Li Yousheng (2015/11/29)
Abstract: Dividing human society into a genetically encoded primordial society and a man-made secondary society reveals that five thousand years of human civilization is a history of escalating warfare. Under the competitive pressure of humanity being its own enemy, civilization and social complexity have rapidly increased at the expense of people’s well-being. If we consider the two World Wars as the ultimate driving force of civilization, then humanity has reached a point where it needs to find a different way of life. If, in the past five thousand years, the accumulation of human knowledge and wealth has been synchronized with the escalation of warfare, the current world clearly shows that, with transportation and communication shrinking the world into a global village, human knowledge and wealth can develop relatively independently, without the impetus of war. From the perspective of the two-tiered society theory, the construction of happiness must operate independently of the accumulation of knowledge and wealth: humanity needs to return to a primordial society and to the leisurely mindset of enjoying life as advocated by Taoism. Humanity should consider how to transform competition into a balanced feedback loop where there is no clear winner or loser, drawing inspiration from the natural management system of human cells.
I. Two-tier society theory and the history of human civilization
It is said that when a six-month-old baby is overjoyed to receive a new toy, he will exchange glances with his mother to achieve psychological and emotional communication [1]. At this time, even if the mother has something very unpleasant, she will not have the psychological basis of “not being able to make plans with someone who has different views”. She will immediately forget her unhappiness and be infected by the child’s mood, and naturally put on a smiling face to share the child’s joy. This is a victory of natural human nature and proof that human nature cannot be suppressed.
From Confucius’s saying, “Those who follow different paths cannot make plans together,” to the partisan bickering in Western parliaments and the UN General Assembly’s disputes followed by votes, the 4th Global Symbiosis Forum in 2015 was themed “Those who follow different paths, can they still make plans together?” This reminds me of when I was studying at Cambridge University in 1980. I often had tea and chatted with an old man who had been a prisoner of the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army in the Korean War. He said, “We, these different people, sit together like old friends who haven’t seen each other for years. When our national leaders meet, they shake hands and hug, smiling sincerely. But when the national leaders return home and are with their own people, the two countries start a war.”
This raises the question of different levels of society, where human behavior differs and cannot be lumped together. Dividing humanity into a genetically encoded primordial society and a man-made secondary society reveals that they exist at different levels. Just as the following table of cosmic evolution shows, the distinction between these two levels of society is akin to the difference between atoms and molecules, or cells and tissues/organs—there is an insurmountable barrier between them.
Cosmic Evolution Table
Examining human history through this two-tiered social theory, it is found that China before the Warring States period was still a primitive social system, while Western civilization began with a typical two-tiered society. The main differences between primitive society and two-tiered society are: the former is based on human nature as its operating mechanism, and psychological and emotional communication makes primitive society a unified entity at the subconscious level. This psychological and emotional communication can also occur between people and things, that is, the occurrence of aesthetics, and also becomes the basis of animism (animism); the latter has direction and purpose, driven by rewards and punishments and violence, and its unity depends on the unity of goals and rational understanding. The author speculates that the division of labor and connection between the left and right hemispheres of the human brain may be the neurological basis for the construction of two-tiered society, which can be used to explain the differences between the different levels of two-tiered society. People in primitive society have culture and consciousness, but the force that maintains social harmony and stability is the subconscious, which is the emotional connection between each other; the structure and stability of two-tiered society mainly rely on people’s rational understanding at the level of consciousness. [2, 3]
The difference between primitive society and secondary society is similar to the evolutionary history of fish moving onto land, which led to the emergence of birds, reptiles, and mammals. Fish moving onto land was driven by immense natural selection pressure from different environments, forcing them into a period of rapid evolution. Similarly, after humans entered artificial secondary societies, the countless possible forms of these societies—their unmanageable nature—lead to escalating conflicts and internal conflicts.
