Forgotten Thinkers: Mencius

this lecture is on benches you don't know men chesty was one of the primary students of Confucius and we'll talk about why I'm talking about min Ches instead of Confucius but basically so I can sneak in two philosophers on one evening that's really that's really what I'm doing I'm cheating but importantly if you want to start talking about benches you first want to start talking about irrigation I know that's why you all came here because you thought let's hear about irrigation so the key element one of the key elements in China and Chinese history is it's an agricultural civilization in fact all early civilizations were based on a very limited set of crops in China in particular however that by far the most advanced irrigation systems in the world were in China for basically most of human history mohenjo-daro had some very impressive works as well but what this means for Confucius and Mencius as we talk about them is if you live in any area of China this goes we're talking about thousand BC coming this way so for the last three millennia this has been true if you lived in China often where you were god its water from someplace else and so anytime there's a civil unrest or disturbance it wasn't just that the crops got run over by the troops or your facilities got burned down or some of the farmers got killed all which is bad but you would disrupt ongoing basically Civil Works projects that often provided water necessary for the growth of your crops when that happens everybody dies the amount of catastrophe that that is brought about by a disruption of large-scale irrigation projects is almost unimaginable and so if you look at the history of civil wars and Wars in general often the Chinese like the warring States Period I mean they've had all of these interregnum zuv incredible violence have the highest percentage basically any conflicts of history many of them are the right at the top and it's not because so many people died fighting because they would you know it's not that efficient to spear people or shoot them with arrows it was the disruption and the agricultural systems primarily at the irrigation but also the moving of food that would cause mass starvation and by the way everybody would start of course it's always better to be rich but but you know if there's no food there's just no food and it sort of would disrupt whole regions and then you would fall into chaos and then you would get order now it's important to keep this in mind because both Confucius and Mencius were they were rural they were agricultural philosophers they come from the rural whether they're not they were part of a rural aristocracy that was based on agriculture and out there their worldview is the worldview of people who grow up on the land with the necessities of an agricultural system shaping all of their outlook so if we look at Confucius which is 551 to 479 BC ish right so these these early dates are hard to track down so 2500 years ago we're going back a bit but one of the wonderful things about Chinese history and philosophy is Confucius repeatedly states I'm a conservative I just want to look back to the good times in the olden days right so you go back 2,500 years and Confucius is saying it used to be great three or four or five or six hundred years ago it was really great and we've sort of fallen on hard times but we can return to good and so even 2500 years ago his worldview was conservative and backwards looking and focused on a couple of things most significantly order you want a society that is orderly and then how do you build that order was what they talked about sort of relentlessly almost now men chess is important because men chess is sort of to Confucius it's a loose analogy but kind of like Plato is to Socrates Confucius didn't write a lot down what we have attributed to his sayings are sort of well I've got a few quotes which will read they tend to be very short snippets of dialogue bits of outlook it's not a coherent system it wasn't developed or ratified by Confucius there's no big book of Confucian works the main works of Confucius perhaps in the Analects are relatively short and many of them obviously weren't don't by Confucius they're by his students but it's not systematic at all what happens when you get to mention who in the history is or the story is that he studied with Confucius as grandson whether that's true again slightly dubious but but so that generation 100 ish years later 370 is at three yeah 370 to 289 there again if there's some question about the exact date he took the Confucian system and really expanded and systematized it so it could actually be put in pretty effective order and then it was and then you'll see why this is so important so if we go back to Confucius again he's rural agriculture he said he's a functionary for the aristocracy and the aristocracies power and money and position comes from owning land and you need a couple of things when you own land particularly the ancient world when you need land you need water and you need workers and one way you can get workers is to enslave them and so the ancient world is filled with civilizations that were perfectly happy to enslave their entire populations Confucianism really repeatedly said mintus develops this that what you want to do is attract people the good ruler ruler draws people to him always a him by the way women essentially dogs the good ruler draws people to him you don't have to oppress them you know to beat them you don't have to threaten them they will come to you and so one way to think about wealth and to think about power is simply the fact that people want to come to your state your region the part of land that you control and this makes you richer more powerful because you have more laborers and if you have more arable land then you can generate more food which is what everything all wealth is generated from this in the ancient world second important thing about Confucius to note unlike