hi and welcome everyone this is the fifth in the LaRouche PAC class series on what

is the new paradigm my name is Megan Beats and I'm very happy to be joined in the
studio here by today's presenter Mike Billington who's a longtime collaborator of
Lyndon LaRouche and the head of the Asia desk at executive Intelligence Review
we're also very happy to be joined by you watching online as well as our live
audience in Seattle Washington so welcome now if you're joining us for the first
time I would encourage you after today's class to go back and watch the previous
classes in this class series because they were very much composed in as an
organized whole and you can find those at discover LaRouche PAC comm the class
series began by taking a close look at geopolitics both from the standpoint of
policy and the history of the geopolitical policy but also from the standpoint of
the underlying philosophy and outlook on the nature of man and the counter pull to
that in the best traditions of Western thought that was followed up by delving
deeper into the organization of the human mind itself and human social relations by
looking at the principles underlying classical art and most particularly classical
music now today Mike will lead a discussion on something which most people in the
West particularly in the United States know almost nothing about which is the
history of Confucianism in Chinese history the relation of that to today's emerging
new paradigm and the coherence of that with the best traditions of Western
civilization so just to give a little context before I turn it over to Mike I
wanted to read a quote from a speech that helga LaRouche gave at the end of last
year at the Belton Road conference in China and she was referencing President Xi
Jinping's image his concept of a community of a shared future of mankind and she
said by putting the notion of the one mankind defined from the standpoint of our
common future as the reference point as how to think about political economic
social and cultural issues President Xi has established a higher level of Reason a
conceptual basis for a peace order on the whole planet it is no coincidence that
the concept for an entirely new paradigm in human history would come from China as
it is coherent with the 2500 year old Confucian tradition a little bit later in the
speech she referenced the reaction on the part of some people in the West against
the emerging new paradigm and she said does this mean that the idea of building a
harmonious world in which all nations can work together for the common aims of
humanity is a utopia a dream that can never become a reality I believe that the
universal history of mankind can prove can provide the answer to that question
because it shows that there are some profound characteristics the ideal of the
highest humanity shared by the most noble expressions of different cultures so with
that I will turn it over to Mike to elaborate very good introduction so I'm very
glad to be here you've you've those of you who have listened to these classes all
along have had a very good dose of the the the opposite poles of Western
civilization the the development coming out of Plato of a humanist conception that
that represents the recognition of the human mind of the creative power of the
human mind as the basis upon which all of humanity is defined and counter to that
the oligarchical Aristotelian idea that people are born either as masters or slaves
that people have to be governed in a way like you govern animals with punishments
and rewards animal training and a strict hand and a view of man an Aristotelian
type view of man that says that basically the maximum creativity capable of man in
the mind is that of a computer that really you depend entirely on sense perception
that you can at best take your sense perceptions and through basically deductions
come up with certain theories and that that's considered the maximum creativity
there can be such a world as we've seen as especially as represented by the British
Empire historically and the Aristotelian spokesman for the British Empire like
Hobbes and Locke and and Hume that you've you've heard discussed in these classes
basically views man as an animal and justifies oligarchical society and that every
great renaissance throughout our history every great period of republican advances
were based upon the opposite concept that of the Platonic view of man that man is
born good through the the creative power of the mind the creative potential of
every single human being to participate in the unfolding creation of the universe
now this is generally identified as a humanist Christian view in the West if you're
going to look at that view from the perspective of another culture you gain a great
deal and it's extremely important that people do take into their hearts some other
culture and at this point in history the looking at China it's it's really almost
the responsibility of every human being to look into Chinese history Chinese
culture and Chinese philosophy given the fact that we are experiencing this
incredible resurgence of Renaissance thinking in which has given rise to both the
transformation of China and through the New Silk Road carrying that transformation
out to the entire world countering the degeneration and collapse of the old
paradigm the Imperial colonial paradigm and it's especially important since as you
know the people who are terrified that the United States might actually linked up
with China and with Russia which would certainly be the end of the British Empire
once and for all as Lyndon LaRouche has has argued for decades that those three
great nations and India as well but especially China Russia and the United States
coming together around a new paradigm based on the common aims of mankind rather
than the British Imperial vu view of the lesser races and the lesser peoples who
have to be governed over by the elite by the aristocracy that that would mean the
end of the Empire and we see that at hand now and it's for that reason that there
are these hysterical attacks on both China and Russia demonization of Putin and
demonization of Xi Jinping who is declared to be a new Mao Zedong the dictator who
oppresses his people who prevents freedom in his nation and on and on covering up
the in fact greatest burst of creativity and and invention that we've seen in many
decades a taking place in China and being spread around the world through the Silk
Road for instance you probably know that Marco Rubio and other people in the
Congress are trying to outlaw the Confucius Institutes of which there's over a
hundred here in the United States where China on its own dime and with its own
people volunteering I mean being they're hired but I mean they're coming into the
US and the nation's all over the world and basically offering to teach Chinese and
to discuss Chinese culture and Chinese traditions with people this is declared by
Marco Rubio to be thought the poisoning the minds of our children making our
children think that somehow there's something good in China when of course we all
know China is a dictatorial hellhole and so forth and so on it reminds me of what
Plato was charged with the poisoning of the minds of our children by his platonic
approach to reason so it's extremely important that we do so now it has been it's
generally the case that people both in the east and in the West have often accepted
the idea that there's some fundamental division between the Chinese way of thinking
and the Western way of thinking and that it's an unbridgeable gap as Rudyard
Kipling the British and pure imperialist basically said he's deceased and West is
West and never the twain shall meet and as I've always said that is not a statement
of fact it's a policy this is the British Imperial policy making sure that that
division exists because it's through keeping the world divided that they can
continue an imperial rule over the divided nations but what we have is both here in
the u.s. end and in in the West and in China people tend to accept this idea that
there's some fundamental different way of thinking and of course there are
different characteristics to Western culture and Chinese culture no question about
that but they people who argue that tend to say that their side is the superior and
the other side is the inferior and you see this in China as well as you see it here
by the way what I want to do today is to basically refute that conception and to
try to show that what is fundamental to human beings everywhere is this fight
between a humanist conception of man and the oligarchical view of man as some sort
of advanced animal at best and that this is the character of the entire history of
Western culture and the entire history of Chinese culture and in doing that showing
the the the compatibility between the humanist view on both sides and the
compatibility of the oligarchical view on both sides so let me start with you can
go ahead and put the screen up this will be the general theme toward the ecumenical
unity of East and West I'm going to start with live notes and Lyndon LaRouche and
Helga LaRoche that wonderful picture of Helga and Lynne and what's the name of the
dog Holly Holly that's right Holly this I believe was on his 95th birthday live
knits you've heard a lot about live notes in the previous classes and you'll hear a
lot more today and Kooza who have you ever heard a lot about and and Lyndon
LaRouche the liveness was the seminal influence on the founders of the American
Republic he was a seminal influence on Lyndon LaRouche in his teenage years when he
was studying German critical philosophy and looking around to see who had ideas
that were coherent with his sense of humanity and he found like that's but what
might not be as well-known as that Leibniz was also in very very close
collaboration with
the Chinese you can take the picture down the liveness was in correspondence with
the Jesuit missionaries this is the second group of Jesuit missionaries who had
gone into China mostly from Paris actually where gladness was also but he was in
close correspondence they were translating the works of Confucius of mensches and
especially of Zhu XI and we'll talk about zhu xi he's much less known in the west
but he's in a certain sense the nicolas of Kooza of china in the 12th century the
Song Dynasty zhu xi basically led a renaissance of Confucian thought the way that
Kooza did something of a renaissance by reviving platonic thought and advancing it
Zhu XI did the same in the 12th century in China and led to a great renaissance in
that era which was only stopped by the Mongol hordes coming into China and crushing
the Chinese civilization but it was then revived and Zhu Xi's work in fact was the
basis for the examination system in China for centuries and we'll talk about that
in a bit but what Leibniz did is that he took these readings he studied them
carefully he recognized that there was a great similarity between the most profound
Chinese philosophical ideas what he called the natural philosophy or the natural
theology of the Chinese and that of Christian Western culture and more importantly
I think in a sense he said he recognized that here we had not only great ideas but
we had a nation which had by far and away bigger cities than anything that existed
in Europe a much more highly educated population a great educational system and he
saw that if you look at that long wave of history at that the fact that here is a
culture which has succeeded in creating a highly educated advanced civilization
even though it was generally in decline by that point compared to its high point
earlier this is in the 1700s 16 and 1700s but nonetheless he recognized that this
demonstrated that the Chinese must have discovered the most profound truths about
man and nature because only such a discovery could facilitate such a long-term
development of an advanced culture so he took that idea and he went with it I'm
going to read a quote that I've used in just about every class I've ever given it
has to do with China because I think it's an extremely beautiful quote it says this
is from his Nova samosa Neko which is a publication he wrote called news from China
in 1697 and if he had his own essay about the the philosophy of Confucianism but
also other things about what's going on in China he said at one point I consider it
a singular plan of the fates that human cultivation and refinement should today be
concentrated as it were in the two extremes of our continent in Europe and in China
which adorns the Orient as Europe does the opposite edge of the earth perhaps
supreme providence has ordained such an arrangement so that as the most cultivated
and distant peoples stretch out their arms to each other those in between may
gradually be brought to a better way of life okay now think of that I think this is
one of the most beautiful expressions of what Helga calls the spirit of the New