According to Eckald’s research, the five thousand years of human civilization is a history of escalating wars. He found that the frequency of battles, the area of empires, and civilizations all spiraled upwards simultaneously over the five thousand years. Eckald used the number of famous figures who entered encyclopedias and textbooks as a measure of civilization. Eckald called these famous figures geniuses, that is, the number of geniuses constitutes a measure of civilization. This number of geniuses should be two parallel and related numbers to the total amount of knowledge accumulated by humankind. Eckald found that in the spiraling process of all examples of civilizations, not only did civilization, empires, and wars rise simultaneously, but it also led to the expansion of social inequality, manifested in: slavery, caste system, class differentiation, and social hierarchy. In short, under the enormous pressure of survival in the face of war, humankind completed the process of knowledge accumulation and the process of social organization becoming more complex. [4]
Eckald’s findings are clearly not applicable to the world after the two World Wars. In the seventy years since 1945, technology has developed rapidly, and the accumulation of human knowledge and wealth is said to double every one or two decades, without the escalation of wars or the expansion of empires. Some studies have found that the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties in China were different from the turbulent situation in other parts of the world at the same time, showing extraordinary stability comparable to the world after World War II. [5]
This led to a historical fact discovered by the author many years ago: the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties in China were primitive social superpowers, and China had not yet entered the spiral upgrade history of war civilization discovered by Eckald. This primitive social superpower had not yet disintegrated in the time of Confucius. Confucius said, “Those who have different paths cannot make plans together,” but at the same time he also said, “Nothing is impossible.” Yang Hu and Gongshan Furao, rebellious retainers of Lu, and a rebellious retainer of Jin all asked Confucius to help them, and Confucius considered going. His students objected, especially Zilu. Confucius replied, “Is it not said that it is firm, yet it cannot be polished; is it not said that it is white, yet it cannot be stained. Am I a gourd? How can I be tied up and not eaten?” Confucius said that even if he worked with these people, his purity would not be stained by their filth, that is, Confucius had the magnanimity to get along with both black and white. This suggests that the government at that time tolerated people with different ideas. The change of emperors and ministers was the result of later political development and differentiation, and it did not apply to the time of Confucius. [3]
Language serves different functions in primitive and secondary societies. In primitive societies, language largely remains at the aesthetic level, while in secondary societies, semantics and its meaning within the constructed secondary society are emphasized. In Confucius’s teachings, “Those who follow different paths cannot make plans together” and “Those who follow different paths can still make plans together?” both convey an aesthetic resonance, much like a mother facing the innocent smile of her child, where the similarities or differences in their paths become meaningless.
The above serves as the introduction to this article. While introducing the theory of two-level society, it incorporates the author’s personal observations in order to convey the tone of the original social emotional aesthetics that cannot be translated into language.
II. The modern world, including Western representative democracy, has been shaped by war: the differences between Chinese and Western history.
If war has played an irreplaceable role in social organization and civilization development in human history, then in today’s world, where technology is highly developed and modern communication equipment makes humans live in a small global village, civilization development and the improvement of social organization can be separated from war. Keegan shows why, regardless of its cultural environment, the pursuit of honor is always attributed to military virtues, and how war itself always influences the imagination of martial humans, to the point that “in the deepest part of the human mind, there self-destruction of rational purpose, pride dominates everything, passion is supreme, and instinct overrides everything else.”[6] Keegan’s words show how virtue, passion, and pride in the original social aesthetic sense are transformed into secondary social conflicts and wars. Humans today can completely obtain the satisfaction of virtue, passion, pride and other emotions outside of war.
The five thousand years of civilization in the West is a war that is constantly escalating, while Chinese history compresses the five thousand years of war escalation in the West into the Warring States period of two or three hundred years. There are two thousand years of stable period before and after the Warring States period, but after the Qin and Han dynasties, there is a super-stable social structure and large-scale periodic turmoil. [7] Looking at the current wars, they are not evenly distributed on the earth, but highly concentrated around the original Mediterranean civilization, that is, the origin of Western civilization. From the fact that the original socialist countries disintegrated in the process of capitalism while the huge China was able to transition peacefully, China still maintains a super-stable social structure for thousands of years. According to Yang Jisheng’s statistics [8], 36 million people starved to death in China during the three-year famine. This is the price of China’s super-stable social structure. People did not go to war because of the satisfaction of emotions such as virtue, passion, and pride, but went to the Great Leap Forward in the name of the same emotions, causing social chaos and resulting in the starvation of a large number of people. If the original society of humans lived in the present of aesthetics, the history of civilization was the result of balanced competition in different directions of many secondary societies, which has reference and guidance significance for the contemporary era. It is said that many Chinese people refuse to acknowledge the fact that 36 million people starved to death, citing the need to smear China’s image. This is an attempt to erase the inhuman historical fact of secondary society using the aesthetics of primitive society. The author’s impression from comparing Chinese and European history aligns with Yang Jisheng’s research: the periodic upheavals in Chinese history resulted in more deaths than wars in the West. Here, we will tentatively refer to these periodic upheavals in Chinese history as the failure of the centralized mechanism, leading to the temporary collapse of the secondary social mechanism.
