online: 23 june 2009 modified: 24, 25 june 2009 23 june 2009 upside down West
in a Chinese cafe
...tonight my thoughts are still in the cafe where Mr Wong, who sat at the same table, gave me a quick lesson in Chinese writing:
the pictograms for one, two, three are simply one, two and three horizontal lines
and three variations of the two or three strokes to make an inverted letter y can mean 'people' or 'enter' or 'huge'...
early pictograms (also callled ideograms) resembled visually an idea, or a meaning... (the thought, not the sound!)
...with much laughter and delight (at the thought that he'd aleady taught me six words) he went on to show me how simple pictograms can combine to give surprising meanings that convey something of how Chinese thought is 'the right way up' while Western thought is 'upside down'...
...let's see if i can recapture this, for it fascinates me... even now... close to midnight:
...when i asked Mr Wong what was the meaning of this complex pictogram in a text he was reading he said 'nothing'... much laughter... (later modified to 'emptiness' by Mr Wan, who sat nearby and had been at the same college that I had. )...
...apparently this most complicated pictogram of eight strokes (or twelve strokes in a modern version) means 'nothing'... from which i guessed that, in Chinese thought, nothing, or emptiness, is a way of implying 'the whole' (and that it would be unwise, or even impertinent, to write 'everything' directly... as if it were a describable and finite thing?)...
...then someone showed me how, if the pictograms for male and female are combined, the meaning of the resulting pictogram is 'good'... (or perhaps 'goodness')... implying, i assume, that marriage, and the combining of opposites, is the right way...
(opposites seen not in conflict, as in the West, but in harmony, as in the East)
... so the good life, in Chinese thought, is not in going your own way but in adapting to organised society...
...and that, explained Mr Wan, is why the Western way seems 'upside down'...
at this point someone described the Chinese way of addressing an envelope... from top down (which they say is 'the right way up'):
country
town
street
number of house
family name
first name
i.e. from the social whole to the individual person
...but of course the Chinese way rests not on freedom and individuality but on conformity... to central control... and to hierarchy... the 'third way of thought' in ancient China*...
...so the error, as i see it (of both East and West) is the refusal to share power with everyone (in the chaotic delight and the spontaneous collective wisdom of what i call 'everything')...
...something close to what's good in both West and East while replacing our fascistic urge (to over-control) by a new trust in direct democratic action... not only in 'the electronic parliament of everyone' but also in the largely self-regulated use of cars and phones... plus augmented human intelligence (or some such new thought and language) as in computernets...
...but to return to the cafe... those seemingly ordinary people, Messrs. Wong and Wan (to call them by their family names... and not by their first names or occupations - one is a waiter and the other a computer consultant) embody, as we all do, the unwritten wisdoms of both the integrative nervous system and the collective intelligence of our ancient languages... and these are enough, i believe, to proceed to the next chapter... and to ensure our survival!
...at which, in the distance, we hear of wide-ranging agreement throughout the known universe... and in the human heart... writes the holy scribe... on the basis of these simple thoughts and fragments... nothing more...
* Arthur Waley, Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China, Doubleday Anchor, New York (originally published in 1939, possibly by Macmillan Publishers, London)...
...the three ways described by Arthur Waley are Taoist imagination (exemplified in the writings of Chuang Tsu), Confucianist morality (exemplified in the writings of Mencius) and Realist (or Legalist) power and control (exemplified in the writings of Han Fei Tsu).
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