virtually any other system that was being developed at this time is it's almost free it's totally free of God there are no gods homeless I mean it's a little hint here in there but almost totally free anti superstition focused on the human it's an incredibly human system and it always comes back to people people personal relationships the good ruler the good father the good son the good daughter the good friend without reference to or with only the most vague references to divinity and it's always sort of Airy and vague there's never really a strong sense that there's a God that you should worry about or there's all these divine rules that you should worry about it really is a human centric personal system of government and all the analogies are drawn from that they're either drawn from agricultural they're drawn from the family famously as we'll see so the cardinal virtues that are promoted by Confucius and then develop systematically by men chests are as I have them here is with first one is benevolence and that is the sense of compassion for others and acts appropriate to these feelings there you go the one cardinal virtue is but it is benevolence or compassion and over and over again both Confucius but particularly meant just said it is not enough to think these things it's not enough to feel this one's acts must convey in fact that's how you know who a good person is or a good ruler or a good father again a good son a good it's because there acts are appropriate to a sense of compassion for others that compose their worldview the second one is ye is righteousness and this is really it's an interesting sort of a negative cast here it's that act of feeling repulsed essentially at the prospect of either doing something wrong so if somebody offers you a bribe not taking the bribe is the correct thing to do but if you were truly developed your sense of righteousness you would be offended in fact you'd be physically repulsed by the notion of taking a bribe you wouldn't even be think about it because it would be like oh would you like to put your hand in this fire you go no right just pull your hand I don't want to burn my hand it's that righteousness is that sense of withdrawing from terrible things also any sense of being mistreated or being condemned or looked down on or being getting the short shrift in any way so it's both the sense of doing the correct thing not not doing wrong being repulsed by evil but also not allowing it to be imposed on you you don't allow that because that would disturb your position and disturbed your sense of yourself and then wisdom gee at my pronunciation of course incorrect in every instance the capacity discerned the nature affairs and to act and keeping with the other virtue so wisdom for them was really if you have righteousness and you have benevolence wisdom is knowing how to act given that and given these situations and if you read the Analects but particularly to read mention a lot of other confucius scholars what you'll see is this you know emperor wu chatted with his servant and said what do i do in this instance and then the old couple of servants will argue about what is the correct course of action and how you're supposed to feel and why and we'll see some of this here and the other extracts but it's always this conversation of well what's the righteous thing but stupid Evelynn thing howdy is this compassionate or does the does this aspect overwhelm that aspect it's always around concrete questions it's rarely about abstract question it's like oh if your father dies of course being your father he deserves a better funeral than your mother because fathers are more important than women right okay men are more important than women ah but if your father dies when you're young and you're poor or not very wealthy and your mother dies and you're wealthier well now that you can afford to do a more elaborate ceremony for her shouldn't you even though that would be more elaborate than the ceremony you did for your father right so it's what do you do when the various virtues conflict how do you decide what is the correct course of action how do you weigh this out in your heart in your acts and then finally one that we really struggle with because we have no sense of this is propriety didi this was a huge one this was really really vitally important one things we struggle with understanding in China to this day is is the fact that to show respect and honor all rich world rituals not just an empty action but in thought and feeling so the reason you show respect to your parents because that is the correct thing to do a good state a good Emperor is like a father the citizen is like the son in the family the father has duties and responsibilities the son has duties and responsibilities the next son has duties the mother has duties all spelled out and fulfilling those duties and obligations is propriety but you don't do them sort of burdened down and over oh my god I gotta go to my brother's birthday party kay I hate those things right that's wrong that's actually a lack of virtue virtue this feeling the desire to do what is appropriate and doing it from from up from a sense of goodness and well-being and when you cultivate it to that sense doing the correct thing becomes what you want to do and the idea is if people cultivate these virtues then eventually society will be orderly if people do not cultivate these virtues society will be disorderly in just to contrast with our system today in the American system we believe in a system of laws if you have government of laws that follows laws then you will have an orderly society people who do not follow the law will be punished people who do follow the law will not be punished this is practically the reverse of that if you have virtuous people they will do what is right without laws because therefore this is what virtue is virtue doesn't do the right thing because there's a law that says you must do it virtue does the correct thing