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Recalling days when officials really revered grass roots
By Wang Yong |
September 21, 2011, Wednesday
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IS there absolute equality in any human society?
"Yes" is the answer, but you will find it only at the bottom of your heart.
If you look at a person from his birth, talent or fortune, he has no equal. People are different, and how can people be "different but equal" as many idealists think? So it's naive for everyone to dream of living in a palace, or for everyone to dream of flying on Air Force One. But that's how far inequality can go.
Emperor or president, one must learn to develop what my colleague Ni Tao in his article today calls "visceral empathy." Men are born different, but through mind work they can become absolute equals.
Mind matters. But in a materialistic world today, the mind is often biased toward inequality - either in flaunting wealth or in showing status. Mind corruption is more corrupt than system corruption. Put a corrupt-minded person in any system, and he will just be corrupt.
When I read Ni Tao's article on some officials eating better vegetables than the rank-and-file, it occurred to me more as a case of mind corruption. After all, not all officials tried to eat "above" the people. There are officials who are satisfied with simple food at home, such as cabbage and tofu bought from a rundown marketplace.
China's political system of checks and balances has improved a lot over the past couple of decades, one example being the unprecedented rise of critical public opinion, especially on the Internet.
While this is progress indeed, one is discouraged to find that many officials are corrupt-minded today, a far cry from Chairman Mao's time when working cadres were mind-framed to eat what the poor eat and live the way the poor live. A big problem for China today is that many officials revere only the rich and the powerful, as do many Wall Street regulators. East or West, a corrupt mind is the worst.
Our systems can certainly kick out the bad apples, but soon the positions will be filled by other bad apples if we focus only on kicking out but ignore the need to reform the apples in the first place.
China yesterday honored national "moral models" in an effort to restore a traditional mainstream ideology, that is, thinking of others and doing for others. Given another 30 years, this ideology might triumph over money worship, a value spread over the last 30 years or so as our society was mind-framed to follow the rich and the powerful.
"Yes" is the answer, but you will find it only at the bottom of your heart.
If you look at a person from his birth, talent or fortune, he has no equal. People are different, and how can people be "different but equal" as many idealists think? So it's naive for everyone to dream of living in a palace, or for everyone to dream of flying on Air Force One. But that's how far inequality can go.
Emperor or president, one must learn to develop what my colleague Ni Tao in his article today calls "visceral empathy." Men are born different, but through mind work they can become absolute equals.
Mind matters. But in a materialistic world today, the mind is often biased toward inequality - either in flaunting wealth or in showing status. Mind corruption is more corrupt than system corruption. Put a corrupt-minded person in any system, and he will just be corrupt.
When I read Ni Tao's article on some officials eating better vegetables than the rank-and-file, it occurred to me more as a case of mind corruption. After all, not all officials tried to eat "above" the people. There are officials who are satisfied with simple food at home, such as cabbage and tofu bought from a rundown marketplace.
China's political system of checks and balances has improved a lot over the past couple of decades, one example being the unprecedented rise of critical public opinion, especially on the Internet.
While this is progress indeed, one is discouraged to find that many officials are corrupt-minded today, a far cry from Chairman Mao's time when working cadres were mind-framed to eat what the poor eat and live the way the poor live. A big problem for China today is that many officials revere only the rich and the powerful, as do many Wall Street regulators. East or West, a corrupt mind is the worst.
Our systems can certainly kick out the bad apples, but soon the positions will be filled by other bad apples if we focus only on kicking out but ignore the need to reform the apples in the first place.
China yesterday honored national "moral models" in an effort to restore a traditional mainstream ideology, that is, thinking of others and doing for others. Given another 30 years, this ideology might triumph over money worship, a value spread over the last 30 years or so as our society was mind-framed to follow the rich and the powerful.
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