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Notes on video lecture:
Eastern Holistic Thinking and the Paradox of Virtue
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on December 10, 2014 (go to class or lectures)
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
other, legitimacy, subordinated, Mediterranean, maintain, goats, carrot, qua, interacting, role, group, leader, paddies, unified, present, reborn, flat, life, sacrifice, background, impressed, structure, boats, analytical, identify, social, sharp, agriculture, Yangtze, approved, coastline, paradox, timing, magnified, next, separation, lone, Ceasar, collectivism, Shang, small, highest, stepped, Ajax, background, holistic, friends, tension, same, gaming, moving, radical, China, ill, high, water, Greece, solitary
the individual is tied up in their role
identified and honored on basis of , not individual life history
e.g. as ancestry or father or son
not so much concern as individuals individuals
visual representation of this
early bronze vessels
individuals hard to
large numbers of people engaged in activities
they are all playing their roles in the ritual
contrast with bowl from 530 BCE
many individual characteristics
recognizable individuals engaged in activities
e.g. portrayal of Achilles and
figures are large and standing out against the
focus is not so much the group activity and the scene that is going on
why did focus so much on the social role?
higher population densities
agriculture in the Yellow and was able to support much more people
living much closer together
large scale, intensive
agriculture
Classical Greece
goat herders wandering around on the hills alone herding
individual traders in small plying the coastline on their own
fisherman essentially engaging in relatively activities
scale farmers
Shang culture
large scale agriculture
agriculture in the Yangtze River valley was based on rice
labor intensive
you can't be a rice farmer
have to create large rice
is crucial
you are essentially transforming the landscape into hills of rice paddies
an immense amount of control and labor that goes into this
so the demands of rice agriculture are going to tend to subordinate the individual to group activities
greater territorial integrity
China
the Yellow River and Yangtze River valleys are fairly
can travel easily
relatively around these East-West rivers
crops they could grow at one point on the river they could grow at another part since it was on the same latitude
relatively non-complex
not many bends, curves and coves
Greece
coastline
convoluted
rocky
many coves that are easy to defend
you will have more fragmentation in a civilization based in the than in one based in the Yellow and Yangste River valleys
Eastern vs. Western patterns of social thought
individualism vs.
analytic vs. holistic
exercise to identify the difference: draw a picture of how big you see yourself in relation to your friends
gives a sense of how important you see yourself in relation to your social networks
USA/Canada is
Europe's slightly smaller
in Japan, they tend to display themselves as the size or even smaller than
abstract relationships vs. analog/holistic patterns
show picture of , rabbit and dog, ask which goes together
thinker will say rabbit and carrot, tend to think in terms of scenes and relationships, and rabbits eat carrots
thinker will say rabbit and dog go together, "animals go together since they are the same category of being"
show fish tank
analytical thinkers tend to concentrate on the fish
holistic thinkers tend to see more of what is in the , i.e. everything in tank
research in China shows that people from wheat regions tend to think more analytically than those from rice regions
suggests a link between a how you make your living and how you see yourself in relation to your
thinking of yourself as a collective is probably the default way people have historically thought about themselves
what's new is individualism and analytic thinking that develops in Northern Europe at a certain time
unity of politics and religion in the Dynasty
king is also the priest
all religious functions are to his rule
no independent priesthood
there's no of church and state to use contemporary terminology
you can't separate the state from its religious affairs
the state receives its directly from its function as a religious organization
very different than models of religion in of the world
Christianity
strong sense of rendering under what is Ceasar's
we're going to have this kingdom of God that's going to be in the world
Buddhism
a prince which is incompatible with him being a religious figure
he has to give up his political role in order to become a religious
in early China, politics, religion and family are all tied together
lack of a divide between life and death
ancestors are not gone
we're aware they are dead, we've buried their corpses in the ground
but they are still in an important, social way
people are still with them
e.g. through sacrifice and divination
they continue to influence the world
the world the ancestors lived in was much like their own
they social roles, status, personality, activities they had in life
so unlike Christianity, they didn't have the concept of death as a change where you go from an earthly world to the kingdom of heaven
and unlike in Buddhism of Karma, the idea that you are going to die and get in a completely different form
death doesn't change the social of the present
of virtue, of "de"
de, or moral charisma, can only be acquired by someone who is not consciously tryng to acquire it
it accrues to someone who is genuinely virtuous and genuinely -oriented
oracle bones which portray stories of virtue
1. king's consort has fallen
king petitions the spirits to let him take her place
the spirit was and spared both of them
2. two princes fall ill
king seems to offer his for them
"the assisting princes having been restored to health, the king's de is with this even even more by the ancestors"
the king's offer of self- has this result:
sick person gets well
king does not get ill
the king's "de" or virtue is
but it works only if the king is not the system
he has to be sincere, he has to know he is not acting in order to gain virtue, this is the paradox
this of how to gain virtue is something many ancient Chinese philosophers dealt with
Spelling Corrections:
ancestory ⇒ ancestry
Mediterreanean ⇒ Mediterranean
wholistic ⇒ holistic
Ideas and Concepts:
On the agricultural reasons why individualism arose in Ancient Greece but not so much in Ancient Shang Culture, via tonight's Ancient Chinese Thought course:
"If you look at early Shang Dynasty pottery, single individuals are rare and hard to identify. When people are represented in Shang art, they are usually in large numbers engaged in some group activity, playing their roles in the some ritual or participating together in some group task.
