Thorsten Pattberg

“ Appearances can make happy, indeed. What appears to the integration-based Eastern nations as a continuation of their own traditional search for ‘oneness’ and ‘harmoniousness’, that same process appears to the Europeans and Americans as the ingenious, creative deconstruction of the East, the processes of total ‘westernization’. ”

“ The Golden Rule from The Bible is unambiguous, I think, about its intention: make enemies friends (what happens if applied to friends, will they become enemies?) for one’s own personal advantage.
Another use of the Golden Rule from The Bible is to warn someone about the pain and punishment that comes along with breaking the Golden Rule, because once you break the Rule, you cannot rule out that someone else is breaking it on you. After all, who wants to be murdered, beaten, crucified? ”

“ Not that the U.S.A. or European nations do not have there own ideas about harmoniousness, far from it, they have various, often fragmentary, even conflicting ideas about it. They always have. After the ‘ejection’ of communism from the Western hemisphere, in the case of dialectical materialism, all major parties of Western capitalistic democracies quickly found their own ways to attend to and satisfy its people and to curb production and the accumulation of material wealth, and it all happened without turning human beings into submissive production units with no human rights. ”

“ There is no need for China’s outmoded senses of tolerance, kindness, gracefulness, Japan’s ‘universal emptiness’, Indian ancient senses of ‘universal equality’, ‘universal tolerance’ or indeed any other spiritual idea, no matter how many hundreds of years those great sages spoke prior to Jesus Christ, Bill Gates, or Harry Potter. ”

“ How can someone appreciate someone else’s cultural values if he does not know their content, language or their origin? The answer is, no one can; and the West will not appreciate Eastern spirituality. ”

“ Far into the 1970’s, no communist party in Western Europe or the United States held any considerable mandates. Apart from France, Italy, and of course Finland, communism was virtually absent in Western politics, except, of course, as the bogeyman. I cannot discuss the reasons here why collectivism, authoritarian rule, the spiritualization of materialism, socialism and totalitarian concepts so easily caught fire in the East, and why Stalin, Mao, Kim Yong-Il, and, yes, Hitler too, are still considered ‘great leaders’ among Asian nationals and admirers. They will probably always be. ”

“ The abstract concepts of ‘harmoniousness’ or ‘democracy’ behave non-relative precisely in their “respective Western context” and in their “respective Eastern context”, and behave relative only by themselves. Here I will give an example about the ‘Golden Rule’ in ethics, also called the ‘ethic of reciprocity’, which is supposedly at the root of the Western position on human rights. In Luke 6;27-31 Jesus said: “Do for others just what you want them to do for you. If you really do that, you may just find that your enemy will become your friend.” ”

“ Not to die in dying is to live on” (Kumarajiva, 2008) .
What then is the problem with Europe? Why don’t they unify, become ‘one’? I will argue, that in 2500 years of its history, there has never been the concept of ‘oneness’, and ‘harmoniousness’ in the European collective mind. Goethe said: “There are two peaceful powers in this world: Right and Tact” (Goethe, 1833) . And Gu Hongming noticed: “希伯来人的文明宗教教导欧洲人正义的知识,但没有教导礼法. (The Religion in the civilization of the Hebrew people taught the people in Europe the knowledge of Right, but it did not teach Tact (Gu, 1922) . ”

“ As a consequence, in a Western dominated world no one could care less about “equilibrium is the great foundation of the world, and harmony is its path“ (Zi Si, Zhong Yong, 1) , “the function of rites (‘li’) lies in harmoniousness” (Confucius, Lun Yu 1;12) , or “to live with a culture is to understand that culture” (Laozi, 54) . It is indeed very difficult to conceive that today’s Obama, Sarkozy, Brown or Merkel would favor ‘oneness’ over ‘westernization’; most unlikely candidate of it all: the Chinese dream of ‘tianxia’ (天下, All under heaven) . ”

“ This Golden Rule of Confucius is at the core of ‘harmoniousness’ in the East, and according to its moral implications, all East-Asian nations have encouraged their societies to promote the cultivation of oneself as an integrated member of the collective with various decrees of filial piety that will ensure ‘shame and loss of face’ if the collective is harmed.
Few people in China fear the punishment for one’s misbehavior. ”

“ If you ask any of the fragmented twenty-seven nation states of Europe today about their European Union, each of them wants to defend their individual Right, but none of them has Tact enough to submit to the greater cause. ”

“ Even to this day, 9 out of 10 university professors of Chinese or Sanskrit/Hindi Studies in Europe are not able to write or communicate fluently in those languages, let alone to a level worthy of the highest intellectual standard, and even have to employ Chinese or Indian translators or assistants to help their ‘white masters’ carefully dissecting those foreign texts as if they were insects. ”

“ The psychological conundrum for Asia is that due to its induction-based views on the world, it does not perceive those European countries as isolated and self-sufficient, but rather as integrated and dependent part of humankind, and thus - out of need for universal tolerance and harmony – readily believes them; at least will always consider Western views. ”

“ Some of the Goths, the East Germanic tribes who disappeared slowly after the 6th century, must have felt that their cities had too many foreigners; that their daughters preferred to marry outsiders, that there sons had to learn a foreign language, that they consumed more and more goods that they themselves did not produce ”

“ It is clear to all Chinese that Western culture is the root of wealth, success, development and political survival – it is the essence of modernity. (Francesco Sisci, 2008)
This air of condescension is reflected in Western education systems. It is still perfectly conceivable, in the 21st century, to meet a German, French, Italian, American visiting scholar on the streets of Delhi or Shanghai, who has never heard about Rammohan Roy, Sri Autobindo, Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Si Maqian, Hu Shi, Liang Qichao, or Lu Xun. ”

“ An American teacher in Beijing once wrote in her web-diary about Chinese students: “The think their country is doing so incredibly well and it can only get better... and they are always happy, happy, happy.” They love their country, and they embrace life. ”

“ Are Europeans really that ignorant? Of course, they are not. Far from it, in fact, they are really busy in all intellectual departments in keeping what they have, and maybe learning a bit more about finance, IT, and American popular culture. ”

“ What is feared most is the ‘loss of face’, the ‘feedback from the collective’, the ‘wrath of one’s family’, one’s ‘father’s judgment’, and, yes, sometimes the Party official’s patronizing, if not infantilizing, words “This disgraceful ‘child’ now prefers to feel ashamed”. ”

“ The Chinese, on the other hand, knew only little about Right, but a lot more about Tact. Laozi said:
故大邦以下小邦,则取小邦;小邦以下大邦,则取大邦。故或下以取,或下而取。大邦不过欲兼畜人,小邦不过欲入事人。夫两者各得所欲,大者宜为下. When a large country submits to a small country, it will adopt the small country. When a small country submits to a large country, it will be adopted by the large country. The one submits and adopts, the other submits and is adopted. It is in the interest of a large country to unite and gain service, and in the interest of a small country to unite and gain patronage. ”

“ There can be no mistake about what a liver is. And about where it is. All the parameters are highly scientific and precise. We know what a good operation looks like, and we know what follows if all the premises are true: the patient walks out of the hospital. ”

“ One is to pursue the story in an inclusive form, paying attention to the divisions as well as the interdependence involved, possibly varying over time, between the manifestations of civilization in different parts of the world. ”

“ They also have plenty and great problems, they know it, but they would – as all great powers do – rather continue to be great and engage with other great nations, and not to waste too much time with the negative, nagging and left-behind former great nations, and certainly not with some jealously barking – but politically irrelevant - European demagogues. ”