Prologue: What Sort of Future Can We Expect?

The choice of the present subject, however, is caused by grave concerns over such current issues as the Middle East crisis and the Persian Gulf War. As a modern writer rightly observes:

" . . . U. S. and allied forces are bombing Iraq and Kuwait. . . In the absence of striving for an authentic understanding of 'the other' the only interaction that will result is violence in one form or another. . .

Philosophy may be viewed by the non-philosopher as something esoteric, divorced from the realities of global politics and world diplomacy, but our work in comparative, cross-cultural philosophy has an important contribution to make towards the future well being of our planet. In the absence of a quest for authentic understanding cross cultures what sort of future can we expect?

Our failure, our impotency, to solve human problems peacefully and wisely is, in the words of the Pope, "a grave defeat for all mankind," In fact, the whole Persian Gulf tragedy is a teaching lesson for all of us living as fellow human beings on this tiny planet known as "the Earth" in the solar system. Under such circumstances, naturally, we cannot but apply ourselves to "reflect critically upon what we are actually doing in our world," as Professor Josiah Royce of Harvard put it, "to philosophize," -- nay, to philosophize comparatively!

I. Problematics : Why War? The Answer: Why Not?

Reflections on the present Gulf Crisis naturally lead one to the thought and works of such great minds of our day as Arnold Toynbee and Bertrand Russell (1872-1969). Half a century ago both cautioned the world with: "Beware of the Persian Gulf!" For Toynbee the future of mankind depends on intelligence, love and good will; for Russell, on scientific method and a just conception of the ends of life. Otherwise, intelligence without love and good will, or effficiency without regard for purpose, spells man's digging his own grave. And that quickly!

Russell has been preoccupied with the problems of war and civilization all his life, beginning with the World War I; early in the 50s he even warned about the possible immediate cause for global destruction as perhaps "a dispute about Persian oil; perhaps a disagreement as to Chinese trade; perhaps a quarrel between jews and mohammedans for the control of Palestine." To the question "Why War?" the appropriate answer-say, from Freud to Einstein-is a more chilly one: "Why Not?" Look more deeply into human nature and you know it! Is there any feasible way-out? The smart bomb is not smart enough; it needs a far smarter mind to guide the use of it, or what is still better, to avoid, whenever possible, using it!

Recently we have often heard it said that the main problem, as well as the main task, facing us today is: How to combine technology with a humane way of life? or, to put it more bluntly, skill with wisdom? But, the point is, what constitutes a humane way of life? What makes up wisdom?

It is precisely to such most pertinent questions that Russell's earnest quest for "authentic understanding cross cultures" is addressed; hence it deserves our close attention.

Much has been written about China and "things Chinese"; yet in terms of critical acumen and constructive suggestion Russell's little book The Problem of China still remains unsurpassed. For most intellectuals in the modern West he is mainly--if not merely--regarded as the world's top logician, mathematifcian, and analytic philosopher.

Regrettably, few has fully appreciated his accomplishment and contribution as a comparative philosopher. But in the words of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, "Among the Westerners, only great philosophers such as Bertrand Russell and John Dewey have truly sympathetic understanding of China, her people and her culture." Published in 1922 and reprinted unaltered in 1966, The Problem of China is a rare classic in the field that one can never be tired of reading with renewed interest, especially those chapters that are non-topical in character, which, even reread today, still prove a rewarding experience: inspiring, suggestive and full of insights.

The reason is not far to seek: unlike most works by those "China hands" or "China watchers" in the West whose interests are predominantly or solely political, economical, or journalistic, The Problem of China is approached fundamentally from a cultural perspective: "China is much less a political entity than a civilization-the only one that has survived from ancient times." "Independence is to be sought, not as an end in itself, but as a means toward a blend of the Western skill with Chinese traditional virtues. If this end is not achieved, mere political independence has little value."

Strictly speaking, Russell may not be the best choice for comparative philosophy and culture: He does not have, in his own words, the "insight and spiritual depth" of his teacher Alfred North Whitehead;17 nor does he have the "metaphysical subtlties" of his anticipator Count Hermann Keyserling, the travel philosopher who visited China soon after the Revolution in 1911; nor does he have the methodological niceties of F. C. S. Northrop, his contemporary.

But he does have merits of his own not easily to be found among his contemporaries: As a philosophic writer, he is charcteristically brief, lucid and witty in style; as a humanist, he is extrremely candid, sincere and honest in admitting what is bad in Western civilization and what he admires in the Chinese traditional culture.

Thus, he approached The Problem of China with great insight, profound sympathy, and great concern for the future not only of China, but of mankind as a whole. Most remarkably, in this little book, he has succeeded in enabling us to locate the problem of the world and to show its way-out.

