When the "Sky" Falls

By Fan Xue-de

The Chinese people like to use the word "do". In the past, they would do revolution and do movements. Now they do business, do money and do fun. "Do prostitutes" used to be a shameful term, but now it is replaced by "do women", a more neutral phrase which shows off one's flirting skills.

Do not misunderstand materialism

Some of my friends ask me if the popular desires for pleasure and wealth among the Chinese people have anything to do with materialism taught in school for many years. Well, this is a tough question and it does not appear to have a clear answer.

When trying to defend materialism, Engels said: "As far as foolish people are concerned, materialism equals to banquets, fun, pleasure, getting drunk and everything else a fool cares to pursue." Some people indeed misunderstand materialism in such a way. On the other hand, there are also materialistic thinkers who vulgarize it and ruin it.

Materialism existed in ancient history as a philosophy. One scholar argued that materialism should be interpreted as material-based, not material-exclusive. The theory focuses on origin and nature of material. True materialists believe that everything in the universe, including life and spirit, can be explained by matters' various states and their movement. The theory that promotes materialistic gains more than anything else ought not to be called materialism. It is pragmaticism.

Serious materialists show contempt to pragmaticists. Epicurus, the Greek materialist, believed that happiness was the ultimate goal of human life. Happiness, to him, did not mean pleasure or dissipation. It meant a painless body and a peaceful mind. Marx was the founder of historical materialism, but he sharply criticized those who were enslaved by money. He hoped everybody would have a chance to freely and thoroughly develop so that everyone would enter heaven of this world.

Most of the materialists are also atheists, but there are exceptions. Epicurus, for example, firmly believed the existence of supernatural beings. He believed the spirits were so busy doing their own business that they did not have time to care for us. Those who vehemently attacked Christianity, for example the French Enlightenment thinkers, didn't really do so for theoretical reasons; rather they attacked for pragmatic and political reasons. Even the conservative Hegel was able to realize this. He said their attacks were targeting those Catholics with the most shameless superstition, religious power, stupidity and immorality. Their shamelessness and wickedness were beyond imagination.

Paul ran into Epicurean and Stoic philosophers as he was preaching the Gospel in Athens. Although these two schools had very different viewpoints, Paul never bothered to follow any of them or attack any of them. He was very straightforward when he said to them: "Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you", because "he is not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being... In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead." (Acts 17:23, 27, 30, 31)

So you can see that the key issue is not to pick a school of theory to follow. It is impossible to know God through man-made schools, thoughts and theories. To believe in Jesus is to believe in God. And this is the key issue.

Oh we Chinese!

When I was a graduate student in Beijing, an old professor advised me to distinguish between two types of value propositions, the philosophical value and the worldly value. Philosophical value, be it Confucianism, Mencianism, Taoism or Zhuangism, impacts the society and it often meets the expectations of the rulers. Nevertheless, what is deeply rooted in human consciousness and what really has the final say in the society is the worldly value. The center point of worldly value is the pursuit of wealth and longevity, political power and fame. This is a very good proposition.

If someone shows a little bit imagination, everybody around him will ask him to be a little practical. The word practical does not mean any materialistic being. They basically advise the person not to go against social trend. The fundamental direction of social trend is to pursue practicality, gains and effectiveness.

A French missionary who came to China in the 18^th century tried to compare the Chinese people with the European people. He wrote in his autobiography that Chinese people were very practical and the European people were imaginative. At that time, American pragmaticism had not come to China yet. But even after pragmaticism came to China, it was never considered a study of truth; it was merely a way of handling daily life or a means to gain.

It is not exaggerating to say that the life orientation of the Chinese people did not go beyond preservation, supporting family, raising kids, good health, peace of mind and longevity. Lin Yu-tang, the famed Chinese scholar, commented that Chinese people had no appetite about abstract concepts. Hence the saying: All cats are good, white or black, as long as they are able to catch mice. This was exactly what Chinese people liked. It was easy to digest.

Then came 1949 and the Revolution along with it. Then we were supposed to revolutionize deep in our souls. We were supposed to break away from traditional ideologies. All of us, rich and poor, were supposed to adopt the proletarian outlook, also known as the dialectical materialistic outlook. I used to be brainwashed with this kind of outlook, and I even tried to brainwash other people with the same outlook, namely, the world is materialistic; materials constantly move; social existence determines social consciousness and so on. During the time I was in school, it was said that these ideas were too mysterious. To use a modern word, they were empty talks. How many of us truly understood them? And how many of us were truly interested in them? Some of us did, but most didn't. And this was pretty common in middle schools, in colleges and even in political institutes of the Party.

