(2)
Basic translation of this: Mengzi met King Lianghui. King stood on a wetland and was enjoying looking at water bird and deer. He asked:"Does a wise and kind man also enjoy nature?" Mengzi said:"Only when a man became kind and wise can enjoy these. A man without wisdom cannot enjoy such a beautiful thing."
I had an very interesting conversation with memebers in my book club last month. One of the memebers mentioned that the reason why Japanese cartoon was so popular was because the cartoon figures resembled children very much. Their disproportionally big eyes and big heads....Those are the elements making them visually appealing. I then raised a question: why do children looklovely and why do we always smile at kittens? We certainly were not educated to love the look of children or kitten.
But certainly there are things that we liked without a reason and nobody ever told us to like them. Some of the things that we love have no clear connections with our chance to survive and it certainly was not our ability to reason which had taught us to love those things....
Are we genetically programmed to like certain things? Blue sky? Purple flowers? A white bird gliding in the sky?
I like water bird and deer...and I am not wise and kind..and certainly I am not a man...
*Just a quick note here...I have been cynical towards Mengzi's theories and being cynical is required for most of the critical studies...However, being cynical rarely makes one being creative..It is always easier to destroy then to construct...So..just a small reflection and a confession of guilt...
Mengzi set the continuation of Kong Fuzi. Mengzi hald that man is bascially good and the traditional rules of Kong Fuzi should be followed. Mozi argued that the rites (Li) were becoming to much and it took away from addressing the needs of the people because everything was becoming ceremonial. The Kong- Fuzi framework lasted for many years and produced an orderly state and allowed the central government to remain realifitively small because government was left to the family and the village. If you believe that the government that governs least, governs best, the Kong Fuzi model created a society to support this notion. But back to Mengzi. If mankind is bacially good, why did the Kong Fuzi model become so corrupt? When the Kung Fuzi philosophers of the East were confronted with the gun barrels of the West, it was technology and not philosophy that was the victor. Was the model bad or people bad? Should humans be given examples of correct behavior as a model that we know they will never follow, but say that they do?
ReplyDeleteHi, Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteYou are always very insightful. Again feeling lucky to know you.
The notion of being good or bad always confuses me. Maybe there is no good and bad (right and wrong). Thinking made it so...But why do we have to think? Maybe our survival instincts insist on us experiencing the sense of owning mentally before we actually own it (it can be anything). If we don't truly own it, there is an inconsistency in our mental world and we were forced to perform mental activities to deal with this inconsistency....
Again, we don't own it to the notion of being good or bad....