Thursday,
August 8, 2013
10:20 AM
Research
report
I am still fascinated with my utopia, my Ur world government.
What would be the ideal governance that would prevail there? All my life I have
been building and refining this imagined stepping stone to world government in
my head. Since it has no physical existence, I build it up and tear it down at
the drop of a hat. As soon as a problem crops up I go from raising to razing to
rebuilding from the ground up. The construction changes as my enquiry into the
nature of democracy advances and my questions change. Socrates put one question
perfectly that I wrestle with constantly. Who should rule? His answer covers
all the bases.
"The true kings, the true magistrates,
(...) are not those who wear crowns, those who have been elected by just
anyone, those who have been chosen by lot, nor those who have used force or
fraud, but those who know how to rule." (Xenophon, Memorabilia III, 9,
10).
Here, Socrates lists each of the most important ways of
gaining power: birth or experience (wearing a crown), election (the
characteristic road to leadership in an
oligarchy or meritocracy, but not, contrary to popular misconception,
democracy), sortition (i.e., lottery for public service posts, as in a jury;
this is the real characteristic of democracy, which assumes that all citizens
are equal), of despotism (force) or kleptocracy (fraud). But the only
legitimate path to leadership is, he says, is through demonstrable knowledge.
Rule of those who know how to rule. Call it epistemocracy.
Simple.
Lately, I discovered that this same idea, that power should
go to those who can show they know, was best taken up in China. And by
"best," I mean that they actually invented a way to assure that those
to take high posts in government demonstrate that actually know what they are
doing in a clear, systematic way. That invention is the written civil service
examination. This led to rule by Mandarin. The Mandarins were the first group
of leaders ever who could say with full assurance that they paid their dues,
they showed in an objective manner that they know what they are doing when they
take a post in government.
This is a momentous discovery that, I think, should be taught
in every history class from primary school on up. I am still reeling from this
realization, and I have been reading history all my life.
When you discover something like that, you change your
reading habits. I immediately turned to a book about Confucius that happened to
be sitting on my bookshelves. It is a biography of Confucius written in 1971 by
one Betty Kalen. My question going into it was, how did the teachings of
Confucius lay the groundwork for the invention of written exams? Clearly,
Confucius did not say, "Use written tests if you want to have rule by
Mandarin." But his teachings were a precondition somehow.
Kalen writes that the ultimate ideal of Confucian thinking is
"Ta Ting," a world commonwealth. This, Confucius says, is the
"great principle." In other words, he was a founder of the principle
of universal peace that, the Writings tell us, is the goal of all other Baha'i
principles. UP is the ring that rules them all, as JRR Tolkien might have put
it. Kalen states that at United Nations headquarters in New York there hangs a
plaque of black marble, inscribed in gold in the Chinese calligraphy of Dr. Sun
Yat-sen, the "father of the Chinese revolution." The quotation is
from the Li Chi, the Book of Rites. In other words, it is traditionally
ascribed to Confucius.
"When the Great Principle prevails, the
world is a commonwealth in which rulers are selected according to their wisdom
and ability. Mutual confidence is promoted and good neighbourliness cultivated.
Hence, men do not regard as parents only their own parents, nor do they treat
as children only their own children. Provision is secured for the aged until
death, employment for the able-bodied, and the means for growing up for the
young. Helpless widows and widowers, orphans and the lonely, as well as the
sick and the disabled, are well cared for. Men have their respective
occupations and women their homes. They do not like to see wealth lying idle,
yet they do not keep it for their own gratification. They despise indolence,
yet they do not use their energies for their own benefit. In this way, selfish
schemings are repressed, and robbers, thieves and other lawless men no longer
exist, and there is no need for people to shut their outer doors. This is
called the Great Harmony." (Confucius, In Life and Legend, by Betty Kelen,
Thomas Nelson, Inc., New York, 1971, p. 103-104)
Great Harmony! Sounds a lot like "Most Great
Peace," doesn't it? I just had to see what this plaque, hanging at the UN
in New York, looks like. No, I do not read Chinese, but just the same, I had to
see it. This is surely one of the founding documents of any future world
government. This, surely, is something that every person of Chinese heritage
must be immensely proud. It must be like the US Constitution is for Americans,
the subject of story, song and action movies.
So I did what anybody does who wants to see anything
nowadays, I looked for the plaque of marble, inscribed in gold, on Google
images. Not a trace. As far as I can tell, just a couple of years after Kelen's
book was published, China entered the U.N., and demanded that the plaque be
taken down. What the UN did with it, I have no idea. If you want to see the
quote, in English translation, you have to go to California and see a roadside
statue of Confucius:
I looked into this some more and found that official rulers of
China, including the republic of Sun Yat-sen, the guy who did the calligraphy,
did their best to repress all memory of Confucius. The Communist regime of Mao
especially suppressed Confucius. Until, that is, about ten years ago. Now the
Chinese government is supporting "Confucius societies" in
universities around the world. So, maybe there is hope that China's founding
document will once more find its way into the UN building.
More on my research later.
...
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