The Path

by Michael Puett

  Today hand washing is considered a necessary precaution and perfectly natural, but it was a human discovery that took decades to take hold. And Xunzi would have us remember the need for it was the result of the innovation of hospital birth, itself a response to changes such as the rise in population, but also the cause of a new danger: exposure to foreign germs. Any innovation gives rise to new problems that then need to be solved. But Xunzi would not say that the solution is to return to a time before the innovation. He would remind us that we can build on innovations, creating further advances to address the problems created by the previous one.

  Here’s another one: we fear the increasing prevalence of genetically modified crops, and even require that genetically modified foods be labeled. Such genetic modifications raise fears of humans playing God and manipulating the natural order. In fact, most of the foods we consume today have been modified over the past several millennia. Without going deep into the forests to forage for, say, mushrooms or wild berries, you would be hard pressed to find food that is not the product of some sort of human domestication. The current mode of genetic modification simply allows us to alter plants more quickly than we have been able to do up until now.

  Of course, not all genetically modified foods are being modified in a good way. However, Xunzi would say we should not assess our food in terms of how “natural” it is. The real question should be: in each instance, are we employing artifice wisely and well?

  Our longing for a natural world arises in discussions of the Amazonian rain forest. We are alarmed—with good reason—at the current destruction. But those concerns are often voiced as despair that we are destroying one of the last remaining natural parts of the Earth. In fact, archeological work has demonstrated conclusively that much of the Amazonian rain forest is itself a product of domestication by indigenous peoples. Preserving the rain forest as it is would not return it to a natural state; it would preserve a different type of human domestication. The debates over conservation of the rain forest are significant and have far-reaching implications, and they would be more productive if we took the question of what is “natural” off the table.

  We’ve created the world we live in, and we can choose to move it in a different direction. Subjects such as the best way to preserve the Amazon, or whether or not to pursue cloning or genetically modified foods, are difficult to discuss wisely when they devolve into debates about what is natural versus artificial. These misguided debates prevent us from facing up to the real issues at hand. If we fetishize nature, we surrender our human power to transform the world, and fail to acknowledge that just as we have created problems in the world, just as often we have improved upon what exists in nature.

  If we do not see the positive aspects of human manipulation of the world, we tie our own hands and blind ourselves to the subtleties of issues such as environmental protection and stem cell research. We should simply ask: Are we doing these things well or not? If not, what improvements can we make?

  Just as there are those who romanticize the natural, there are also those who revere technology and think newer and bigger are always better. But just as nature is not something to blindly accept, neither is artifice. It is true that technological advances have led to many new inventions that make life easier. But Xunzi would say that both camps—those who romanticize technology and those who demonize it—misunderstand how we should approach artifice. Endless technological innovation isn’t what matters; it’s what we do with it and how we build on it in each particular situation.

  We have created an artificial, constructed world, one with immeasurably grave problems. But that does not mean that we should surrender our human power to transform it for the better. Instead, by understanding what we have done, we can change where we go from here.

  Constructing a World

  Water and fire have qi, but they do not have life. Grass and trees have life, but they do not have understanding. Birds and the beasts have understanding, but they do not have propriety. Humans have qi, life, and understanding, but they also have propriety. Thus, they are the most precious thing under Heaven.

  Xunzi believed that we alone, out of all the creatures in the cosmos, are capable of vastly exceeding our capabilities and making good lives for ourselves.

  In saying so, he was building on the concepts of thinkers who came before him. But his ideas also very much reflected the turbulent age in which he lived, in which powerful states had created huge bureaucratic institutions and were gathering unprecedented momentum in their campaigns to found a new dynasty that would unify China.

  Many voices called for reducing these states’ power and for returning to a more virtuous age. But for Xunzi, it was clear there would be no returning to the past and that the shape of the dynasty to come would be very different from what had come before. For him, the way forward did not lie in rejecting these powerful state institutions, despite their troubling aspects. Rather, people needed to work with what they had. They needed to learn to use these new institutions well; to reframe what already existed in order to build a state that would enable social mobility, and to create a world in which the educated elite ruled. Building such a meritocracy would be, for Xunzi, how humans could most wisely give pattern to the world.

  In giving philosophical pattern to the world, Xunzi took stock of the vibrant ideas already out there. He agreed with Laozi’s concept of generating worlds, but he found dangerous the notion of generating a world that appears natural but isn’t so. Think of a cult leader who lulls his followers into believing in his catastrophic vision; think of Hitler, who slowly generated a natural-seeming world that ended in inhumane devastation.

