likely that they would cross the boundaries

without knowing its consequences. Punishment could come

from all sides. That’s the case especially during the peace

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period. And there is no lawyer as an occupation in Ancient

China, as the ancient scholar functioned as the legal clerk.

But the western laws are different.

They have been divided into nature law and nation law long

time ago. For them, the nature law that everyone should

abide by in the same way may be mainly practiced through

religion. Humans possess some basic senses of telling good

from evil even before they have developed their logic and

reasoning, which fact leads to the formation of nature law.

The nation law is the law formulated by the state to maintain

the operation of the political machinery, and it is the

embodiment of rationality. But any thing created by man

must have loopholes to poke through, so if religion loses its

influence, it would inevitably lead to malfunction of the

nation law by fighting against the “sinners” alone. Chinese

propriety rules are combination of nature law and nation

law.

Therefore, it could be more effective sometimes in

maintaining the stability of society. Its purpose is to make the

society well function, instead of making up issues. There is a

popular saying “If the people do not bring the issues up, the

officials will not intervene”. That is to say, in civil cases, as

long as the parties feel that they can solve the case by

themselves, the officials usually will not take the initiative to

intervene.

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Today’s world is at the era of rapid development of science

and technology, also the era of knowledge explosion.

People’s cognitive and knowledge level have improved

unprecedentedly. Although religion still plays an important

role in providing comfort to people’s soul and promoting

world peace etc al, and even some religions have evolved

into multiple branches by incorporating the elements of

science, still they are confronting doubts and negation of

new generations, because some of their theories conflict

with many contents of modern civilization, which leads to the

loss of their believers. Even among the believers, religion has

lost its superior authority and great

influence. Consequently, the commandment of religion lost

their power of control. In this kind of society, what people

follow are the work morals established under the market

economy and capital operation, which is actually a set of

game rules by all means to achieve the job goals. Of course,

these rules can help them achieve their individual short-term

goals and gain profits during a certain period of time, but any

behavior against the nature laws will inevitably cause

adverse consequences to the whole society, and this

consequences will inevitably return to its perpetrators

themselves sooner or later. So, in the long run, it will result in

multiple losers and eventually lead to the failure of the whole

society. Especially in a society of high-speed communication

of information, any unreasonable action upon the society will

soon come to light, and are very likely to face their

consequences shortly after.

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The ancient Chinese rules of propriety which are based on

benevolence, righteousness, propriety and music are closely

related to everyone’s life, can be directly integrated into the

daily function of the society.

The ancient Chinese sage said:

the truth of benevolence is the truth of kinship;

the truth of righteousness is the truth of brotherhood;

the truth of wisdom is the truth of knowing both;

the truth of propriety is to demonstrate the above two in a

proper manner;

the truth of music is to praise the above two and reveal the

happiness during their practice of the propriety.

That is to say, benevolence is to serve parents, extended to

their superiors etc al; righteousness is to listen to brothers

and sisters, extended to trustable friends, colleagues and

acquaintances who might have more life experience and

wisdom; propriety is to practice the benevolence and

integrity by applying the social etiquettes, national or family

rites, and making them appealing to the common sense of

people, thus they should be appropriate, elegant and

pleasant.; music is the expression of inner feeling due to such

great pleasure produced during the proper practice, that

people can’t help singing and playing the instrument to share

their praises. Some might say that many religions are

practicing in the same way too. Yes, but they mostly do it in

churches and temples. And The ancient Chinese propriety

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was working in daily life of everybody, from the emperor to

the peasants.

If we can sincerely respect and assist our elders, would they

not treat you kindly? If we show our admiration and respect

to your brothers or other people who are more experienced

than you and by chance we know, they will naturally

promote you and try their best to help you. The Chinese

say: a gentleman dies for someone who truly understands

him. If we really know someone, and show sincere

admiration to their integrity and respect to their talents and

abilities. Of course, they will treat you as their confidants,

and wouldn’t mind dying for you, precisely, is dying for the

same beliefs and purposes of life. In fact, these two kinds of

relationship can simplify all relationships in the world. If we

can handle them well, we should have no worries in our life

provided that there were not too much external intervention

and disturbance. Therefore, as it was mentioned above: the

truth of the wisdom, or in another words, a wise person

should keep in mind that these two things – benevolence and

righteousness cannot be ignored. The question is how to

make them work in current world? It will come down to the

next question of how to create effective propriety rules for

current world by borrowing wisdom from ancient Chinese

people and other cultures.

The four books and five classics, the Analects of Confucius,

the Daode Ching of ancient China, and various important

literature and documents developed by the followers of

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neo-Confucianism can provide very valuable information

about Chinese propriety. At the same time, the outstanding

philosophical theories and relevant literature materials of all

other countries in each century are also very important

references. In a world of global village, humans have

developed unprecedentedly stronger interconnection with

and interdependence upon each other . Therefore, the rules

of one nation will undoubtedly affect the lives of other

nations, and the propriety of other cultural nations must also

be reflected in the rules of that nation. It seems that more

and more people are beginning to realize that we people on

earth need a set of new rules to avoid falling into the fate of

lasting worldwide chaos.

Sources

1. Analects (ancient books republished), Confucius, China Press [The Spring and

Autumn Period]

2. Tao Te Ching (ancient book republished), Laozi. China Press [The Spring and

Autumn Period]

3. Yi Ching (ancient books republished), Confucius, China Press [The Spring and

Autumn Period]

4. Laozi and Zhuangzi (ancient books republished), Laozi and Zhuangzhou, China

Press[The Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Periods]

5. Mencius (ancient books republished), Mencius, China Press[The Spring and

Autumn Period and the Warring States Periods]

6. The Stories of Philosophies, Willian Durant, (I only kept the copies of some of the

pages from the book, but cann’t remember the name of the press)

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On Proper Naming

----- Reflection of Ancient Asian Philosophy

upon Current Society

*This article has been published in Journal of Global Research

in August 2020

Throughout human history, no matter in the east or in the

west, there would be chaotic situation taking place every few

decades in human society. In ancient time when the material

production was at low level with tools not yet developed, the

cause of chaos could be easily understood by the Chinese

sayings: "People die for wealth, while birds die for food." and

"Food is the heaven for people". In face of starvation and

losing of homes, or extreme unfair treatment by

governments in distribution of wealth and benefits, there

were always people who would rebel or take a military or

political coup, or started a war by neglecting the peace

agreement.

But in today's world, where technology is highly developed

and material productivity greatly exceeds the demand, why is

there still constant social turbulence? Whether In China or

many western countries, we can see the stores displayed with

all types of merchandises, stocked with goods unable to sell,

and warehouses of factories overstocked with products

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unable to go to market. It's not because the overall

purchasing power of the society is insufficient, but because of

production and consumption level of the society has reached

its excessive high point. Nowadays, merit boxes, which are

public boxes for donations, are popular things everywhere.

Still good and usable items can often be found discarded at

the garbage room of the community. What does that mean?

It demonstrates that the demand for living goods is not the

primary concern of human society any longer. Thus many

skilled people have been liberated from the production

sector to engage in various social management work in our

society, and division of work is becoming more and more

precise. In this way, it seems that people on earth should

have nothing to worry about? On the contrary! There are

much more problems in now days, and the society is in a

chaotic situation that is almost unprecedented.