Silk Road this is the concept that great civilizations in coming in contact with
each other and joining forces taking on the common aims of these two civilizations
can lift up the less developed portions of the world and it means not just Eurasia
obviously but this implies all of humanity can be brought up through that kind of
cooperative relationship based upon a profound idea of man based upon the creative
power of the mind and the ability to advance the future for one's nation and by
coming together for the entire world which is precisely the concept that Lyndon
Helga had when they first came up with this idea of a new Silk Road after the
collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s so just to make it clear that we're
always dealing with two opposite poles of thought let me now turn to the wonderful
Bertrand Russell the man known by Lyndon LaRouche is the most evil person of the
20th century not surprisingly Bertrand Russell was also involved in China the first
world war at the time of the first world war Sun yat-sen and we'll discuss Sun yat-
sen later who was the founder of the Chinese Republic actually you can take the
slide down for a second the Sun yat-sen argued strenuously that China should stay
out of this war in Europe at the first world war and but he said if we must be
involved in the war we should be involved in the side of the of Germany who were
the least offensive of the colonial powers that had taken a chunk of China during
the previous hundred years the British he loved noted had looted destroyed imposed
opium on the population had led to mass famine drug addiction and the Germans had
been much more benevolent in the areas of shine dome where they were sort of the
colonial power and he said if we join this war on the side of the British that when
the war is over if the British win we will not share in the spoils rather they will
chop us up like and and hand us out to the other allies the other European powers
and in fact that's exactly what happened China did against his advice he was not in
power at the time but did join with the British were part of the war and at the end
of the war they were chopped up into little pieces the German holdings were turned
over to Japan and other countries took their peace so there arose a huge response
against this mostly by youth it was called the may 4th movement and der in that
movement Sun yat-sen was fighting to establish a Republican concept to bring his
Republican ideas to the fore amongst the people involved in this movement and
unfortunately on the other side Bertrand Russell came in and stuck his nose into it
along with John Dewey his friend from the US who who advocated D schooling who said
that you can learn by doing you shouldn't have to study to do it and they basically
helped create a radical anarchist faction within what was becoming the Communist
Party of China and I would argue that it was actually way back at that time with
Bertrand Russell and John Dewey that the ideas that ultimately came to the fore
during the so called Cultural Revolution in China from 6566 up until about ten
years after that which was an absolute Dark Age for China a period of complete
self-destruction and it was based on principles that had been brought into China by
Bertrand Russell so now you can put the slide in here's what Bertrand Russell said
in the book he wrote after being in China called the problem of china instinctive
happiness or the joy of life is one of the most important goods that we have lost
through industrialism its cominis in china is a strong reason for thinking well of
the Chinese civilization progress and efficiency for example make no appeal to the
Chinese except to those who have come under Western influence by valuing progress
and efficiency we have secured power and wealth by ignoring them the Chinese until
we brought disturbance secure it on the whole a peaceable existence and a life full
of enjoyment so you can take it down this was this is a classic example of the
noble peasant idea of British imperialism go into a country profile them find the
most backward tendencies you possibly can convince them that they're better off
communing with nature with a life expectancy of 22 or 23 but you're happy and
poisoning basically every aspect of any advanced culture that exists within those
civilizations and especially in the case of China you're dealing here with a nation
that had as Helga pointed out 2,500 years actually 5000 years of one of the most
advanced cultures in in the world so this is what you're dealing with still today
both in the West and in the east you're dealing with the the influence of Leibniz
and the humanist conception and the view of the British Imperial empiricists like
Russell who fundamentally hate human beings and who believe that you have to have
masters and slaves and of course the Masters must be the British so okay now let's
look at Confucianism Confucius lived from 551 to 479 you can put that up this is a
poem he didn't write this poem but he quotes it it's from the book of poetry that
was written even earlier but I think it's one of the most simple and profound
representations of Confucian thinking in in all of the literature he wrote heaven
in creating mankind created all things according to law such that people can grasp
these laws and will love virtue now this has many many things first of all man
mankind was go ahead and leave it up so people can see it first of all mankind was
created now that's important there's a lot of people who argue well the Chinese
Confucianism is not a religion it doesn't have faith it's just a philosophy and
perhaps that's true perhaps it's not but I don't think that is the important
question whether you call it a religion or not you want to think about what the
actual concepts about man in nature and creativity and the creation of the universe
are in here it says straight out mankind was created this is not just some natural
phenomenon there was a creation of mankind by who by heaven perhaps you could say
God but heaven created mankind and the next line he created all things according to
law which means there's a there's a lawfulness to that universe out there it's not
haphazard it's not Darwinian survival of the fittest there's a lawful development
process that created all things not only mankind but nature itself according to
principles and then he says that it's created in such a way that people can grasp
these laws Lyn has always said that the basis of any true scientific reality or
cultural reality has to be able to be subjected to a an intelligible representation
that you that the it becomes capabie comes capable or is capable of grasping these
laws putting them into action as part of civilization applying those to the
advancement of
mankind and then I think most profound is the last line not only can people grasp
these laws and apply them but that will that will make them love virtue in other
words virtue is not just doing good or being kind or something it's the advancement
of human knowledge about the principles that just in our universe and applying
those laws you can take it down so that in a sense encapsulate sin my mind the
entirety of the humanist tradition east and west and it's one which which Confucius
directly identified as the most profound concept mensches later on in the readings
I gave you from mensches also goes back in quotes this this poem so it's clearly
seen as a fundamental piece in terms of that concept I want to quote now and then
come back later to something by Pope Leo the 13th you can put that up this is from
an encyclical that Lin quotes the beginning of the reading I gave you from from
Lin's prison writing called the science of Christian economy he quotes Pope Leo the
13th in his rerum de varam on new things this was during the industrial revolution
in the encyclical is basically about the question between labour and capital the
rights of man in this new changing society and so he says four laws are to be
obeyed only insofar as they conform with right reason and thus with the eternal
laws of God so just because something is a law does not in any way mean that it's
just or even that it should be followed this is pope leo xiii speaking a very
revolutionary concept actually and one which I'm sure you know has has been acted
upon by people of goodwill throughout throughout history so I would compare that
with the with what Confucius said this is again one of his most famous sayings he
says if there shall be distress and want within the Empire the Mandate of Heaven
shall be taken away from you forever so he's speaking to one of the kings here and
you've all heard of the Divine Right of Kings well this existed in Europe it
existed in China there were those tyrants who believed that they were given the
position as a mandate from heaven meaning they had the right to effectively do
whatever they wanted to do whatever they did was right because they were the king
because they had the divine right and Confucius says no that's not true you as a
king do have the Mandate of Heaven but the mandate is that you have to make your
society just and prosperous and if in fact your policies have led to the general
decay and collapse of your culture and people are in distress and want then that
Mandate of Heaven shall be taken away from you forever again a very revolutionary
concept and one which has been acted upon and one which we should be very familiar
with in our current situation in the world today so now let me get into what
Confucianism is philosophically or religiously you might say it's generally known
as the philosophy of Ren you can put it up in the readings I gave you I spelled it
je n I'm gonna refer to it as re in here Ren the Chinese pronounces sort of dren
something like that that's the symbol for the character Fortran which is the people
symbol the sort of hat with a stick coming down that's that means person that is
also pronounced Ren with the fit with the number two next to it the two lines so
this is the idea of Ren the coming together of people and to say what it is here's
what Confucius himself said what it was when a student asked what is Ren he said
love all men so it's not just love it's sometimes translated as love it's sometimes
translated as benevolence which is not a bad translation I would argue that the
only accurate translation would be agape which is the Greek word that has become
common in in our own language as a higher form of love a love of mankind as a whole
a love of God a love of the creation and in fact the next line there he was asked
what is wisdom and and the master said no all men so it doesn't just mean no this
or that or that people it doesn't mean you know every person in the in the universe
obviously it means you know mankind you know the nature of the human race and in
Chinese are in the Confucianism there there are what they call the four virtues and
we'll come back to that and the first of these and the greatest of these is Ren or
agape the others are righteousness propriety which is known as the rites and what
that means basically is right action proper action which benefits oneself and end
Society and wisdom knowledge the compare that with the very famous biblical passage
from first Corinthians 13:13 which is and now abideth faith hope and charity these
three but the greatest of these is charity that's the King James uses the word
charity but that charity comes from the word agape the Greek agape so I'm gonna use
that now abideth Faith Hope and agape these three but the greatest of these is
agape so this is exactly parallel to the concept of rent in Chinese it can mean
benevolence but it means a higher form of love Joshi whom we'll discuss later said
that Wren is the principle of love or the source of love so this is the fountain
that sort of the fundamental concept of Confucianism and you see right away a very
clear parallel with with with the the best of the Western humanist Christian
tradition now I'm going to I'm not going to do a lot of sayings from Confucius but
I'm going to do a lot from mensches I gave you a reading from mensches I hope some
of you had a chance to read that it's I find mensches to be much more polemical he
was about almost 200 years after Confucius and he had the deal with the fact that
there were numerous cults and sects that had come into being opposed to confuse
just as we had the aristotelian ISM and so forth in the West and the Roman
dictatorship and the the polytheistic ideas and so forth to deal with in the West
against platonism and against Christianity especially so he's very polemical he has
to deal with with Taoism he has to deal with legalism look we'll discuss legalism a
bit and with other sects of that sort so I'm gonna have some extended readings from
mensches both on politics on the quality of the mind and on the sort of
philosophical base of humanity as a whole so from the very first book part 1 he