because it is the correct thing to do and so our notion of an abstract external system which we can either conform or not conform to and then that somehow brings order to society they thought was silly and we'll see in these quotes whereas they felt that the only way you can have a orderly reasonable society is if you have virtuous people because people can always skirt laws and you know do something that allows them to get out of a situation or to commit a crime and get away with it it's the famous saying that the law is the last refuge of this of the scoundrel right that notion that's the notion oh we use the law to protect us when it's convenient because we've done something nasty see if you're virtuous and the Confucian ideal you wouldn't do nasty things so let's let's flip this over here we'll read a couple quotes from Confucius like your brother these all mentions I thought I put a couple of Confucius quotes in here now these are both finches quote so we'll start with them inches quote to give you a sense of this central to this now it's kind of hard philosophically mint just makes an incredible claim almost unique in the ancient world and that is that men all men men and women all people I have the innate capacity and desire to be virtuous it's born in us we are essentially good or at least we have the capacity to be good it's natural so here's the the crucial quote here it's long ish but I want to read it because it's so important when I say that all men have a mind which cannot bear to see the suffering of others my meaning may be illustrated thus even nowadays if men suddenly see a child about to fall into a well they will without exception experience a feeling of alarm and distress they will feel so not as ground on which they may gain the favor of the child's parents nor as a ground on which they may seek the praise of their neighbors and friends nor from the dislike of to the reputation of having been ascent of unmoved by such a thing from this case we may perceive that the feeling of commiseration is essential to man that the feeling of shame and dislike is essential to man that the feeling of modesty and complaisance is essential to man and that the feeling of approving and disapproving is essential to man the feeling of commiseration is the principle of benevolence the feeling of shame and dislike as the principle of righteousness the feeling of modesty and complaisance is the principle of propriety the feeling of approval and disapproval is the principle of knowledge or wisdom this so it's just he gives you this imaginary scenario if you're walking down the street some village you've never been you don't know anybody there and you see a child tottering on a well you don't stop and go I wonder if that child's parents are wealthy I wonder if anybody is watching I wonder what the outcome of this would be that benefits me generally we gasp and jump to save the child without thinking that's the key we do it without thinking it's a native impulse in us ninja says this demonstrates of course this is a huge philosophical argument but he says firm interest this demonstrates without a doubt that we have the capacity innate in us and the desire to do what is good and benevolent and compassionate and that when it's clear and nothing gets in interferes with us we will do the benevolent thing without thinking when we know it what to do in this case we know what to do so we don't think about it we just do it what gets confusing is that the world is often much more complicated than that so this is where wisdom comes in wisdom is the capacity to look at a situation and go how do I respond like a child falling into the well what is where is the clarity so I know the right act at any moment he goes a step for both Confucius and Mencius go as much stuff one step further Humber and using an agricultural analogy which is not a surprise for them minja says but this is a sprout in a man and a woman and it has to be nurtured it has to be in an environment where it can flourish and if it's given the right kinds of soil the right water the right tending then all of the virtues will grow and expand in it he says almost no one even a sage is not virtuous when he's starving you it's hard to be virtuous when you're stuck hard to be virtuous when you're threatened with violence the direct from interest by the way this is almost word-for-word quotes from it it's it when you don't have shelter and you're freezing hard to be virtuous so he says if you give the people food if you give the people shelter and if you make sure the people are free from violence then you can cultivate compassion in them then you can cultivate benevolence and righteousness and wisdom and the correct approach to ritual so that the first responsibility of a good ruler an aristocrat or an emperor or a Duke is to make sure that the people are fed and clothed and they have houses and they're not threatened with violence because then you can cultivate the virtues in them and and the collected works of mintus and the Alex Confucius are just sort of an endless discussion of these sorts of issues so here's another example this is make sure I've got the right ones here yeah this is the first work the first part of the works of mixes mint just went to see King hue of young the king said venerable sir since you have not countered it far to come here a distance of a thousand Li may I presume that you are provided with counsels to profit my kingdom so hey you come a long way to see me you must be here to tell me something that's gonna profit my kingdom and then just replied why must your Majesty use the word profit what I am provided with our counsels to benevolence and righteousness and these are my topics only if your Majesty say what is to be done to profit my kingdom the great officers will say what is to be done to profit our families and if the inferior officers and the common people will say what is to be done to profit our persons superiors and inferiors