The Ancient Chinese Super State of Primary Societies

Book Review By Kevin Brown FROM SAN FRANCISCO BOOK REVIEW Amazon Star Rating: 5 out of 5, ★★★★★ Has the world shrunk? Airlines can get us to places quicker than a dog can get fleas. Phones and computers make connecting to our neighbors faster and more reliable. Even with advancements like this, society and culture, as shared ideals, lag behind. Even moving to a new state in this country has certain social aspects that take time to learn. This book, The Ancient Chinese Super State of Primary Societies, is a deep personal discussion about the ramifications of Old World philosophy and New World modernism. The book is composed of 14 different essays, all centering on the topic of Chinese and European societies. The point, I feel, is not only to help people understand and respect Chinese philosophies more, but to explain why these concepts are still valid in our modern world. The book mainly consists of a compare and contrast of opinions that help prove You-Sheng Li's theses. One part talks about how the Chinese were more of a land-based people and Europeans were more oceanic; therefore Europeans were the explorers. There are interesting little nuggets inside each essay and it’s a treat to read them all. Each essay is incredibly well cited, with notes and references listed at the end. It is always wonderful to see where a book gets its ideas. You-Sheng Li displays that he is one of the most certifiable person to write on this subject. With the writing style as direct as a surgeon, he is able to craft an engaging and thoughtful experience. The short essay also gives the book a quick and fun pace to the read. Each essay many be different, but each is as enjoyable as the next. With a wealth of information, this is one of the must-read books on this topic. * * * The following is from the book: 11. Where is God? Christianity branched off from Judaism while Buddhism branched off from Hinduism. Neither Christianity nor Buddhism succeeded in their homelands but both fl ourished in foreign lands to become major religions in today’s world. Buddhism was created by Sakyamuni ( Siddhartha Gautama), the Buddha, who was born about 563 and died 480 BC. Th e Buddha was a prince in a small state which is inside Nepal today. He gave up the luxury life of a prince and lived as a traveling monk preaching the religious truth in northern India where numerous independent states coexisted. In face of human suff erings everywhere, the Buddha asked, “Where is God?” When there was a war, wounded soldiers and civilians were left dying in the battlefi eld. If there was a God, why didn’t he stop the war and why didn’t he heal the wounded? When there was a famine, hungry farmers travelled far from their homeland in search for food. If there was God, why didn’t he feed those who were starving? Th e Buddha then concluded that there is no God. Th e Buddha also denied the existence of the subjective I or the soul. Buddhism accepts the traditional theory of reincarnation but insists that both the world and I are illusory. Once the subjective I is lost, there is no more suff ering. Th us the Buddhist religious truth resides outside God, the world, and I. Whoever realized and accepted this religious truth is called a Buddha, the enlightened one. So the pursuit of Buddhism is really a process of enlightenment. Contrast to the rigid unjust caste system suff ocating the low caste talents, Buddhism emphasizes the equality of all humans in the sight of the Buddha. Everyone has a Buddha nature and everyone can become a Buddha, so they claim. Th e Buddha also taught whoever wanted to learn from him, regardless of sex, class, or caste. Th e Western enlightenment movement started in the seventeenth century and ended with the French revolution in the late eighteenth century or early nineteenth century. Like the Buddha, the Western enlightenment employed rational thinking to examine the existence of God. Th ey argued that if everything, physical and metaphysical, could be well explained in scientifi c terms by rational analysis, we do not need a supernatural being. Th ere is no rational evidence for the existence of God. Although there is no room left for God according to rational thinking, there is no proof for the non-existence of God either. Th omas H. Huxley (1825-1895) believed that the large secondary society of the modern human world is intended to be run by God not human beings, as he compared a colony or state with a farm or orchard. Th e intellectual gap between God and human beings equals the intellectual gap between man and plants or sheep or pigs. Lao Tzu said similar words, “Th e social world is not something humans can possess or grab in hand to meddle with. Th e one trying to possess it will lose it; the one trying to grab it and meddle with it will fail.” Th e conservative political traditions in the West were based on a similar belief that the master of our world is God, and human beings had better not meddled with world aff airs to create an ideal world. What we can do is only to solve the emerging problems, or the so-called pragmatism of piece-meal social reform. Th e so-called fi deism insists that religious truth is not, and ought not to be, based on rational knowledge but solely on faith. God exists only by faith. But why do we need such a faith to create a God who does not speak to rational minds but speaks to irrational minds with confl icting messages resulting in endless violence? As discussed in Essay 1, the worldwide desertifi cation around 4000-3000 BC resulted in a dramatic cultural transformation in the human world, namely from a peaceful motherly culture to a warlike patriarchal society. In his book, Th e Fall: Th e Evidence for a Golden Age, 6000 Years of Insanity and the Dawning of a New Era, Steve Taylor calls this social transformation the Fall. [1] Because of the ego explosion, social inequality, and war, the fallen people were suff ering from psychic disharmony. It was those fallen people who created the concepts of God or gods. Th e hierarchy of gods or the world of God is really a psychological refl ection of the secondary society on our minds. According to Taylor, even the idea of a prehistoric Goddess religion is a kind of error similar to the belief that some prehistoric societies were matriarchal. We can today observe our children’s behaviour to understand the religious faith in the ancient primary society, which was the golden age of childhood in human history. A toddler puts his or her little pillow on the top of a much larger pillow saying, “(Th e) pillow wants Mommy too!” So they see everything in the world have the same ideas and desires as they do. Th ey thus have a psychological and emotional bond even with their physical world. In our children’s imagined world, everything is golden bright and everything is motherly kind. Whether you call our children’s world a godly or a godless world, it lacks the psychic disharmony and social inequality Taylor describes. It is also the Taoist ideal world. Th e following quotation from Leslie Marmon Silko’s short fi ction Lullaby that gives a more vivid picture of such a warm, friendly, peaceful, and interesting world humans once lived in: Th e earth is your mother, she holds you. Th e sky is your father, he protects you. Sleep, sleep. Rainbow is your sister, she loves you. Th e winds are your brothers, they sing to yo Sleep, sleep. We are together always We are together always There never was time When this was not so......