says there are only men of education who without a certain livelihood are able to
maintain a fixed heart and as to the people if they have not a certain livelihood
it follows that they will not have a fixed heart and if they have not a fixed heart
there is nothing which they will not do in the way of self abandonment of moral
deflection of depravity and of wild license when they have thus been involved in
crime to follow them up and punish them this is to entrap the people and I find
that most profound he's going along and this is another statement of the Mandate of
Heaven issue that you know if people don't have jobs if they're unemployed if they
have no future they're going to turn to drugs and crime and and licentiousness but
then he adds that if they then get arrested for their crimes right you can't blame
them per se it's entrapment of the people entrapment by a ruler who is not
following the actual Mandate of Heaven from book six part one he says he's actually
talking to a king or one of the Kings he said is there any difference between
killing a man with a stick and with a sword and the King said there's no difference
is there any difference between doing it with a sword and the style of government
and he says there's no difference and then mensches says well there are people
dying from famine on the roads and you do not the stores of your greeneries for
them when people die you say it's not owing to me it's owing to the year to the
times and what does this differ from stabbing a man and killing him and then saying
it was not I it was the weapon let your Majesty cease to lay the blame on the times
on the year and instantly from all the nation that people will come to you so this
is another I think profound expression of that idea of the Mandate of Heaven now
this is Professor a philosopher gal you can take it down for a second Gao was a
member of what's called the mo most sect after a guy named mo mo this was very much
like the Aristotelian networks in the West they claim to be for rationality they
claim to be for reason but their view of reason was basically like Aristotle that
of just extrapolating from sense perception and that the human mind had to be
basically shaped by the rulers and they therefore argued that man was not born good
was not born with any inborn qualities but had to be shaped and here's what GAO
said professor GAO said man's nature is indifferent to good and evil just as the
water is indifferent to east and west so Manchus said from the feelings proper to
man's nature it is constituted for the practice of what is good this is what I mean
in saying that the nature is good if men do what is not good the blame cannot be
imputed to their natural powers the feeling of commiseration belongs to all men so
does shame and dislike and that of reverence and respect and that of approving and
disapproving so he's basically saying these are inborn qualities of the mind and
then he compares those those those concepts to the four principles that we
mentioned before he said the feeling of commiseration implies the principle of
benevolence or Ren or agape that of shame and dislike is the principle of right
that of reverence and respect the principle of propriety and that of approving and
disapproving the principle of knowledge so let me next give a little bit of a sense
of what legalism was because this was the main thing that that mensches was
battling with or the the followers of mentions subsequently had to battle with the
two major legalist scholars and this leads you see at the bottom well this led to
what was the consolidation of the first emperor in China by Qin Shihuang in in the
200s BC was a legalist was a legalist regime the
two leaders of legalists thought were shinza and shang yang ginsa said the nature
of man is evil his goodness is acquired being what it is man is born first with the
desire for gain second he's born with envy and hate third man is born with passions
of the ear in the eye as well as the love of sound and beauty now this doesn't mean
the love of beauty and the profound sense but rather the avarice the wanting to
hold and have so-called beautiful things so he basically just argues that man is an
animal because an animal also is not born with any of these natural qualities and
he has to be trained the way an animal would be trained Xiang yang takes that to
the next step he actually came earlier but he had what he called the two handles
punishment and reward animal training man he made it very clear that it was
primarily punishment that should be the role of the ruler he said one reward for
nine punishments he also said if the ruler levies money from the rich in order to
give alms to the poor he is robbing the diligence and frugal and indulging the lazy
and extravagant so these were the kind of thoughts that went into the Qin Shihuang
dynasty he believed that you were guilty if you were poor the poor were rounded up
and sent out to do such things as the build the wall he began building the first
wall not the wall you see today but an earthen wall in those days and people that
died building the wall their bones were basically thrown in to make up part of the
wall he's also very famous for having buried the Confucian scholars alive and
burning the Confucian books and many Confucian books were actually lost during that
period so this this led to a general decline in China there was a revolt after a
very few years he was only in power for a little more than 15 years I think and
then you had the long 400 year Han Dynasty which was rather mixed things proceeded
for another millennium until the time of Zhu XI in the 12th century and his
predecessors the century before who had something of a resurgence of of
Confucianism now let's go to the next slide this is also mention where he says
benevolence Ren righteousness propriety and knowledge are not infused into us from
without we are certainly furnished with them and a different view is simply owing
to want of reflection hence it is said seek and you will find them neglect and you
will lose them men differ from one another in regard to them some as much again as
others some five times as much and some to an incalculable amount it is because
they cannot carry out fully their natural powers and what he argues is that you
have this what he calls the inborn luminous virtue is part of every human being as
a potential because of the creative power of the mind you have the potential to act
upon these fundamental virtues of mankind but you tend to these they tend to be
obscured because of your sense perception so your sense actor acting upon your
sense perceptions rather than the mind so he says seek and you will find them the
mind here's the next slide he says no I'm yeah here this is on the mind and he says
therefore if it received its proper nourishment there is nothing which will not
grow if it lose its proper nourishment there is nothing which will not decay
Confucius said hold it fast and it remains with you let it go and you lose it its
outgoing and incoming cannot be defined as the time and place and then mensches
concludes it is the mind of which this is said now the next the next quote from
mensches is I think a very profound way of expressing the concept of the sublime
many of you read the essays by Schiller on the sublime that Helga had in her
reading list and I think both Martin Luther King and mensches quite profoundly
defined that concept of the sublime man she said I like life I also like
righteousness if I cannot keep the two together I will let life go and choose
righteousness I like life indeed but there is that which I like more than life and
therefore I will not seek to possess it by any improper ways I dislike death indeed
but there is that which I dislike more than death and therefore there are occasions
when I will not avoid danger and I'm sure many of you have have seen the video of
Martin Luther King the night before he was assassinated when he said he'd been to
the mountaintop and he said like anybody I would like to live a long life longevity
has its place but I'm not concerned about that now I just want to do God's will and
he's allowed me to go up to the mountaintop and I've looked over and I've seen the
promised land I may not get there with you but I want you to know tonight that we
as a people will get to the promised land so I think this is exactly the profound
idea of the sublime in man the the necessity that people look inside themselves for
those things that are more important to them than life itself for which they'd be
willing to die not that they want to die but that they would be willing in order to
achieve a greater purpose for one's actual mission in life which is eternal which
is the future of mankind and this was precisely the way mensches and then later
Jews she taught and that of course Martin Luther King also talked now this one more
from from mensches he said in in response to a principal who said all are equally
men but some are great men and some are little men how is this and men just replied
those who follow that part of themselves which is great are great men those who
follow that part which is little are little men the senses of hearing and seeing do
not think they are obscured by external things - the mind belongs the office of
thinking by thinking it gets the right view of things by neglecting to think it
fails to do this these the senses and the mind are what heaven has given to us let
a man first stand fast in the supremacy of the nobler part of his Constitution and
the inferior part will not be able to take it from him it is simply this which
makes the great man so again here I think it's this concept of the humanists
creative powers of the mind versus sense perception thinking that the way you
control people is through punishment and reward giving them the rewards in the form
of sensual pleasures like the pornography and the drugs and the and the the violent
and degradation that takes place today on that in the name of Education this is
titillating and the senses in order to basically convince people that they need not
think that they can lead their life in a way which has no long-term purpose no goal
either from oneself or for Humanity as a whole now again to show the contrast in
China I want to say a few words about Taoism Taoism was cancer who was the sort of
founder of Taoism who wrote the daodejing that many of you may have seen lived
about the same time as Confucius and just let me just read a couple of passages
from this it should be easy you can think of the Daoists as as the Greenies of
today and as as we've seen the green mentality the idea that oh we should not
poison the earth by taking technology to the third world and so forth you remember
you remember Obama telling the South African graduate students that if they aspire
to have two cars and an air conditioner they're going to burn up the world so they
should give that up this is pure racism actually but this is the Taoist mentality
it's the way in which the World Wildlife Fund and the British and so forth have
have argued for their political purpose which is to keep the world backwards in
order to control it and creating a so-called justification based on these lies
about climate change and global warming and and so forth and so on here's what
louts have said banish wisdom discard knowledge and the people will be benefited a
hundredfold banished benevolence discard righteousness and the people will be
dutiful and compassionate banished skill banished profit discard profit and thieves
and robbers will disappear banished learning and there will be no more grieving the
happy peasant you can see why people the British and their their cohorts love
Taoism and the next is a separate poem they're saying from the Lao Tzu this this
was the favorite saying of Joseph Needham Joseph Needham was the eve my nemesis in
a sense he was the British China expert a scientist so-called biologist who went to
China and became the great his biography is called the man who China well he loved
the backwardness of China he wrote seventeen volumes called the science and
civilization of China and it's all based on lies basically that science comes from
this Taoist ideology Joseph Needham who loved the Cultural Revolution he went to
the China during the Cultural Revolution and praised what was going on as the
pinnacle of Chinese success you can go back to that slide his his saying was heaven
and earth are without benevolence agape this Ren heaven and earth are without rent
they treat the ten thousand things as straw dogs nor is the sage benevolent a
gothic see him also are the hundred plans but straw dogs that the hundred things
and the hundred clans are ways of saying all things and all people so he I mean
Joseph Needham said this this is my favorite of the Taoist poems they don't hide
their their hatred for actual knowledge and actual humanity the other great Taoist