Nevertheless, the moral value, i.e., the proletarian morality, had tremendously impacted the Chinese people. Its most striking characteristic, in addition to the proletarian morality, was asceticism under the propaganda of the revolutionary banner, the sacrifice of individual needs in favor of revolution. It could be called revolutionary asceticism. Ever since I was a little kid, I had been brainwashed with slogans like "Fear no hardship nor death", "Never serve us; always serve others", "Serve the people completely and thoroughly". We were told to learn to live in hardship, to save every single penny, and to push forward as long as the wagon didn't break apart.

Echoing these slogans were a series of model individuals known to everybody. Those who barely entered kindergarten were already told to learn from Lei Feng. Admittedly, the education of the revolutionary asceticism indeed managed to produce numerous revolutionary fools, who aggressively pursued idealism, who had strong self-disciplines, who despised pleasure, who completely gave themselves up, and who would not hesitate to sacrifice their own life just for the revolution. If these people were to live in this world today, they would be labeled as having mental problems.

The Cultural Revolution pushed revolutionary asceticism to its peek. If a woman wore a skirt, it was considered the beginning of corruption. Life was tough enough, and yet we were required to eat bitter meals, which supposedly would remind us of more bitter life in the past. Revolution also eliminated sex. In modern Beijing operas, all heroines were either unmarried or widows, and they never came close to males.

Of course, only ordinary people were forbidden from sexual desire. High ranking officials did not apply. Then followed the complete perishing of revolutionary asceticism when ordinary people started to realize how key political figures, who demanded asceticism, indulged themselves in excessive sex. This was part of a social process of value transformation over twenty years ago.

All ravens are black.

On the surface, the current value proposition of the Chinese people in pursuing practicality and pleasure goes head-to-head against revolutionary asceticism that was popular in the years after 1949. In recent years, a lot of Chinese people criticize the current society for its lack of morality and unprecedented human desire; they believe moral education can save the society. I think the battle has been decided and there is no way back.

I have a Chinese-translated book entitled The Dilemma of the Capitalist Culture by Bell. It was written in 1978 and I was told this was a famous book. The author pointed out the double origins of capitalist spirit. One was asceticism from Webber and the other was greed. One of these was associated with religious force and the other was associated with economic force. During capitalist development, however, these two forces are seriously out of balance. While the religious force runs out of steam in front of rapid development of technology and economy, the economic force becomes the only master of social advancement. Culturally speaking, the economic force that reflects the dominating value proposition and life style is epicurism.

Bell further depicted in the book that epicurism was provided a greenhouse by the advancement of modern science and technology, the popularization of automobiles and movies and TVs and the invention of mortgage payments and credit card system. The main motive of epicurism is to pursue carefree physical intuition and pleasure. Its ultimate principle is to enjoy life and to satisfy individual desires. "Let us enjoy ourselves! Let us party and have sex. Let us get drunk and not worry about tomorrow." These things were considered decadent sentiments, emptiness and degeneration in the past. Today, however, they are considered open-mindedness, wisdom, self-perfection and self-awareness! The ancient King Solomon considered these as meaningless. Modern people don't care though. Rather, they want to possess, to have fun and to spend their life in pleasure, comfort and stimulation. Then life is completely worth the journey.

Even in church, which used to be considered a sacred place, prosperity theology gains a lot of popularity. "If you truly believe that you will be wealthy, you will then possess a lot of money," preached one of the American pastors who promoted active ideology. Another faith teacher, who promoted active proclamation, said that faith was nothing but a proclamation: "Whatever I proclaim, I shall possess." Somebody summarized this "new gospel" with a one liner: "This is health or cure, abundance or prosperity, sometimes even wealth and happiness too." "I want cure; I want health; I want money! I want prosperity!" Besides all these, they want sex too! Well, this is too vulgar to preach at church. So they said they wanted happiness.

What the Chinese people currently pursue is the western pragmatic morality.

The "sky" falls.

Bell said: "The real issue of modernism is religion. It is a spiritual crisis." Such crisis found its origin in the 19^th century. At that time, Nietzsche hysterically proclaimed that God was dead. Then he was mad.

If God had really died, what would human beings do? This is a problem.

In The Brothers Karamazov, the famous literary piece that Maugham praised as "the great subject", Dostoyevsky repeatedly discussed this subject. Ivan, an unbeliever and one of the main characters in the book, said that he wanted to be like his father before he was thirty and sexual desire would become his mighty pillar. "Now that I have fallen into this cup, there is no reason I will get out of it without draining it." His brother Alyosha said to him: "This is excessive indulgence your soul will fall into. Is that so? Is that so?" Ivan admitted it. "Then how are you going to survive?" Alyosha asked again, "Are you going to do what Karamazov did: 'all is permissible, all is possible'"? His brother had to admit it again.

What Karamazov did pushed negation of God to its ultimate conclusion: "If there is no God, what is left we cannot do? All is permissible!" This sounds like nonsense, but it is pretty real and honest. Materialism, as widely preached in China, has always considered proletarian gains as the ultimate standard to judge between good and evil. But are people's gains always right? Furthermore, whose gains are we talking about? What are these gains? God knows. Even if people's gains are always right, why do I have to obey them? This is the fundamental difficulty of materialism as preached in China.