In today’s postmodern world, we should consider how to integrate Western and Chinese civilizations, learning from each other’s strengths and compensating for each other’s weaknesses, avoiding unnecessary competition and conflict, as well as social chaos caused by insufficient development of secondary societies.
As for the concept of sustainable development, it refers to the maintenance of the natural environment, not the protection of human emotions. For example, the murder of women and children in the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks was an emotional blow to all normal people in the world, and people have an emotional demand not to face such tragic events. If modern civilization, represented by Western civilization, is an escalating but unsustainable one, then the civilization in Chinese history was sustainable: the vast majority of people were placed in rural primitive social life, while the secondary social life that destroyed human nature was largely restricted to the imperial family and the government bureaucratic intellectual class. According to Zhang Hongjie’s statistics, the emperor was the most unfortunate person. There are 209 emperors in history whose exact birth and death dates can be verified. The average lifespan of these 209 people was only 39.2 years, which is nearly 18 years lower than that of ordinary people. In the history of Chinese dynasties, including large dynasties that unified the country and small dynasties that were in a corner of the country, there were a total of 611 emperors, of whom 272 died unnaturally, with an unnatural mortality rate of 44%, which is much higher than that of other social groups. [9, 10]
It is clear that Chinese and Western history have taken completely different approaches to the essential differences between the two societies. Today, as Western civilization dominates the world and is coming to an end, we need to draw inspiration from Chinese history: to return to the original society.
III. Clash of Civilizations and Clash of Cultures: Differences in Chinese and Western Understanding of Democracy
American political scientist S.P. Huntington (1927-2008) is best known for his clash of civilizations theory. A clash of civilizations can manifest as war and social chaos, or it can remain at the aesthetic level of primitive societies, expressed as the splendor and color of aesthetics. Of course, it can also involve mutual learning, drawing on each other’s strengths and compensating for each other’s weaknesses, using the existence of the other as a prerequisite for one’s own growth. More realistically, it can create a platform for symbiosis, that is, building a new social hierarchy that governs all different civilizations, and so on. If Huntington, coming from the upper echelons of society, leans towards a second-order social perspective and sees the conflict aspect, then ordinary intellectuals from the lower strata of society may have more primal social sentiments and see the peaceful coexistence aspect.
Here, I re-examine the problems of Western democracy from the perspective of two-tier society theory. Democracy ultimately needs to be implemented by people, and by their psychological experience. So-called democracy means that the people are the masters of their own affairs and manage their own affairs. This is precisely the reality of primitive society, so primitive society is the most democratic. Modern democracy is just a return to primitive society to some extent in a two-tier society.
A fundamental measure of the degree of democracy is: 1) individuals do not feel controlled; 2) emotional freedom: the freedom to refuse to endure cruel realities, such as not watching scenes of people being slaughtered or other realities that hurt human emotions; 3) freedom of action: the freedom to manage one’s personal life, not the freedom to explore and realize oneself in secondary society, much less the freedom to manipulate others.
These three measures of democracy can only be maximized in primitive societies; they are difficult to achieve in secondary societies, though they can be reached to some extent. The West, starting with the biblical account of the fratricidal killing of Adam and Eve’s sons, has emphasized the inherent evil of human nature. This reflects an understanding of the inhumanity and unmanageability of secondary societies, but it also harms human emotions, as no one is born willing to accept the notion of inherent evil. Traditional Chinese culture lacks an understanding of this inherent evil, which may explain why, as mentioned above, Westerners engage in wars of fratricide to satisfy their desires for virtue, passion, and pride, while the Chinese perish in chaos caused by an overconfidence in human goodness and ability. As a result, Westerners have become accustomed to instances of inherent evil and have developed a higher tolerance, while the Chinese have turned a blind eye, choosing instead to forget and live in self-imposed isolation. This raises another issue with the three measures of democracy: merely increasing people’s tolerance for and isolation from undemocratic phenomena, rather than making substantial political improvements, will raise the democracy index at the level of individual perception.
