Tolerance Is the Foundation of Cultural Coexistence
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
— The United States Declaration of Independence (1776).
Lovers of Eastern culture often boast that Eastern culture is older and wiser than Western culture; they even believe that what will ultimately save the world must be Eastern, not Western, culture. This is a frog-in-the-well cultural arrogance, an arrogant utterance born of not understanding Western civilization, especially the essence of American culture.
In cultural anthropology there is a view that human culture is like water, flowing from a high position to a low one; cultures at a low position are bound to be permeated and transformed by cultures at a high position. Throughout human history such a phenomenon does indeed exist. But in the present age, under the influence of liberalism, this view has been questioned.
Take the United States. This country fully defends individual liberty, and the inclusiveness of American society has produced a cultural prosperity the likes of which human history has never seen—diverse cultures flourishing together. America has also benefited greatly from this cultural diversity. The tolerant and humanistic spirit of American citizens leads the world, all thanks to America's protection of individual liberty. From its founding, America explicitly separated church and state, abolished the aristocratic system, and emphasized that all are created equal and free. This destroyed the social foundation on which authoritarianism thrives.
Over eighty percent of Americans are adherents of some religion, but American religious belief differs from that of China. In America, religious faith is considered personal, not organizational. Although American Protestants do attend religious services, they bypass the pastor and face God directly, which has greatly reduced the authority of professional clergy. Personalized faith, while preserving the soul-purifying function of religion, has also liberated the American mind to the greatest degree. As Jefferson put it: every man's soul is his own to tend.
The reason Americans handle faith this way is largely that many of the earliest Europeans who came to America were Protestants persecuted by the traditional European churches. Precisely because they did not worship authority, they were persecuted by authority, some even to death. The suffering these Protestants endured still exists widely in our world today.
From these details we can see that America's founders expended great effort to safeguard Americans' various freedoms to the maximum. Of course, American freedom is built on self-reliance; in America, not standing on one's own and living on others' charity is a disgrace and invites social discrimination. This differs somewhat from the East, where we even venerate certain non-self-reliant strata, such as the political-privilege class and the monastic class.
Fundamentally, this is tied to the obedience-to-authority consciousness inherent in our cultural genes. Personally I believe this inherent authoritarian consciousness is the chief culprit that has plagued China for millennia; our culture has long been shrouded in the gloom of archaism. We unquestioningly believe the sayings of legendary sages; we enshrine historical figures like Confucius, Laozi, Shakyamuni, and the Yellow Emperor on altars and prostrate ourselves before them, deliberately molding our every word and deed to their requirements. Though most people vaguely feel that, for all the truth in their words, there is also no lack of error, in the atmosphere of obedience-to-authority created by public opinion, few dare openly express their true thoughts. Over time, obedience to authority has become a fixed behavioral pattern in our society, one that directly suppresses every attempt at innovation.
I have studied the various schools of the pre-Qin thinkers, ancient Indian philosophy, Buddhism, and Daoism to different degrees, and have devoted myself especially deeply to Chinese medicine. Not to be immodest, my clinical skill is now at least above average. I know well the strengths and weaknesses of ancient Eastern culture and science; I draw beneficial elements from these studies, yet I have never been able to believe devoutly. The reason is simple: I have also absorbed Western philosophy and modern scientific civilization. Moreover, because medicine prizes practice, clinical results often slap the face of many a theoretician; a physician who treats patients is the last person likely to be superstitious or worship authority—otherwise countless patients would die.
We often hear that many good things from abroad, such as American Protestantism, change once they reach China. This is true, because our cultural soil differs from America's; we still worship authority. In Chinese temples, the personality cult of the masters has reached a jaw-dropping degree. The superstition that grows from such personality cult stifles all possibility of innovation. China's other religions are in much the same state.
Our social environment makes us born superstitious. Fortunately, since the 1990s Chinese thought has gradually opened up. China's post-1990s generation, though overindulged because of the one-child policy and thus afflicted with many character flaws, fortunately marks the beginning of the gradual fading of authoritarianism. With the development of publishing, cultural diversity gained a foothold in China after the 1990s.
