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Opposing Anti-Traditionalism
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16163 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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6 / 1989 |
2,847 Words |
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Zhongguo Quingnian Bao
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"Anti-traditionalism" is a major current of thought. It has permeated scholarly and intellectual circles in China and penetrated into every corner of society. It would seem to be time to take a look into its true nature.
Tradition is not hereditary. It is a cultural phenomenon, a social phenomenon. It consists of concepts, systems, patterns of behavior that have been passed on from the past to the present. Tradition has gone through quite a long period of refining and perfecting. It has gradually become more uniform and assumed a definitive form. It has gradually spread to include the majority of the members of society and thus has achieved a wide distribution. It has come to transcend the characters of individuals and has become social in nature. In the course of becoming systematized and passed on it has come to assume a sacrosanct quality. However, at the same time it has continued to retain the most basic characteristic of culture--plasticity, the capability of being remolded. The behavior of animals is controlled by their intrinsic capabilities (in the biological order) while human behavior is restrained by tradition (some definite sort of culture). Animal behavior never goes beyond its set limits and its ingrained patterns cannot be adapted in response to change. It is precisely because the culture and traditions of man are susceptible to change that the human race is continually developing innovations, is always moving on into "new worlds."
Don't blame tradition
To take all the mistakes and faults of people of the present time--all sorts of faults in system, flaws in ideological style, and even wrong-headed policies--and blame them on tradition is restricting one's vision to just one aspect of the nature of culture and is a way of thinking that seems to be incisive but is actually an absurd way of oversimplifying. When you make a mess of things what is the use of denouncing tradition when, in the final analysis, the first thing you should be looking for is the primary cause in yourself? On the basis of the differentiation between man and dumb animals, human conduct is regulated by tradition but is also capable of new creativity on the basis of individual initiative. No individual and no nation can escape actual responsibility. We must realize that to blame all our mistakes on tradition is to consider tradition as a rigid and immutable biological system and to consider oneself as an animal without an iota of autonomy or initiative. To be sure our very long and very rich history contains within itself everything imaginable. Certainly we can find in it analogies to every kind of mistake we might make. But it is not true that everything that existed or that happened in the past was a reflection of the mainstream of culture at that particular time. Nor is it true that everything traditional exerts a binding influence on people of the present day. A great many of the mistakes made by people of the present day must be placed on their own shoulders only.
The good old virtues
What is the tradition of the Chinese people that evolved in the two thousand years prior to 1949? It is a tradition of hard work and patient suffering; [it is] respect for teachers and elders; it is belief in the Three Cardinal Guides and the Five Constant Virtues that emphasize relations such as those of ruler to subject and father to son; it is a great concentration of power and authority at the center under the belief that there is no
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