I want to write about the history of individualism in Chinese thought as a way to find out why they are collectivists. even though I know nothing about Chinese philosophy.
Can I just write about the major schools (confucianism, taoism, etc.) and their opinions, or will I not find shit?
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I don't know a whole lot myself, but I can tell you that Conficianism (serve thy family) and Legalism (serve thy state) are going to be relatively collectivist, while Taoism and Buddhism (which Chinese people found so similar that they claimed Buddhism was actually an ancient offshoot of Taoism) are going to be relatively individualist. Buddhism in China might be your best bet to start with since it's all about personal enlightenment.
The actual answer is density promotes collectivism, but his is a moron board and will disagree.
So China has a lot of different schools of thought, philosophies, and religions leading it, but the overwhelming unifier of all these things is "be a good boy".
You have Confucius, who wrote shit like "you must always return to 禮", that character has a lot of different translations, order, structure, rites, modesty, ritual, etiquette, it's basically all of these things, bowing is 禮, being obedient to your boss is 禮, being good to your parents is 禮, basically it means the social structure and it must always be maintained, this is the first of these ideas.
Then you have taoism, which is the metaphysical what will be will be philosophy, be like a leaf in a stream, this basically encourages a passive worldview and that cosmic forces will align themselves in such a way as everything works out.
On top of this you have buddhism, an idea that the material world simply doesn't matter at all and that everything is simply a distraction that must be overcome in order to reach enlightenment.
Once you're cognizant of these factors you basically understand China. This is why they have centuries of stability and then everyone chimps out at once, because the leader was not following 禮, cosmic forces have turned against him, these things make China bad at innovation and ingenuity, because their general outlook is to simply be a bugman.
If you believe that individualism and collectivism are real things, you shouldn't be writing anything about history.
>8
If you don't think abstract concepts can be used to communicate physical phenomena to human beings - you need to stop posting on IQfy.
It's not that abstract concepts are useless, it's that an individualist/collectivist dichotomy is one of the stupidest oversimplifications of sociopolitical phenomena
Agreed.
You could also think of it as more of spectrum - i.e. Germany takes collectvist traits like saving face, putting family first, paying higher taxes to gov etc. MORE than countries like the UK or US
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Origins_of_Dictatorship_and_Democracy
The basic social contract in China is that collectivism comes from the central authority but the average Chinese is often very atomized and individualistic because the central authority doesn't appreciate the idea of organized religion, gangs, clans, NGOs, a wealthy class, opinion leaders, etc.
In other words, the central authority structurally hates "feudalism" because the "middleman" takes away the authority's power, and in place of the authority, the "middlemen" impose "tribalism" on the people. As a result of this "contract," the average Chinese prefers to cooperate than resist when the central authority is organizing them, which makes Chinese seem mroe collectivistic than they really are, as that kind of organization is mainly seen during matters of importance to the central authority (a pandemic, an earthquake, typhoon, terror attack, shit blowing up and going haywire and yada yada). In exchange for that, they are "free" from the "middlemen" (at least on paper) such that they become more individualistic in society.
So it's not entirely true that collectivism can define the Chinese. For instance, Americans can be very collectivistic regarding the "tribe" they are loyal to (church, NGOs, identity groups, politicians), but definitely have a problem of being collectivistic for the government. This can be considered a sign of individualism in a way, but as I said it may not be real individualism because many of them just divert their collectivism to the "tribe" they associate with.
I wonder if China will ever become more democratic in nature within our lifetime. Their economic stagnation and demographics are going to hit them HARD and the downside to a seemingly-benevolent dictatorship is that when shit goes wrong, there’s only one thing to blame, the state.
They'll just replace the failing dictatorship with another better performing batch of authoritarian leaders and call it a day.
The Chinese are extremely redpilled towards the role of the government: its there to keep the country stable and prosperous. Anything else is accessory to that.
