Arts of Civilization
Confucianism is an ethical religious orientation that has informed the culture of China for nearly twenty-five hundred years. Confucianism values the social construct of civilization. In the Confucian scheme, a harmonious civilization is achieved by the nurture of the individual and a strong family unit.
In the Confucian outlook the virtue of character, including the quality of human-heartedness, is the foundation on which civilization rests. And it might be said that the formation of character is a primary concern of the good society. Incidentally, human-heartedness is a condition that is itself a fulfilling goal for the individual.
In recent years we Americans have rued that our society is declining in civility. So the concern of how individuals become "civilized" is a clear and present concern for us. But it appears that we Americans have ambivalence about being civilized—of taking on what Walter Lippman once highlighted as a "Second Nature," a condition in which the arts of life—achieved through habit and discipline—become engrained as character. (To begin to understand Confucianism, ponder what "Second Nature" means, that is, what it means to do something until it becomes "Second Nature," how that contrasts with what might be called "First Nature." For example, it's "First Nature" to be impulsive, while it’s "Second Nature" to be patient.) Civilization and the ways of being civilized are concerns of mythological proportions in the American experience. The classic morality story of the Movie Western often plays the theme of the lawless frontier (cattle) town transformed into a decent place for families and children (farmers). For example, remember the movie Shane.
In particular, I love how Mark Twain played with the notion of civilization and the ways of being civilized in one of the formative and great novels of the American experience, Huckleberry Finn. Early in the narrative Huckleberry, the virtually parentless urchin of the earlier novel Tom Sawyer, describes his new circumstances now that he is worth six thousand dollars, thanks to the treasure he and Tom had found, and which has helped make him the pet of the village. Huck says, "The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her says; and so when I couldn't stand it no longer I lit out." Tom persuaded Huck to once again leave his old haunts and return to the widow's "sivilizing" care with the promise that he was about to start a band of robbers, and Huck would be included only if he returned to the widow's and became respectable.
At the story's end, after the epic journey down the Mississippi with the runaway slave Jim, Huck declares in the book's final sentence, "But I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally's she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before."
Huck resonates to something in our American spirit. We struggle with being "sivilized" perhaps committed more to a romantic, spontaneous vision of a First Nature rather than of a refined, restrained vision of a Second Nature.
In this regard, Confucianism gives us much to reflect about. It offers lessons regarding personal character and a fully realized humanity that serves society and fulfills the person.
The Sage Kung Fu
Confucianism is identified with an historical figure, Kung Fu or Confucius, who was born around 550 B.C.E. in what is now Shantung province. He became a tutor and gained a reputation for his wisdom, but was too impolitic to rise to any great office. He was a critic of the harsh rulers of that time, something of a democrat and with egalitarian tendencies. In his own principality, he was tucked away in an unimportant position with an inflated title. When Confucius realized the ruse, he was indignant and resigned.
So, at the age of fifty he began to wander from state to state offering unsolicited advice to rulers on how they might become better rulers. As you might imagine, he wasn't warmly received nor did he seem to have any great effect. The ordinary people he wished to uplift often ridiculed him. Only a small following of disciples took him seriously. All in all, he failed miserably as a politician and itinerant political advisor. At the end of his life, an old man who posed no longer posed a political threat, he returned to his home in the principality of Lu after a regime change; there he quietly taught and edited the classics for five years before dying.
He is a curious figure to head up a great religion. He was thoroughly of this world. He enjoyed creature comforts and liked a good time—singing, eating, and drinking in moderation. He could be tart and even sarcastic, if the occasion merited it.
What eventually triumphed was the virtue, but even more the effectiveness of the relatively complete ethical system that became associated with Confucius. His teachings took hold and his reputation as a sage grew in relation to the larger context of his immediate era.
By all reports, this was a time, spanning nearly five hundred hears, of deterioration, turmoil, and destruction, when state warred against state and rulers struggled in their respective states to maintain power. Bonds of tradition had been replaced by self-interest. In this turbulent era, when society and culture were foundering, there were two, almost polar opposite worldviews vying to regulate society. One solution was proffered by so-called Realists who generally argued that only force, including reward and punishment could govern essentially selfish people and give order to an unruly society. Another solution was offered by Mo Tzu and his followers called the Mohists. Their way was love, in the guises of broad kindness and good will to all. Their scheme rested on a cosmology over which a loving god (Shang Ti) ruled.
The Realists are characterized as excessively harsh and promoters of a self-fulfilling prophecy, the Mohists as excessively naive and Utopian. Along came Confucius with his Middle Way, which might be summarized through a well-known anecdote. Confucius was challenged, "Should one.. .love one's enemy, those who do us harm?" Confucius replied, "By no means. Answer hatred with justice and love with benevolence. Otherwise you would waste your benevolence."
I've long believed that Confucianism is the most congenial of the world religions to our Unitarian Universalist common values and outlook. It is humanistic, ethical, and supports the culture of the individual and society. The one significant departure concerns the roles of tradition and ritual, though in our center we might be more traditional than we credit ourselves to be. It's worthwhile to take a closer look at "deliberate tradition."
Deliberate Tradition
In a nutshell, the Confucian answer to the turmoil of Confucius's era and the esthetic ethical/religious scheme Confucianism offered to the ages was "deliberate tradition." Confucius recognized that the spontaneous tradition of an earlier era (what he believed to have been a Golden Age) had broken down, now self-interest held sway. The rule of "what's in it for me" is not a sound basis on which to be a good society, seemed self-evident.