Why is that? Some people may attribute it to the social

complexity brought about by the highly developed civilization,

but I don't think so. As we all know that no matter how

advanced science and technology are, it is based on the laws

of science discovered by our predecessors. Because the

scientific workers strictly follow some basic laws of science

and the commonly accepted rules of logic, they have made

the rapid development of science and technology in modern

times, and created miracles of one after another in human

society, while produced some reliable scientific and

technological products to serve mankind, which have greatly

helped improving their living standards. I haven't heard that a

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certain type of sophisticated technology products had acted

recklessly due to their high complexity level, or they would

do things against their purposes to be produced. Although I

personally think that modern science and technology did

have their share of burden of blame in jeopardizing the life of

modern people, during the short period of their glorious

history, the professionalism and the qualification of those

scientific and technological workers are indeed worthy of

admiration for people from other industries. At least they

clearly know the concepts of the terminologies in their own

domains. Otherwise, they won't be able to produce anything

good.

One of the most important issues, as what the ancient people

called "name", might have been ignored by people of many

industries. The ancients said, "if an appropriate name is not

applied for the thing, then it is not a reasonable name and it

would cause confusion about any work related to the thing,

and lead to the failure of work." That is to say, if the name

is not properly placed, or the meaning is not correctly

explained, it would be difficult to explain the principles and

mechanism of the thing and thus unable to execute its

purpose. Perhaps some people may feel that this is just such

insignificant thing, why bother making a big fuss about it? I

am afraid it is not quite so. Actually in the first chapter of Tao

Te Ching(One of Chinese people’s bibles), it is clearly written:

"The beginning of the universe is in the status of being

nameless, while the creation of all things in universe is

accomplished during the process of giving names” These

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words don’t conflict with the scientific postulate of the start

of the universe at all, but are intended to interpret the

different side of the nature of universe. Thus, we can see how

important it is to name things. People create and give names

to things according to their respective attributes and our

understanding about them, and it were those names that

composed the structure of our civilization. They are like the

codes of our civilization, and provide answers to our

questions. Chinese people are the ones addressed the

importance of names just like the westerns addressed the

importance of atoms in nature science. So no matter whether

you believe it or not, it is there doing its work. At the same

time, names give things eternal life. Without a name, when

things are used up or destroyed, they are gone for ever. With

names, things can regenerate and appear again.

In field of culture or philosophy, this phenomenon of “name”

problems may be most prominent, especially in today's world,

where the division of labor is fine, and the economic

interdependence of each country upon others is so strong.

The world can't do without petroleum from the Middle East,

just as it can't without high-tech software from the United

States, as well as all kinds of life necessities made in China,

and so on. Economic interdependence will inevitably lead to

the exchange of cultures and the confrontation of different

ideologies. Whether the result of communication and

confrontation is acceptance, expulsion or integration may

largely depend on the common understanding of the

concepts in those domains.

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While the civilization is evolving, along with it, there were

many new fancy words coming out in all fields. There are

good ones, also bad ones. Just as our forefathers have

foreseen: strange words with ambiguous meanings, and

improper names appeared to make people unable to

distinguish right from wrong, even the government officials

or the law enforcement officers are confused themselves.

How would we expect them to make the right decision and

enforce the law properly? Each country has their own

languages and cultural origins, in addition to which, the

inappropriate translation of words may also lead to

misunderstanding of the same philosophical, political or legal

terms from other cultures, or even the same culture by

different people. Has anyone run into such embarrassing

situation as if a scholar gentleman argued with a

single-minded soldier off the battle, the result of which is

hardly optimistic, because the two can never stand on the

same ground. The logic on which the mode of Human’s

thinking is based is very similar, just as mathematics has been

accepted among all nationalities in basically the same way. So

the fundamental problem that leads to difficult

communication of different nations is caused by the different

understanding of the same concepts, or the “names”. In other

words, the varied depth of knowledge about things and the

interpretation of the meaning of things from different aspects

leads to many incomprehensible and unnecessary conflicts in

the world.

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Probably some people will say that it would be naive to think

it the way mentioned above, and that many conflicts in the

world were actually caused by some governments fighting for

the best interests of their own countries. If that is true, it

would only explains another case of misunderstanding

concept in politics, which is about the confusion on the

concept of "national interest". On the appearance, some

countries may be able to gain certain material benefits by

maneuvering their military power, but they will certainly lose

the faith upon them, not only of the people of other

countries, but also of their own people. What they lose is the

capital of relationship, which is the true long-term interest for

all entities. Some people might say that some governments

are fighting with other countries in order to promote their

culture and advocate their belief and make other countries

accept their cultural advantages so that they would gain the

greatest recognition in the world. Then, they must make it

clear first what is their cultural advantage and how it should

be expressed through the right concepts. Humans mostly

admire people with the attributes of bravery, industriousness,

nobility, generosity, benevolence and humanity, wisdom,

faith, and sense of responsibility, etc., but not stealing,

slandering and framing, getting weaker into worse situation,

and raping human nature to humiliate themselves. Different

nationalities may be inclined to different human values. They

may also have different understanding of those values.

However, those values are the bases of any belief they have

clung onto. In the antique time, the Europeans advocated

chivalry; the British advocated the culture of gentlemen; the

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Americans respected the cowboy spirit; while the ancient

Chinese liked to use their favorable term "Junzi", somewhat

similar to gentleman, but not the same, to express their

national spirit; and so on. Unfortunately, I can't cite all the

examples here one by one, only I don't know what kind of

national spirit the modern countries are advocating. If they

haven't come out with a clear idea, maybe they should first

consult with their ancestors, then surf the Internet, and then

discuss with their neighbors in this global village, before they

are going to do such great deeds for their nations. Otherwise,

they probably wouldn’t even know what they are fighting for

before they’ve blooded their face or gotten their skull broken

into pieces. Perhaps after they have really come to

understand what that idea is, they would suddenly realize

that there is nothing to fight for at all. All humans are

nurtured by the same root – that is mother earth. Why must

they act so earnestly to eliminate one another? It's OK to

have some fun by playing games like in sports matches, but it

should be a match of gentlemen. Like some ancient people

said, if you have to compete with others, courtesy always

goes first. After the contest, the opponents could still

befriend each other by toasting together with greetings and

cheers wholeheartedly. What is the point to fight each other

to death! The adventure of humans has reached the top of all

mountains and the bottom of all oceans, while seldom giving

an second thought by taking away all that they can. There is

not much left on earth but a few glasses of liquor and several

pieces of peanuts made of metal? It is definitely not worthy

of powerful human force to fight for the pitiful leftover on

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earth. It would be so much better to use the human wisdom

and power to engage in some meaningful work to make a

positive transformation of human society and find new

resources and new way out. In modern world, raw materials

are playing much less important roles in people’s life and

countries’ economy than before. Whether or not a country

can succeed in the new era, largely depends on how they can

effectively organize and deploy their social and economic

forces, how they can efficiently utilize and recycle their

resources, how they establish their rapport among their

partners, and how they built their relationship with other

countries. Fighting for the territories and raw materials are

the games of wild animals and primitive people, which should

be voided among highly civilized beings.

There is still an important concept here I would like to

mention. That is, the fights between the governments are not

the same thing as the fight between the civilians. The

government, acting on behalf of the state, seems to devote

themselves to the people of the country. However, it is not

exactly the same thing. Although the government is elected

by the people, once it is formed, it becomes an instrument of

the state as a separated entity with its own will. It is obviously

indebted to the people, but its ultimate goal is to

demonstrate the reasonableness and purpose of its existence,

which is the nature of all individual entity and should not be

blamed for. The people have given the government all kinds

of supplies and privileges to do its job, and they are no longer

obliged to bear other pressure and burdens for the

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government, unless they are employed by the government

temporarily or part-time (full-time personnel, of course, have

been included in the government), or in the extraordinary

events of natural disasters or when the country is facing

immediate takeover or extermination under the attack of

their enemies. Why? because each ordinary citizen has

his/her own share of burden and responsibility in this

human’s survival game. Therefore, it is not wise or practical

for the government to frequently get civilians involved in

their fights against their opponents, in order not to disturb or

even ruin their normal life. Once the damage is done, it

would come back on the government and jeopardize the base

of their power. The common people are the foundation of a

country. Losing the common people means shaking the

foundation of the country and the government.