Well, a liberal republic/democracy done correctly are by far the most prosperous modern form of government. The problem is, it’s extremely difficult to do it correctly.
Perhaps overall, China is a country that is culturally and geographically doomed to be authoritarian.
>Well, a liberal republic/democracy done correctly are by far the most prosperous modern form of government.
But not the most stable. Imagine Taiwanese parliamentary infighting and multiply that with the numbers & the violence of your average spastic mainlander. They don't like that.
Its how China ended up with a Warlord Era in the 1st place.
You sure this is the Taiwanese parliament? I'm sure I saw this as a JAV.
This is a crucial fact about Chinese civil society that westerners do not and will never understand: we in China all fricking hate each other. Chinese people will look for any possible excuse to mock and bicker and hate each other for every possible reason, from urban/rural divide and belief in different ideologies to our favourite ancient dynasties all the way down to the price of our clothes. There’s nothing we love more than getting under each other’s skin as a coping mechanism for the harshness of our work culture and societal pressure.
China is also not a monolithic culture/entity. It’s a population and geographical area so huge that individual provinces often have almost no contact with each other. There’s a great documentary about a filmmaker in the hilly backwater rural provinces of southwestern China and none of the villagers knew anything about what was going on in the shiny hyper-capitalist metropolises of Beijing or Shanghai.
Two things hold us all together: A common shared blood (we pretty much all share the same Han race; although we do NOT all share the same culture) and a common extremely strong state that politically moderates all of China’s vast and sneakily-diverse population and holds it together as one. China holds a passionate and extremely complicated relationship with its state structure that is unique in the world.
I like how every Chinese fight video starts with people pointing at each other, it's the Chinese equivalent of shouting worldstar.
The fact that we love fighting each other so fricking much makes the government’s unity vast collective projects even more impressive, in my eyes.
Infighting is eternally rampant in China from provincial party heads that undermine each other’s federal funding out of sheer seething pettiness, all the way down to the fact that there has never yet been a game of Chinese checkers or Mahjong amongst old village men that hasn’t ended with at least one person being hit over the head with the game board.
The innate knowledge that the government is what unites China more than anything else by far is what drives the widespread support for the CCP. We’re constantly at each other’s throats, but we still make it work via a state that gets things done (most of the time.)
Thoughts on
?
I’d say modern China is a blend of the three major schools of thought. A legalist state, with a Confucian collective population (or at least proclaims to be Confucian), which in turn spawns a warped version of Taoism in which people more or less shrug their shoulders in the knowledge that the government will most likely make things right, lest they lose the Mandate of you-know-what.
I would also go out on a whim and say that the fate of Confucianism is uncertain. Confucian family structures forced the hyper-totalitarian Maoist regime to bend somewhat to Chinese civil traditions. but China’s huge economic boom has created new generations of urbanized, cosmopolitan, single-child nouveau-riche Chinese that are better educated but more mentally ill than ever. The Confucian social order has been radically shaken up. Confucius’s ideals were able to survive for millennia in the eternally-routine Chinese farming village, but will its ideals survive amongst the new generation that has grown up in sardine-can apartments amongst the bright lights of Chongqing and Tianjin? Who knows what philosophies and cultural norms will arise to perhaps replace the traditional?
don't worry, xi's about to press the 'send the shanghai zoomers to the countryside" button any day now
Would be pretty hilarious to watch the wealthy superiority-complex millennial brats in the big cities have to work in the countryside like Xi was forced to.
When the Shanghai lockdowns started everybody outside of China was Pearl-clutching about how evil le See See Pee is, but everybody in the rural villages were e-girlng their heads off while eating popcorn
All the farm elders constantly bemoan the fact that all their children had packed up and left for school and high paying jobs in the big city, because a ‘Child who has never done farm work will never be a true adult’ and all that crap, and this just serves to justify that in their minds
Shanghai like Singapore and basically every other city are IQ shredders. If China wants to raise birth rate and reverse urban dysgenics it should encourage more people to stay in/return to villages where birth rates are higher.
