One crisp winter evening during my freshman year in College, I walked about a half mile from my dorm to a hill that rose just over the lights of the campus. The moon was bright and illuminated he snow covered ground. The bite in the air was not unpleasant, it did not cause wind and it prevented clouds from covering the sky, the only variation from black and stars was a halo caused by moisture framing the mostly full moon. I was armed with my film camera and a notebook. I tried to capture the scene (the photographs weren’t every engaging never used them, I think that the negatives now live in a box under my bed) then I wrote. The words flowed out of me, I wrote about the universe and our connection to it, the springs, summers, autumn and winters of a person’s life and all life. I ended without knowing how I began or what I had written other than the last paragraph resounding in my mind. The final question lay in whether humans were like snow, individual flakes that become part of grand and growing snow covering, or whether since we are all born without knowledge each of us has to re-invent the world for ourselves. This excerpt from The Origins of Inequality by Jacques Rousseau delves further into a scenario where we each must learn the world.
Let us conclude then that man in a state of nature, wandering up and down the forests, without industry, without speech, and without home, an equal stranger to war and to all ties, neither standing in need of his fellow-creatures nor having any desire to hurt them, and perhaps even not distinguishing them one from another; let us conclude that, being self-sufficient and subject to so few passions, he could have no feelings or knowledge but such as befitted his situation; that he felt only his actual necessities, and disregarded everything he did not think himself immediately concerned to notice, and that his understanding made no greater progress than his vanity. If by accident he made any discovery, he was the less able to communicate it to others, as he did not know even his own children. Every art would necessarily perish with its inventor, where there was no kind of education among men, and generations succeeded generations without the least advance; when, all setting out from the same point, centuries must have elapsed in the barbarism of the first ages; when the race was already old, and man remained a child.
Teachers, parents, friends, books and all of our experiences create our personal worlds, it is also their existence that allows for men to not to remain children. In our seminar classes we often talk about Chinese/Eastern societies as collective and Western societies, specifically America as not. However, the simple fact that I have a language to that I can communicate with, a language that was given, and taught to me implies that society is by definition collective.
Every individual creates their own world based on their experiences, if we imagine our worlds as circles of Venn Diagrams, there must be a part that can overlap with any other person we meet, people from our home culture we might have a larger overlapping point initially but upon inspection we may find we have similar ideas to individuals all over the world. The point my classmates are making is that, current Chinese culture is born out of two teachings that would say individuals have large common areas, Confucianism and Communism. Confucianism which gives a system in which people in a society should interact with each other, if you apply the Venn Diagram visual to Confucianism you would say the teachings designate points that circles overlap with others in a society, and the designated points might incorporate more area intrinsically than if you tried getting to know someone and discovering commonalities. Your circle might overlap more with your mother based on Confucius’ teachings than if you tried overlapping only where interests were shared. The idea of communism in our diagram example would hypothetically combine every person’s circle into one.
I would say that I assume overlap with individuals I do not know based on how compelled I would be to help them if I knew how, there is no one I would not help the same is true for my friends. Following this example I assume a commonality between myself and others so I was offended by the statement that American society is not collective. I have found some truth in the statement for example: I am studying what I want to(the definition of a Friends Global World education) because I can, as opposed to my Chinese friend who is triple majoring and studying economics so he can be assured a good job, and will be able to support his family. On a material level, since China is not on a rationing system anymore, families in both countries still purchase food together but everything else varies case to case (as does the example of food).
I think it is up to the individual how to how many people and in what circumstances they incorporate others into their world. Right now, I am trying to incorporate too many ideas to attempt to make any solid arguments so I am stepping away. I would like to continue with the visual of the Venn Diagram to show relationships, between, people, societies etc perhaps do this in each country we visit, and separately discuss compassion for others and what the religious traditions describe compassion as. I have learned by flushing these ideas out that that I understand compassion as making someone/something part of your collective.
