For the last six months I have been captivated by Confucianism. The more I learn about it, the more I believe the values it teaches are what is needed to rejuvenate our country. Ames makes an interesting point that rather then importing a completely foreign idea system, which could have potentially dangerous side-effects, it is better to use a marginalized counter-discourse to provoke change within an existing system; a evolutionary rather then revolutionary movement. Even though he is a Confucian scholar, it seemed to me that he was bluntly stating that he did not think Confucianism was right for America. This was really shocking to me because I had started reading the book looking for support in the completely opposite direction.
There are two things I see Ame's statement as suggesting: the first is that revolution is negative, and the second is that there are dangers in the high degree and size of symbolic information (I will explain what I mean by this in a second).First, are revolutions negative? There are many types of revolutions. However, in my mind I see revolution as invoking dramatic large scale action. In my mind I imagine a giant game of musical chairs. The time between each round could be generations, but at some point, the music starts, and no matter who you are you cannot help but move. It is childish, but I get very nervous playing musical chairs. The last time I played was during my sophomore year of college. Nothing put me above the nervousness. Not the lofty ideas I churned in my head, not my status, or the muscles in my leg. Not even the fact that it was a game. It is silly, but as that music played I could feel myself leaning towards the chairs, speeding up when I was furthest away and slowing down when they were within my reach. That said, there are limits to the control the game had over me. I was not willing to hurt anybody to win, but there were people who were. They may not have thought they were going to hurt people, and they definitely did not want to hurt people, but these are different from not being willing to. If you are really not willing to hurt someone, then you think first and foremost of that, no matter what else you are doing. But it's hard, especially when you want to win. And when it comes to life, most people want to win. This is why I think revoltuions are dangerous. They involve large scale, fast, change that i see as inevitably damaging. This is not to say that the means cannot justify the ends. For example, the civil rights movement of the 1950s through 1960s was a revolt ion in humaneness. It undoubtedly caused many deaths and shattered many people's reality, but in the end I think these means were justified. Returning to the subject of Democracy, I am very critical of our current form of democracy. When I was just a couple years younger I felt strongly that we needed revolution in America. I still think we need revolution, but not against democracy. It has its problems, but they are not large enough to justify the scramble. The revolutions I would support are revolutions of love and community. These are things I see to be worth the risk.
The second thing I wanted to discuss about the above idea is what effects the degree and size of symbolic information have. For something to be a symbol means that it has plural meanings. This can range from having two meanings to having ... well infinite. When I talk about the degree of symbolic information what I mean is that how much does it leave to personal interpretation. Some symbols do not leave much at all. If I write
3+3=6
There is not much you personally can do with that to change its meaning. This is why math is so powerful. It can create stability and thus secure its power. However, other symbols are not stable at all. Some people read the bible and decide that they must be good parents, others that they must save the world, and still some believe they must punish sinners. While this is partially due to high degree symbols, it is also due to the fact that the bible is a huge amount of information. I wish I could write some sort of equation to express this idea, so I will try (sorry if it is bad). What I am suggesting is that
Having a certain number of high degree symbols (Hd) plus a vast body of overall symbolic material, leads to near limitless interpretation of material. Peace requires order, and order requires stability. Even if the intentions of transmitters are noble, I think large amounts of highly symbolic material can produce unpredictable results in a society. Not to say that these could not be great things. But for the purpose of establishing a stable society, I can see how a marginalized idea counter-discourse would be more beneficial.
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