will try to snatch this profit the one from the other and the kingdom will be endangered in the kingdom of 10,000 chariots the murder of his sovereign shall be the chief of the family of a thousand chariots in the kingdom of a thousand chariots the murder of his Prince shall be the chief of a family of a hundred chariots to have a thousand and ten thousand and a hundred thousand cannot be said can can be said not to be a large allotment if righteousness be put last and profit be put first they will not be satisfied without snatching all there never has been a benevolent man who neglected his parents there never has been a righteous man who made his sovereign and after consideration let your majesty also say benevolence and righteousness and let these be your only things why must you use the word prophets this should resonate with us a little bit I should think the theme of how does this profit us what's in it for me who makes the money where where is the word the goods right one who can follow the money when we always follow the money that'll take you to the truth so 2,300 years ago benches when asked this precise question on an unreasonable question from up from a ruler from a Duke says no you've got it all wrong and again it is this this theory of the the virtuous person if the ruler isn't virtuous why would the aristocrats be virtuous if the aristocrats aren't virtuous why would the people be virtuous and if the people are virtuous and the aristocrats are virtuous and the King isn't virtuous or the ruler you're in trouble nothing good you're gonna get assassinated he just says this he says even if somebody has a thousand chariots they'll say I want more because that's what you've said you said I'm in it for profit I'm in it for more he says all you're doing is setting an example for your own people to kill you because this is what you're doing don't ask about profit ask about the whole the four virtues how can I be benevolent how can I be compassionate how can I be wise these are why I've come to your come to your state this is what I'm here to help you with and if and if I can't help you with that I'll leave it's important to note that both Confucius and Mencius sort of wandered around trying to catch on with a king or a Duke or account that they that they could counsel and lead to wisdom neither of them had much success it is it is sad to say that they were sort of they struggled with this because it turns out you know the world intervened that the leaders really were more interested in profit the world they really were much more interested in worldly power and then chess was actually sort of vaguely tricked into supporting a military venture which he did not support and which went very wrong and to be retired sort of said well that's it I kind of I kind of give up but for example another one of the things he says is forget when one of the Dukes does having an ox brought in to be slaughtered and he sees the Ox sort of bellowing in the courtyard and he says no set it free I don't want to kill the Ox and then he's criticized for this because it makes it look like he's cheap that he's supposed to do these sacrifices for the good of the kingdom but it looks like he's just sort of doesn't want to spend the money essentially and mint just says well don't worry about that what's important is you are doing it for the compassion of the ox and again the King says yes I was doing it for the compassion of the Ox I just didn't want to see it suffer and he says now aren't your people more important than an ox aren't they suffering if your people are going hungry take the compassion you feel for the Ox and grow it meditate on it let that fill you then you'll be compassionate to your people set the Ox free set your people free let your compassion flow to them and so it's really this almost complete reversal of our notion of following laws and rules and order because it says goodness and a clear society an orderly society comes from people who again do not need laws and order it comes from people who from the model of the family if you're the father you fulfill your responsibilities and duties for the son you feel the responsibilities and duties one of the rules I did that Confucius I believe lays down this is not mention as Confucius says if in a family the father dies and the older son takes over which is what would happen and nothing changes for three years you know you have a good family because the son will just keep doing exactly what the father did naturally because it hasn't changed anything in three years he's not gonna change anything right it's pretty clear it's things are just gonna go on the way they were now for us this sounds incredibly stifling right we're like oh you know go out make yourself do what you want be you to the Chinese model is very different you you can express yourself through cultivating the virtues through benevolence so that so Confucius starts this minja szyskii ki student really starts spreading it develops into a system and why this is important is if you look at the chart here in the Han Dynasty 206 BC to 220 ad in formal examinations for some officials based on the Confucian classics began to be implemented so this is 2200 years ago up until this point and then still all over the world today by the way the way you choose who's going to be your generals who's going to be your accountants three members of your family four members of the important aristocracy totally genealogical family family family family friends of the family important families they control all the government positions they control all the wealth they control the land they control everything this is new this is the notion that hey let's try and select the best and buy the best we mean the most virtuous as trained to the Confucius system and again this isn't very systematic at first and basically it was really a way to sift through different aristocrats wasn't it wasn't like the common people are going to school and