Greece pottery, on the other hand, often portrays people with individual characteristics, even recognizable individuals such as Achilles and Ajax, and they are often engaged in an activity which informs you about their individual personality or character. Greek artistic figures tend to be large and standing out against the background, focused not so much on any group activity but on individual endeavors.
One reason for this is the differences in agriculture in Ancient Greece and Ancient China.
In Greece you tended to have small farmers living at significant distances from each other each tending their barley patches, vineyards, and olive trees. You had individual goat herders wandering around on the hills alone, single traders in small boats plying the coastline on their own, and fisherman essentially engaged in solitary activities.
Ancient Shang culture, on the other hand, already supported large scale agriculture, mostly through the cultivation of rice in the Yangtze River valley. Rice agriculture is extremely labor intensive:you can't be a lone rice farmer. Timing is crucial which results in demand spikes of intensive labor that requires hundreds or even thousands of people to work together, and you are essentially transforming the landscape into vast fields and stepped hills of rice paddies, all which requires an immense amount of water control which in turn requires heavy labor and management of a large portion of the population.
So while agriculture in Greece tended to separate people into lone activities which encouraged the individuality that we recognize in the Greek culture, the demands of rice agriculture in China tended to subordinate the individual to group activities."
"If you look at early Shang Dynasty pottery, single individuals are rare and hard to identify. When people are represented in Shang art, they are usually in large numbers engaged in some group activity, playing their roles in the some ritual or participating together in some group task.
Greece pottery, on the other hand, often portrays people with individual characteristics, even recognizable individuals such as Achilles and Ajax, and they are often engaged in an activity which informs you about their individual personality or character. Greek artistic figures tend to be large and standing out against the background, focused not so much on any group activity but on individual endeavors.
One reason for this is the differences in agriculture in Ancient Greece and Ancient China.
In Greece you tended to have small farmers living at significant distances from each other each tending their barley patches, vineyards, and olive trees. You had individual goat herders wandering around on the hills alone, single traders in small boats plying the coastline on their own, and fisherman essentially engaged in solitary activities.
Ancient Shang culture, on the other hand, already supported large scale agriculture, mostly through the cultivation of rice in the Yangtze River valley. Rice agriculture is extremely labor intensive:you can't be a lone rice farmer. Timing is crucial which results in demand spikes of intensive labor that requires hundreds or even thousands of people to work together, and you are essentially transforming the landscape into vast fields and stepped hills of rice paddies, all which requires an immense amount of water control which in turn requires heavy labor and management of a large portion of the population.
So while agriculture in Greece tended to separate people into lone activities which encouraged the individuality that we recognize in the Greek culture, the demands of rice agriculture in China tended to subordinate the individual to group activities."
On the difference between holistic and analytic thinking, via tonight's Ancient Chinese Thought course: "When you show a picture of a carrot, a dog, and a rabbit to people and ask which two objects best go together, those who tend to think in terms of scenes and relationships will answer that the carrot and the rabbit go together since rabbits eat carrots. This is an example of holistic thinking. Another group of people will tend to look at the objects in terms of categories and will answer that the dog and the rabbit best go together, since both of these objects belong to the same category of being. This is an example of analytic thinking."
Acronym of the day via tonight's Ancient Chinese Thought course: "W.E.I.R.D. = Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, And Democratic. "Almost everything experimental psychologists believe about the human mind comes from studies of people from W.E.I.R.D. countries. But perhaps you've guessed the problem:from a global standpoint, people from these countries may not representative of the world's population. Many phenomena we've assumed are universal probably aren't:we can only really say they're universal among W.E.I.R.D. people, who make up 96% of subjects in behavioral science, or Americans, who make up 68%, and often only among US college students."