actually you don't have to show this slide I'll just tell this story the other
great Taoist was a guy named jawanda who lived about a hundred years or several
hundred years after Lao Tzu and he has a book called Chuang Tzu you may have seen
it and he often writes about Confucius but basically he's he's using he's telling
stories making up stories about Confucius did such and such in order to try to make
fun of Confucius and to degrade him and this is one of the most famous he's walking
Confucius is walking along a country road and comes along a peasant who is scooping
water by hand out of a trench into his field one scoop at
a time and Confucius comes up and says if you had a machine here in a day you
could irrigate 100 times your present area the labor required is trifling as
compared with the work done would you not like one and Confucius then the describes
a a well sweep this is the thing where you sit on a chair and you have pedals which
you turn and it makes a wheel turn with scoops on it like like in a mill scooping
up water from the trench and then dumping it into the field and he showed that if
you you had this machine that you know you'd be able to do everything in a fraction
of the time the taoist peasant then denounces him it says this is you know anyone
he says anyone who was cunning with instruments must must also have a scheming
heart and cannot be pure and in corrupt it's like people that support nuclear power
you know they must be evil trying to poison the earth and this is that peasant says
this is not a fit vehicle for the Dow and his last quote is it is not that I do not
know of such things he said I should be ashamed to use them so this is the the kind
of counter position that is taken by the oligarchy and in China to poison the
Confucian ideas and unfortunately they had quite an effect now I want to give one
more comparison between East and West with Confucius and that's between Friedrich
Schiller and Confucius I hope you all had a chance to read or watch the speech that
Helga gave in New York a couple years ago on Schiller and Confucius it's the most
beautiful and profound presentation which she gave as part of her reading for her
presentation here so if you didn't go back to that I'm going to give a somewhat
different comparison but for a specific reason Friedrich Schiller in his essay
Grace and dignities defines what he calls the beautiful soul the golden soul in
this way he says we call it the beautiful soul when the moral sentiment has assured
itself of all emotions of a person Eltham lee to the degree that it may abandon the
guidance of the will to emotions and never run the danger of being in contradiction
with its own decisions now you you often hear that you have to sort of choose
between the mind and the emotions somebody who's too rational is is not living up
to the emotions of people there separate then and that other people say you should
follow your mind and not pay any attention to your emotions but Shiller and as
you'll see also Confucius and others made the point that it's not that you want to
suppress your emotions you have to uplift your emotions you have to lip lift
emotions emotions up to the quality of the word of the mind and this is very much
what Leibniz was talking about when he talks about happiness and you know our
constitutional commitment to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness comes from
Leibniz and he certainly didn't mean the the happiness of the flesh he meant the
happiness of participating taking the joy of creativity in great science great
music great culture and knowing that you're contributing in a way that's going to
advance literally all of mankind by contributing to new knowledge and new artful
beauty to the universe this is the basis of what he means by happiness and here
Schiller is saying the same thing you have to lift those emotions up to the point
where they are so committed to the to the beauty and to the good that you can let
your will go and follow your emotions because you trust that your emotions are not
going to do anything against the good that they in fact have been in noble to the
point where you are a golden soul a beautiful soul Confucius had a very very
similar concept and and I think it comes through in this very famous section from
the Analects which you can put it up this is it's in a sense he's describing his
own progress that through his own life but really he's talking about the stages
that people should go through it's a teaching basically on how people should
develop these same qualities he says at 15 I set my heart on learning I mean he'd
reached puberty and he began studying again by 15 Lin was already a committed live
Nazi and so so Confucius says that and then he says that thirty I finally firmly
took my stand this is this is particularly important when when when the Revolution
took over China in 1949 Mao Zedong on Tiananmen Square before the throng said China
has stood up and everybody knew what that was referring to it was a reference to
this idea in Confucius that you finally reached adulthood and that you can then
begin the productive part of your life so he says at 30 I firmly took my stand at
40 I had no delusions at 50 I knew the Mandate of Heaven at 60 my ear was attuned
and here he means my senses were attuned they're not going to be sucked into you
know rock and roll or something it was attuned to beauty and then this is the most
important one at 70 I could follow my heart's desire without overstepping the
boundaries and this is precisely the same as Schiller's idea he said by 70 I had so
ennobled my emotions my heart's desire that I could follow them fully trusting that
I would not do anything against my mission in life my sense of duty and
responsibility and mission so again I think go back and watch or listen or read
Helga's entire speech on Shiller it's it's its most profound so now I can get into
zhu xi whom i brought up before this gets a little bit deeper philosophically but I
think it's the core of what we have to do to bring America and the Europe and the
the West generally into a sense of knowledge of what the Confucian Renaissance was
about Jews she lived from 11:30 to 1200 he was actually sort of the last in a line
of what they call neo-confucians I don't like the word neo-confucians I think it's
better to say that he had a Confucian Renaissance Nicholas of Cuza whom you've
heard about a lot in these earlier classes was the key seminal interest that got
the Western Renaissance moving and I'm going to take before I get into this kusers
writings and how I myself got involved in extending coozes ideas to those of China
I want to read I tried to find a video of Lin talking about the the work he did on
the science of Christian economy but it was during the time he was in prison and I
was in prison and will words who translated joushi I mean Cuza was in prison so we
don't have any live and in any lie of speeches I'm gonna read this with you is
about five or six panels here but I think it's worth taking the time to read this
section from the preface of Lin science of Christian economy written in 1991 and
the preface II quotes from that encyclical that I mentioned before from pope leo
xiii four laws are to be obeyed only insofar as they conform with right reason and
thus with the eternal law of god linden references the decay of modern society
referring to the new age and the rock drug sex counterculture and the increasingly
irrational estas Morris expressions of self-styled eCollege ism or what he calls
neo Malthusian ism so I'm just gonna read the rest what is notable on these
accounts is the increasingly emboldened way in which the two evils the New Age and
usury and note that he combines this New Age ideology with the evil of financial
usury have exhibited their natural affinities for one another combining their
forces in even the highest places of anglo-american power to demand in the misused
name of freedom and ecology the rapid extermination and global outlawing of every
scientific and moral barrier which has hitherto existed as impediments to rampaging
immiseration and dictatorial oppression of mankind then under the subhead
ecumenical standpoint a little later he writes we propose that it is necessary but
not sufficient to view the reference state of affairs from a Christian standpoint
for practical reasons it is essential that even the Christian standpoint itself be
presented here from an ecumenical standpoint as ecumenical is typify by Cardinal
Nicholas of coozes dialogue day patch aphid a in in the peace of faith different
faiths religions and or secularists can be brought to a principled agreement only
in two possible alternate ways of manifesting mutual goodwill in the one case they
may agree on a common point of talk doctrine such as the principle of monotheism as
in opposition to the pantheistic pluralism of pagan Babylon Rome or the Apollo cult
at Adelphi or otherwise differing faiths may reach coincidence of principled views
by means indicated in the reference feature of Pope Leo the 13th encyclical it is
the latter alternative upon which we concentrate attention here faith may read
those writings it deems sacred or as authoritative commentaries and such writings
or faith may read the bear book of universal nature a book which plainly has been
written directly by none other than the creator himself it is certain to all men
and women of ecumenical goodwill that the two kinds of books the written ones and
the book of nature cannot contradict one another on condition that the written one
be true and that both the written and natural one be read by means of the inner eye
of true reason so where doctrinal writings differ we may turn the eye of ecumenical
reason to the common book of nature let us argue the point in the following two-
fold way we emphasize on the one side the ecumenical nature notion of intelligible
representation of a principle of knowledge of cause-effect in our universe a means
by which all men and women despite differences in profession or of monotheistic
faith may be brought to their by their own powers of reason to agreement upon a
common principle of law second we emphasize the importance of stressing Christian
principles of Christian civilization as Christian even within the framework of a
monotheistic ecumenism consider next this simple illustration the most ancient
among known astronomies that of ancient vedic peoples of Central Asia illustrates
the obvious manner a so-called primitive
people may construct a reliable solar astronomical calendar from scratch observe
successfully the successively rather the position of the Sun at dawn midday and
sunset mark those observations each in stone at night observe the constellations in
their stars to which each of these respective three daytime observations point
after five years we have thus the data on which to base a solar astronomical
calendar of approximately 365 days per calendar year measuring the year either from
the winter solstice the winter solstice or from the vernal equinox to the vernal
equinox by the same method the long deck of millennial equinoctial cycle is adduced
so a system of solar astronomy free of the whore goddesses Shakti and each stars
lunacies is built up by eight of reason so the book of nature may be read God's
book of nature in such successive revolutions the and related ways reason reveals
to us that our universe has the apparent form of a unified cause-effect process of
becoming a process of becoming which is subsumed by an indivisible supreme being
who embodies among other qualities what Plato admired as the good of such matters
of principle in such a manner do the very stones cry out consequently when we
demonstrate by access to reason that a certain universal or approximately universal
principle must be true a monotheistic ecumenism has gained a two-fold advantage
since all of human knowledge is finally supplied by reason there can be no valid
teaching presented by any religion which contradicts true as we define reason in
the following chapters there can be no valid objection to this principle which is
to be tolerated on premises of secularist rejection of religious precepts you can
put take it down so I strongly encourage you to get the site that book called
Lynne's prison writings which includes the science of Christian economy I'll point
out that some of our closest friends around the world were recruited to Linds
thinking by that book including a lot of Muslims one of our closest friends in
Malaysia caucus Kasim Ahmed was recruited to Lynn's idea precisely by reading the
book on the science of Christian economy and recognizing like like cuza he didn't
know cuza before he'd read this that basically religious truths can be demonstrated
scientifically and that I've recruited him and became a very close friend he
visited Lynn in prison he visited me in prison okay so now we can look at Jiu Shi