The author once used the frequency of the word “I” in poetry as the subject expression degree. The subject expression degree measured in this way also includes the freedom of exploration and self-realization in secondary society as well as the freedom to manipulate others. Even so, the author found that the subject expression degree of humans in primitive society is much higher than that of humans in secondary society, that is, the primitive society is much more democratic than secondary society. In modern European history, the Netherlands gradually moved towards democratization, while Germany gradually moved towards centralized rule until World War II. The author found that the subject expression degree in the poetry of these two countries also evolved in the opposite direction: the Netherlands gradually increased, while Germany gradually decreased. According to the theory of two-level society, China was a primitive society-type superpower before the Warring States period, and gradually moved towards centralized rule after the Qin and Han dynasties. The author found that the subject expression degree in Chinese history gradually decreased, while the democratization in the West gradually increased the subject expression degree. [3] In short, the author’s research on the subject expression degree also supports that democracy is conducive to the free expression of subject consciousness.
If we define democratic politics based on the three points above, the original social superpower of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties in China was undoubtedly the most democratic system in the world. Even the centralized systems after the Qin and Han dynasties did not lack democratic elements. For example, many scholars believe that the Chinese imperial examination system had the same effect as Western democratic systems, giving commoners the opportunity to enter the bureaucratic class through learning and hard work. Yang Nianqun wrote:
“No matter how remote the rural area is, there will always be a gentry class recognized through the imperial examination system. They are the most cultured people in the area and often play the role of local spokespersons. The common people can express their opinions to the officials through the gentry. The gentry are the intermediaries between the common people and local grassroots cadres. I think this is the representative system, which is the Chinese reflection of the so-called modern democratic system.”[11]
Huntington’s foresight regarding the clash of civilizations, or the clash of different cultures, has the potential to escalate into violent conflict and even localized wars. It also carries the possibility of a return to five thousand years of war-torn civilization. All intellectuals worldwide, and all people concerned with the fate of humanity, must join hands to seek the possibility of coexistence and mutual learning. If we follow the path of Western civilization, we must avoid violent conflict and war; if we follow the path of Chinese civilization, we must avoid top-down chaos.
IV. The Ideal of Returning to the Original Social Aesthetic Mindset of Taoism
Five thousand years of war-driven civilization have firmly established our nations, societies, cultures, and individual mindsets in a state of stress response to war. Our task now is to break free and return to the relaxed and leisurely human nature. Living in a modern secondary society, we can only approach the Taoist ideals of our original society and ultimately escape the war and conflict of this secondary society by casting aside all worldly noise, returning to a natural state of mind, and enjoying life.
Individual activities at the current secondary social level, such as career pursuits and self-actualization, can only be a part of the existing secondary society, representing a specific direction within it, and may conflict with other secondary social forms. The demonstrations, street riots, and even local wars in the Western world today are all conflicts between different directions within the secondary society. The dramatic increase in suicide rates in North America in the last century, and the doubling of the suicide rate in Canada, both illustrate that freedom in the secondary society cannot replace the freedom of the original society; the freedom gained through struggle within the secondary society is merely a construct of the social hierarchy. We don’t need to work tirelessly like ants day and night before enjoying life, much less push each other to the point of madness.
Laozi, Zhuangzi, and other authors of Daoist classics unanimously stated that a prehistoric egalitarian society was the Daoist ideal, a society where no authority could impose its will on humanity. They even referred to people living in such a society as “True People” (真人). As Wenzi said, “It is essential to let people live according to their own nature, allowing them to live comfortably, doing what they can do, and managing what they can manage. In this way, everyone is equal, and no one can oppress another.” (Original text: Let each person be in accordance with their nature, at peace in their dwelling, in their proper place, doing what they can, fulfilling their needs, and applying what is appropriate; in this way, all things will be equal, and there will be no way for them to surpass each other. Wenzi, Volume 8, Nature.)