As birthrates collapse in China I think an inwards mass pivot back to the villages is more or less inevitable at some point, at which point Chinese ideology will change drastically. God only knows what though, but I genuinely do not like the CCP will be around much longer.
yeah I watch youtube videos too, you don't have to regurgitate verbatim what you heard. the collapsing birthrates stuff is overblown. birthrates already collapsed in japan and russia 30 years ago, both countries have similar population now as 1990. has japan changed? not really. nowhere near collapse either. china's population will flatline at 1.4 billion for about 30 years, if russia and japan are indicators (and that's ignoring the total economic collapse and emigration experienced in russia).
>you don't have to regurgitate verbatim what you heard. the collapsing birthrates stuff is overblown
You don’t have to regurgitate whatever goes against what the lion’s share of people are saying.
>birthrates already collapsed in japan and russia 30 years ago, both countries have similar population now as 1990. has japan changed? not really
That’s just the problem. Low birthrates leads to economic stagnation, which is undesirable for a Party that bases its right to rule justification upon economic growth.
>Low birthrates leads to economic stagnation, which is undesirable for a Party that bases its right to rule justification upon economic growth
the CCP does not justify its rule on GDP growth, it justifies it on the strength and stability of China, as compared to the warlord era. In any case, it makes especially very little sense than an aging society would revolt because the line isn't going up fast enough. Even if what you claim about economic growth is true, it's basically also applicable to Putin who justified his early rule with rapid Russian growth from 2000-2008. Since 2008 the Russian economy has flatlined, but Russians support Putin more than ever now. So what you claim seems very unlikely.
>Han
We keep calling it Han, but this is IQfy, call it what it really is, Hakka.
>This is a crucial fact about Chinese civil society that westerners do not and will never understand: we in China all fricking hate each other. Chinese people will look for any possible excuse to mock and bicker and hate each other for every possible reason
It's the freest country on earth! In the sense that everyone is free to hate each other for any reason. Well it's free except for the part about the political system that builds the massive infrastructure. You're even free to say stuff that seems kinda racist but they're actually less racist on the inside if you think about it because they're by nature a bunch of atomized individualists, and even acting super patriotic or nationalistic would probably prompt others to laugh at you.
It's interesting to listen to foreigners talk about China in those YouTube "what is it like to be X in China" videos. I've seen both black people and LGBT people say that they actually kinda prefer it in China to America even if people are kinda racist or prejudiced in some ways, because people are like "eh, yeah, frick you, but I don't really give a shit that much either."
>There’s a great documentary about a filmmaker in the hilly backwater rural provinces of southwestern China and none of the villagers knew anything about what was going on in the shiny hyper-capitalist metropolises of Beijing or Shanghai.
That made me feel quite uneasy. If you mean the one with a huge ladder.
Link?
>liberal republic/democracy done correctly are by far the most prosperous modern form of government
oh please feudal monarchy has a much longer and better track record than liberal democracy, which has only been around for about 200 years and collapsed on countless occasions already.
Feudal monarchy has longevity but almost nothing else. Liberal democracy has spawned a gigantic leap forwards in every conceivable metric of human civilization in the short time that it has existed. From the French Revolution to rockets flying for the moon in less than three short centuries. In the modern era not a single authoritarian country could possibly make the list of best countries to live in overall, except maybe Singapore? Meanwhile, feudalism is a byword for backwardness. Only an utter fool would deny the incredibly fast paced and enormously-beneficial impact of liberal democracy/republicanism when it’s instituted correctly (very hard to do.)
>Feudal monarchy has longevity but almost nothing else. Liberal democracy has spawned a gigantic leap forwards in every conceivable metric of human civilization in the short time that it has existed. From the French Revolution to rockets flying for the moon in less than three short centuries. In the modern era not a single authoritarian country could possibly make the list of best countries to live in overall, except maybe Singapore? Meanwhile, feudalism is a byword for backwardness. Only an utter fool would deny the incredibly fast paced and enormously-beneficial impact of liberal democracy/republicanism when it’s instituted correctly (very hard to do.)