If people from all trades of the world can share a set of

common terms and follow a set of well-accepted laws and

rules from the beginning to the end of anything they are

doing, then the irresolvable problems would be greatly

reduced, because they can communicate freely with common

understanding of things they are talking at any time with a

designed work language constitute of clearly defined

concepts.

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JENN ZHU

On Reason and Belief

It is commonly said that people without reasons are like

beasts in the season, which indicates the importance of

reasons in a civilized humane world. Reasons literarily means

the capacity of consciously making sense of things, and it

needs to apply logic. Can we say that animals have absolutely

no reasons? It is hard to define. Animals, as just humans do,

can think and plot in order to hunt for food, who should

follow certain logic and acquire some skills, which would be

taken as one way of reasoning in a broad sense of this

concept. Then how to distinguish the human reasons from

animal reasons? Human has some things that animals don’t

have, that is the self-consciousness and belief, and make their

reasoning upgraded to a higher level. Reason is not only

applied to the knowledge, institutions, science, language and

art, but also to ethics and beliefs. The self-consciousness led

to the formation of some basic human morals, while the

belief led to the common will and empowered human activity,

with the former to steer the latter and either noticeable or

unnoticeable penetrated into the latter.

Some of the primitive people have discovered the power of

belief and started worship totems which developed into

religion or other types of belief later on. Those totem pictures

or symbols didn’t just come out of imagination, but also from

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observation of the nature in their many years of fighting

against the adversary environment. From the archeological

discoveries on ancient Chinese bronze ware, or in their cave

and tomb mural paintings, and mural graphs of the Pyramid

in Egypt, we could find quite some of those images which

might indicate a totem worship. Coincidently, The ancient

Egyptian language contains part of iconographies, besides the

syllables and other scriptures, and Chinese language is

originated from a type of pictographical characters, which

made their culture printed with totem belief. China doesn’t

have its own religious belief according to rigid definition of

religion, and that’s why Chinese had to borrow a religion,

Buddhism, from India during the first century AD, in order to

satisfy the need of some people who didn’t have a chance to

engage a deep study of Chinese culture or couldn’t quite get

along with Chinese totem culture. To understand a inland

totem belief originated from the mountainous areas where

they can built temples or small huts far away from the crowds

either on top of the mountains or deep in the woods to

obtain needed solitude in order to have better connection

with the universe, it takes meditation and cultivation, while

Buddhism also requires meditation, and explains why it could

so easily adapted to Chinese culture and evolved to some

new schools such as Zen Buddhism and Pure Land Buddhism,

for some intellectuals and ordinary people. The Pure Land

Buddhism may involve some repeated lip reading of the

name of the Buddha to show their desire and determination

reaching for a land full of bliss, technically speaking, for life

enlightenment.

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JENN ZHU

Western religion is somewhat different, as it is originated

from a sound-inclined culture. Public speaking, oral debate,

and theatre have played a very important role in western

culture since ancient Greece, notably during the three saints

period of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. The opera, with that

penetrating high-pitch voice of Soprano that no singing art of

other cultures is a match, has long become a prominent

feature of western culture. In Christian churches, the oral

preaches of priest, the hymns of the chorus, and the singing

of the prayers are the major plays, who want the divine hear

their praise to God and their faith on the belief; while in a

Buddhism temple, it was the meditation and various

cultivations including some martial arts such the Shaolin

Kongfu in China, in the play, without much oral work needed.

So for those Asian people, their belief focus on achieve

enlightenment through God by meditation and cultivation, or

finding the unity with the spirit of heaven as some of them

believe that they can stay in where they are and become the

Buda themselves, in another way to say it, everybody have

the potential nature of Buda; or become immortal to be

unified with the nature according to the indigenous Chinese

culture. And for Christian believers, they are working toward

finding the path to reach for God in order to be saved since

they believe that everybody is born as a sinner and can only

be saved through Jesus, by loud singing, voiced preaching

and incessant exploring and experimenting, the result of

which acts, however, converted some of the believers to

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something else, or led to reinterpret some of the contents of

the bible and develop the new schools of Christianity. All

these ways are good in their creating and developing the

spiritual world of themselves, and there are no reasons for

those Gods or spirits to fight with each other, just as the lions

don’t need fight with tigers as they are the “kings” of

different territories.

After the ancestors of humans started to stand up, they

would clearly saw the sex parts in the front of their body,

which let them not only to realize the difference between

females and males and started to feel the sense of shame,

which is the original meaning of shame and is the basic

instinct of human as a biological being, but also to come to

understand the importance of those sensual parts of them

and take them as the sacred part of life, on which they

depend on passing on their own kind, and even started to

worship them in some cultures. This was the beginning stage

in the development of self-consciousness that further

developed into a more complex system of human morals

under the assistance as well as the guidance of their belief.

Those early morals were generated from the instincts of a

biological being craving for life and continuance of their

existence on earth, and had their practical reasons, not just

for the formalities or for the purpose of themselves. At first,

they have understood the significance of their sex organs

which they then found out the importance to protect and

respect, and further triggered the behavior of putting on

clothes, starting from protecting their genital parts; then,

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they realized in a harsh physical environment, they needed to

work together in a humanly planned manner, instead of

merely an group action driven by inborn instincts as wolfs or

other animals do, as group activities are usually more

successful than single-person endeavors, during which they

discovered some rules of nature, and found out some things

are closed related to their survivals than other ones and led

to the creation of totem belief. The totem is a combination of

realistic thing with mental picturing through imagination or

abstractions, the later of which could be regarded as the

precedent of some abstract concepts in certain Asian

languages. So the relation between the self-consciousness

and belief is a two-way interplay. Reasons came out first to

prepare for the creation of belief, and the belief came back to

help enriching the reason, then the reason continued to

energize the belief, and the belief came to empower the

reasoning of humans. The emotional shock such as a feeling

of awe to the nature caused by the cruelty of the

environment and the joy created by the successful

experience led people to realize the importance of certain

things to their survival, and produced the sense of reverence

to some symbols pictured or abstracted from nature, thus

came out with the idea of totem. Eventually, the connection

between the strong emotional devotion and spiritual trust

was established between the human and the believed

symbols, and made the worship became instrumental in

human history. It might be a difference case in western

cultures. Nevertheless, it was truly a transcendence of human

spiritual and mental activities over primitive lives, and made

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them apparently stand up, not only physically, but spiritually

from the animal kingdoms on earth, and made them become

the preferable ones of the God or the Heaven. Thus, they

never need to craw on earth again, not like some animals

which may temporarily or occasionally stand up in order to

accomplish some goals.

However, will the spiritual standing- up last for ever? Humans

are clever, and quick learners also, but they have a problem

which can never be fixed, that is easily forgetting things they

have learned before. It is said that a fall in pit, a gain in wit,

which is true and will work for a short period of time, but

people could seldom keep the wisdom for a life time, and can

never pass those lessons to their off-springs through genes

which would develop into a biological mechanism and make

them function as easily just as human knows eating with

mouth and breathe with nose. However, those lessons would

be coded into the library of this civilization and could only be

inherited by those who are willing and ready to learn. The

human civilization is founded on reasons and have developed

into many different disciplines so far. and only those who are

capable of consciously making sense of things would have

chance to learn those wisdom. No doubt, it is not an easy

endeavor to become a sensible being. In modern time, most

people have chance to go to school for education, and going

to college for young people is becoming a phenomenon in

many countries. People are not lack of opportunities to learn

things, and most educated people could become a sensible

being if they want to, and at least demonstrated so some

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times and in some particular occasions. The difficult thing is

to become a reasonable person all the time and in all

circumstances.

