Thursday, November 21, 2013

Confucianism and Constitution

Confucius’s core idea is on humanity. It is the search of factors that shape us human. It proposed an ideal model on dignity and apathy. It proposed the development model and role playing framework for individuals. It is so-called the reappearance of social structure on individuals. It did not give us the principles of formation of social structure. Therefore the social rules were reduced as personal virtues. It cannot help us to lay the foundation of modern society.

Constitution is the law which represents the social contract and governs the government. The spirit of the constitution should be believed by the members of society. The core values are more on public affairs or interpersonal affairs. As we investigate Confucianism, we can find it more on family affairs and intrapersonal affairs. The revival of Confucianism in Sung dynasty revised the relationship between the nature and the human. It left blank in the political aspect. It did not reject absolutism where the government seemed not exist in the traditional Chinese society. The incomplete ideological framework may be able to work with modern constitution. Such cooperation may be similar to the relationship between Christianity and modern constitution.

In the old days, the Protestants in New England regarded making excessive money as evil until the idea of managing business was interpreted as managing the lands given by God. As Benjamin Franklin said, "Industry. Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions." The economy was geared up. The development of USA was boosted up.

The collapse of original Chinese spirit requires the revival of Confucianism. That's why the traditional Sinologists were searching for a big revision on the ideological framework. For example, the idea of suppressing personal desire may not fit into the freedom of faith. The projection of personal guideline cannot regulate the organizations and institutions. At least, the most precious Confucius values on humanity and dignity must be kept but the old rules and guidelines derived from this idea should be redeveloped in order to fulfill the needs of modern society. The constitution should be revised incorporating with these redeveloped principles. Regulations and education can be revised accordingly.

Unfortunately, PRC has gone far beyond from Confucianism and constitution. ROC still needs to improve its political status quo. Hong Kong is not ready to become the key player of the political reform for Chinese. The Confucianist constitution is just a dream.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Online Social Network

Nowadays the online social network has shortened the distance between you and your friends and also your enemies. We enjoy the sharing but we are not well prepared to resolve conflicts.
Both constructive and destructive messages can go far away. Messages run very fast and evolve very fast. They cannot be checked on time. It really hurts our understanding of the topic.

The bite-size and visualized messages can go viral. All of us are flooded by these advertising messages which simplify the real context and try to move us emotionally. It cannot help us to get the full picture or to go through the discussion on the key aspects of current issues. The opinions and ideas are scattered among the social networks. It is very hard to put them together.

Can we get rid of the problems of online social network? It seems not. Not all of us are clever enough to distinguish the facts from the opinions, the description from the parodies, the black humor from the tragedies. We cannot expect AI can help us a lot. We have more chances to contact with other communities and cultures.  Thus we need more effort to relieve our unrest.
Can we learn on the online social network? We may be able provided that we can trace all of our records and we are true to our heart during reflection.

Can we understand how others learn? We know that we have not traced the changes in others’ mind directly. It would become a black hole. However, a black hole does not mean that there is no information at all. The experts in inverse problem could help us on remote sensing of these psychological changes. Reconstruction of models may require us certain assumptions. Is it a self-prophecy? It is probably not because everything will be revised when there is a contradiction.