learning Confucianism and getting jobs that's not going to happen yeah it's coming but it was the beginning of like a sort of civil service system you had to learn the ancient classics you had learn the appropriate rituals and you had Alert Confucianism me I did to cultivate the correct virtues key amongst us is the capacity to discern who amongst all these people is actually honest and trying to help you and who is just trying to profit themselves a question we all struggle with today right when we say that politicians are venal that they're corrupt that they're stealing that means that when we voted for them we thought they were gonna try and do what was right in theory but now we realize that they're really just trying to enrich themselves this is a problem it's not a new problem right this wasn't just invented recently this is a problem as old as as we have organized government how do you select those people who are actually trying to do good and help versus those people who are just here to rip you off steal your chariots embezzle and promote their own friends and family civil service exam this is the idea and here it starts this goes off with breaks right because the Chinese history there's Wars and interregnum Xand the explosions of an order and then you know comes back and the tang dynasty this is 6:06 18 to 907 80 now increased the complexity of the exams expanded who could take the exams and added more subjects the classics played a central role so now we're talking on almost a thousand years well actually a thousand years after the death of Confucius in one of the great dynasties in Chinese history Confucianism becomes increasingly important because the larger and more prosperous the Empire became the more difficult it became to manage the more you needed a professional civil service Confucian right at the heart of it at this point starts if you start learning your letters and Chinese not letters I guess symbols in Chinese what you would learn was a simple five child's versions of the Analects of Confucius his main sayings in his main phrases so when you were learning to draw your characters you were actually the first thing you would write out and you wouldn't do see spot run you would say the good son obeys the father you know this this was the this was the order of learning it would be the first thing you would learn to write the good emperor does this you you know the virtuous son does this the good friend does that you cultivate Li by doing this the appropriate ritual is that's what you learn to write so your entire education and of course literacy was rare I mean it was an elite that was being literate being learning to write at all in China was it wasn't just a little bit focused on Confucianism it was Confucianism I mean this is what you learned this what you wrote and because Confucius had been himself influenced by some of the classics that were also in the exams it was a very tight curriculum but also meant that the elites through our China all shared the same educational background and outlook give all these regions different families different aristocracy's but the governing elites know they had one system one background one outlook they could communicate with each other it was sort of a club as essentially that you entered through examinations and excellence and then the Song Dynasty 962 1279 is where mint just really comes into his own because this is mint is a sort of neo-confucianism he took Confucius created a system new of Confucianism and in the Song Dynasty for various reasons political reasons they wanted to expand the franchise they wanted to get more people involved they wanted to sort of push down the power of the aristocracy and so they said you know hey let's get more people taking the exams so there were more subjects and min Ches became I mean he was already important but men just became more or less but you what you learning we're learning other classics but it was meant to sustain Confucianism that set the tone and one way to think about it is basically from a thousand Bedi until 1900 that is what you learned the Imperial exam system became the centerpiece of education anybody who is going to be educated was going to learn the neo-confucian classics here we go they were influenced by Buddhism there are other influences again Mongols come in shake things up but in the long run Confucianism confusion has spreads to Korea spreads to Taiwan everywhere the Chinese went they took the systems like the Koreans in some way became better Confucius than that then the Chinese were very interesting development in history they started sending back Confucius studies back to China like hey look what we learned that's impressive you know so but but this world dude spread and lasted for I mean it was part of the Imperial exam system on and off for over 2,000 years it was what being educated it's what it meant essentially learned in rituals you learned some music learning to play the flute and you learned your Confucian classics and then you got the 1900s right here we come modern world comes crashing in we know what the modern world tells us the modern world says hey make money be you be free and one hand this is great this is the American dream you know go out Explorer move around do what you want follow your dream this is not a Chinese message but this is this is Confucius never said to follow your dream Confucius said sit quietly study meditate and reflect on the compassionate or benevolent thing to do which is a completely different message and part of this is we embrace a level of chaos we're just happy with it I mean it doesn't bother us you can think of society a sort of personal liberty the more personal liberty you have the more chaos you have the more disorder the last personal liberty the more order you can have and so it's not so much a question of oh well they're just tamping down on personal liberties which is sometimes true but what they're really trying to do is up the