  Xunzi understood the Inward Training’s call for cultivation. But cultivating our divinity in order to resonate with the world around us can easily lead us to transcend our humanity, the very thing that he argued endows us with the ability to create a better world. We shouldn’t aspire to be like a resonant spirit. We should be working on the messy, human stuff that is us.

  At a broad historical level, Xunzi wove together the thought of the previous two centuries. In our own lives we can do the same. We can consider what it means to behave in a more Laozian fashion in some contexts, or in a more Zhuangzian or Confucian way in others. Like Xunzi, we too can see how all the thinkers were onto something important, while recognizing the limitations and weaknesses of each of their ideas.

  We are always creating ourselves, always creating the world; we, and the world we live in, are already products of artifice. It is self-cultivation alone that enables us to exceed what we thought we were while remaining fully human. Once we understand what it means to create wisely, we can remain open to all the possibilities that lie before us. Once we recognize how we’ve already shaped our surroundings, we can take on our role as the only beings in the cosmos who can give pattern and order to the world. Nature out there is the same as nature within: it’s something to be worked on, altered, and made much better. We’ve constructed this world; therefore, we can change it.

  9

  The Age of Possibility

  Confucius said, “At age fifteen I set my intention upon studying; at thirty I established myself in society; at forty I freed myself of delusions; at fifty I understood the mandates of Heaven; at sixty I could hear with clarity; and at age seventy what my heart desired and what was right came into alignment.”

  We began this book with some strong claims. We proposed that all of us have assumptions about who we are, how our society operates, and our place in world history. And we argued that many of these assumptions are flat-out wrong—not only empirically wrong but also dangerously wrong, for if we live according to these assumptions, we limit our experience and our potential dramatically.

  One narrative has taken over all others: that we have broken from the repressive past of a traditional world and now live in a modern one in which we are free to live our lives. This master narrative has been so pervasive and powerful that, over time, we have come to accept i
t as utterly true and natural. It has directed our assumptions and our actions without our even realizing it.

  Per our definition, a traditional society is one in which a stable self and a fixed, coherent world are assumed; in which one flourishes by following larger societal norms unquestioningly; in which there is minimal social mobility; and in which one lives within a confined worldview closed off from other ideas.

  But if this is how we do indeed define the traditional, then we are the ones who are accepting a traditional worldview and returning to a traditional society. Whether it is at a personal level (the way we confine ourselves in our interactions, the way we limit decisions about our future) or the societal (the aggregation of wealth in the hands of an elite few, greatly decreased social mobility), in both realms we are steadily slipping back into a traditional world.

  Our notions of tradition and modernity have led us to see everything on a spectrum, with the traditional world at one end and the modern world at the other. But there is a completely different axis from which to view things, in which the stable/authentic/sincere stands in stark opposition to the broken/fragmented/messy world as seen by our philosophers.

  The Chinese philosophy we have explored in these pages can break us from the confines of our narrative, as well as from the assumptions we hold about who we are and what kind of world we live in. Far from seeing coherence, sincerity, and authenticity as modern, we can recognize how these ideals have shackled us. Working through complexity and fragmentation is how we can break from where we are. It is by opening ourselves up to fresh—if challenging—notions that we will leave the traditional world and truly become cosmopolitan.

  How We Became Traditional

  Why were these ideas lost to us in the first place?

  We learned about the Axial Age, a period during which religious and political experimentation flourished throughout the continent of Eurasia following a radical break from an aristocratic past. But then the religious and political experiments ended, at least in some parts of Eurasia.

  In the western portion of Eurasia, when the Roman Empire fell, Europe reverted to rule by aristocratic lineages. Again it became what people would look back upon centuries later as a traditional world—one in which social positions and political power were determined solely by birth. This was the hereditary social world that would eventually be overturned in the nineteenth century.

  This world was politically fragmented. Aristocrats controlled their own regional domains. The rulers of each domain made their own customs and decrees as they wished, with no coordination or consistency among them. With no overarching state to create comprehensive laws, no roads or other public infrastructure were built to connect these territories. Not only was there no social mobility, but also the lack of transportation routes made it impossible for any mercantile activity to develop.

  It was not until over a millennium later that the beginnings of what we think of as the modern period began: the emergence of Protestantism and its emphasis on the individual, the emergence of urban areas and a market economy, and eventually a middle class that would begin calling for political power of its own.

  * * *

  Everything we’ve mentioned had a profound impact on both the development of Europe and the way we have come to think of China.

