The mass of Chinese, from the immemorial past up until the recent modern time, seem almost always to have spared their efforts contemplating the conception of liberty, equality and fraternity, or anything like that. That's a big frustrating fact, isn't it?
While most of us are making our big dreams, gaping at the welfare democracy has brought to and enjoyed by the westerners thereof, seldom dare we become any more bullish about our own future. "We have too complicated a history!" "We have too bulky a population nearly uncurbed!" Boasting a long-standing history, more often, does not deserve taking that much pride in. We have, time and time again, attributed to our 5000-year history those unsettled issues emerging over underdevelopment to unscrupulousness.
As a matter of fact, we might several times in those turbulent cascades of our history all but approach the glory of democracy. Yet due to various reasons, that glory soon fizzled out. Progress of Chinese nation well resembles, the zigzag Great Wall, so to speak. We are not certain whether the Great Wall means grandeur or rather closure, nor are we secure about whether our fabric of society would indeed bring to us what the founders of her pledged to do in the first place, or not. Why can we not like those western nations - or nearer, like our neighbor Japan - building up a truly democratic nation through successful reforms, no matter through a seismic one or piecemeal ones? Why can't belief of liberty ever take strong hold on this massive land? These sphinx riddles, allow me to say, worth each and every Nobel candidate's inexorable thinking.
I have been reading Democracy in America these days. Some sentences delineating germs of America really grabbed my heart：Religion is no less the companion of liberty in all its battles and its triumphs; the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims. The safeguard of morality is religion, and morality is the best security of law and the surest pledge of freedom. The law, the mores, and anything related to that could hark back to one thing, that is, religion. It is religion that solace those people's hearts, making them look on the bright side of things. It is religion that preachs to them virtues of love, equality and freedom. It is religion that always constricts and monitors their conscience.
Looking back on ourselves, it is quite natural and reasonable in my eye now to associate our underdevelopment and unscrupulousness with dearth of religion among us. We don't have any creeds - like those derived from Holy Bible - to guide us. We are facing with the blank slate to draw our life, for many of us are confused about the meaning of life. We are like straying lambs. We are easily misled diametrically to a dreadful direction. We are often unconsciously hurled into dark holes of moral degeneration. We are totally unaware of what a vital importance liberty has attached to human beings' life.
Buddhism has not become our common religion yet, nor has Taoism, needless to say Christianity(although the influence of it has become more and more considerable, which is however a good message for us). Religion stands for belief; though it is not the entire content of belief, it is indeed the most manifest of that. Only with a belief of substance can we Chinese finally solve those irksome social problems, ones which have been deeply ingrained.
But before achieving that goal of belief, who can tell me what kind of religion can be authentically taken up by unqualified majority of Chinese people?
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confucian did once play the religious role in Chinese history, but it tells people how to behave according to their classes more than how to live a liberal life. so I'm wondering whether religion can be the key to rescue Chinese. but compare China with Singapore,Korea,Hk and Taiwan where confucian has survived with western values, at least I think pay more attention to confucian moral education than nationalism education would do more good。。
oh by the way, I found your blog from 芬姐's, and your english is so so so terrific!!
hehe~Thank you for your unexpected comment, it's a really big surprise and pleasure to me:)Your English is truly terrific, and I'm really flattered by what you said.
Indeed, what I purported to say was that we need some kind of thing that can impart the conception of liberty to us and make it exactly rooted in our hearts, which in my opinion, would substantially become antidote for us Chinese.
Why I connected that with religion? Because I found that western values originated from the Christian belief which gives its people firm confidence that liberty is fundamental because God told them so.
But the importance of liberty is far from persuative in our country as that in those Christian countries. So I guess maybe we need something as powerful as religion is in the eye of westerners to urge us aware of the sanctity of liberty, where I didn't expressly mean religion, but rather something that can make us retrive and solidify our faith.
As to Confucian, I don't think it has yet played a role as powerfully in our history as Christianity did in the western one. Korea may have played the role of Confucian to the best, still it is not the reason why Korea is more advanced than us. Confucian only helps them make further progress as advance citizens, upright, honest or something like that. What constitutes the fundation of the acomplishment Singapore, Korea, HK and Taiwan have achieved is still the conception of liberty and accordingly the esteem for human being as an individual, which, I don't think Confucian have ever promulgated, and which, instead, is for the most part implanted from the west.
So then that is where my puzzle lies: why our Asian neighbors are able to take up those thoughts proclaimed in the first place by westerners while we can't? Is it because we are too too too stubborn or because we haven't fully experience the enlightment of mankind? Or other mysterious reasons? I can't see where the crux has taken hold.
I think that is a prerequisite we need to contemplate at present.
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