The problem is seen to be basically a cultural question with its psychological root lying deep in human nature, with greed as the root of evils and the source of trouble; the way-out is a matter of philosophic wisdom of life best epitomized in Lao Tzu's teachings on the importance of "creation without possession, action without self-assertion, development without domination."

Such a Taoist wisdom of life anticipates much of the most up-date findings in humanistic psychology, such as emphases on creative vs. possessive impulse for Russell; productive vs. non-productive character for Erich Fromm; mature vs. Immature personality for Abraham Maslow, Ability-type vs. Being-type of culture (as Conquest-orientation vs. Fulfillment-orientation) for Hermann Keyserling. Let us focus just on Russell and Keyserling for sampling:

(A) Russell

Russell frankly acknowledged that "The Chinese have discovered and practised for many centuries a way of life which, if it could be adopted by all the world, would all of the world happy, We Europeans have not." Why? Consider, for examples, the following observations he has advanced in the said work:

(1) The so called "Problem of China," in the final analysis, is not a problem of China alone; it is part of those problems confronting and challenging the whole world.

(2) Thus, it reflects some of the pathplogical aspects, as the profound disease, of the Western "civilization" whereto China has fallent victimized since the middle of the 19th century.

(3) Paradoxically, the source of trouble and the root of evils for the world today are to be located in the Western "civilization" whereas their way-out, as cure and remedy, is to be found in the sublimely simple and terse words of Lao Tzu as cited above.

(4) Basically, problems like possession, self-assertion, and domination have their psychological roots deep in human nature displaying themselves in the form of capitalism, militarism, and imperialism [colonialism and hegemonialism].

(5) Thus, paradoxically, The Problem of China tells us more about the problem of the world than about that of China; for the problem of China is part of the problem of the world as caused largely thereby. And what is more important, it is in the traditional Chinese civilization that one is going to locate a remedy, a cure, a way-out, for most of those problems confronting the world today, hence the prognosis following the diagnosis. "Problematicity, thy name is human!"-to rephrase Shakespeare. For basically the problems, whether of China or of the world, have their psychological roots deep in human nature; and as such, they must be treated fundamentally as a matter of culture; or more precisely, as a question of education in the widest sense; or more specifically, as a question of psychotherapy to logotherapy.

(6) It is no exaggerating to say that the best psychotherapy for human beings, individually or collectively, consists in adopting what Abraham Maslow, America's most distinguished humanistic psychologist, calls a wholesome, "taoist attitude" towards life or a wholistic, "taoist perspective" of all things in the cosmos, as advanced in his recent work, The Farthest Reaches of Human Nature.

(7) For China, the problem of sheer poverty is less menacing than twofold blankness or blindness Nowadays, when one is speaking of China, one is often thinking of her present condition as in a state of sheer poverty and twofold blankness, in Chinese, "yi-qiong er-bai." The present writers venture to take the expression "twofold blankness" in the sense of a "twofold blindness" resulting from a "twofold ignorance"--being unable to "know thyself" and to "know the others." Ever since the May-4th Movement in 1919 it is typical of Chinese intellectualists that they are addicted to criticizing their own tradition solely from the modern or Western point of view; it is only recently that Professor Hao Chang, Ohio State University, called for a balanced view as a corrective for the one-sidedness involved, by going the other way round, i.e., by criticizing the modern from the traditional standpoint.

In fact, these two strategies are intercomplementary and can be pursued simul-taneously as operative in a dual-track procedure for creating a higher synthesis by combining the merits of both as a result of such a "cultural cross-fertilization."

More than half a century ago Count Hermann Keyserling (a grandson-in- law of the German statesman Bismarck) cried out for the importance of "getting beyond the East and the West"; in the case of China particularly, Bertrand Russell anti-cipated the same view, saying: "I believe that, if the Chinese are left free to assimilated what they want of our civilization, and to reject what strike them as bad, they will be able to achieve an organic growth from their tradition, and to produce a very splendid result, combining our merits with theirs. . . . "

In fact, however, all the world will be vitally affected by the development of Chinese affairs, for good or evil, during the next two centuries. Hence, the great cultural as well as moral responsibilities on the part of all intellectuals of our generation, regardless of natinalities or races, at home or abroad.

(9) What is wrong with both Chinese and Western civilizations? -- a diagnosis Undoubtedly, in view of what has been going on in the world in the last couple of hundred years, any enlightened person, Chinese or Western, is obliged to recog-nize that there must be something seriously wrong with our so called human "civilization" or, as some writer has wittily called it, "syphilization"; something so tellingly symptomatic of the pathological case on both sides that one can not simply deny its existence blindfold. In the past we are told that the problem of China was attributable to indolence or laziness as the major cause of her national weakness or decadence.