and Kooza zhu xi's this was the 12th century the Song Dynasty his school is called
the principal school of principle and the word for principal is Li if you put the
slide up the character for Li there Li the the idea of principle this concept of Li
was not it was not a major concept in Confucius and Mencius writings it's something
which which joushi somewhat gave a special meaning to and further developed the
whole Confucian concept here's what juicy himself says about Li universal principle
isn't and he distinguishes between universal principle which is the principle of
the universe as a whole and the individual principle in all created things so what
he says is universal principle is indeed complete wholeness however we call it
principle in that it has a completely ordered pattern universal principle is simply
a comprehend of term for the four virtues ran righteousness propriety and wisdom
and each of them is an individual enumeration for the universal principle so he
basically says that the the virtues are themselves expressions of the totality of
the universal principle Leibniz as I said had studied the writings of Zhu XI
extensively as well as Confucius and Mencius and here's what he says about this
concept of the Li the principle in this is in his nobis iment Seneca the first
principle of the Chinese is called Lee that is reason and it means principle or it
can mean reason or the foundation of all nature the most universal reason and
substance there is nothing greater nor better than Lee it is not at all capable of
divisibility as regards its being and is the principle basis of all the essences
which are and which can exist in the world but it is also the aggregation of the
most perfect multiplicity because the being of this principle contains the essences
of things as they are in their germinal state we say as much when we teach that the
idea is the primitive grounds the prototypes of all essences are all in God the
Chinese all attribute also attribute to the Li all manner of perfection so perfect
that there is nothing to add one has said it all consequently can we not say that
the Lee of the Chinese is the sovereign substance which we Revere under the name of
God now if you read that sentence that I have colored there the being of this
principle contains the essences of things as they are in their germinal state this
liveness had his own theory called the Monod ology which basically expresses the
concept that the the monad of the universe as a whole subsumes the the essence of
every created thing the multiplicity of things and you'll see that this is very
close to to Zhu Xi's concept of Li and I'm gonna spend a fair amount of time on the
next slide this is it's a it's a it's called the great learning or the Dasha the
character therefore Tasha that da means big the first one and she means to study or
scholarship and it generally was translated with in Chinese as the great learning
Jew she actually gave it a different name he said he thinks it should should rather
be interpret it's not a different word because they're using the same words but but
he said it should be interpreted as learning for adults where the da means adults
grownups big people and she means the study and I should mention here just because
it's important in ancient Chinese they didn't use the combinations the contemporary
Chinese as it developed over the millennium increasingly use combinations of words
to further and identify what it is you're talking about like if you could say hot
heart cold heart broad heart and so forth to mean different emotions but the word
heart could mean many many different things and the similar things like this many
of these characters had multiple meanings sometimes very distinct from each other
but the ancient Chinese didn't have these combinations they only had these single
characters and therefore they were open to many different interpretations they were
very poetic in that sense they would carry multiple meanings so much of Chinese
scholarship is interpreting what you think these these writings mean and Zhu Shi
did something really quite extraordinary in his interpretation of these things
which which we'll get to so let me read first of all what the great learning this
is one of the so-called four four books of Confucianism as defined by Zhu XI but
I'll read this sort of traditional interpretation of this as translated by by legi
the British scholar who translate a lot of this stuff not a very good guy but
here's here's the traditional idea via the ancients who wish to illustrate
illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom first ordered well their own states
wishing to order well their own states they first regulated their families wishing
to regulate their families they first cultivated their persons wishing to cultivate
their persons they first rectified their hearts wishing to rectify their hearts
they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts which is good you know to have a
strong heart you have to have good thinking you have to have sincere thinking
wishing to be sincere in their thoughts they first extended to the utmost their
knowledge and then a sentence which is not part of this pattern it concludes with
such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things now this is good
this there's this has good qualities to it but joushi said this is not what
Confucius meant he did not mean that it's the responsibility of the King to
illustrate his illustrious virtue if you look at that first sentence it's not just
that you want the King to illustrate illustrious virtue to as a model for the
population but rather look at the first sentence as interpreted by Zhu XI below
those of antiquity who wish that all men throughout the Empire keep their inborn
luminous virtue unobscured put governing their states well first so Zhi Zhu she
said basically look Confucius didn't mean this is only for the king this great
philosophy is not just for the leaders it's for all men and all men must be must
have be encouraged but also to know that they have the capability as men having
this inborn luminous virtue which you don't want to obscure by the by the the
influence of sensual things which disrupt the mind so this is for all people plus
look at the end of juicies first sentence he says to for for all men to keep their
inborn luminous virtue unobscured put governing their states well first so
governing the state is also not just the responsibility of the king governing the
state is the responsibility of all men right in other words he is universalizing
this as a as a principle of humanity he then goes on in a similar vein to the
traditional saying wishing to govern their states well they reading from the juicy
translation in the bottom wishing to govern their states well they first
established harmony in their households wishing to establish harmony in their
households they first cultivated themselves wishing to covet cultivate themselves
they first set their minds in the right wishing to set their minds in the right
they first made their thoughts true wishing to make their thoughts true they first
extended their knowledge to the utmost but then he changes the last sentence
remember the last sentence in the traditional view such extension of knowledge lay
in the investigation of things jus she says the extension of knowledge lies in
fully opera handing the principle in things now think about that we've already
shown that he believed
that there was a fundamental principle to all created things that there was an
essence to it if you think back to Plato's cave analogy most of you know that the
people that are in a cave and who can't see outside the cave they can only see the
reflections in front of them of what's going on outside the cave to the point that
they think that those of reflections are the real real world that's the real world
to them and this is plato's trying to say basically that when you see things how
they touch how they feel the sensual grasp of some being or some person it's only a
shadow the physical existence is a shadow of a more profound meaning of what that
thing how it came to be as part of the unfolding creation and what it's what its
role is in the unfolding creation what Lin called the becoming what its role is in
that process with of course man being the most advanced form of that because of the
mind so he man directly participates in that unfolding creation not waiting for
biological evolution or any such thing so jus she says that the extension of
knowledge lies in fully apprehending the principle in things now you can't
understand the principle in something by measuring it or touching it or smelling it
or tasting it those are just sensual recognitions to understand the principle in
things you first all have to start from the universe as a whole the way Kepler did
when he was examining the solar system he came up with his laws for the solar
system because he had a principle that in fact that solar system must be must be in
must have coherence with other aspects of the of the creation for instance the
musical scale which was something which he he knew was something man had discovered
too by the the chromatic scale that by time what's the word looking for the the
idea of a comma within the diatonic scale these concepts which man had discovered
as existing in the physical universe but had not been known until man discovered
them and in that way also Kepler was able to make his discoveries so in that sense
you have to start from a universal principle and you have to examine things actions
people and physical objects you have to examine them from the the issue of what is
their role in the unfolding creation of the universe so this is a much higher
conception of the creation and he had his opponents you know he had people who
didn't agree with him on this they didn't like the idea that he thought he could go
back and change things in fact he even said there's a there's a group of
commentaries on the Dasha and Jew she said there was a commentary that was lost
during the legalist era but I'm filling in that Luke and I'm basically going to
provide you with what in fact Confucius wrote in that commentary and provided that
commentary which i think is very hubristic and showed that he was committed to
really conveying profound ideas and not letting things slip by in a in an easy way
so now I'm gonna discuss Kooza a little bit I'm not going to try to spend a lot of
time on that the and I hope you did try to read the section I asked you to read and
in his de patchy fidei on the piece of faith this is as translated by will words
what Kooza was doing and on peace of faith was basically arguing as lynne indicated
that you can find a fundamental truth within any monotheistic religion and that you
can thereby come about to an ecumenical agreement among religions as a way of
maintaining peace if you can convince each other and themselves that there is in
fact this unified universal grain of truth in any monotheistic concept so what Cuza
did was he basically wrote this essay with God as the word calling together a Roman
Catholic and an Orthodox Christian and a Jew and a Muslim and a Tartar and a few
other things and he had a debate amongst them trying to convey the idea of the
Trinity as understood in Christianity as something which could be understood not in
terms of the Christian concept of God the Father God the Son and God the Holy
Spirit but rather in terms of principles of nature just as Lynn said the rocks cry
out that you can find a representation within a knowledge of the universe which is
a higher expression of what in Christianity is called the Trinity and what he says
I'll read the passage here at the beginning he says the word God is speaking he
says you will not find another faith if you're looking at each other's religions
you will not find another faith but rather one in the same single religion
presupposed everywhere you who are now present here are called wise men by the
shearers of your language or at the very least philosophers or lovers of wisdom
there can be only one wisdom and he gets the agreement of everybody that there's
only one wisdom prior to every creature there was wisdom through which everything
created is that which is and they all concur yes whatever religion they're from
that's true he then defines this threefold nature of the universe he says this
overall principle of wisdom or the word we could call unity because it is
completely combined it son divisible and yet unfolded in that unity is all the
multitude multiplicity of created things and people and so forth those things are
equal in the sense that they're all participating as we discussed earlier in an
unfolding creation in the becoming as lynn said so that's their equality there's an
equality in the unity of all created things and the connection between all these
created things and the unity is the principle of agape of love of a higher sense of