content of order because the cost of disorder has always been catastrophic you know 25 percent of the population dying which is historically in a case from a warring States period which is vastly more I mean it makes World War two look like nothing we're talking unbelievable number of deaths because of starvation we got another example of this in the Great Leap Forward mouths you know horrific inhuman attempt to modernize China no one's exactly sure how many people died somewhere between 20 and 50 million people starved to death why because he tried to mess around with the way agriculture was done he tried to change the traditional patterns tried to make everybody start making iron and do all these crazy things and disrupted the system that had been in place for literally thousands of years and every time in the Chinese history in that system gets disrupted you get the same thing thirty to fifty million people starved to death voices of the most horrific is that it's the greatest mass die-off of the 20th century it wasn't World War two wasn't that concentration camps it wasn't the gulags of Russia as horrible as all those were there was a Great Leap Forward and it was an attempt to basically undo this history modernize in one leap get rid of all this tradition ditch it and so not surprisingly when communism comes along it has a lot of problems with the Confucius system not the least of which is Confucianism teaches that your first loyalty is to your parents and to your family benches actually says that if if a man you know would obey his Emperor instead of his father he does not know what's right that your loyalty to your family is Trump's everything else of course industry totalitarian government can't have this it has to say your first order of duty is to the state and so I give you two pieces of propaganda these are from communist posters trying to fight Confucianism and mensches theories and these are both from from the 1940s and 50s but they have these sort of lurid posters I didn't have room to put him here but it says the caption is there when Confucius was about thirty years old he began a private school collecting disciples far and wide which is true he strictly regulated the social class restrictions of who could enroll extorting tuition from all his students true except for perhaps the extorting part at that time a person of slave ancestry who lacked personal freedom had no right to receive an education the children of the aristocracy and the officialdom came to study one after another Confucius made use of oral instructions gathering disciples and forming factions training faithful lackeys who would restore the slavery system the next posterior amidst the great social revolution the government of the slave holding class was represented by Confucius in 1551 BCE the state of Lu Confucius was born into a declining slaveholding family he was the second eldest amongst the siblings and hence the name Gold number two Confucius constantly bore in mind the fact that he himself was of a later generation of the slaveholding aristocracy when he was young he loved to set up little bowls and dishes of sacrificial vessels and imitate the cow tying rich Little's to his aristocratic ancestry the charge here is clear conservatism means slave holding we want to liberate the peasants who by the way we're just needed to liberating right I mean that that the Communists weren't all wrong um we're here to liberate the peasants throw off your Esther Craddock / throwers and their chief spokesman Confucius don't believe all this stuff this is just a bunch of lies to make slaveholding and crushing the people look good now of course there's some truth to this not what's not from Confucius but P we're perfectly happy to justify what they were doing under the confucius model but it was this model of conservatism it really was it said look to the Past keep things the way they were we're sorry you're a peasant but no don't worry about that eventually the exam system was in fact opened up to include just about everybody in the very poorest of the poor couldn't really participate but almost everybody else couldn't sue Julie competitive thousands of students would take in that little boxes that they would put them in where they take these exams because it was your ticket to a better life it was the way that you moved up so sort of a incredibly intense version of our modern SAT test we'll see how this works out but the communist system wanted to overthrow that so they wanted to liberate the peasants in theory what they really wanted to do was remove a system of belief that said totalitarianism is wrong a leader is supposed to be compassionate people are supposed to be helped and that your first loyalty is to a system of ethics that's internal not a party creed not a legal system it's an internal system of virtues that you cultivate for yourself and that is focused on the family in the village and in fact this is where it ends up being lived so this didn't work out too well for the Communists because they did the part of the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward these both of these incredible tragedies was specifically to exterminate Confucianism but it didn't work 2,000 years cannot be erased in 50 years or 40 years even when you're willing to kill as many people as it takes even with 60 or 70 million total dead the system still sort of stroll along so after that what we've experienced over the last 20 years the Gries of China as we call it this loosening of Chinese of westernizing of China opening up of the borders the importing of knowledge and technology the growth of the this boom this profit has been extraordinary but what's happened is now everybody here at Chinese people wants to but they know this is not communism everybody is clear that this is not a communism this is not work this is this is something new and different so now the Chinese Communist Party is faced with this problem we don't want Western ideas