Ancient Chinese Thought
I have taken a small detour to read some Chinese classics: the Analects, the Tao Te Ching, Zhuangzi, and Sun Tzu's Art of War. They are all short works, but challenging.
I thought about trying to learn Chinese once, but I don't think I'm cut out for it. On one hand (and feel free to correct me if any of this is wrong), it seems to have a very simple grammar: no cases or declensions, no real verb conjugations, no moods, simple markers for tenses. On the other hand, the very simplicity of it makes it difficult to interpret. I saw the following example of a Chinese sentence, each word translated directly into English: "Tiger father no dog son." I stared at it for some time without having any idea what it meant. The explanation: "if the father is a tiger, his son will not be a dog" -- i.e., the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Now that I know it, it makes sense, but I suspect that in reading there must be many cases where the meaning remains ambiguous. (Try looking at different translations of the Tao Te Ching to get an idea of just how ambiguous). It seems, based on my very superficial knowledge, like a language that would be easy to write poetry in, but very difficult to write precise technical works in.
The Chinese works that I read, apart from Sun Tzu, seem to fit this paradigm of ambiguity. Two of them are Taoist works and so are deliberately ambiguous, but even the Analects avoids anything like a direct and logical exposition. Again, the nature of the work tends against exposition anyway. ("Analects" sounds like a profound title until you realize it just means "leftovers" -- scraps of Confucius's sayings collected by his followers.) But it seems that Confucius delighted in never giving simple and direct answers. His arguments are more often like a sort of metonymy in which he explains one small aspect and expects the interlocutor to infer the whole from it. I won't elaborate on this because it is a complicated subject and I don't want to dig up examples. But I don't think it's controversial to say that Confucius's answers are less than comprehensive (see e.g. the Wikipedia entry, "Confucius generally responds indirectly to his students' questions, instead offering illustrations and examples of behaviours that are associated with ren").
It is not difficult to see how this could be extended to government. Everyone is familiar with Orwell's newspeak and the way the government in 1984 abused language. The one real-life example that I always think about is the Department of Defense, which until 1947 was the War Department. It is still basically an accurate description of the department's role, but what a great change in focus that simple word change gives it. It seems that legislation in the United States increasingly gets named in a way that, rather than simply being descriptive, biases opinion toward favouring it. Who, after all, wants to oppose something called the Patriot Act? The fact that the name "patriot" is derived from an acronym from the law's full title hardly justifies such a naming.
I thought about trying to learn Chinese once, but I don't think I'm cut out for it. On one hand (and feel free to correct me if any of this is wrong), it seems to have a very simple grammar: no cases or declensions, no real verb conjugations, no moods, simple markers for tenses. On the other hand, the very simplicity of it makes it difficult to interpret. I saw the following example of a Chinese sentence, each word translated directly into English: "Tiger father no dog son." I stared at it for some time without having any idea what it meant. The explanation: "if the father is a tiger, his son will not be a dog" -- i.e., the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Now that I know it, it makes sense, but I suspect that in reading there must be many cases where the meaning remains ambiguous. (Try looking at different translations of the Tao Te Ching to get an idea of just how ambiguous). It seems, based on my very superficial knowledge, like a language that would be easy to write poetry in, but very difficult to write precise technical works in.
The Chinese works that I read, apart from Sun Tzu, seem to fit this paradigm of ambiguity. Two of them are Taoist works and so are deliberately ambiguous, but even the Analects avoids anything like a direct and logical exposition. Again, the nature of the work tends against exposition anyway. ("Analects" sounds like a profound title until you realize it just means "leftovers" -- scraps of Confucius's sayings collected by his followers.) But it seems that Confucius delighted in never giving simple and direct answers. His arguments are more often like a sort of metonymy in which he explains one small aspect and expects the interlocutor to infer the whole from it. I won't elaborate on this because it is a complicated subject and I don't want to dig up examples. But I don't think it's controversial to say that Confucius's answers are less than comprehensive (see e.g. the Wikipedia entry, "Confucius generally responds indirectly to his students' questions, instead offering illustrations and examples of behaviours that are associated with ren").
I have trouble getting much out of Confucius. He seems to have been convinced that if officials were good, the people would also be good, and that seems like a very, very long-term solution to me, if it works at all. The one thing I absolutely love about his ideas is the "Rectification of Names." This is the name given to an idea that Confucius expressed rather simply: "Tzu-lu said: “The King of Wei looks to you, Sir, to govern. How shall ye begin?”
“If need were,” said the Master, “by putting names right.”"
Language is ambiguous and I accept that up to a point, but there are some uses of language that are sloppy or deliberately wrong, and they cause all sorts of difficulties. As a software developer, I see this sort of thing all the time in something as simple as the names of database tables. You may not think it would matter much, but if you give a table a name that doesn't reflect what it actually contains, you open the way for endless confusion. In the same way, I object to remaking words to suit some people's agendas: for example, "pre-owned" instead of "used," or "townhome" instead of "townhouse." Sometimes considering something in a different light can be advantageous (is a person "stingy" or "frugal"?), but in these cases I am convinced that it is abusive.It is not difficult to see how this could be extended to government. Everyone is familiar with Orwell's newspeak and the way the government in 1984 abused language. The one real-life example that I always think about is the Department of Defense, which until 1947 was the War Department. It is still basically an accurate description of the department's role, but what a great change in focus that simple word change gives it. It seems that legislation in the United States increasingly gets named in a way that, rather than simply being descriptive, biases opinion toward favouring it. Who, after all, wants to oppose something called the Patriot Act? The fact that the name "patriot" is derived from an acronym from the law's full title hardly justifies such a naming.
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