Current society is at an age of information explosion and

technology sky-rocketing, with various new disciplines

rushing out like bean sprouts that could make people feel

awe-dropping. No one can expect themselves to learn the full

knowledge of modern civilization. It takes a lot of hard work

to become a talent in some specific area already, let alone to

study two or more disciplines. That’s why we don’t use the

word sage or saint to label current people in now days, as the

ancient sages were the ones who were supposed to know

everything and address all the questions of their tribes or

their people. However, reasons applied its charms practically

to all disciplines, and it is obvious that if the people are better

learned, they are likely to become more reasonable in dealing

with issues and other people. Reasons basically rules all

things. They are the light and guidance of human life. If this

civilization wants to continue and develop to something of

higher level, human needs put more effort to its fundamental

work which is to enhance the reasoning capability of people.

It is not just the logic training in some specific area on which

the graduates depend for looking for a job, but the logic

development for necessary areas that related to their daily

life. A man is wise only if they have learned what they need

for their living. As a saying goes, “learn everything of

something, but also learn something of everything”. Some

people may say, schemes and knavery may work better than

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reasons many of the times, but only to some small portion of

people, and in the underground of this world. In general

speaking, and in the open air of accepted cultures, reason is

still the sunshine boulevard, and which is the only way to

make this civilization to continue and to grow for long term.

Learning is a life-time thing, and the determination to

become a reasonable person should stay on for a life time

also. By learning, we become a reasonable person. Needless

to say, leading an easy life by laying back an having fun would

be more alluring to some people, which is not irrational way

of life, however, only when you could and you are allowed, in

a tolerable and cooperative social surrounding, in a strong

economical situation, and in an amiable political environment.

The truth is that human society has always its downturns and

twists during its course of development. Two or three

decades of good life is usually followed by bad times. No

matter you accept it or not, bad times would come upon

anybody’s life. Lucky ones may get by running into

unfortunate experience once or twice, unlucky ones or the

ones with longevity probably would get into more troubled

times in their life. How to deal with the bad situation with

healthy mentality oneself, or get along with others, for the

politicians, extended to get along with those of other

countries, would be a very important thing. As said above,

reason is the light and guidance of human’s life, which

wouldn’t exclude the religion out, since many religions

claimed that they are the light and guidance of life, because,

as also mentioned above, reasons are applied to human

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beliefs too. Thus, it is not one’s own choice whether or not

they should be a reasonable person, the fact of being a social

being requires them to be reasonable, otherwise, either they

would have problems to cope with a nicely set system which

is supposed to be founded on reasons, or fail to get along

with others. A good system based on good reasons could

make people easily become a reasonable person, while an

outdated or failed system would make people have hard time

to follow reasons. So the society need truly reasonable

people to constantly update the system and make the general

public to cope with this reasonably established system with

easy-to-follow procedures and make the less reasonable to

become reasonable and the reasonable ones to become

more reasonable, then everything could run smoothly, and

things would meet at the right place and eventually work out

of their ways.

The current phenomenon is that the quasi -reasonable

people easily lose their reasons or even fall into madness,

while the supposed-to-be reasonable people are forced to

give up the reasons. Why? because the system or the reality

is making them to do so, otherwise, either things wouldn’t

work out for them or they would just stumble into troubles.

For the system part, it is due to its outdated setup, as the

social, economical and political environment have changed

dramatically due to the rapid advancement of technologies

during the past decades; for the reality part, there are always

some people in any era who don’t want to follow reasons in

order to gain personal favors, while some people don’t have

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good education and failed to learn about good reasons, or

some people are simply not born as reasonable beings due to

some abnormal biological factors, So it seems that the good

education on birth for infants, secondary school for youth

and continual education for adults in more expanded areas

should be emphasized. And at last, but not least, a good

main-stream culture which promotes a cultured, reasonable

and cooperative social environment is extremely important.

Diversity is necessary, while a pillar of main-stream culture

should be erected to attract all other cultures to it, which

wouldn’t shun the latter, but make them more comfortably fit

into a new cultural environment and become the effective

supporting elements to make a diversified, however, stronger

and unified culture with greater capacity and better influence

among nationalities.

Theoretically speaking, reason is the key to open the door of

problems and fix the problematic relationship among humans.

Probably no one would object that.. The issue is whether or

not that the “reason” held by you would be the same as by

theirs. Everybody would argue that their reasons make more

sense than others’. The solder has reasons of weapon, the

politician has reasons of policy, merchants has reasons of

business, the lawyer has the reasons of law, the educator has

the reasons of education. When people fall into argument,

they are standing on different grounds. Is it because the

grounds of the reasons are different? Probably not, reasons

need apply logic, while the logic of humans are pretty much

the same, as the logic inherent in the mathematics is

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universal. So the fights are not originated from difference of

reasons themselves, but by the different understanding of

reasons. The different education and life view could cause

difference in people’s understanding of reasons. This life view

which is part of the religious or other type of beliefs concerns

about their attitude to the things and other people. Would

they want to solve the problem or want to satisfy themselves

above all other things. If they place themselves above all

other things, then their reasons have partially skewed,

because logic has no preferences. Logic smoothes the

movement of thinking, which is the movement from one

concept to another concept, as long as the definition of the

concepts are commonly agreed upon, the reasons should do

well, and things could be settled down to the satisfactions of

related parties. However, as the personal or emotional factors

are attached to their logic thinking or sometimes to the

concepts in their mind, then the movement could be

deterred, and makes their own reason fail its job. So, if we

need reason to work out as a key to problems, then we

should first erect a good attitude before starting off the task,

especially put away the emotional and discriminatory factors.

Almost all populations of humans developed their own belief

during the development course of their civilization, except

that the way of practice and degree to the belief are different.

Nevertheless, however the beliefs present differently to their

followers, they share a lot in common, firstly all, they are the

spiritual activity of human beings, secondly, they may contain

supernatural elements, however, never alienated reasons,

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thirdly, they try to promote positive side of human nature,

fourthly, they empower the humans of its mass activities and

help to put the society in order. Look through the Bible, or

the Koran, or Buddhism scripts, or Confucianism classics, the

principles of their commandments, tenets, or preaching and

teachings are very similar, of course, the legends of the

creators or the Gods could be different, and the way of

practice are also not the same. It is not surprising, because

humans are all made of the same materials, they are basically

the brothers and sisters on earth and they share the same

universe which created all the things and lives according to

the same laws. Different geographical environment shaped

slightly different figures and tinted them with different color,

however, their biological composition is basically the same

which rendered their sense to the universe the same, then

leads to the mechanism of thinking almost the same, after

excluding the effect of the physical environment and life

experience on the manner of their thinking.

Then why there are always the conflicts with the

confrontation of cultures. The ancient conflicts originated

from the needs of material wealth, while the modern

conflicts tended to generate from the want of pride and

greed. As more advanced high-tech weapons and devices

were born, the humans started to shift their inner spiritual

power to those exterior powerful technologies, and shift

their belief on mass strength agitated by common will to

strength of individuals or small groups equipped with devices

and weapons. That led to the doubt on religions and neglect

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of legacy of traditional culture, which means the belief have

lost its magnet. People become very practical, which is

understandable in a realistic world. However, people forget

that the realistic world which is mostly represented by the

materialistic things, or things that could be obtained through

material wealth, was once empowered by the spiritual world

and whose true meaning only matters when the spiritual

world also admits them, and whose continuance only

possible when the spiritual world still exists. Current people

are confused by many superficial things and got lost in the

complexity, superiority, extremity and fantasy of a material

world created by the high technology, which could easily pop

like a colored bubble, then they would have nothing left,

without the support of a spiritual world. Constantly chasing

after the colored bubbles, playing on the computer games are

the things that could drive people into madness and lose

their reasons, as those things are themselves the nature of

unrealistic fantasy in a realistic world created by high tech or

virtual concepts that wouldn’t stand long in reasons, just like

the shots of electrons, which may give out a fancy beautiful

light of moment, however, vanishes a second later. Because

man-made things don’t have long-lasted natural source to

back up, not like the sunlight which is providing presumably

life-time energy to mankind( neither the longevity of sun, or

human species can be predicted for sure yet), and can be only

good enough to support their vanity, while vanity will blast

for sure in a short while.