Now, doctors use computers to assist them in diagnosing and treating patients. The author once wrote, “If well-trained national managers were to use large computers to manage the country and society, decision-making would be faster and cheaper. The will of the people could be entered into the computer at the same time and considered together. Such a system would be more like the human body’s management system for its own cells, tissues and physiological biochemistry.” [2, 10] In the beginning, these professional national managers, like doctors, used their professional knowledge to perform national management duties. Once everything was in place, these people only needed to manage the national computer system. During this period, it is necessary to vigorously develop the diversity of communities and establish many different cultural and value systems to reflect the multi-directional and multi-form nature of secondary society. Citizens have the freedom to choose and enter these different communities. Data on citizens’ activities in these communities, including the number of participants in various social activities, as well as data on citizens’ emotions and intentions analyzed by audio and video recordings, are entered into the national unified computer system for balancing and feedback. Such a computer management system will eventually replace industrial and service companies, so these words are still far from the current social reality. [3]
The author has specifically discussed the equivalence of fantasy and reality. [2, 12] In the future, we will vigorously develop computer simulation products for real life. Sitting in a computer room, wearing the headphones and eye mask provided by the computer, the computer can give you a life experience exactly like real life. In the ideal society of the future, people can freely request a certain entertainment activity, but the computer management system of society will secretly and randomly divide the people who request the entertainment activity into two groups: one group participates in real entertainment activities, and the other group participates in computer virtual entertainment activities. As long as computer technology is advanced enough, these two groups of people may have the same life experience without being able to distinguish between reality and illusion, and may even never know whether the entertainment activity they participated in was real or computer virtual. The ratio of these two groups is determined by the social financial capacity. [3]
V. Conclusion
Zoologists believe that play in juvenile mammals prepares them for adult life. The two-tiered society theory posits that humans retain this play-playing habit throughout their lives as preparation for a secondary social life. The social practices of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties in China suggest that civilized life does not necessarily require entering a secondary society that cannot be artificially controlled. In the six thousand years of human civilization, typified by Western civilization, the ever-escalating pressure of war led to self-destruction, greatly accelerating the evolution of civilization. Now, with advancements in transportation and communication enabling us to live in a small global village, the possibility of humanity returning to a primitive social life at the artificial secondary social level is presented. The author speculates that, mimicking the human body’s management of trillions of cells, existing nations and societies could be managed by large computers—that is, without any human intervention except for a balancing feedback mechanism. This aligns with the Daoist philosophy’s advocacy of a primitive society: enjoying immediate pleasure, transforming the individual struggles and self-realization of the existing secondary society into a Zhuangzi-esque expanse of unrestrained freedom. The large computer system would then select a few ideas from countless such unrestrained personal illusions for use in improving the secondary society.
If Western history leads to endless competition and war, then the failure of China’s historical system of social division and centralization to properly balance and respond to conflict, and its aestheticization and illusory portrayal of real life, will ultimately resolve the periodic collapse of the overall mechanisms of Chinese civilization, as well as the conflicts and wars in Western history.
literature:
[1]David Premack and James Premack(2002): Why animals have neither culture nor history. In Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology, edited by Tim Ingold, London and New York: Routledge.
[2] You-Sheng Li (2005): A New Interpretation of Chinese Taoist Philosophy. London, Canada: Taoist Recovery Centre.
[3] Li Yousheng (2014): Looking at Confucius from a different perspective. Suzhou University Press.
[4]William Eckhardt(1995): A dialectical evolutionary theory of civilizations, empires, and wars. In: Civilizations world systems studying world-historical change, ed by SK Sanderson. Walnut Creek, USA: Alta Mira Press. p75-108.
[5] Claudio Cioffi-Revilla and David Lai (1995): War and Politics in Ancient China, 2700 BC to 722 BC: Measurement and Comparative Analysis. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 39:467-494.
[6] Keegan (2010): A History of Warfare, translated by Shi Yinhong. Commercial Press.
[7] Li Yousheng (2012): The Differences Between Eastern and Western War Cultures: A Case Study of Duke Xiang of Song’s Defeated Defeat Due to His Adherence to the Rules of War. (Xue Deng, Issue 24; http://confucius2000.com/writer/yousheng.htm)
[8] Yang Jisheng (2008): Tombstone: A True Account of the Great Famine in China in the 1960s. Hong Kong: Tiandi Book Co., Ltd.
[9] Zhang Hongjie (2007): Five Fates of Chinese Emperors. Taiyuan: Shanxi People’s Publishing House, 2007.
[10] Zhang Hongjie (2012): It’s tiring to rule the world: Nine flavors of Chinese-style power. Changchun: Jilin Publishing Group, 2012.
[11] Yang Nianqun (2015): The Legacy of the Imperial Examination System. (http://www.aisixiang.com/data/94033.html)
[12] Li Yousheng (2006): A New Interpretation of Chinese Taoism. London, Canada: Taoist Rehabilitation Centre. pp. 248-255.
author By Dr. You-Sheng Li
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