I often reflect that, as a child, I lacked the reading environment my son enjoys today. My father suppressed us brothers and forbade us from reading "useless" books; the various books my father regarded as "miscellaneous" I read at the risk of scolding or a beating. By junior high, my Chinese teacher told me frankly that he had read fewer books than I, and he felt nothing but dislike for me; in his eyes I was an unfocused student.
But today my son has whole bookshelves of miscellaneous books from early childhood. His father no longer limits his reading range but encourages broad learning. Sometimes, when I talk with scholars raised after the 1990s, I feel nervous: I find that, although among my peers and the generation ten or twenty years older I count as among the most broadly learned, compared with the new young generation I begin to look narrow and ill-informed. This is probably what the ancients meant by "the younger generation is to be feared."
To avoid arrogance, superstition, prejudice, and ignorance, there is no better path than wide reading of books and wide experience of the world. Personal cultural diversity and rich life experience both help dissolve prejudice and superstition. From my years of observation, the bigoted are mostly cultural conservatives: once they encounter a certain culture, they rarely explore others. As a result, the world they see is inevitably limited. Such people most easily become fanatics. In every culture war, both opposing sides inevitably share this flaw.
Nearly all human cultures are beneficial—this is undeniable, for after all no culture arises without source; most are distilled from the experience of human life through reflection. Yet any culture inevitably has historical limitations, determined by the limits of humanity itself. Through the ages, however high a person's IQ, he cannot touch every realm of human wisdom, and probably no such person will arise in the future. So everyone's understanding of the world is like the blind men touching the elephant: grasping only one part, never the whole.
To overcome the shortsightedness and prejudice born of human limitation, there is no way but to open one's heart, admit one's inadequacy, learn broadly, and absorb the essence of every culture. This is the direction all nations in today's world are striving toward, differing only in degree of openness. America safeguards this best institutionally. Of course, with the arrival of the information age, this relative institutional advantage matters less and less. Worldwide, informed people have long been freed from political constraints in their personal outlook and develop freely to the greatest degree. After all, wherever you go, self-cultivation depends on one's own effort.
In Eastern eyes, Western culture is like a restless young man—abundant in enthusiasm, deficient in wisdom—full of vitality and youthful drive, but little concerned with the inner adjustment people inevitably need when, in old age, they decline. Eastern culture has real superiority in this regard. Over a hundred years ago, when Bertrand Russell came to China to lecture and saw the serene, calm life of the Chinese, he felt he had discovered a cultural New World. Then, Europe and America were in the throes of industrialization and urbanization; people were obsessed with competition and cared little for inner ease. Westerners in old age inevitably feel desolate, having stepped to the sidelines and become a burden to society. Eastern societies, especially the Confucian cultural sphere, influenced by filial piety, show the elderly a reverence that made a great thinker like Russell envious.
A century later, much has changed. Under the impact of globalization, Eastern societies too have entered the tide of industrialization and urbanization. The leisurely Chinese elderly of old now toil in the fields or on construction sites, sweating, and must endure the loneliness of being separated from their children, left-behind elders. Meanwhile Western societies, especially developed countries, having accumulated enough wealth to meet social needs, have steadily improved their institutions and welfare, offer an ever richer variety of cultural goods, and enjoy ever happier old age.
In my view, culture is neither old nor young, neither high nor low; so long as it suits a person's present needs, it is beneficial. Culture is created by humans and serves humans, not the other way around. People are the enjoyers of culture, not its slaves. If a culture or belief wears us out, the first thing we should consider is casting it aside and seeking other spiritual nourishment—not fighting ourselves, remaking ourselves until even we cannot adapt to ourselves. Culture is like the food we eat: a necessity of life whose function is to let us rest and recover from the fatigue of living.
