Home » Opinion » Foreign Views
Ode to the 'milk of human kindness'
By Greg Cusack |
August 31, 2012, Friday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
DURING the last week, your fine paper carried three articles regarding Chinese and Eastern culture, along with musings about the seeming lack of receptivity to such by "the West." (What's Wrong with Western "China Studies" by Thorsten Pattberg, August 20; Do Most Chinese Care Enough About Their Own Language by Wan Lixin; and A Meditation on When and How East Meets West, by Andrew Lam. Both of the latter articles appeared in the August 23 issue.)
Allow me to offer another perspective. My wife Karen and I live near a tiny village of less than 2,500 people, a place many in my own country would consider the rural "backwaters" of the vast, uninteresting middle of the United States.
Unsung work
Here, where there are few large cities, common occupations include various kinds of agricultural and manual labor: humble, hard, largely unsung work.
Nonetheless, there is a Chinese-sponsored Confucius Institute associated with the University of Wisconsin in the small town of Platteville less than a two-hour drive from our home.
Further, several times during each year in Iowa's capital city, Des Moines, Chinese-American citizens celebrate significant Chinese holidays with traditional dances, dress and cuisine. These are widely attended and always receive significant attention from the citizens and newspapers of Iowa.
And, as Lam indicated in his article, both the study and practice of Buddhism is no longer uncommon, even here in America's heartland. Three of my dearest friends are practicing Buddhists, and I am myself currently studying Eastern philosophy and your greatest thinkers.
I mention these instances because it is clear that as cultural contacts increase between our peoples - such as the expanding student exchange programs of China and the United States - it is inevitable, and most welcome, that a greater exposure to Chinese people, their history, and wisdom traditions will be both influential and admired by Americans.
For there is a vast spiritual emptiness in America these days. Christianity here has been watered down to seemingly mean little more than the observance of rituals - attending services on the weekends, and citing dogmatic teachings of the institutional churches, rather than seriously attempting to integrate the teachings of Jesus himself. "Good Christians" are all too often also good - and comfortable - capitalists and materialists.
Chinese wisdom and spiritual traditions, on the other hand, emphasize who one is to be and how one is to behave. (This was also, of course, the essence of Jesus' teaching.) Precisely because the Eastern religious customs and wisdom traditions are less well known here - recall the old adage that familiarity breeds contempt - their message can be heard more freshly than oft-cited words of Jesus, which may have been committed to memory but too little taken to heart.
I believe that greater exposure to your views may help people recover what is also a deep part of Western tradition, too - the belief that we need to strive to be "good," "useful," and "upright" if we are to be truly successful as human beings.
More than 'things'
At heart, there are still many Americans who hunger for something more than "things," who wish to know more about other people and their cultures, who treasure music and art, and who are most open to respecting others, even though they be very different.
Personally, I fervently hope that China - and other great cultures of the East - would put even greater effort into reaching out to us in the West with opportunities to learn more about your culture and perspectives on important matters of our time.
We need to hear from your scholars and leaders, your poets and visionaries, your artists and musicians, for this is how people really can come to know and cherish traditions other than their own.
And, when such people do come to the United States, please remember that many of us reside outside the great cities, and live elsewhere than just on the East or West coasts of America.
You will find that the hospitality, friendship, and eagerness to learn in our part of America is every bit as great as any that you might find in our better known, and more frequently visited, areas.
In this summer of the terrible drought throughout the grain-producing Midwest, it is not just the soil that is arid - for all too many, it is also their spirit.
We need the "milk of human kindness" that comes from prophets and dreamers who still dare to entertain visions of peace, justice, and equality among all peoples, and who challenge us to walk with them into a more peace-filled future that we have crafted together.
I thank the Shanghai Daily for continuing to bring so much expanded richness, in all that really matters, to my own life.
The author has been a college teacher of American history and political science, the director of the US National Catholic Rural Life Conference; he served as a member of the Iowa State House of Representatives, and retired from public service in the Iowa executive branch in 2004.
Allow me to offer another perspective. My wife Karen and I live near a tiny village of less than 2,500 people, a place many in my own country would consider the rural "backwaters" of the vast, uninteresting middle of the United States.
Unsung work
Here, where there are few large cities, common occupations include various kinds of agricultural and manual labor: humble, hard, largely unsung work.
Nonetheless, there is a Chinese-sponsored Confucius Institute associated with the University of Wisconsin in the small town of Platteville less than a two-hour drive from our home.
Further, several times during each year in Iowa's capital city, Des Moines, Chinese-American citizens celebrate significant Chinese holidays with traditional dances, dress and cuisine. These are widely attended and always receive significant attention from the citizens and newspapers of Iowa.
And, as Lam indicated in his article, both the study and practice of Buddhism is no longer uncommon, even here in America's heartland. Three of my dearest friends are practicing Buddhists, and I am myself currently studying Eastern philosophy and your greatest thinkers.
I mention these instances because it is clear that as cultural contacts increase between our peoples - such as the expanding student exchange programs of China and the United States - it is inevitable, and most welcome, that a greater exposure to Chinese people, their history, and wisdom traditions will be both influential and admired by Americans.
For there is a vast spiritual emptiness in America these days. Christianity here has been watered down to seemingly mean little more than the observance of rituals - attending services on the weekends, and citing dogmatic teachings of the institutional churches, rather than seriously attempting to integrate the teachings of Jesus himself. "Good Christians" are all too often also good - and comfortable - capitalists and materialists.
Chinese wisdom and spiritual traditions, on the other hand, emphasize who one is to be and how one is to behave. (This was also, of course, the essence of Jesus' teaching.) Precisely because the Eastern religious customs and wisdom traditions are less well known here - recall the old adage that familiarity breeds contempt - their message can be heard more freshly than oft-cited words of Jesus, which may have been committed to memory but too little taken to heart.
I believe that greater exposure to your views may help people recover what is also a deep part of Western tradition, too - the belief that we need to strive to be "good," "useful," and "upright" if we are to be truly successful as human beings.
More than 'things'
At heart, there are still many Americans who hunger for something more than "things," who wish to know more about other people and their cultures, who treasure music and art, and who are most open to respecting others, even though they be very different.
Personally, I fervently hope that China - and other great cultures of the East - would put even greater effort into reaching out to us in the West with opportunities to learn more about your culture and perspectives on important matters of our time.
We need to hear from your scholars and leaders, your poets and visionaries, your artists and musicians, for this is how people really can come to know and cherish traditions other than their own.
And, when such people do come to the United States, please remember that many of us reside outside the great cities, and live elsewhere than just on the East or West coasts of America.
You will find that the hospitality, friendship, and eagerness to learn in our part of America is every bit as great as any that you might find in our better known, and more frequently visited, areas.
In this summer of the terrible drought throughout the grain-producing Midwest, it is not just the soil that is arid - for all too many, it is also their spirit.
We need the "milk of human kindness" that comes from prophets and dreamers who still dare to entertain visions of peace, justice, and equality among all peoples, and who challenge us to walk with them into a more peace-filled future that we have crafted together.
I thank the Shanghai Daily for continuing to bring so much expanded richness, in all that really matters, to my own life.
The author has been a college teacher of American history and political science, the director of the US National Catholic Rural Life Conference; he served as a member of the Iowa State House of Representatives, and retired from public service in the Iowa executive branch in 2004.
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