'Western values' not to blame for a generation's failings

• Source: Global Times
• [22:57 January 25 2010]
• Comments

Taking the claims of philosophers and rulers at face value, and holding up ideals as though they were practiced by the whole of society, gives us a very distorted picture.

Chinese history has no lack of violence, materialism, and crime. In every dynasty, you'll find people harking back to earlier times when people were polite, officials were honest, and the roads were free of bandits, but this golden age never existed.

In fact, Chinese philosophers often wrote against their times. They weren't documenting what was around them, but calling for a better world – some, such as the ever-cantankerous Mencius, more stridently than others. And when rulers called for the imposition of so-called traditional values, it was often to cover up violence, corruption, and inequality.

The idea of a clear-cut dichotomy between Western and Chinese values is also misleading. After all, Western thought is just as diverse as Chinese, not to mention the vast di® erences between national – or even regional – philosophies.

The communist principles that the country is supposedly built on, and which still spur many idealists to battle against growing inequality and exploitation, were derived from Karl Marx, a German philosopherjournalist drawing on a vast tradition of social justice.

In turn, Asian philosophies and religions have infl uenced the West since at least the 1860s. In 1883, Philip Brooks, a Bostonian clergyman, visited Buddhist holy sites in India since "In these days, when a large part of Boston prefers to consider itself Buddhist rather than Christian, I consider this pilgrimage to be my duty as a minister."

Even on an entertainment level, the massive recent blockbuster Avatar, to take just one example, put forward ideas of community values, anti-imperialism, and environmental harmony that fi nd many counterparts in Chinese thought. When moviegoers prefer Avatar over a snorefest biopic of Confucius, they're not favoring Western values, they're favoring a better movie.

Let's stop blaming kids for preferring Call of Duty over the call of duty. They'll fi nd their own value from the sources that appeal to them, whether Chinese or Western or both. In the meantime, at least they're not killing their teachers!

The author is a historian and a copy editor with the Global Times. jamespalmer@globaltimes.com. cn