because it's too chaotic remember their system is to this day they really do not like chaos they want order we all kind of like order but again how much we're willing to tolerate varies and so they're like well what do we do communism is dead it's been you know it didn't work people don't want to go with communism that we don't want to go with Western democracy liberal ideas what can we go with hmm how about Confucianism so in the last five years they've opened over a thousand schools of traditional Confucianism and they have the goal is to open 10,000 I believe in the next four so right now the Chinese Communist government is vastly I mean 10,000 schools even in a country of a billion people that is a lot of schools these are some of these are big schools a lot of students let's turn back to Confucianism this is the system a system that will give us order and prosperity in virtuous society because look at what they're struggling with if anybody follows Chinese government problems one of the big pushes they have on is government corruption the officials are just stealing the place blind well how do you fight this why wouldn't you steal the place blind what does the capitalist ethos say the best thing you can do is get money so the purpose of being in government position is to profit if that's not the purpose of being in a government position what could it possibly be don't ask what the profit is ask what is benevolent ask what is virtuous so because they've lost the values of the Communist Party has it been you know they've lost all possible resonance people just don't believe them they're looking for a new elite governing virtue that will allow them to continue to rule to have efficacy when their own country in their own history so that they can basically maintain power but within a new structure they need a new structure and they know this and the structure they've chosen is Confucianism which is really the exposition of new Confucianism by mensches so if you look around the world today probably the single most influential philosophical system is Confucianism it is the central tenant of the lives of over a billion people and it's growing it's not receding it's growing in fact it's in this incredible dynamic struggle if you look and if you look at sort of the Middle East right now you know is Lama klonda mentalism in this non terroristic mode I mean terror is always a bad idea but it's lammott fundamentalism and it's more reflective mode meditative mode is saying we do not like the values of the West we're looking back to earlier values of the Koran in our own civilizations and so it is this war of ideals and philosophy that's going on but it's also happening in China communism failed they know that the economy is booming but do you that seems to be having run its course is a bit soft at the moment which creates problem stress in your society so same impulse let's look back what did we have that was good what they had was what they have Confucianism so nothing that's going on in China today and right now today is this big boom in Confucius ceremonies so people are beginning for the first time in quite a while having large elaborate Confucius weddings based on the ancient traditions and rituals it would with overseen by Confucius officials with with you know there's sort of big elaborate red robes and dresses and incense burning the respect for parents and family is on the rise they're trying to re-emphasize that another way I think of us to put in concrete terms that sort of in Vega concrete terms in the United States we look at our demographic issues everybody sees all we have you know so many old people so many retirees how are we ever going to support them well you have to give them social security we have to have government programs we have to do this we have housing for them a special nursing and Medicare Medicaid and prescription drug benefits and all this government government government government China facing precisely the same problem by the way a similar demographic problem is saying virtuous children that's how you solve that problem virtuous children take care of their parents you don't need a government program you need virtuous children Caesar completes this it's a totally different approach but whether this is working about I have absolutely no idea but but this is this is this is the this is the call this is the concept if you want to help people do you need a government program that delivers from the outside finite goods as defined by laws and carried out by bureaucrats sometimes sure or do you need better people who take care of the problems for themselves but then how do you make sure they do that so one of things the United States this wouldn't work at all because when you're 18 your parents just kicked you out of the house sort of kids a communal decision if you're if your kids stay today at home when they're young guys you read in the newspaper all the time kids come home right boomerang kids they return it's a terrible thing that kids have come back to their parents this is a powerful they should be on the world on their own well if you tell people they should be out in their world on their own entire lives when you get all they need help why would they help you what could possibly be the point and we know there's no joy in the family no knowledge to pass along nothing to learn there you don't want your kids around because they're awful you oughta be with your parents because they're awful what an interesting system we developed right isn't it strange that the Chinese the Confucian system is just exactly the opposite it says no virtuous parents fulfill their responsibilities their children virtuous children fulfill their responsibilities their adult and everybody is much happier in theory and practice write your mileage may vary uh-huh but but but it's a coupe again it's just a completely different outlook and if you think about freedom and values is it better to put your faith in