People may say that human have acquired the ability to

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utilize the energy of all sorts of natural resources, wouldn’t it

be the same for them to play the heaven or god themselves?

The truth is that anything obtained through second-hand will

lose a great part of its original power, and anything through

man-made mechanism has already slowed down the natural

process of things. Still some people may say that it is not

quite right, since the man-made airplane obviously flies much

faster than most birds, that’s because the airplane has been

energized by electricity converted from the fuel, just imagine

how much fuel has been consumed and energy has been

wasted and air pollution has been created during the process

while imagining the traveling speed of electricity itself, then

you come back to recall a human with a mechanical flying

device like a man-made wings, how fast would he/she fly? So

the comparison has to be made under the same conditions.

The insatiable desire of some humans to overly and

unreasonable use natural sources will inevitably lead to the

destruction of the nature and the whole ecological and even

the galaxy system and made the available resources shun

away from people and made earth become the tomb of the

beings living on it. However, beliefs let people to learn the

self-control and the basic principles of a living being in a

organic system of universe, and these are the things to

sustain the currently available resources to human while

connect humans spirit and life to the inexhaustible universal

resources which would make them strong and keep up their

vitality, while the path to the true belief is reasons. Better

reasons improve the practice of belief and make people to

come closer to the true belief.

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Reference

1. Analects (ancient books republished), Confucius, China Press [The

Spring and Autumn Period]

2. Tao Te Ching (ancient book republished), Laozi. China Press [The


3. Yi Ching (ancient books republished), Confucius, China Press [The


4. Laozi and Zhuangzi (ancient books republished), Laozi and

Zhuangzhou, China Press[The Spring and Autumn Period and the

Warring States Periods]

5. Mencius (ancient books republished), Mencius, China Press[The

Warring States Periods]

6. The Stories of Philosophies, Willian Durant, (I only kept the copies

of some of the pages from the book, but cann’t remember the

name of the press)

7. Zhuangzi (ancient books republished), Zhuangzi, China Press [The

Warring States Period]

8. The Great Learning (ancient book republished) Confucius. China

Press [The Spring and Autumn Period]

9. The Doctrine of The Mean (ancient book republished),Confucius.

China Press [The Spring and Autumn Period]

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Appendix

The philosophers mentioned in this book:

Confucius ( 551- 479 BC) an ancient well-known Chinese

philosopher and educator.

Socrates (469 or 470- 399 BC) an ancient well-known Greek

philosopher and educator.

Plato (427—347 BC) an ancient well-known Greek

philosopher and educator, the pupil of Socrates.

Aristotle (384 - 322 BC ) an ancient well-known Greek

philosopher, the pupil of Plato.

Mencius(372-289 BC) an ancient well-known Chinese

philosopher, a follower of Confucianism.

Sr. Francis Bacon (1561-1626 AD) an English philosopher

and writer.

Manuel Kant (1724-1804 AD) an German philosopher, and

one of the most foremost thinkers of Enlightenment

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Related Abstracts from some well-known western people

Of Studies excerpt by Francis Bacon

"Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their

chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for

ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment

and disposition of business. For expert men can execute, and

perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general

counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best

from those that are learned. To spend too much time in

studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is

affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the

humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by

experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that

need pruning, by study; and studies themselves do give forth

directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by

experience. Crafty men condemn studies, simple men admire

them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own

use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them,

won by observation.

Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take

for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and

consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be

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swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is,

some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read,

but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with

diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by

deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would

be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort

of books, else distilled books are like common distilled waters,

flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready

man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write

little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he

had need have a present wit: and if he read little, he had

need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not.

Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics

subtle; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and

rhetoric able to contend. Abeunt studia in mores [Studies

pass into and influence manners]. Nay, there is no stone or

impediment in the wit but may be wrought out by fit studies;

like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises.

Bowling is good for the stone and reins; shooting for the

lungs and breast; gentle walking for the stomach; riding for

the head; and the like. So if a man’s wit be wandering, let him

study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be

called away never so little, he must begin again. If his wit be

not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the

Schoolmen; for they are cymini sectores [splitters of hairs]. If

he be not apt to beat over matters, and to call up one thing

to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyers’

cases. So every defect of the mind may have a special

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receipt."

* Bacon published three editions of his essays (in 1597, 1612, and

1625) and the last two were marked by the addition of more essays.

In many cases, they became expanded works from earlier editions.

This is the best-known version of the essay Of Studies, taken from

the 1625 edition of Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral.

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Kant’s illustration of aesthetic judgment

The kinds of ‘cognition’ (i.e. thinking) characteristic of the

contemplation of the beautiful are not, in fact, all that

different from ordinary cognition about things in the world.

The faculties of the mind are the same: the ‘understanding’

which is responsible for concepts, and the ‘sensibility’

(including our imagination) which is responsible for intuitions.

The difference between ordinary and aesthetic cognition is

that in the latter case, there is no one ‘determinate’ concept

that pins down an intuition. Instead, intuition is allowed

some ‘free play’, and rather than being subject to one

concept, it instead acts in ‘harmony’ with the lawfulness in

general of the understanding. It is this ability of judgment to

bring sensibility and understanding to a mutually reinforcing

harmony that calls ‘common sense’. This account of common

sense explains how the beautiful can be purposive with

respect to our ability to judge, and yet have no definite

purpose. Common sense also answers the question of why

aesthetic judgments are valid: since aesthetic judgments are

a perfectly normal function of the same faculties of cognition

involved in ordinary cognition, they will have the same

universal validity as such ordinary acts of cognition.

------------- From Stanford Encyclopedia

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All things truly wicked starts from ignorance.

– Ernst Hemingway

There is nothing permanent except change.

-- Heracleitus

People want economy, and they will pay any price to get it.

-- Lee Lacocca

*Hinting under the economy-based society, the price of pursuing

interest could sometimes out- weight the benefit as the

competition heats up to a certain level.

A teacher effects eternity, he can never tell when his

influence stops.

—H.B. Adames.

A revolution doesn’t last for more than fifteen years, the

period which coincides with a flourishing of a generation.

--Jos Ortegay Gasset

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Some of the common English proverbs

A clear conscience is a soft pillow.

A clear conscience is a sure card.

A contented mind is perpetual feast.

A disease known is half cured.

A faint heart never wins a fair lady.

A fool knows more in his own house than a wise man in

other’s.

After a storm, comes a calm.

A good beginning is half the battle.

A good book is a best friend who never turns his back upon

us.

A good example is the best sermon.

A good fame is sooner lost than won.

A good heart conquers ill fortune.

A good medicine tastes bitter.

A handful of common sense is worth bushel of learning

A land is improved by sowing it with various seeds, so is the

mind by exercising it with different studies.

An investment in education makes the best dividends.

All is well that ends well.

A life without a purpose is a ship without a rudder.

A man does not live by bread alone.

A man may lead a horse to the water, but he cannot make it

drink.

A man of goodness seldom falls into madness.

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A man of words but not of deeds is like a garden full of

weeds.

A man without reason is a beast in season.

A rising tide lifts all boats.

