Foreword
I’m very grateful to all who have and continue to provide mental, emotional and physical support during the turmoil of these ‘unprecedented’ times – you know who you are.
Shownotes / transcription
Hello and welcome to the pilot episode of #AsiaRising. When I drafted the content and recorded this pilot episode back in March, it seemed to capture a very distinct moment in time. Four months later I believe it’s still as relevant, if not more relevant, and we’ve moved into zeitgeist territory for #AsiaRising.
The seed for this pilot was planted by some folks on Twitter, Marcus Guest @marcusguest, Ben Ford @commandodev, Mario Platt @marioplatt. Links in the description and shownotes. All three share a common interest in complexity and Wardley mapping, and are discovering the gems in ancient Eastern wisdom that could be applied to modern times.
When this idea was first seeded, COVID-19 had not yet caused widespread panic in the West. Now we are several months on and it is astonishing to see the geopolitical balance of power in a grunting and heaving tug-of-war, west to east in front of your eyes.
It’s sad that many people conflate China with the CCP, and it’s equally sad that its rich heritage is often used for propaganda. There are heaps of content on the Internet about China and China’s rise, and I don’t think the historical facts and concepts I can present are particularly unique or esoteric. I can only offer my Chinese diaspora lens on the events we see happening in real-time, along with a dose of history and philosophy.
Solomon in Ecclesiastes said, ‘there is nothing new under the sun’, and I don’t intend to reinvent any wheels that are well-oiled and running. You could trawl Wikipedia and read about Chinese culture there, but it would be rabbit holes with no particular end in sight. My intention is to enable Western-educated audiences to understand the deeply-layered cultures of the Sinosphere, leveraging on my academic background in linguistics, and to leave them with interpretations that would spur them to think on them more deeply in their contexts. I do not intend to contextualise anything for anyone, which is the trend of such Sunzi art of war in business type books.
Furthermore, to understand a language is to understand its culture(s), and vice versa. This is why sociolinguistics exist. I won’t only focus on the loftier concepts found in our philosophies, but also folksy sayings that help uncover the Eastern psyche.
Before I introduce the concept of this pilot episode, I think it would be helpful to take a little bit of time to share more about my background so that you know where I’m coming from. I am third-generation Chinese-Singaporean and unique in the sense that unlike most of my generation, I retained my actual mother tongue, which is Cantonese, not Mandarin. My landowning merchant ancestors fled Canton province, Kwongtung, shortly after the Xinhai Revolution. My linguistic loyalties are firmly southern and in fact, just under half my DNA is Austronesian, so you can imagine there’s less in common with northerners than you might think. All this to say that as a political stance I will be speaking all Chinese words first in Cantonese, followed by Hokkien I know it, then Mandarin. I was raised in a post-colonial educational system that had moved entirely to English-medium instruction, but through my maternal uncle, I managed to get into his alma mater, a SAP (special assistance plan) school which taught Mandarin and the Chinese language at the same level as they taught English. I learned Chinese not through the attempted phonetic system of Pinyin, but through the traditional system of recognising characters. I was put through Chinese calligraphy lessons, and learned to read the Chinese Bible in traditional script, not the impoverished simplified version. I also make no apologies for my preferences and stances.
Up until 15 or so my formal education was Eurocentric. I had more conversational knowledge of Greek mythology than I had of the Daoist pantheon of gods. In an effort to rectify that, I started to teach myself Classical Chinese, which remains to this day one of my proudest achievements. I am ably supported in this endeavour by one of my younger sisters, who similarly discovered the rich world of our ethnolinguistic heritage when she was 13. I think it would be impossible to grasp a lot of my commentary on this podcast if you don’t have an idea of where I come from and what shaped me, hence the past few minutes delving into my background.
So on to the main event – I’ll solicit topics from listeners, although I do already have several core philosophical and metaphysical concepts lined up for exposition. After days of deliberation, as luck would have had it, it was in the shower that the concept to expound in this pilot came to me.
天 – tin, tian – it literally means ‘sky’, but it’s way more than just that to the Chinese – it’s the cosmos, everything under the Heavens. It’s one of the most fundamental concepts to all Chinese philosophies. It’s a concept that predates our recorded history in its animistic form. In Confucianism, it takes on the form of an almost monotheistic Deity. In Daoism it is contrasted with 地, the earthly realm. Tin is the source of legitimacy; if you compare it to the Roman Empire, where you had auctoritas which is like social reputation or status and potestas, which is legal authority, and military authority, imperium – the Chinese had one source, Tin, the wellspring. The emperor proclaims himself the Son of Heaven 天子 Tin Tzi, and a dynasty claims legitimacy through a putative 天命 Tin Ming (Mandate of Heaven). We tell our children 天有眼 Tin Yau Ngan – the Heavens are watching – to straighten them up or to express resigned fury at injustice. A popular Chinese-Singapore neologism is Oh my 天 in place of God. The cosmos IS literally God. As with all gods, there’s a theological system around this concept if that piques your interest, but delving into it would detract from the purpose of this pilot.
天下大亂 Tin Haa Dai Luen – chaos under the heavens – is the perfect phrase for our times. The deeper, more unsettling implication for people who understand Chinese culture is that such 天下大亂 chaotic situations indicate that rulers know they are perilously close to losing their Mandate of Heaven and that regime change is imminent. If you look closely at today’s ruling powers, certain tactical behaviours around obfuscation, delay and sheer delusion start to make sense. Righteous rulers seek to preserve their Mandate of Heaven by ensuring the safety and wellbeing of their people, who in turn will grant them the mandate to remain in power. Countries such as New Zealand, Taiwan and Estonia are doing quite well so far in this regard.
To avoid ending on a glum note, I’d like to remind listeners that we are a fairly hardy species, even if we do our best to fast track our extinction. These 天下大亂 situations allow those ahead of the curve to understand how seismic shifts can work in our favour, to reshape societies and systems that will benefit as many as possible, rather than a tiny, arbitrary fraction.
So, until next time! Please, if you’ve found this pilot episode interesting or useful, share on your social media networks, send me questions which I’ll address either directly on the platform they were sent on, or in a Q&A section in the next episode.
Nothing New Under the Sun – 形勢 #AsiaRising Pilot Episode