Thorsten Pattberg

“ Although Western theories, sciences and technologies were appreciated, most Eastern commentators were convinced that Asian values and wisdom were unique and so clear-cut diametrically opposed to many values and wisdoms to the West, that they needed to be preserved, at all cost of an inevitable intellectual crash with the West. ”

“ That’s a no-no in the Western world, where we expect the unwavering truth - and one truth only.
China in particular never made any great attempts of covering her own truths and her aim to hold up Eastern values and wisdoms (why should the East throw away its 5000 years of successful history and culture?) , and at the same time profit from the practicability of foreign learning; her ability to adopt herself, even if it meant aggressively copying from the Western others:
师夷之长技以制夷。
Study the foreigners so that you will have the upper hand over them. ”

“ In order to integrate ideology with man successfully - again, the concept of ‘the one’ -, not an industrial revolution that manipulates matters, but a cultural revolution that manipulates minds had to take place. ”

“ Yet, in the intellectual output of those great cultural figures no foreigner took part; the Chinese intellectuals – no less engaged in protecting their cultural sovereignty with nationalism than the Japanese before them - read Western theories, studied Western theories, improved them - sinosized them.
In the integration-based East, were knowledge comes from traditions, ancient concepts of the inductive Eastern ‘moral superiority’ vs. Western deductive ‘scientific superiority’ were soon identified as the nucleus of the East-West dichotomy and the struggle for the Eastern soul. ”

“ There are two Winds in the world, the East Wind and the West Wind. There is a Chinese saying that “either the East Wind prevails over the West Wind or the West wind prevails over the East wind.” I believe it is characteristic of the situation today that the East Wind is prevailing over the West Wind. That is to say, the forces of socialism have become overwhelmingly superior to the forces of imperialism. ”

“ Could the principles of husbandry and selection, which we have seen to be so potent in the hand of a breeder, apply to social and political affairs? It did so in the former Soviet Union and Germany’s government under Hitler, both explicitly using propaganda favoring communism or fascism in all forms of media, literary and public expression. ”

“ Any personal action causes a result, and that result itself is the truth about the direction and intention of the cause. The repetitive action then constantly confirms our direction and intention. Hence, it does not matter how much a scientist decries the existence of God: as long as some people believe in God, that God is the truth about the cause that leads to Him. ”

“ Who wants to be so openly manipulated by a politician? But nevertheless what Mao said is essentially at the core of all religious movements and any other mass movement you and I can think of, and, of course, repetition is the very essence of all behavioral modification and psychological conditioning. ”

“ Not only China but East-Asia in general consequently ‘borrowed’ from the West whatever seemed fit: from aestheticism - in a Wildean or Byronic sense – (Zhou, 2000) , architecture, art and cinema, economics, film and documentary, law, literature, sports, music, post-modern theory, through Darwinism, Marxism (e. g. the sinification of Marxism) , to socialism (e. g. Socialism with Chinese characteristics) and new forms of democracy. ”

“ Yet, other forms of cultural superiority in Asia remain, such as ‘Dahan zhuyi’ (大汉族主义, the chauvinistic Han) , Nihonjin-ron (Japanese uniqueness) , the Vasudeva (the supreme man) etc. - all highly complex models not so much of biological but more of moral superiority or even intellectual superiority (we come to that later) ”

“ The legalists stressed the universal importance of promoting capable people as officials no matter their confession or creed. Throughout history the inductive way in Asia manifested in ever-higher inductive reasoning ability and, consequently, in cultural output (in art, religion, music, literature etc.) ”