Democracy can trace it's origins back to ancient times in Germany, the tribal assemblies of the "Thing".
>democracy/republicanism when it’s instituted correctly (very hard to do.)
this sounds like a "real communism" claim. most countries in the world are functioning liberal democracies including india, nigeria, philippines, brazil, south africa. you're going to need to demonstrate why those aren't real democracies, but then you may as well talk about why north korea isn't real communism.
>From the French Revolution to rockets flying for the moon in less than three short centuries
most of this was accomplished in autocracies. NASA scientists were from Nazi Germany. Theory of relativity was developed by Einstein (German). Quantum physics was pushed by Planck, Heisenberg etc. also in Germany. Statistical mechanics from Boltzmann (Austria). Soviets independently developed aerospace technology. Claiming it's liberal democracy that accomplished all this seems silly.
>NASA scientists were from Nazi Germany
Yes, NASA didn’t have a single American in it, Of course. A Feudalist lord would be a much better leader than an elected representative, I’m redpilled now. The wonders of the extremely successful and long-lived Soviet Union and third Reich have convinced me of the wonders of totalitarianism. Big dumb chud.
>Soviets independently developed aerospace technology.
No they did not? They kidnapped a bunch of Nazi scientists and had spies in the Manhattan Project.
>They kidnapped a bunch of Nazi scientists
so still the fruits of an illiberal regime. doesn't change my argument
>Big dumb chud.
this disqualifies anything else you have to say
>Liberal democracy has spawned a gigantic leap forwards in every conceivable metric of human civilization in the short time that it has existed
It started under monarchies, democracies are ruining it as we speak.
From an economic perspective, in traditional Chinese society, due to material circumstances a lot of work was organized by family and clan that binded the population in a rather loose and chill way. However, the exception was when there was demand for infrastructure like "water reservoirs." In that case, a simple community can't handle that, so a "dictatorship," would emerge to organize this massive infrastructure.
This formed a binary system with an authoritarian regime on the top which managed and dictated important issues and a poorly organized population on the bottom. But even then, most of the time, this seemingly authoritarian state couldn't really manage the population, in contrast to the "hyper efficient authoritarian regime" that such regimes like to portray about themselves which promoted a rather intense frequency of peasant uprisings in contrast with other parts of the world.
This also helps explain the nature of the origin of "dictatorship" and "democracy," not that one is somehow better, just that Chinese peasants were relatively atomized because the supreme rulers already devoured the nobles, merchants and religious groups in the middle that could structurally contain / check / balance the peasants. By contrast, "democracy" had a lot to do with the strong presence of the local community that decided to manage the use of the land and food production in a way which, altthough it looks democratic, to some extent collectivized people because one had to compromise for the "common good."
Chinese law also prefers to prevent serious crimes as well as stop regime change or social instability but otherwise is usually loose and is like "not my fricking business," "don't waste my time here," "you two figure it out by yourself," or "let's talk this out you two" which some say is why China lacks the "rule of law" that exists in America.
>which some say is why China lacks the "rule of law" that exists in America.
The reason is that China had a bad experience with it. The problem is that sociopaths LOVE the rule of law as it alliws them to plan ahead what they can get away with and even use laws to their advantage (think of a school bully who uses "zero tolerance" rules to get those who stand up against him into trouble).
> The problem is that sociopaths LOVE the rule of law
This is true, but you have mis-stated it. The correct version:
>Sociopaths love LAWS
>Sociopaths hate RULE of law.
There is a significant difference
> it alliws them to plan ahead what they can get away with and even use laws to their advantage
Sociopaths love *LAWS* because it takes a genuine concern for society to correctly interpret and apply laws. They can disingenuously argue that laws mean other than what they state, and ignorant peasants will be persuaded by their arguments.