  In Europe, the break from an older, hierarchical world structured by birthright was temporary, and it quickly reversed back to the aristocratic mode when the Roman Empire fell. But in some other parts of the world, that break from the traditional past was more enduring.

  During the age of the early empires, China’s first significant empire, the Han, formed effective states and used bureaucracy and law to undercut hereditary rule. Even after the Han dynasty fell in the third century, subsequent empires would continue pushing for the creation of successful state bureaucracies that allowed China to flourish.

  In the early seventh century, for example, while northwestern Europe was still dominated by small, feudal enclaves, a vast new empire emerged in China: the Tang. Run by an effective bureaucracy and legal system, the Tang created a thriving, vibrant, and cosmopolitan society, its capital filled with peoples, goods, and religions from all over Eurasia.

  By the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, these great governing bureaucracies in China had become truly meritocratic institutions: every single position of power, except for the emperorship, could be gained only by becoming educated and taking the civil service exam.

  The exam was not aimed at gauging what inborn talents a candidate possessed or what skills and abilities he could demonstrate. Rather, during the exam, a candidate would be asked questions about real-life scenarios that any official would likely face: situations full of moral quandaries and conflicting, incompatible interests. He was not judged on the right answer, because there wasn’t one. He was evaluated on the promise he showed to see the whole picture and navigate complex moral situations. The exam was a measure of goodness.

  Of course, this system wasn’t totally accessible to all. To begin with, the exam was restricted to males. And just as elsewhere in the world at the time, there was no universal education. Wealthier families could arrange for their children to be tutored for the exam. But a student preparing for the exam was being educated in moral self-cultivation and learning a different set of values than those of the aristocratic elite. When he took the exam, his answers were anonymous; it didn’t matter who his family was. And if he passed, he would be transferred from place to place, far from his home region, so that his judgment would not be overly influenced by childhood connections or powerful local interests.

  What this meant was that political power was not hereditary. It was held by an educated elite.

  Freed of the vested interests of the aristocratic elite, the state could focus its energy on public infrastructure projects in a way that was not possible in the decentralized, disconnected world of feudal Europe. In China, roads were built, canals dug, extensive legal systems developed. All this was highly productive for the growth of the economy. And as the economy took off, huge trade networks began developing across China and extending well beyond its borders. These networks played a major part in the trade systems that started spreading through Southeast Asia, across the Indian Ocean, and into the Middle East in the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries. The trade networks also ultimately connected China and the Mediterranean region. Venice, for example, became incredibly wealthy largely from selling and buying goods along these networks.

  While this enormous maritime economy was beginning to transform much of Eurasia, parts of Europe continued to be “traditional,” still run by aristocratic clans. Northwestern European countries such as the Netherlands, Spain, and England—far removed from these trade networks and from the wealth they were creating—began building ships to sail around the southern tip of Africa and on to Asia, and then later to sail westward around the globe. Instead of reaching Asia, however, they landed in the Americas. They began to build a new colonial economy across the Atlantic Ocean based upon slave labor.

  This new colonial economy began bringing wealth to western Eurasia. But wealth alone did not create states. And that is the next part of the story.

  * * *

  As early as the sixteenth century, Jesuits started traveling to China. They were stunned by what they saw. And they began writing accounts to describe it: bureaucracies run by an educated elite, not aristocrats; laws applying to all, whether peasant or aristocrat; people who became educated in order to take a civil service exam; social mobility through a meritocracy. All this was simply unheard of in Europe.

  Two centuries later, these accounts helped to spawn an entire movement in Europe called the Enlightenment. Philosophers such as the French writer Voltaire (1694–1778) read these accounts and asked how they could replicate what they described. They began to develop ideas for institutions that could foster bureaucracies, laws, and an educated elite. European rulers realized that having such institutions was entirely possible. After all
, they existed in China.

  They started building effective states, establishing legal systems, and creating strong militaries. With the wealth coming in from the Atlantic economy, these new states became tremendously powerful and were finally in a position to connect to the Asian trade networks. But now the goal was not just to reach those networks; it was to take them over, as they had the Americas—to colonize them and create an empire.

  This is when the intriguing twist on how we look back at history began to occur. When these European states became wealthier and stronger and began to break down the older aristocratic orders, they saw themselves as creating a rupture in history: rejecting the traditional world and beginning a modern one. Thus, they thought the Asian territories they were colonizing to be backward and traditional. Now they could be liberated—by becoming more like the West.