This view was rejected both by Russell and Keyserling. For example, Russell says: "Our industrial and commercial civilization has been both the cause and effect of certain more or less unconscious beliefs as to what is worth while; the Chinese becomes conscious of these beliefs through the spectacle of a society which challenges them by being built upon a different standard of values. Progress and efficiency, for example, makes no appeal to the Chinese, except to those who have come under Western influence. By valuing progress and efficiency, we have secured power and wealth; by ignoring them, the Chinese, until we brought distur-bance, secured on the whole a peaceable existence and a life full of enjoyment. It is difficult to compare these opposite achievements unless we have some standard of values in our minds; . . ."

To the question "What are the things that I ultimately value?" Russell listed "Knowledge, art, instinctive happiness or joy of life, and relations of friendship or affection," adding, "Instinctive happiness or joy of life is one of the important widespread popular goods that we have lost through industrialism and the high pressure at which most of us live; its commonness in China is a strong reason for thinking well of Chinese civilization." The joy of life, it is true, results mainly from the natural fulfillment of our creative impulse, not as a matter of satisfaction of the possessive impulse, which are essentially as insatiable as bottomless. On the psychological roots of Western civilization Russell further comments thus:

"Our Western civilization is built upon assumptions which, to a psychologist, are rationalizing of excessive energy. Our industrialism, our militarism, our love of progress, our missionary zeal, our imperialism, our passion for dominating and organizing, all spring from a superflux of the itch for activity. The creed of efficiency for its own sake, without regard for the ends to which it is directed, has become somewhat discredited in Europe since the war, which would have never taken place if the Western nations had been more indolent. But in America this creed is still almost universally accepted; so it is in Japan, . . .

The evils produced in China by indolence seem to me far less disastrous, from the point of view of mankind at large, than those produced throughout the world by the domineering cocksureness of Europe and America. . . . Thus he went on to remark emphatically that since he went to China, he had come to regard progress [in the sense of restless change] and efficiency [without regard for purpose] as the great misfortunes of the Western world."

The Great War [World War I] showed that something is wrong with our civiliza-tion; experience of Russia and China has made me believe that those countries can help to show us what it is that is wrong. The Chinese have discovered, and have practiced for many centuries, a way of life which, if it could be adopted by all the world, would make all the world happy. We Europeans have not.

Our way of life demands strife, exploitation, restless change, discontent and des-truction. Efficiency directed to destruction can only end in annihilation, and it is tothis consummation that our civilization is tending, if it cannot learn some of thatwisdom for which it despises the East."

(B) Hermann Keyserling

But, then, what accounts after all for the tragic plight China has unddergone in recent history, her national weakness, her cultural degeneration decadence? On this burning issue Russell does not have much light to shed; a more penetrative, and no less sympathetic, perception is to be found in Keyserling's works where the source of trouble is summed up in one word, "philistinism."

"Above all, I should like to see the following hypothesis tested by fact: The Chinese possess, unless I am very much mistaken, the greatest physical vitality of all human beings. Neither as individual nor as a nation do they seem to be capable of exhaustion; they get over illness which would be fatal to other people, they can stand an excess of work (also of mental work) without evil consequences to their nerves, and the worst debauches harm them relatively little.

The nation seems to be deteriorated to a considerable extent neither by over-culture, nor by inbreeding, nor by opium,nor by syphilis-in fact, by none of the things which ruin other peoples. The only general phenomenon of degeneration which can be observed among the cultured classes is their growing philistinism-and this not regarded, for very good reasons, as pathological in Europe at all. Is this marvelous physical vitality not the consequence of psychic culture? . . . and the tendency of many schools of our time is in the direction of strengthening the body through the culture of the soul.

Is the inherited vitality of the Chinese not due to the same cause? They have practiced self-control for thousand years, forced to do so by external circumstances, and encouraged in it by a wise moral system; and in the process has not that become inherited property which among us is acquired only through personal effort by favored individuals? Of course, it must not be forgotten that in China natural selection has assisted the building up of the race more than anywhere else, and that this alone explains a great deal; weak natures are hardly capable of life in China. It is of interest to notice that Keyserling's insightful observation on the growing philistinism as the cause for the deterioration of the chinese people. especially among the cultured classes, was anticipated by Wang Fu-chih (Chuan-shan,1619-1692), who said of the intellectuals of his days more than three hundred years ago, "There has been no greater harm than fu-ch'ien: superficiality!" that is to say, superficialism as the Chinese counterpart to the Biblical term philistinism.( to be continued)

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