>Sociopaths hate RULE of law.
"Rule of Law" is the correct, judicious enforcement of laws. There can be laws without "rule of law". Look at modern day America; The Constitution outlines a lot of Rights which the American government refuses to enforce and which the people do not recognize as not being enforced. What sociopaths love is that the legal system can be socially manipulated into dropping charges and into giving lighter sentences to charismatic speakers; but this is an erosion of "the rule of law"
No, it's exactly such autistic enforcement of laws with lttle regard to circumstances that suits sociopaths, as it allows them to scheme and then argue that something is technically legal (or illegal) even when it's obviously ridiculous.
The Qin empire fell because of that. Try looking up "legalism".
DumbFricks Can't Even Read My Posts Without My Own Help
>No, it's exactly such autistic enforcement of laws
>"Rule of Law" is the correct, judicious enforcement of laws.
Sir, please direct your attention to the following differences:
>autistic enforcement
>correct, judicious enforcement
Consider, is "autistic" synonymous with "correct, judicious"?
"Autistic" Rule of Law, btw, would have judges blindly throwing books at every offender and using the widest interpretation of the law possible to convict as many offenders as possible so as to ensure that laws are not taken lightly.
>2-1-2 Kasumigaseki
>Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-8974
>Japan
>Consider, is "autistic" synonymous with "correct, judicious"?
Yes. Abiding by your definition it absolutely is.
Such problems always creep up everywhere whenever it's allowed, or some think it's allowed: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikilawyering for a more recent example.
>Abiding by your definition
> a more recent example
Actually, a strong rule of law here would have you executed. R-I-P-a-reeno. Bot, human, trash-thinking is trash-thinking.
>, trash-thinking is trash-thinking.
Says someone who can't even properly respond to criticism.
No, I think it's fairly typical that collectivist cultures expect and come from people who think for their own, who then reach mostly the same conclusions, while individualist societies come from people who mindlessly ape each other and everybody is different depending on which people they have aped.
When the 2nd Chinese Emperor died his son was initially going to inherit the Empire. But his Uncle Yong Li disagreed. Yong Li murdered his nephew and commanded the top scribe of the day to ratify his ascencion to Emperor as legal. The scribe refused. Yong Li murdered the scribe, all his students, and all his relations to the 10th degree, several thousand people in all.
In the first place, the Chinese must have been collective enough to allow these events to unfold as they did.
Secondly, the consolidation of power under tyrants like Yong Li created a trend in the Chinese population where submission was rewarded and initiative punished.
Contrast with the bad kings of the Greeks. Five different kings were rejected in turn as too bossy and killed. This indicates a people antithetical to Chinese kowtowing, who demand their independence on pain of death and, in turn, ferment a culture where personal intitiative is rewarded each generation while submission holds stable.
>I know nothing about Chinese
many such cases
Keep larping as Han "Chinese" then chang
Anonymous Chang, can you give me some insight into the hatred between Mainland Chinese and Hong Kong Chinese, I was tutored by an old man who came from Hong Kong, but he was born in mainland china, his family was a wealthy one, responsible for agriculture in some sort of government position pre-CCP. He always spoke with contempt of “Honky” Chinese people
>find out why they are collectivists
because they had to be
if I were you I would look into this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_empire
https://www.nature.com/articles/536028a
The whole collectivism thing is kind of a meme tbh.
If you spend any time around actual mainland Chinese they're pretty selfish.
Real collectivists are selfless. China only pushes the collectivism meme because its a good excuse for authoritarianism.
Yes, Chinese are collectivists and you are all israelite-worshipping homosexuals.
There are no collectivist human beings like there are no flying pigs.
homosexuals
What the frick are you talking about? Collectivism was the norm in 99%times and places.
You are not a collectivist either. You will not willingly give to the "collective" more than you will take.
Fricking crooks.
Why is every chink devolve into /misc/ shitfest?