your government to take care of you or your children notice if it's your children your your view on your children and your relatives and your friend and your village is very different when your life literally depends on them when you look on them and say the quality of my retirement the quality of my later years my care is dependent on these people benevolence and compassion starts to look like really good virtues right because you're not you're not it's not it's not it's not some abstract concept this is now a very real potent life-changing investment investment is the wrong word see what all a lie I'm sorry use that word because knows all our language is the language of profit Minges would say why are you talking about investment son investment is compassion it's love it's caring and it's the wisdom to know how you do this appropriately and write heartedness so this you know it's it's a it's a fascinating experiment and against an experiment that's going on right now today in China 10,000 schools is nothing to sneeze that particularly when it's already in the culture if there were 10,000 schools for something that didn't exist I would say check check back in in a hundred years see if that has taken off but it's 10,000 schools for something that already has a 2,000 year history that's that's you know sort of lots of Drive brush the match I think was gonna catch and so that so you know when I was thinking about this I thought you know series called forgotten philosophers we don't even know who mensches is essentially in the West we sort of heard of Confucius don't know what he stands for probably haven't heard of Minges um but I think there's a very real argument today if we were in China he wouldn't be forgotten of course by the way the Chinese of the Communists did their best but it didn't work people Stillman inches is but right now today probably the most influential philosopher in the world is ninjas because he's got a massive part of the Chinese Communist bureaucracy going ooh what are we gonna do ninjas let's do Michos that worked for 2,000 years let's give it another gun and so that really is this revival this boom some people say by the way that this is just a naive cover right this is just a power play by the communists to try and do the best they can to maintain power when they're under threat from Western ideals that could be true I don't know who knows but but it's not a coincidence that this is what they chose they could have said you know sir oh we really like that slow guy we've been reading some Thoreau we think everybody should get a cabin right that's not what they said that would sort of be if the Taoist we're taking over if the Chinese government had decided to go Taoist it would be something more like that that's not what they said they said hey let's revisit our own past and Cole from that what looks to be the best and what they're calling is mensches not unrelated by the way is it you can look this up online by the today in China if you want to go to college wanna advance get a good career you take the gut cow up again my pronunciation Oh pronounce it's cow cow cacao it's a big national exam and if you want to see a country that believes in tests because they've been doing it for 2,000 years look at some of the pictures you'll have all the students who are going to take the exam in a buses lined up the entire village dressed formally will line the streets with flags the mayor all the important people will be out and as they drive by everybody waves to them wishes him the best in Beijing taxi drivers all free if you're taking the test during the days that you're there taking a test you don't have to pay lots of restaurants will set up food outside for free for the test takers because these are future this is another thing that Confucius teaches it's not an coincident that Confucianism is associated with exams is because Confucius believed in study and learning and wisdom and reflection and so those systems are sort of coming back together that the what we look at like SAT college entrance exams except for x k thousand times of intensity are starting to stuck in these Confucian estai deals again and the idea of education being the most valuable thing because it cultivates the virtues again it's almost hard for us to imagine but if you do well on these exams particularly for from a village you know ten fifteen thousand person village not Beijing it's a little different but if you do well on the exams basically the entire village will throw you a party because you're a great person there you're an investment in the future you you're yours you've become somebody they know that they're gonna everybody in the village knows are gonna be better off because of you and you look out and say now I have an obligation to all of these people it's a reciprocal relationship that's not built government down art tradition it's built from the family to the friends to the neighbors to the Communist structure of the village to the region and government so it's extraordinarily different so when we think about this like I said this is this is one where I can say without a doubt this is this mintus forgotten perhaps never known in the West really one might say we've heard of Confucius in chess but the NiO Confucius movement that I guess now we'll be knio knio Confucius movement is upon us you can look it up online read the newspaper stories Wall Street Journal talks about this all kinds of people talking about this if it goes anywhere again I don't know the future is hard to predict but it certainly I think amazing that 2600 years later the Philosopher's of the moment in China in a very serious way as Confucius students Minges so thank you very much you you

Channel: Wes Cecil

Views: 29,979

Rating: 4.8474574 out of 5

Keywords: Mencius, Confucius, Wes Cecil, Humane Arts, Philosophy, Chinese history, Lecture

Id: Gvxk4ryX-CI

Length: 56min 24sec (3384 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 25 2015