If, like the anthropologist Tylor, one has studied over seven hundred different primitive cultures and produced a masterpiece like Primitive Culture, one is unlikely to arrogantly regard one's own favored culture as the savior of the world. For a century, anthropologists have tried to bridge the rifts among civilizations so they may coexist in harmony. The root cause is that this foolish creature called humanity has waged wars and slaughtered people by the millions merely over trying to change what goes on in other people's heads. This is not merely history already past; it is the reality we still witness today.
We should live, and let others live. This is said to have been one of the most basic consensuses of America's founders when they framed the Constitution. Reaching this consensus requires a sense of self-restraint in everyone. If a person or a faith considers itself entitled to stand above others or other faiths, this coexistence and common prosperity is hardly possible. In America, the most despised are not people who believe a certain idea, but those who discriminate against others' beliefs.
Many Americans believe in rebirth. The rebirth they believe in is spiritual; they have experienced spiritual rebirth. Through faith they strive to reform themselves, to self-perfect and self-restrain, rather than being arrogant and complacent. Today many Americans even adhere to several religions at once; of course, growing numbers of contemporary Americans no longer like to call it religious belief, preferring to call it spiritual pursuit.
When Mr. Feng Zikai explained why his teacher Li Shutong (the monk Master Hongyi after ordination) left home, he said that human beings have three levels of pursuit: the lowest is the pursuit of material things; the next, of art; the highest, of spiritual or soul life. Master Hongyi, having climbed to the third floor of life, shaved his head and became a monk. The humanistic psychologist Maslow divided human needs into five levels (some say six), with much the same meaning as Feng Zikai.
This layered thinking too has great limitations of its time. All beings are equal; human needs differ at different periods and stages of life, which is natural and has no hierarchy of high and low. To insist on dividing them into high and low levels is suspect as mere vanity. An accomplished monk, after fasting for days and nights, mostly reveals his true face: that food matters more than anything else. The "exchanging children to eat" recorded in our Chinese historical texts is unimaginable in our age of material plenty, but in great famines, when people were starving and desperate, they actually reached the point of exchanging their sons and eating human flesh. So human needs change at any time with changing circumstances.
I personally greatly dislike spending much time with archaists; if they are willing to keep pace with the times and improve the knowledge of the great figures they venerate, I am glad to sit and talk with them. Otherwise I look for every excuse to avoid them. Especially when they devoutly worship their authority and wish to spread their ideals to the whole world, I want to leave at once. If we Chinese were not so infatuated with authority worship, our living standards would probably not still be so low today.
I have studied Chinese medical theory—from the required classics such as the Huangdi Neijing (Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon), Shennong Bencao Jing (Shennong's Materia Medica), Shanghan Lun (Treatise on Cold Damage), Nan Jing (Classic of Difficulties), the works of the four great masters of the Jin-Yuan period, and the famous writings of the Warm-Disease school, to the medical essays and case records of physicians through the dynasties—all of which I read very assiduously. At the same time I was educated in modern Western medicine. My purpose in studying medicine was intense and clear: to save my own mother. Besides studying medicine, I sought out famous physicians everywhere, in both Chinese and Western medicine. But whether in my own practice or in observing others' clinical results, I never saw the miraculous cures touted by the superstitious, the credulous, and the charlatan masters. I saw only the true face that the French psychologist Le Bon described in The Crowd: how credulous followers rewrite reality and create myths. Today my skill has reached the point where, when most Chinese-Western experts are helpless, I can occasionally achieve notable results; yet I know full well that this thing is nothing special.
Without a sense of freedom and the habit of independent thinking, it is hard to tolerate cultural diversity or to become a broad-minded person. Such people often prate of justice and morality, never realizing that they themselves are of the same kind as chauvinists and Nazis. If such people truly seized power, there would be no freedom; in the name of morality they would place themselves above the crowd and remake people into a uniform model. This goal can never be achieved; the end result is what has happened repeatedly in history: extremist, inhumane massacres and racial and religious persecutions.
The more tolerant a country and society, the more advanced it is. The more tolerant a person, the wiser he is, and vice versa.