A stumble may prevent a fall.

A thing is bigger for being shared.

Bad news travels fast.

Be honest rather clever.

Better unborn than untaught.

Birds of feather flock together.

Brave actions never want a trumpet.

Catch not at the shadow and lose the substance.

Cheats never prosper.

Coming events cast their shadow before them.

Courage and resolution are the spirit and resolution of virtue.

Custom makes all things easy.

Drive your business, not let it drive you.

Education begins a gentleman, conversation completes him.

Education has for its object of formation of characters.

Education polish good nature and correct bad ones.

Every advantage has its disadvantage.

Every brave man is a man of his words.

Every man has defects.

Every metal has its reverse.

Every tide hath its ebb.

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Evil enters like a needle, but spreads like an oak tree.

Extremes meets.

Fair faces need no paint.

Friends are lost by calling often and calling seldom.

God never shuts one door before he opens another.

Glory is the shadow of virtue.

Goodness often charms more than mere beauty.

Grace will last, beauty will blast.

Handsome is as handsome does.

He alone is poor who doesn’t possess the knowledge.

Heaven helps those who help themselves.

Heaven never closes its roads against man.

He is wise who hath wit enough for his own affairs.

He is wise that is honest.

He preaches well that lives well.

Hoist your sail when the wind is fair.

Honest doubt is better than faith in a pious fraud.

Honest is the best policy.

Honor and profit lies not in one sack.

Honor brings responsibility.

Honor can only be purchased by worthy action.

I can’t be your friend and flatterer too.

If all pulled in one direction, the world would keel it over.

If the counsel be good, no matter who gave it.

If you plan for a year, sow rice, if you plan for a decade, plant

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trees, if you plan for a life time, educate people.

If you know the minds of a man, listen to his words.

Ignorance of the law excuses no man.

Ignorance is the mother of impudence.

In books, are embalmed the greatest thoughts of all ages.

Industry is fortune’s right hand, and frugality her left.

Initiative results more from sustained effort than from genius.

It’s not enough to run, one must start off in time.

It takes all sorts to make a world.

Joys shared with others are more enjoyed.

Just notions will grow into good actions.

Justice has long arms.

Kind hearts are the gardens, kind thoughts are the roots, kind

words are the flowers, and kind deeds are the fruits.

Kindness always begets kindness.

Kindness is the noblest weapon to conquer with.

Kindness is the sunshine of social life.

Kindness is the gold chain by which the society is bound

together.

Kindness to justice is never lost, but kindness to the wicked is

unkindness to oneself.

Kind words soften the anger.

Knavery may serve, but honesty is best.

Knowing something of everything, and everything of

something.

Knowledge is a treasure but practice is the key to it.

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Law makers should not be the law breakers.

Learning is ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity, and

a provision in old age.

Liberty is not license.

Liberty consists of power of doing what is permitted by laws

Life is short, but there is time enough for courtesy.

Life is measured by thought and action, not by time.

Live to learn, and learn to live.

Man is a tool-using animal.

Man’s nature are all alike, but it’s their habit that carry them

far apart.

Manners make a man.

Manners make often fortunes.

Many hands make a burden lighter.

Many heads are better than one.

Many men have failed through lack of decisions.

Men do more things through habits more than through

reasons.

Nature is a glass reflecting the truth.

Nature is the true law.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

No one can disgrace us but ourselves.

No one can have all he desires.

None are so deaf as those who will not hear.

Observation is the best teacher.

On choice of friends, our good and evil name depends.

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On earth there is nothing great but man, in man there is

nothing great but mind.

One must draw the line somewhere.

One must drink as one brews.

Open not your door when devil knocks.

Our best friends are those tell us our fault and help us to

mend it.

Pease on earth and good will towards men.

Pen and ink are wit’s plough.

People don’t lack strength; they lack will.

Politeness costs nothing and gains everything.

Practice what you preach.

Promise is debt.

Quietude is the crown of life.

Reading makes a full man, conference a ready man, and

writing an exact man.

Reason bounds the man.

Reason is the guide and light of life.

Reasons rules all things.

Repentance always comes too late.

Reputation is often gotten without merit and lost without

fault.

Rome was not built in one day.

Seek the truth from facts.

Silence is golden.

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Sincerity, a deep genuine, heart-felt sincerity is a trait of true

and noble manhood.

So many countries, so many customs.

Spare the rod, and spoil the child.

Strong reasons make strong actions.

Take care of the sense, and the sound will take care of itself.

Talent develop itself in solitude, and characters in stream of

life.

That teacher helps his pupils most who most help them to

help themselves.

That which is evil is soon learnt.

That which is striking and beautiful is not always good, but

that which is good is always beautiful.

The artist is the creator of beautiful things.

The best government is that which teaches us to govern

ourselves.

The day has eyes, the night has ears.

The greatest friend of truth is time, her greatest enemy is

prejudice, her greatest companion is humility.

The horizon of life is broadened largely by the opening of the

heart.

The learned pig didn’t learn its letters in a day.

The virtue of man ought to be measured not by his

extraordinary exertions, but by his everyday conduct.

The voice of people is the voice of God.

The water that bears the boat is the same that swallows it up.

The wise is instructed by reason, the ordinary minds, by

experience, the stupid, by necessity, and the brutes, by

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instinct.

The wise man is always a good listener.

Things unreasonable are never durable.

To teach is to learn.

Unity is the strength.

Use your wit as a shield, not as a dagger.

Virtue is the beauty of the mind.

Virtue is fairer far than beauty.

Walk straight, my son -- as the old crab said to the young crab.

(The nature of something can never be changed, and the only

solution is to drop it.)

What is worth doing is worth doing well.

What’s lost is lost.

Women in mischief are wiser than men.

Wonders are many, but nothing is more wonderful than man.

You can’t eat your cake and have it.

You can’t have it both ways.

Zeal without knowledge is the sister of folly.

Zeal without prudence is frenzy.

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Related Abstracts from ancient Chinese philosophical books

The four books and five classics often mentioned in the study

of Confucianism are:

The four books: The Great Learning,

The Doctrine of The Mean,

The Analects of Confucius,

The Analects of Mencius.

The five classics: The Book of Songs(The book of Poems),

Book of History,

Book of Change(Yi Ching),

The Book of Rites,

The Spring And Autumn Annals.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

学而时习之 , 不亦说乎 ? 有朋自远方来 , 不亦乐乎 ?

人不知而不愠 , 不亦君子乎 ?

孔子

Isn’t it a delightful thing to go over from time to time what

one has studied earlier? Won’t it make you happy to have

friends visit you who has traveled from far away? Won’t it

make you a noble person to keep a mild temper even though

people have wronged you who don’t understand you at all?

Confucius

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学不可以已。木直中绳 , 輮以为轮 , 其曲中规 , 虽有

槁暴不复挺者 , 輮使之然也。故木受绳则直 , 金就砺则厉。

君子博学而日参审乎己 , 则知明而行无过矣。荀子

It’s better not to stop learning. The wood which is as straight

as thread, once is made as the wheel for chariots, the shape

of which will become just as perfect as a compass, and will

never go back straight again even if it has gotten cracked due

to the extreme heat, because the bending effort makes it

happen that way. So, the wood can be cut straight by

measuring against the rope ruler, and the iron can be made

the knife by sharpening it against the stone sharpener. Hence,

if a man engages himself into various studies while reviewing

and examining what he has studied every day, then he would

become very well-learned and sharp-minded, thus would be

less likely to make mistakes in his life.

Xunzi

吾日三省吾身 : 为人谋而不忠乎 ? 与朋友交而不信乎 ?

传不习乎 ?

曾子

I would exam myself three times every day by asking these

questions: Have I truly acted in sincerity helping others? Have

I showed faith in the relationship with my friends? Have I

failed to review my studies?