The deliberate tradition that Confucius taught was a centered into a well-formed sense of what it means to be a fully realized human being. (It was supported by an underlying religious assumption that Heaven and Earth were continuities—one realm in which similar if not the same rules prevail.)
In the Confucian scheme, humankind is essentially good. For some two thousand years the first words a young scholar learned to read—in an exercise that was the New England Primer and McGuffy Reader at once—were: "Man is by nature good." Confucius lifted up to the pinnacle the virtue of "human-heartedness," recognition of expansive humanity, leading to respect of others and of self. To become rich in and to live in "human-heartedness" is an ideal. Such a demeanor and integrity is achieved through deliberate tradition that includes propriety and ritual. There is power in a person who attains and lives a full measure of humanity—a moral power of example that includes the "arts of peace." The arts of peace relate to what we often lift up as authentic or good culture: the fine and performing arts, as well as other esthetic modes of living.
The Middle Way of Confucius, from our contemporary American perspective, is a relatively highbrow way. It certainly isn't responsive to the "lowest common denominator," vis-a-vis H . L. Mencken's iconic pronouncement about no one grew poor underestimating the taste of Americans. Nor is it analogous to the "silent majority" of our culture's middle class. Rather it responds to clarity of thought and language, refined and esthetic ways, an assumed respect between persons and mutual dignity—the way of a lady or of a gentleman.
In this light we come to one of the significant components of Confucianism, its essential spiritual truth that we might well draw from in our own religious strivings: Right Relationships. In the Confucian scheme, there are Five Relationships that ground society:
- father and son—the father is loving, the son is reverential;
- elder brother and junior brother—the elder brother is gentle, the younger brother respectful
- husband and wife—the husband is good and the wife is "listening"
- elder friend and junior friend—the elder friend is considerate, the younger friend deferential
- ruler and subject—the ruler is benevolent, the subject is loyal.
Three of the Five Relationships relate to family. Here, remember last week's scientific contentions about our hardwired brain—that family ties are primary in our social behaviors; and also remember that relationships outside the family and kinship circle are ruled by a tendency to share with others based upon reciprocity. It makes eminent, biologic sense that we work on our relationships; even establishing conventions on what those relationships should be, and with the additional Confucian insight, expect that Right Relationships will center a good society. (Perhaps it's revealing that Huck Finn was the result of a dysfunctional family: his mother deceased and his father a drunkard and petty criminal; Huck was homeless and self-parented.)
It seems obvious—blatantly so—to me that family relationships in American society need particular attention. It begins with the relationship between partners. Women in recent decades have rightfully claimed a reordering of male-female relationships. In the traditional marriage of husband and wife this relates to an expectation of egalitarianism and mutual respect, and if there are children, a mutual commitment to their needs and welfare. Scandinavian societies provided apt models for how children should be cared for—even outside the boundaries of traditional family units.
Children, even adult children, rightfully relate to their parents from respect. That respect is extended to adults, particularly adults who are charged by family or society for their care. Teachers, in particular, deserve the respect and resulting discipline that befits their position and responsibilities. And teachers in return should comport themselves with a professional dignity fitting their position as honored/honorable mentors.
In recent years, we've learned something about the interpersonal dealings between persons based upon two sensitive areas: power and sexuality. We can readily justify why it's wrong for a child-adult, supervisor-supervisee, doctor-client, minister-parishioner, and similar relationships in which one person has an aura of authority and the other person does not. Such relationships involve issues of power and vulnerability. We've had some very dismal public scandals around these areas, none more debilitating than the still spilling scandal within the American Roman Catholic Church, relative to sexual misconduct between priests and children and youth. But it strikes me that what we've missed in this general area involves what Confucius was trying to lift up and also inculcate—a sure sense of the dignity of one's own human -heartedness, that one comports oneself in an appropriate and dignified in the private as well as public aspects of her or his life. Decency is more than a matter of image; it is a way of being for its own sake. We can reasonably expect that our leaders and those we entrust with our care behave in appropriate ways. They are also prime exemplars with tremendous influence on the larger culture.
In my opinion the ultimate, as well as beginning, relationship is the relationship with one's own self which focuses on what it means to be filled with a sense of one's own humanity—what our Unitarian forebears identified with being made in the image of God, so that humanity and divinity were synonymous, and character mattered, really mattered.
There's one more insight from Confucianism that I think has application for these immediate days. Confucianism is a comprehensive system beginning with the individual and human-heartedness as the root of all things and ending with a well-ordered state in a larger system of states. Confucius also taught how states should get along, what we might now call international relations. This is of no little matter as the end of the Cold War has left our American nation astride the world order like a new Colossus, and as we are engaged in a vague and ongoing post 9/11 International War Against Terrorism.
In opposition to the Realists who contended that victory went to the state with the most military might, Confucius argued that the ultimate victory went to the state that had the most advanced culture, what the Chinese calls Wen and which we translate as the arts of peace or the esthetic aspects of life.
The spiritual truth I take with from the great religion of Confucianism involves the arts of peace, a significant part of the package of my humanity. It teaches me that not only do I matter by virtue of my humanness, but that I am responsible for my own human-heartedness—a full realization/incarnation of humanness. And if I live an outward and inner life with then dignity that befits a human being, I not only fulfill myself; I am an example to the world and contribute to the well-being of society.
