Words&Dirt

“The timelessness and broad appeal of the teachings of Confucius begins from the insight that the life of almost every human being, regardless of where or when, is played out within the context of his or her own particular family, for better or worse.  For Confucius and for generations of Chinese that have followed after him, the basic unit of humanity is this particular person in this particular family rather than either the solitary, discrete individual or the equally abstract and generic notion of family.  In fact, in reading Confucius, there is no reference to some core human being as the site of who we really are and that remains once the particular layers of family and community relations are peeled away.  That is, there is no ‘self,’ no ‘soul,’ no discrete ‘individual’ behind our complex and dynamic habits of conduct.  Each of us is irreducibly social as the sum of the roles we live––not play––in our relationships and transactions with others.  The goal of living, then, is to achieve harmony and enjoyment for oneself and for others through behaving in an optimally appropriate way in those roles and relationships that make us uniquely who we are.  The analogy with music here is irresistible.  Harmony requires that each component maintain its own integrity and be itself while simultaneously joining in and integrating with the other participants to form an organic unity distinct from, and more than, the sum of its parts.  The unity of each of us emerges as we pursue this inclusive harmony within the orchestra of our roles and relations.”

––Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary, by Roger T. Ames, pg. 96

“‘I woke up in the middle of the night because I could hear Miro throwing up and crying in the bathroom.  I don’t think anybody else heard, and I didn’t go to him because I didn’t think he wanted anybody to hear him.  Now I think I should have gone, but I was afraid.  There were such terrible things in my family.’

The Speaker nodded.

‘I should have gone to him,’ Ela said again.

‘Yes,’ the Speaker said.  ‘You should have.’

A strange thing happened then.  The Speaker agreed with her that she had made a mistake that night, and she knew when he said the words that it was true, that his judgment was correct.  And yet she felt strangely healed, as if simply speaking her mistake were enough to purge some of the pain in it.  For the first time, then, she caught a glimpse of what the power of speaking might be.  It wasn’t a matter of confession, penance, and absolution, like the priests offered.  It was something else entirely.  Telling the story of who she was, and then realizing that she was no longer the same person.  That she had made a mistake, and the mistake had changed her, and now she would not make the mistake again because she had become someone else, someone less afraid, someone more compassionate.”

––Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card, pg. 211-2