Zengzi

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无为其所不为 , 无欲其所不欲。

孟子

Don’t do what you are not supposed to do, and don’t acquire

what you don’t want to have.

Mencius

鱼我所欲也 , 熊掌亦我所欲也 , 二者不可皆得 , 舍鱼

而取熊掌也。

孟子

Fish is my favorite food, the paw of the bear is also my

favorite food, but I can’t have both, thus, I have to pick the

paw of bear, the one that I like better.

Mencius

*The paw of bear with nail removed is one of the delicious

dishes for ancient Chinese. It means that one has to choose

between what they want, and can’t just let their desires

dominate his behavior.

子贡曰 : 贫而不谄 , 富而不骄 , 何如 ?

子曰 : 可也。未若贫而乐道 , 富而好礼者也。

A student named Zigong asked Confucius: If one can never

flatter the riches when he is poor, and behave in a humble

manner even if he is wealthy, won’t he be a true gentleman?

Confucius said: Not bad, but it would be better to pursue the

Dao when poor, while promote the social etiquettes when

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rich.

*Dao: can be interpreted as Truth in the simple way.

吾十五而有志于学 , 三十而立 , 四十而不惑 , 五十而

知天命 , 六十而耳顺 , 七十而从心所欲 , 不逾矩。

孔子

I have started to engage in study since I was fifteen years’ old,

and I established myself at the age of 30; I gained

understanding of this world at age of 40 without much doubt

about things, and knew what was my destiny at age of 50; I

became able to tell the right from the false of what people

told me at age of 60, and was capable of doing anything at

my discretion, without crossing customary boundaries or

breaching any rules at age of 70.

Confucius

君子之所以教者五 : 有如时雨化之者 , 有成德者 , 有

达财者 , 有答问者 , 有私淑刈者。

孟子

A true educator has five different ways to teach people: teach

them like the season’s rain to irrigate the crop fields and

make them grow with knowledge; or help them to learn by

becoming a virtuous man, or help them to learn how to make

wealth, or help them to learn through dialogues, or make

them to admire the teacher and study him at home

themselves.

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Mencius

温故而知新 , 可以为师也。

孔子

By reviewing the already learned and coming up with

innovated ideas, a person can make himself/herself a teacher.

Confucius

记问之学 , 不足以为人师。《礼记》

The learning of memorization won’t make a good teacher.

The Book of Rites

博学之 , 审问之 , 慎思之 , 明辨之 , 笃行之。有弗学 ,

学之弗能 , 弗措也 ; 有弗问 , 问之弗之 , 弗措也 ; 有弗思 ,

思之弗得 , 弗措也 ; 有弗辩 , 辩之弗明 , 弗措也 ; 有弗行 ,

行之弗笃 , 弗措也 , 人一能之 , 己百之 , 人十能之己千之 ,

果能此道也 , 则虽愚必明 , 虽柔必强。

《中庸》

One should study numerous subjects, with careful

examination, deep thinking, clearly understanding, diligent

practice of them. If there is something that hasn’t been

learned, don’t leave it; if there are questions that haven’t

been addressed, don’t let them go; if there are issues that

haven’t been thought over and become absorbed, don’t give

them up; if there are things that haven’t been completely

understood, don’t put them aside; if there is doctrine that

hasn’t been put into practice, don’t stop it there. There are

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things that would take other people one time to learn might

take you 100 times to do it, and things that would take others

10 times to learn, might take you 1000 times to get it done.

However, if you can stick to this way of studying, and never

give up, then you will turn into an intelligent and strong man

from being foolish and cowardly.

The Doctrine of The Mean

知之为知之 , 不知为不知 , 是知也。

我非生而知之也 , 好古敏而求之也。

孔子

If you know something, then say it; if don’t know the thing,

then admit it. This is called the true knowledge.

I wasn’t born to know so many things, only am I fond of the

ancient wisdom and keen on studying.

Confucius

或生而知之 , 或学而知之 , 或困而知之 , 及其知之 ,

一也。《中庸》

One either knows the things inborn, or by leaning, or by

experience. Once they know it, then it becomes the

knowledge.

The Doctrine of The Mean

不愤不启 , 不悱不发。

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孔子

Wait until he is thirsty for the answer after hard search,

before enlightening him; wait until he is struggling for

explaining of things himself before guiding him.

Confucius

君子深造之以道 , 欲其自得之也。自得之 , 则居之安。

居之安 , 则资之深。资之深 , 则取之左右逢其原。故君子

欲其自得之也。

孟子

Junzi study hard for pursuing the Dao, because they want to

learn it by themselves. Once they have acquired it themselves,

then they can keep it well in their memory. Once it has been

well kept in their mind, then they can develop the deep

thoughts about it. Once it has been deeply grasped by people,

then they can make connection with other things. That’s why

Junzi won’t mind the hard work by pursuing the Dao.

Mencius

*Junzi can be interpreted as Gentleman in the simple way. Refer to

the book Chinese Painting – A showcase of Chinese Culture.

三而行 , 必有我师焉 , 择其善者而从之 , 则其不善者

而改之。

孔子

Among any group of three people walking together, there

must be something that one can learn from the other ones;

pick the good advice and keep it, and guard against the bad

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influence and try to avoid it.

Confucius

古之学者必有师。师者 , 传道、授业、解惑也。生于

吾前 , 其闻道也 , 故先乎吾 , 我从而师之 ; 生乎吾后 , 其

闻道也 , 亦先乎吾 , 吾从而师之。我师道也 , 夫庸知其年

之先后生于吾乎 ? 是故无贵无贱 , 无长无少 , 道之所存 ,

师之所存也。

韩愈

Ancient scholars must all have teachers to guide them. The

duty of a teacher is to pass on the ancient wisdom and skills,

while address the issues of the students. Those who were

born before me, could know something that I don’t, then I

should learn from them; those who were born after me,

could have learned something that I didn’t, then I should let

them teach me. We can learn from others no matter what

their ages are. Hence, on the course of pursuing the Dao,

there is no need to distinguish the noble from the humble, or

the young from old of its sources. Wherever there is Dao,

there is teaching and learning.

Han Yu

子绝四 : 无臆 , 无必 , 无固 , 无我。

Avoid false assumption, arbitrariness, stubbornness, and

self-centeredness.

Confucius

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天行健 , 君子以自强不息 , 《易经》

The movement of the heaven is strong and unstoppable, a

wise man should take it as his example for the life.

The Book of Change

古之学者为己 , 今之学者为人。君子之学也 , 以美其

身 ; 小人之学也 , 以为禽犊。

荀子

Ancient scholars studied in order to improve themselves,

current scholars study for others. The learning of the Junzi is

for self-cultivation, while the learning of pitiful people is for

acquiring benefits from others.

Xunzi

六言六弊 :

好仁不好学 , 其弊也愚 ; 好知不好学 , 其弊也荡 ;

好信不好学 , 其弊也贼 ; 好直不好学 , 其弊也绞 ;

好勇不好学 , 其弊也乱 ; 好刚不好学 , 其弊也狂。

孔子

The six problems of not learning:

If people into benevolence don’t like study, they would get

fooled by others; if people like wisdom, but not study, they

would go wild in their behavior; if people believe in faith, but

don’t like study, they would be easily taken advantage by

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others; if people tend to be frank about things, but don’t like

study, they would likely hurt others verbally; if people are

brave, but don’t like study, they would cause trouble to the

society; if people are strong, but don’t like study, they would

likely do crazy things to harm others and the society.

