Viewing Life's Hardships Through the Lens of Grand History

I came to the United States in 1946 and spent a year at the Army Logistics Staff College. After returning to the US again in 1952, I was completely penniless. I washed dishes in restaurants, worked as a waiter, mixed cocktails in bars, toiled as a gardener, labored as a handyman in warehouses, filed records in banks, and drew blueprints for construction companies just to make a living. I resumed my studies as a junior and finally obtained my doctorate in history in 1964—twelve years in all.

— Excerpted from Ray Huang's "Grand History Does Not Shrink"

Among Chinese-American historians, I have long been partial to Mr. Ray Huang and Mr. Tang Degang, and from time to time I still read the history books they wrote. Both were eyewitnesses to war. At the most perilous moment of modern China, both, as passionate young men, laid down their pens and took up arms to fight the Japanese invaders. Then, toward the end of the war, both switched to the study of history and went on to become historians.

Having lived through the flames of war and been tempered in years of suffering, when they finally turned to historical research they brought a truly distinctive vision to bear on problems. History is a subject that everyone ought to study. We do not study history merely to watch what happened in the past; rather, we stretch our own field of vision out into the long river of human history, so that we may see what kind of world we live in, see the age we are in, see our own lives, and see our future. Taking history as a mirror, we can know what we ought to do in the present.

We have lived through many major events in these years: the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic, the US-China trade war, the Russia-Ukraine war, the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Taiwan Strait crisis, the global economic crisis, the climate crisis, the food crisis, and the energy crisis. All of these will eventually become major events in the history books. They are what we of the present generation have lived through, and later generations will likewise look back on this period of history we have endured.

We who are living through this history cannot help but be affected by these events. Many people have been thrown into anxiety by these upheavals and turmoils, and some have even chosen to end their own lives. I too am affected by these events; the whole world shares the same warmth and cold, and no one is exempt. Living through a turbulent period of social transformation, no one can truly stand apart.

But because I have read a great many history books and read many other people's accounts of their own lives, I remain comparatively free of anxiety in this age. From a biological standpoint, humanity is now caught in a "big-year/small-year" cycle: because population has grown too fast, the Earth has been oversaturated for years, and this has brought a whole series of environmental, resource, climate, and social problems. If we are easily swayed by outside events, it is very hard to set our minds at peace in such a state.

These problems will push humanity automatically into a great period of transition. When the pressure to survive becomes too great, many people will simply lose the desire to have children. We know that in history, when survival pressure grew extreme, war, plague, and famine cut down the population to help humanity reach a new balance. At the level of an individual family, there were even practices of abandoning infants and the elderly.

Su Dongpo's writings already record the practice of killing infants in the Song Dynasty. At that time people had no contraception, and when they had too many children they would drown some of them, because they could not afford to raise them. By comparison, the contraception we choose today is far more humane. In history, some backward regions would also place elderly people who could no longer move about in an isolated cave, leaving them to live or die on their own—in effect, shedding the burden of elder care.

When I was studying psychiatry, I found that some mentally ill patients are born with a deeply rooted fear of being abandoned. This fear is not without cause: from ancient times to the present, human beings have indeed abandoned one another. The behavior is so cruel and ruthless that certain genes in the human genome are closely tied to it; it is therefore no wonder that some people are born fragile and sensitive and afraid of being abandoned.

Today the whole world faces the problems of an excessively wide wealth gap and acute social conflict. Whether in the Southern or Northern Hemisphere, whether in developed or developing countries, these problems exist, and so social conflict has become far more frequent than in years past. Humanity has now arrived at a critical historical juncture, and all of society must go through a fairly long and painful transition. On the surface it looks as if every field is being rectified, but the underlying reality is that the wealth gap has grown so wide that the whole society is in pain.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has announced that, by the end of last year, the number of forcibly displaced people reached a record 117.3 million, and unless major changes occur in global politics, this figure may keep rising. There are also many more people who, though they have a home, live in wretched circumstances. Many people truly live in deep suffering, and it is hard for us to look away.

I have recently been rereading some history books. One great benefit of reading history is that it lets us view social development and individual fate through a far wider lens. A few years of one person's life amount to nothing within a whole lifetime, and a whole lifetime amounts to nothing within all of history. So as I read, my own heart and mind gradually broaden. We must face calmly every kind of upheaval that befalls us in this life. Having been born into this world, we have an obligation to take care of ourselves and to live well—all the more so in adversity.

From my own life experience, when we are in adversity we actually have plenty of time on our hands; it is just that many people sink into pain and worry and let that time slip away wasted. We can use this abundance of time to improve ourselves. When I was in school we had a slogan: "Develop in an all-round way in morality, intellect, physique, aesthetics, and labor." That slogan sounds rather abstract, but it actually captures the true essence of education.

We live in a modern society with an extremely fine division of labor, and we overemphasize specialization. We divide human knowledge and skill into disciplines, and then subdivide each discipline further. In the end, many people mechanically perform a single job with an extremely narrow field of vision. This does not promote the brain's all-round development; over time it makes people live in extreme narrowness—and narrowness is one of the greatest triggers of mental disorders.

I still practice that slogan of "all-round development in morality, intellect, physique, aesthetics, and labor." On the intellectual front, I adhere to the principle of developing in many directions. Every day I still set aside one or two hours to study knowledge entirely unrelated to my own specialty, and this is connected to what I know about brain science.

I know that the human brain is divided into many regions, each with its own chief function. Only by studying knowledge from every field in an all-round way can we stimulate the brain's full development. Fully developed brains are of vital importance over a lifetime: the more comprehensively a person's brain develops, the less prejudice they hold, the fewer conflicts they have with others in real life, the higher their quality of life, the slower they age, and the more independent they remain in old age.

As early as more than two thousand years ago, Confucius advocated that "the gentleman is not a mere utensil"—a person should not have ability in only one respect but should develop in many ways. Both hands-on ability and mental ability must be exercised, and imagination, logical reasoning, and powers of expression must all be cultivated; intellectually, one should develop as comprehensively as possible. If a person can live by "the gentleman is not a mere utensil," then when one road is blocked they can take another; they will not perish in the waves of social change, and they are less prone to fear and anxiety.

The Dutch brain scientist Swaab has continually urged people to value mental exercise. He even believes that physical exercise is far less important to human longevity and to the quality of late life than mental exercise; moreover, certain strenuous sports can cause injury and actually shorten life. Most geriatricians share his view: once the brain, that command center, collapses, the whole of life falls into chaos—what quality of life can there be then?

I believe that if we can see a little further and learn a little more, then living this life calmly and unhurriedly is not such a difficult thing after all.