Cultural Differences, the Ignorant American and Star Trek

May 21, 2010

I’ve watched Star Trek since the 1960s and have seen most of the spin offs.  In the Star Trek Universe there are many cultures and races—far too many for even Christians or Islam to convert since that seems to be a driving force behind both of these major religions even if it means using war and violence to make it happen.

One way to look at this is to consider cultures and countries like China, Japan, both Koreas, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore and others as if they are light-years away from Western culture.

If the US sent a spaceship to a far off world around another star and discovered a culture that was alien to our way of life, but these aliens had powerful, modern weapons and a strong military to defend themselves there would be no way to force them to change as the West did to so many cultures during the 19th century and a good portion of the 20th.

But what if this culture around that foreign star had products and materials  we wanted or needed for our civilization to survive. To do business with them, we would have to accept that culture the way it was and not attempt to change them or judge them as if that planet were an American Territory to be terrorized and converted.

None of the Asian cultures on our earth developed from Christianity, Judaism or Islamic roots. Even our staunchest allies in Asia, Singapore and Thailand, are Asian cultures with governments that do not fit the America model.

What does loss of Face mean to most Chinese?

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

Subscribe to “iLook China”!
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.

About iLook China


Cultural Differences, the Ignorant American and Suicide by Railroad

May 21, 2010

There is always a spat of suicides in China when public school students don’t get into college. Recently, near Stanford, California, there were suicides by Asian students who weren’t doing well in high school and it didn’t look like they were going to make the grades needed to get into the US university they wanted to attend.

An example of Western religious intolerance may be seen in this post about the Gunn High suicides.

The students would lay on the train tracks and wait for a train to end their misery. As the suicides mounted, the city did what it could to make it difficult for more kids to do the same. The high school shut down and testing was cancelled to remove the pressure. Gunn High is one of the highest ranked public high schools in the country. The Asian student population is about 80%.

Behavior like this is shocking but it is part of Asian culture.  As a Christian nation, is it the responsibly of American citizens to change this behavior even if we have to use violence and war like we are doing in Iraq and what we did to the American Indians in the 19th century?

Learn about the important of an Education to the Chinese

____________________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart. He also Blogs at The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

Sign up for an RSS Feed for iLook China


Lin Yutang Explains Christianity in China

April 27, 2010

“For most Chinese the end of life lies not in life after death, for the idea that we live in order to die, as taught by Christianity, is incomprehensible, nor in Nirvana, for that is too metaphysical, not in the satisfaction of accomplishment, for that is too vainglorious, nor yet in progress for progress’ sake, for that is meaningless. The true end, the Chinese have decided in a singularly clear manner, lies in the enjoyment of a simple life, especially the family life, and in harmonious social relationships.

“The Chinese are a nation of individualists. They are family-minded, not social-minded… It is curious that the word ‘society’ does not exist as an idea in Chinese thought. In the Confucian social and political philosophy we see a direct transition from family, ‘chia’, to the state, ‘kuo’, as successive stages of human organization …

Lin Yutang

“The Chinese, therefore, make rather poor Christian converts, and if they are to be converted they should all become Quakers, for that is the only sort of Christianity that the Chinese can understand. Christianity as a way of life can impress the Chinese, but Christian creeds and dogmas will be crushed, not by a superior Confucian logic but by ordinary Confucian common sense. Buddhism itself, when absorbed by the educated Chinese, became nothing but a system of mental hygiene, which is the essence of Sung philosophy.” Source: My Country and My People, Lin Yutang. Halcyon House, New York. 1938. Pgs 94; 101; 103; 172, and 108)

Learn about Superior versus Civilized

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar. 


Taking the Spiritual for Granted

April 26, 2010

Most people that live in Western democracies grew up fearing and hating the word “Communist: during the Cold War. The media brainwashing that went on for decades to paint the word “communism’ as evil did a great job.

Christianity in China

A conservative, Republican, born-again Christian, evangelical friend of mine that has never visited China was proud to E-mail me and say that Christianity is the fastest growing religion in China. He also told me that ‘communism’ was evil.

Taking one word and using that word as a definition for evil is wrong. Mao did evil deeds during the twenty-seven years he ruled as China’s modern emperor. Stalin and Hitler also were responsible for horrible atrocities. Words are not evil. Using a word to describe evil is dangerous. It leads to stereotyping. If what my friend said was true, than my mother-in-law, the closet Christian, would be evil since she lived in a communist country.

See “An American Shadow Over the Philippineshttp://wp.me/pN4pY-6Z

 


Older than the New Testament

March 20, 2010

A conservative friend once said that Communism was evil and that China needed a proper legal system. Since China already has a legal system, what did he mean?  I’ve known this individual for decades, and I’m sure he meant that China should have a legal system like the one in America or the U.K. After all, he claims scripture guides his life and the Christian Bible has been around for centuries proving it comes from God. There is no other choice.

The problem with that logic is Confucius walked the earth long before Christ, and the New Testament didn’t exist for centuries after Christ was gone. What Confucius taught has been around longer.

What about China’s legal system? The highest agency in China is the Supreme People’s Procuratorate.  This agency is responsible for both prosecution and investigation in the People’s Republic of China.  Similar institutions influence the office of the Procurator in the Socialist legal system. Its direct predecessor in China is the Supreme Court of the Republic of China, which in turn is descended from the Procuratorial Office of the late Qing Dynasty.

China's Supreme Court

The Chinese legal system may have been broken during Mao’s Cultural Revolution but not any longer.  It also appears that China’s legal system is an organic institution capable of change as seen in this piece from the Dui Hua Human Rights Journal.

This series of posts about the legal system in China started with Officer in Action http://wp.me/pN4pY-ho