love or you could say of creativity I think it's accurate to say that agape also
can be represented as creativity or reason so he said he said basically actually
this is a higher way of expressing the the Trinity the unity the equality and the
connection of all things he says later you look at the bottom he says some name the
unity the father and the equality the son and the connection the holy spirit since
those designations even though they are not proper nonetheless suitably designate
the Trinity so he's basically saying this is actually the scientific way of looking
at it is actually a higher conception in order to show the triune nature of the
unfolding creativity it forces you not to have a fixed sense of nature as a
finished product or if God as an exterior thing all right it's something that is
completely there's a connection and equality of all through the participation in
this lawful unity of the expanding universe and then just below the word threefold
nature unity equality connection you can read here he says however he started there
there can also be only one eternal he says there cannot be several Eternals
consequently in the one eternity is found unity equality of unity and the union of
unity and equality or connection thus the most simple origin of the universe is
triune since in the origin the originated must be unfolded everything originated
however signifies that it is thus unfolded in its origin and in everything
originated a threefold distinction of this kind can be found in the unity of the
essence and for this reason the simplest origin of everything will be 3 and 1 now
this I'm not going to spend more time on this you need to sit down and read Cuza
and think deeply about it I found that by looking at Cuza which I had tried to read
before I studied Confucianism but by looking back at it from a Confucian standpoint
it became very clear to me that this is this is in fact a scientific view of a
religious concept meaning of something that doesn't have any physical substance but
which is fundamentally true about the universe and so it's worth taking the time
believe me to read the cuza think about it and I encourage you to read it in the
context of what we've discussed here about Confucianism now I I don't really need
to draw the conclusion what I was doing in my work in prison was to try to Cuza did
not know anything about Confucius I was trying to extend these concepts into what I
had learned about Confucianism and I think you probably already have a sense of
what that is you can show the next slide if you want to think of a Confucian
Trinity of unity equality in connection we've defined it as the universal Li the
universal principle which which aliveness identifies as like our concept of the
Christian concept of God which is the origin of the universe and the unity of the
universe the second person of the Trinity is the Li the principle of the individual
thing the nature of every created thing and Ren as we discussed agape which is the
essence of the creation which connects the principle of all created things to the
universal principle so I'm going to leave that with with that I'll just make one
one comment with two comments one one is that there's another figure in Chinese
philosophy called Wang Yong Ming who lived a couple hundred years after Zhu XI and
whom they unfortunately linked with zhu xi they call them the neo-confucians that's
why I don't like that term Wang Yong Ming was not a Confucian he was somebody who
called himself a Confucian he's often thought of as a Confucian but he in fact is
an Aristotelian who became more identified with the Taoist ideology and Buddhist
Zen Buddhist ideology then with with with Confucianism his refutation of Zhu Shi
was he said okay everything has a principle well he and a buddy sat down in his
dad's garden in front of the bamboo and they said we're gonna sit here and study
this bamboo until we find out what the principle of bamboo is so they sat there for
48 hours or something until they finally got sick and had to go and his conclusion
was there's no principle it doesn't sure if that's not exist it's only what's in
your mind that's all that's the only thing that's real cultural relativism
basically so the other thing I say is this one of the most profound questions
everybody has to face some time in their life is is is what is true how do
you know what is true how do you how do you it is is is truth relative is what
somebody thinks as valid because it's their opinion as your opinion is is it is it
the case that there's no true knowledge of anything but that everybody has a
different scientists they refer to and you can't argue that climate change is not
man-made because he has his opinion you have yours no there's a basis on which you
can determine the truth and it's embedded in what we've discussed here which is
that you have to look at things in the long term and you have to understand that
any concept has to be tested in the physical universe by whether or not it actually
effectively creates a higher order of population what Lin calls the relative
population relative potential population density does it create a condition in
which more people can live at a higher standard of living in a certain geographical
area or not all right just like Leibniz when he saw the the civilization in China
said they must have a knowledge of the of the truth of the physical universe and
mankind and as you look at our society as Linda and Helga often point out when you
see a completely degenerating collapse of the situation the degeneracy of the the
so-called entertainment the drugs that the economic decay the collapse of industry
collapse of infrastructure you know that the principles that are being obeyed the
basis of government are false that's the proof and it's through using reason that
you're capable of making those kinds of arguments and not giving in to the idea
that everybody has a right to their own opinion not when it comes to truth one more
thing and then I'll conclude and we'll have time for questions I want to discuss a
little bit Sun yat-sen we might want to come back to Sun yat-sen tomorrow I've
mentioned son he was he led the Republican revolution in 1911 that ended the last
Ching dynasty in China many of you know he was educated in the American system he
was educated in Hawaii as a young man by a family that was directly part of the
Alexander Hamilton movement the Henry Carey movement he had a profound
understanding of it he in his writings he actually talks about Hamilton versus
Jefferson where Hamilton was committed to the idea of Science and Technology
applied to infrastructure and internal improvement as they called it whereas
Jefferson was a promoter of a slave Society and remaining agricultural and
relatively backwards and knew the difference and talked about it educated people
through his book called the three principles of the people which was his organizing
tool for for bringing about that revolution and those three principles as you
probably know came from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address the the idea of
government of the people by the people and for the people so I'm not going to
discuss this at length but I want to at least indicate asagna sends view of
confucianism with a few quotes from from him he said we must revive this is during
this may 4th movement I told you this intense period of resistance to the chopping
up of China after World War one he said we must revive not only our old morality
but also our old learning the great learning that dasha that we discussed earlier
and then he says he basically paraphrases the the da Jie he says search into the
nature of things notice he doesn't say investigate things he says search into the
nature of things the principle underlying what what things are and then he says
extend the boundaries of knowledge make the purpose sincere regulate the mind
cultivate personal virtue rule the family govern the sate pacify the world now
that's not in the Dasha it doesn't exist back then they don't say pacify the world
it's just talking about China but Sanya sent universalize is that concept and says
that the last step in this progression is pacify the world he said later let us
pledge ourselves to lift up the fallen and aid the weak then when we become strong
and look back upon our own sufferings under the political and economic domination
of the powers and see weaker and smaller people's undergoing similar treatment we
will rise and smite that imperialism then will we be truly governing the state and
pacifying the world so he saw as a Confucian responsibility two for China to rise
and to bring about development in the world unlike the imperialist looting that had
dominated the Imperial era of the powers I mean just think of that this is
virtually his is defining what ji Jinping is doing through the New Silk Road so as
I said the three principals of people Sun yat-sen defined them as government of the
people being national sovereignty freeing yourselves of the power of the imperial
power of the powers of the people by the people meaning republican form of
government that sometimes it's translated as democracy but really just sun yat-sen
didn't mean democracy which is often not really of the people by the people at all
but Republican forms of government and thirdly for the people what he called the
people's livelihood what we would call the general welfare of the people from our
Constitution and then he said quote these three principles are identical with
Confucius hope for a great Commonwealth that's an idea and Confucius we didn't
discuss today but it's something that he aspired to the idea of a great
Commonwealth which is like Plato's Republic I mean they're different they have
different characteristics but they're it's the same concept and then I'll just
lastly mention that he also spoke about this radical element within the may 4th
movement that was being influenced by Bertrand Russell he said a group intoxicated
with the new culture have begun to reject the old morality saying that the former
makes the latter unnecessary so he was very much aware of what he was battling so
we may want to discuss sun yat-sen more in the in the Q&A or next week or other
modern expressions of the Confucian culture but let's leave it at that and see if
we can have some time for discussion today thanks very much Mike so we'll open up
the Q&A first by going to Seattle but while they're preparing their question let me
just tell everyone viewing live via YouTube or the class web page that you can
email your questions into classes at pack.com if you're watching live on YouTube
you can also leave your question in the YouTube live chat so please send those in
let's get a good discussion going and why don't we now go to Seattle oh yes yes my
question is is there any evidence that the Chinese cultures and the Greek cultures
were in communication or correspondence or do you think that because of the
inequality of man to discover truth that there was such a close to polarity and the
discoveries that they made which came first the chicken or the egg yeah there there
was connection there there I don't have this detailed knowledge in my fingertips in
terms of some of the very very early connections but they did exist there were
there were Egyptian journeys into the into Asia there were certainly Roman
connections into into Asia the Nestorian Christians had a presence in China and and
some communication back and forth but I don't have that knowledge in my hands but I
don't think it matters I don't think it matters who might have been influenced
first I think what you said at the end is is the truth which is that these Leibniz
often said the truth is written in our hearts this is very much like Lin saying
that the stones cry out by studying nature if you're looking for a universal truth
about the interconnectedness and the unfolded nature of the universe you can find
out you can study it you can learn enormous things from a stone a stone is not a
totally fixed being or it might take millions of years for it to participate in the
creation of the universe but it can and and similarly in man as as mensches said
man is born with an inborn luminous virtue meaning that the truth is written in
your heart Plato tried to prove this with the slave boy when he had the slave boy
show and figure out how to double the square his idea was that all knowledge is
already contained in your mind that doesn't mean you know everything it means that
knowledge is not the fact knowledge is the creative power to discover and he proved
that this slave boy with some help was able to make a very profound simple but
profound discovery in geometry that it was there in his mind and that concept I
think is the same as saying that the truth is written in our hearts that it also
goes to the question of the fact that the what Lin is really emphasized which is