Confucius

君子之事亲孝 , 故忠可移与君。事兄悌 , 故顺可以移

于长。居家理 , 故治可以移于官。是以行成于内 , 而名立

于后世矣。《孝经》

Junzi treat their parents with filial piety which can be

applied to their loyalty to the Crown of the country. Junzi

follow their elder brothers with obedience, which behavior

can be extended to brothers of other families. Junzi will make

sure their family affairs are well taken care of, and can use

that talent to serve the government. Hence, they fulfill their

duties at their home, but establish their good reputation

among the later generations.

The Book of Filial Piety

巧言令色 , 鲜矣仁。

Flattering words and obsequious smiles are far from

kindness.

人而不仁 , 如礼何 ? 人而不仁 , 如乐何 ?

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For people of no compassion, what is the use of good

manners to them? And what can the music serve them?

Confucius

仁之实 , 事亲是也。义之实 , 从兄是也。智之实 , 知

斯二者弗去是也。礼之实 , 节问斯二者是也。乐之实 , 乐

斯二者 , 乐则生矣。

孟子

The truth of benevolence is the truth of kinship; the truth of

righteousness is the truth of brotherhood; the truth of

wisdom is the truth of knowing both; the truth of propriety is

to demonstrate the above two in a proper manner; the truth

of music is to praise the above two and reveal the happiness

during their practice of the propriety.

Mencius

桀、纣之失天下也 , 失其民也。失其民者 , 失其心也。

得天下有道 ; 得其民 , 斯得天下矣。得其民有道 : 得其心 ,

斯得民矣。得其心有道 : 所欲与之聚之 , 所恶勿施尔矣。

民之归仁矣 , 犹水之就下 , 兽之走圹也。故为渊驱鱼者 , 獭

也 ; 为丛驱雀者 , 鹯 (zhan) 也 ; 为汤、武驱民者 , 桀与纣也。

孟子

Why did the despots Jie and Zhou lose their crowns? Because

they had lost the support of the people, which means that

they have lost the loyalty of the people to them. There is a

way to obtain the power of a nation: if one has drawn the

people of the nation toward him, then he would obtain its

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power. And there is a way to draw the people toward him: if

one has gained the loyalty of the people of this nation, then

he has obtained the support of them. Also there is a way to

gain the loyalty of the people: give them what they need, and

stop the conducts and abandon the policies they dislike. The

people are yearning for the benevolent government just like

the water naturally going from a higher place to a lower place,

like the excited brutes running into the open field. Hence, it is

the otter that drives the fishes into the deep water, and it is

the hawk that drives the sparrows into the woods, and it is

the despots Jie and Zhou that had driven their people to the

kingdoms of Tang and Wu and made them replace the

formers.

*Jie is the last emperor of Xia dynasty which was overthrown by Tang

who founded Shang dynasty; Zhou is the last emperor of Shang

dynasty which was overthrown by Wu, the founder of Zhou dynasty.

Mencius

唯仁者能好人 , 能恶人。

孔子

Only benevolent people know how to love the people who

deserve the love, at the same time dislike the evil ones.

君子所以异于人者 , 以其存心也。君子以仁存心 , 以

礼存心。仁者爱人 , 有礼者敬人。爱人者 , 人恒爱之 , 敬

人者 , 人恒敬之。

孟子

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That makes a Junzi different from others, is their heart. A

Junzi possesses a kind and noble heart, and is equipped with

good manners. The people of kindness tend to have

compassion for others, and the people of politeness tend to

show respect to others. The one who loves others shall be

loved; the one who respect others shall be respected.

夫仁者 , 己欲立而立人 , 己欲达而达人。

孔子

For the benevolent people, if they want to establish

something, they would establish others before that; if they

want to achieve something, they would first let others

succeed, as they are all related.

Confucius

夫道 , 若大路然 , 岂难知哉 ? 人病不求耳 . 孟子

The Dao is like a big road, which is not difficult to find at all,

but the problem is that people don’t want to walk on it.

Mencius.

有德者必有言 , 有言者不必有德 ; 仁者必有勇 , 勇者

不必有仁。知、仁、勇三者 , 天下之大德也 , 所以行之

者一也。

孔子

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The virtuous people usually like to speak out, but the

out-spoken people don’t necessarily have virtues; the

benevolent people must have courage, but the brave people

aren’t always benevolent. Intelligence, benevolence, courage

are three greatest virtues worldwide, and the standards to

them are the same everywhere.

Confucius

能行五者于天下 , 为仁矣。此五者 : 恭、宽、信、敏、

惠。恭则不侮 , 宽则得众 , 信则人任焉 , 敏则有功 , 惠则

足以使人。

孔子

There are five traits that can demonstrate the benevolent

people: respectful, lenient, trustworthy, clever, helpful.

Respect will prevent the insult, lenience will gain the favor of

the mass, trust will obtain the opportunities; cleverness will

bring success, offers to others will make it justifiable to

acquire their return of labor.

仁者无敌于天下

The benevolent people have no rivals.

孟子

Mencius

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Some of the common Chinese proverbs

不经一事 , 不长一智 / 吃一堑长一智 Wisdom comes from

experience./A fall in the pit, a gain in your wit.

百闻不如一见 It’s better to see for oneself rather than to

hear for many times

一心不能二用

A man can’t spin and reel at the same time.

失之毫厘 , 谬以千里

discrepancy.

A little error may lead to a large

船到桥头自然直 Don’t cross a bridge until you come to it,

meaning that everything should be natural.

独木不成林

A single tree can’t make a wood.

烛不拨不亮 , 理不辨不明 A candle will become brighter

after trimming, and a truth will come into light after

debating.

读万卷书 , 行万里路 Read thousands of books while

making thousands miles of journey.

人不可相貌 , 海水不可斗量 A man can’t be judged by his

appearance, neither can the ocean be fathomed by a gourd.

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患难见真情 , 日久见人心

indeed.

A friend in need is a friend

窥一斑而知全貌

You may see by a handful the whole sack.

良药苦口利于病 , 忠言逆耳利于行 It takes bitter medicine

to cure the disease, and takes the blunt advice to put the

people on the right track.

欺人者自欺 Liars started by imposing upon others, but

ended by cheating themselves.

前人栽树 , 后人乘凉 It is necessary for the precedent to

plant the trees in order for the later generations to take the

rest under.

人无远虑 , 必有近忧 Those who don’t plan for the future

will find trouble on their doorsteps.

人心齐 , 泰山移 When people are of one mind, they can

move the Mount Tai.

若要人不知 , 除非己不为

it out, it’s better not to do it.

If you don’t want people to find

十年树木 , 百年树人 It’s takes ten years to grow a tree, but

one hundred years to bring up a generation of good men.

天下兴亡 , 匹夫有责

Everyone has their share of

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responsibility for the society.

小洞不补 , 大洞吃苦 A small hole that is not mended in

time will become a bigger one which is much more difficult to

mend.

千丈之堤 , 溃于蚁穴 A little leak will sink a great ship. A

little neglect may breed great mischief.

一言既出 , 驷马难追 A word spoken can’t be taken back,

meaning that people should keep their promises.

玉不琢 , 不成器 The finest diamond must be cut, meaning

the importance of education to people.

远水救不了近火 , 远亲不如近邻 Distant water can’t be

used for putting out the fire, a distant relative is not as

helpful as a neighbor.

种瓜得瓜 , 种豆得豆 As a man sows, so will he harvest.

行动胜于言辞。Action speaks louder than words.

千里之行 , 始于足下

with a single step.

为事在人 , 成事在天

A journey of a thousand miles begins

Man proposes, God disposes.

来而不往非礼也

side.

Friendship cannot stand always by one

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仁者必勇 A man of goodness is man of bravery.

活到老 , 学到老 Never too old to learn.

学而不思则惘 , 思而不学则殆 Learning without thinking is

frustrating, thinking without learning is perilous.

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