Kant, the great philosopher, saw this crisis long time ago. Although he held that God's existence could not be intellectually proved, he believed that the existence of God, free will and eternity constitute the basis for human morality. Voltaire, the Enlightenment figure, said: "If God does not exist, we should make him up."

Chinese people historically feared the supernatural. A popular saying goes that above us are the supernatural forces. Therefore, they burned incense in every temple they visited and they bowed to every supernatural figure they ran into. The socialist revolution cleaned up all this, saying this was superstition. People were not supposed to believe in the supernatural, but they had to believe in something. Right? The desire for supernatural could only be fulfilled by supernatural.

So they made god out of a man. Collectively, its name was "the Party". Individually, it was the great leader and our red sun in hearts. The Party and its leader who represented the people were always supposed to be great, glorious and correct. Ordinary people only had a simplistic view: "The leader is always right. If somebody is wrong, it must be us."

Nevertheless, when the memorial building for the great leader in Tiananman Square was built, the "sky" in our heart fell. So the great leader was not supernatural after all! Therefore, when Shenzhen's slogan "Time is money; effectiveness is life" became the principle of economic activities, the intellectual domain also witnessed a quiet revolution. The early stage of this revolution was characterized by Nietzche's spirit of "breaking the idol" and "re-evaluating everything". (This was officially called "Reality is the lone standard for truth".) Soon it manifested itself through the negation of the old value proposition centered at the revolutionary asceticism. It started out by touching the wounded heart, through the realization of poverty, finally moving out of the altar the god whom the Chinese people had worshipped for over thirty years. At this time, people who had been spiritually enslaved finally said they were liberated.

Nevertheless, the liberated people quickly discovered they were confronted with an empty world. Now that there was no world savior after all, good and evil also became relative terms that were highly dependent on each individual's interest. Communism seemed too far away; pragmaticism became the goal. Collective people were not dependable; individuals had to depend on themselves. In the early eighties, there was a big discussion about life among youth and college students. Although the government tried to guide the discussion, challengers brought up the philosophy of subjective self-centeredness, which, selfish as it sounded, had secretly taken the root in people's mind. More so, it had been rooted in the new economic soil.

Since then, even though people are still trying to search for the right way in economic reforms and economic development, they do not have to search in spiritual domain any more because they have grasped a big rock, and that is "self". All of a sudden people seem to understand it all. They become more open-minded and they realize complaints about poverty do not do any good. The most important is to grasp one's own feel, to follow one's intuition, to achieve personal gains, personal enjoyment, personal pleasure and personal value. In the world of the self, the most practical thing is material gain. The Chinese people like to use the word do. In the past, they would do revolution and do movements. Now they do business, do money and do fun. "Do prostitutes" used to be a shameful term, but now it is replaced with "do women", a neutral phrase that shows off one's flirting skills.

From economic standpoint, China is still trying to jump on the bandwagon of "post-industrial society", yet culturally she has already joined the club of modern society. China never formally went through the period of modernism as western countries did; even if she did, it was merely imitation and it usually came a bit too late. However, the Chinese people are trying really hard to free themselves from the bondage of revolutionary asceticism.

Materialism in Chinese style told the Chinese people there was no god, and the Chinese people believed it. The Cultural Revolution made them realize once again that their great leader was no god either. Today, they seem to understand more than ever: I am my own god. We certainly do not have to publicly build up a cultural superpower centered at epicurism like the western countries do; we still want to continue our construction of a socialist spiritual civilization. But we know very clearly that the only practical thing is to build our own cozy nest.

If there is no god, what is left we cannot do? "What Karamazov did" completely destroyed the halo of materialism. Then what real stuff does a man have as his life jacket? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. So he can only settle for his own gains and his own pleasure. He knows very clearly that these things are not dependable. But what does he care? "When I die, flood does not mean anything."

The problem, however, is that God does exist. He is always there. Jesus said: "My Father always does and so do I." Thousands of Christians are witnesses of this truth. Before they believed in Jesus, they had evil thoughts, monetary desire, sexual desire or powers desire. Evil thoughts made them live in discontent and die in discontent. No matter how detached they were from this world, they were never satisfied nonetheless. After they believe in Jesus, however, they learn that one cannot serve two masters; they cannot serve God and money at the same time. They are also willing to worship the Almighty God. It is interesting that once Jesus becomes somebody's Lord, this person will no longer live in discontent.

Of course there are still worries. He still has to take care of his daily needs. But now he understands he is a person. A person does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. At this time, he will feel the following common Chinese idiom containing quite a bit of black humor: Human beings are such a jerk.

The author came from Shandong Province. He taught Marxist philosophy for many years in the provincial Party Institute. Now he lives in Illinois as a minister and writer.