that the act of creativity in the human mind the process of creating in the mind is
a process which is not only the same whether you're doing scientific investigation
or or artistic the composition of a profound piece of music which is going to
change the way people think by hearing that creative process unfold is the same
process in the mind both of the composer and the listener as the process needed to
discover scientific principles I then often points to Einstein playing the violin
when he's stumped on a scientific question and while he's playing the violin the
solution comes to you because you're stimulating that process of mind but that
process of mine also reflects something that exists in the physical universe this
is the Vernadsky idea that there already is a principle of creativity in the
universe before the existence of life mm-hmm it's the the higher energy flux
density concentrations which create new physical existences the periodic table and
so forth which lead to higher organization of solar systems and different and
galaxies these are principles of creativity that exist in the physical universe and
which exist in the human mind uniquely as masane process so by investigating the
way you think you're in the sense looking at the creative process in the universe
and makes it possible for you to come
up with higher understandings deeper laws that we haven't yet mastered in the
physical universe so all of these things point to the fact that what you said at
the end is that if you have a culture which has fostered creativity be it in Europe
or being in China or be it in Africa or in Egypt you're going to come up with these
same these same principles we have a question that came in from one of our online
viewers who says many Americans think that the Chinese want to take over as the
global hegemon leaving the u.s. in a dust is that what they intend or is their idea
of global leadership different if so what can we expect the next 50 years to look
like yeah good well that's why I had that quote from Sun yat-sen which put it up
again it's the last it's the last slide I think I can let sun yat-sen answer you
let us pledge ourselves to lift up the fallen and aid the weak let's eliminate
poverty in China as as Xi Jinping has done 700 million people and committed to
ending poverty all together by 2020 that's only two years away and he's going to
succeed I know he is and Sun yat-sen then went on if we do this if we pledge
ourselves to lipof the fallen and aid the weak then when we become strong and look
back upon our own sufferings under the political and economic domination of the
powers and see weaker and smaller people's undergoing similar treatment we will
rise in smite that imperialism then we will be truly governing the state and
pacifying the world now Xi Jinping is a absolute committed Confucian there's a
reason that he chose to call the confusion when not he but the Chinese chose to
call the Confucian Institute's the Confucian Institute's they could have called it
the allianz Chinese the way the Allianz francais they could have called it
something like that but they chose to call it the Confucian Institutes for a reason
and it's an important reason and it's one that maybe all Chinese don't understand
as well either because there's different factions still in China there's no
question about that right but what what what Xi Jinping has said and Wang Yi the
Foreign Minister and others is that when you hear that accusation the one you just
you know reference the idea that China wants to take over the world this is the
West looking in a mirror they think they're looking at China but they're looking at
a mirror or as helga likes to say people cannot people in the West the leaders are
leaders unfortunately most of almost all cannot but see through geopolitical
glasses you heard a whole presentation on geopolitics which is just the idea that
there's nothing but zero-sum you can only gain by putting down the other that's how
you become powerful Bertrand Russell strong weak and so forth geopolitics this is a
rejection of geopolitics it's based on win-win as xi Jinping calls it or what helga
calls the common aims of mankind as Linda Lin said they are absolutely committed to
not imposing any kind of political or military control over those nations in which
they are investing billions and billions of dollars they are not going in there in
order to financial to load up people there the argument is that they're loading
them up with debt and they're going to take over this is debt which is not
financial debt the financial debt that the Empire imposed on third world countries
usually came in the form of giving them a lot of debt and then playing with the
international markets and destroying their the value of their raw materials which
was the only wealth they had they had no production virtually none so they would
destroy the value of the raw materials through their manipulation of international
markets and voila the third-world country all of a sudden owes twice as much as
they did before the Asia crisis in 1997 and 98 the Indonesian currency was devalued
by 300% so they'd made borrowings in others say they borrowed $100 they have to pay
it back in dollars because that's the way it was imposed by the empire by the
empire and then all of a sudden their currencies devalue at 300 percent that means
in their local currency they have to pay three times as much as they borrowed but
that wasn't money they used to invest in anything this is what Dennis small whom
you heard a classroom likes to call bankers arithmetic but what the Chinese are
doing is clearly saying we want to build productive nations we're building industry
they're investing in industry they're investing in the infrastructure you need for
industry the Chinese say if you want to be rich first build a road and they're
building roads in fact high-speed rail connections but the purpose here is to
create true fellow nations which are productive and are brought out of poverty the
way China brought itself out of poverty not by handouts not by charity not by you
know it's like that thing from Corinthians which says even if you give all your
your possessions and your clothes to the poor but you don't have agape that is
worth nothing if you don't have a sense of a love of mankind then what you're doing
is not beneficial at all and they're their approach is they have to create
productive nations the way they transform their own country and they intend to do
it and they are doing it they're doing it in an incredible way so when you hear
these these crazy arguments about watch out for China they're gonna take over
they're gonna take our lunch you know forget it this is this is the hysteria of a
dying Empire which only understands that by destroying anybody who threatens to
bring about a new paradigm can they possibly maintain their control over a
collapsing world it looks like we have another question ready in Seattle so let's
go over there okay this question concerns that Marxist doctrine at communist
philosophy as Marxist Leninist what however you want to put it at the non Confucian
er or actually opposing Confucian underlying materialist doctrines British
materialist doctrines in in in Marxism and how is from your point of view in terms
of that shift is going on to China in terms of the leadership how is this being
dealt with effectively how and what are the problems whatever you have to stay on
that particular issue because people are are all you know talking about you know
while there are communists whatever and so forth can you elaborate on that only
negatively I I would say that you know we we try not to talk about communism in
this organization or capitalism because they mean different things to different
people I've read some Marx I know something about Marxism I'm certainly not an
expert in it but you know there's different things in mark some of which are not
bad at all some of which are just they won't work and they didn't work it's clear
that China recognized that there's some aspects or at least interpretations of
Marxism that didn't work and that was done Sean pings you know genius what what
happened there as you know as you had this horrendous Cultural Revolution which I
like I said it was based on hating Confucian there was an anti Confucius campaign
during the Cultural Revolution Joe and Lai was denounced basically as a Confucian
because he committed to science and because he was committed to working with the
West and they and Mao saved him I mean Mao is sort of a back and forth figure on
all of these issues in China but he definitely saved Joe and live from the mob from
the from the Red Guard it was completely committed to destroying the family exactly
as Bertrand Russell I didn't read this but one of Bertrand Russell's big arguments
in his book on China is that what's keeping China backwards is Confucianism and in
particular it's the it's the holding the family together putting the family as
important that of course is going to keep China backwards forever they have to
learn to do away with this admiration of the family and there's there's also a big
religious side to this back I won't try to get into that the question of the way in
which Venice undermined the connection between the Jesuits and China had to do with
similar kinds of things but but I would argue that I mean you Xi Jinping and the
other leadership still say that we are you know Chinese a communist in the sense
that it's socialism with Chinese characteristics and they still admire Marx and
they talk about reading Marx but there's no question but that they have taken what
they think is good from Marxism taking what they think is good from Western culture
through Sun yat-sen who has great influence on on the Chinese till today and
putting them together they had gone through the horror of this Cultural Revolution
and dong Xiao ping came out of it and recognized that if you got sucked into this
turning inward like this with ideology instead of with ideas that you can destroy
yourself and he therefore launched what became the opening up he said no matter
what color your cat is if it can catch a mouse it's okay referring to you know
communism or socialism or capitalism he just said doesn't matter what color your
cat is as long as you catch a mouse and he began the process of building up the
scientific knowledge of his nation the first thing he did was that he sent people
all over the world to be educated you know to Russia to China to Japan I mean he
was in China to Russia to Japan to the United States Australia Britain Germany he
sent people everywhere to bring back the knowledge that we we allowed ourselves to
be turned inwards and cut off all Western knowledge during that horror of ten years
of Cultural Revolution and in doing that he basically said we're going to advance
socialism which of course can be a good thing or bad thing depending on how you
apply it but we're gonna apply it with Chinese characteristics and in particular
Confucian characteristics so I think that's the key here rather than getting into a
sort of an academic debate about Marxism or something that leads nicely into the
next question
which comes from Marcel in New York he asks given that the Chinese government
recently abolished term limits so that she can remain in power as long as necessary
to see the one belt one Road through it seems that not all Chinese elites are
endowed with his understanding of Confucianism what was his experience how did he
come to develop these insights I'm probably not the best person to answer that
question I know that that Bill Jones has been more looking into jian xi jinping's
life I mean he was subject to the Cultural Revolution he was one of the young
people who was in school and was taken out of school and sent out to the
countryside he went to a very poor area of China he immediately became a leader
committed to the idea that we will I mean the idea of the Cultural Revolution is
that people should learn from the peasants well he did learn from the peasants not
in this NC to learn how to dig in the dirt but he actually learned about the nature
of what was what was done to the Chinese people where they were in their state of
development and he from the very beginning took responsibility for trying to bring
a higher ordered sense to the villages and then he worked his way up in the Chinese
still have the merit system this is something Benjamin Franklin greatly greatly
admired in Confucius he wrote about this extensively Benjamin Franklin calling on
America to follow the merit system of the Chinese the way you become a leader in
China is that you have to the before the modern era from zhu xian zhu xi wrote
basically a curriculum for china in the 12th century which became the curriculum
right up through at least the 20th century where any student any peasant student
could study the classics could become skilled in Confucianism who could not only
learn the texts and the ideas but could learn to write poetry and could learn to
write music and you would take these examinations and if you pass these
examinations in philosophy basically then you became a mayor or a governor and
eventually through merit through showing that you are exude you are expressing this
inborn luminous virtue for all people and that you're not allowing want and
distress in the Empire but then in fact you're bringing about progress then you
prove yourself and you move on to a higher stage is that anti-democratic well I
don't think so it's more democratic because every step of the way you have to prove
yourself to the people and when they say serve the people they mean serve the
people maybe sometimes along the way during the Cultural Revolution they used that
phrase you know falsely but they mean serve the people you prove yourself through
your scholarship and through how you succeed in demonstrating your qualities of
leadership committed to this principle of it lifting the people so term limits I
mean you know I think as you said I think it's going to be a good thing that he has
the time to carry out the the New Silk Road that Putin is going to have about as
many years bill Jones was asked by one of the TV stations that what he thought
about the term limits and he said no actually he was told don't say anything about
the term limits and in the interview with the Chinese station but he said he was
ready to answer by saying well if if we had had term limits back in Franklin
Roosevelt's times we might have lost the war you know I mean there's something to
think about the British might have won the war in the sense that they're evil
creation in Hitler and so forth might have actually come to bear so I think I think
this is this idea of the merit system is at least exactly what it is that she
Jinping is is is demonstrating that the quality of leadership has been proven it's
not just a popularity contest the way it is in our so-called democracy which is not
very democratic because you're given artificial choices you have to choose between
two bad candidates you know you certainly remember Al Gore versus George Bush my
god you know this is election this is democracy so I mean this is the kind of thing
that I think it we can learn we can still learn as Benjamin Franklin advised us to
to learn from the Chinese form of government this what Lynne calls the two-party
system in the West has proven over and over again to be full of a pull of holes and
it can be used successfully but it most often is a hindrance to actually coming up
with the kind of leadership we need let's go to Seattle it looks like they have
another question ready hi thank you so my question is questions but I've been
thinking in terms of when science approaches economy he talks about your
transformation from A to B from state a to state B but now you ensure that you're
going to continue that process into a transformation of state C and Beyond and I
mean clearly what the Chinese have set into motion with with with the one belt one
road addresses this question and it's a long-term commitment I'm curious what you
think about what they've done to cultivate this understanding of principle that
you're talking about within the institutions of China to ensure that this this is
something that's understood that this process is clearly understood there can be a
continuing transformation going forward well it's certainly the case that the
Chinese have the long view of things and this is classically true of China you know
at the nineteenth party congress that Xi Jinping laid out a program for the next 50
years I mean Lin wrote this book the next 50 years this is exactly what she Jinping
laid out at the 19th Party Congress or at least through the middle of the century
which would actually only be what 32 years but but in that perspective he said two
stages where I forget the exact terms he used but by nineteen by 2030 we will be a
moderately advanced intermediate stage clearly he means we're going to solve the
poverty problem absolutely by 2020 by 2030 we're going to have everybody at a level
where they can participate actively in the expanding industrial agricultural
economy and that by 2050 we're going to be an advanced nation which can actually
lead worldwide not in an imperial fashion but as we just discussed in a way which
can actually convey these ideas or as as Sun yat-sen said that we can carry this to
those to the rest of the world in a way which will utilize our system let people
know the system we use to get here without imposing that system on anybody and they
do have a win-win situation and believe me this is working the Chinese are taking
this idea of development to every country whether or not that country agrees with
China or and China and Russia of course are working very very closely together as
closely as you can possibly get practically and yet China is working with countries
that hate Russia like Poland you know where you have this anti Russia hysteria
going on in Eastern Europe Lithuania Estonia they're working there they're bringing
the silk rope because their view is build a road create a productive nation you're
going to overcome these kinds of animosities between nations he they mean it when
they say win-win they're going to Saudi Arabia now think of the Saudi Arabia
question here you have a nation which the recently Mohammed bin Salman came over
here and admitted that our leaders his father her great-grandfather again allowed
this Salafist hell to basically take over the educational system and the religious
police in our country they spread it around the world it created terrorism it gave
us 9/11 right and we have to reverse it does he mean it well I don't know we'll see
he's also trying to start a war with Iran and he's committing a genocidal war in
Yemen but what's the Chinese approach and the Russian approach by the way is that
they're working with Saudi Arabia to bring about development to bring the Silk Road
into Saudi Arabia and Syria and Iran hmm their view is this Western idea of
dividing people up into warring factions the divide and conquer mentality in the
Middle East classic British ideology Sunni versus Shia stem force force this
aggravated as much as you can keep them fighting then we run things from from above
all right and that idea is what they're they're committed to breaking down how I
think I think you know after the Cultural Revolution I think all this idea had been
really driven out of their culture at least I don't know if it was driven out of
the people a lot of people retained it and brought it back when they finally
defeated the horror of the culture of revolution that so-called Gang of Four and
this was done Xiao ping and a few other people who who Yvonne who brought this
about but they had to fight to restore it took a long time you know relatively in
the sense of several decades before they could overcome the the disaster of those
ten years of intellectual and technological degradation now I think they are firmly
committed to it I mean Xi Jinping no no question has brought this to the very
highest level and is committed to driving it forward and the people in China
understood that and said keep going we're not going to put these term limits on you
because you know we need we need to we need to succeed not only here in China but
around the world old and bringing about a new paradigm and that of course is the
way Helga launched this whole campaign was that we this organization lends ideas we
have to take responsibility at the highest level to create the ideas that permeate
the world and that when people arise on their own somewhat to say we have to solve
this world and look around and look for those ideas that will succeed they look in
their own culture but they also look at other cultures and we've heard from many
Chinese and many Russians and many others that these people for years we're looking
at Lyndon LaRouche and saying well there's there's a string of sanity in this
decaying Western culture it's there that gives us confidence that there's
sanity and reason and brilliance and genius somewhere in this Western world and
they were open to these ideas as the as a situation evolved they had them in their
minds and acted on them it didn't come entirely from land of course it comes from
different cultures it came from this interface of cultures which Xi Jinping is just
a very good example of but which exists to a great degree in in China and other
parts of the world okay good I'm we're we've basically come up on time I'm gonna
ask one more question and ask you to use that to just wrap up and add any
concluding thoughts so it comes from somebody watching in Texas who asks when Helga
says that we must look toward the best historic aspects of all cultures can the
Christian Renaissance tradition in the West bring anything to the Chinese that they
lack yeah and I think this is very very important you know we had an association
with one Chinese guy who spoke at some of our conferences very bright guy but but
he was insistent on conveying the idea that the Chinese believed in a in a
principle of humane 'no Sande progress that didn't exist in the west and he pointed
to he pointed to the to the enlightenment which was a period of degradation and in
our culture it was basically a refutation of the Renaissance ideas saying that
there that religious principles are archaic that freedom is the freedom of the
individual anarchistic freedom and this was that in this I've seen this in many
cases in Malaysia dr. mahat ears bleeding enemy Anwar Ibrahim wrote a whole essay
about this about our superior Asian culture and and he described this enlightenment
ideology which was evil but he described that as Western thinking and some of our
Chinese friends had done the same so I mean it is a question of the necessity of
Chinese understanding what the true nature of Western civilization is and that
these Aristotelian enlightenment types of views have always led to the degradation
of our own society and we have to have a fight to restore the principles of the
Renaissance the principles of the American Revolution which have been destroyed by
the influence of Empire by the British who have been you know the imperial power of
these last couple hundred years who have and the earlier imperial powers of Venice
and and so forth who destroyed the Renaissance these these are continuing fights
but the idea I think is if today finally as Lynn as Helga likes to say we're
finally in a position where if we get out we can get out of the childhood of
humanity because we thus far the world has been divided according to Imperial
dictates by the Empire and if we once and for all destroy that Empire and through
the new silk road idea achieve a principle of common aims of mankind then
potentially we can end forever this constant battle it'll go on in an ideology
it'll go on in education it'll go on because these things will recur you know but
if we have general prosperity for everybody in the world and there's no reason that
we can't you know people say oh it's a it's a daydream to think we could end
poverty well the Chinese have proven that is not a daydream it's possible for the
world that if you end poverty you also will end the cause of as mention being
turned to all forms of licentiousness right you can end that that that evil of the
lack of a livelihood the lack of a future lack of an idea of your role in
contributing to the universe your propriety your rights if you end that then you
have every reason to be optimistic that we can actually create a new paradigm a new
society and end wars and end this kind of of extreme degradation and poverty in the
world it's possible and this is a rare moment in history where it is possible
precisely because it's being done on a global scale if we have a renaissance it's
going to be a human Renaissance not a Christian Renaissance and a Confucian
renaissance you know it'll go it'll be human and that's what we can and we must do
at this rare moment of opportunity a very dangerous moment but one where we have
the potential for achieving something truly truly great for mankind I want to thank
our live audience in Seattle for their participation and we got many many more
questions than we were able to take today so those will be passed on to Mike we can
carry those into the discussion next Saturday if you are not yet a registered class
participant register that is how you will get access to the continuation of the
discussion next Saturday that's how you'll get access to the reading assignments
that Mike has provided and the other teachers have provided and the homework
assignments if you are a registered participant or once you become one keep an eye
on your email we will be sending out a follow-up to today's class with the homework
assignment a link to the class page with reading and get your questions ready and
we will see you all next week thank you