I.
The Starting Point:
Searching for the Place Where People Are Forced to
Use Their Memory the Most
The
starting point, as a simple curiosity, was in
entertaining the question where in the world people
are forced to use their memory the most.
Upon
reflection, it was reasoned that that place must be
undoubtedly China because the Chinese language
writing system, by lacking an alphabet, would
require a vast amount of memory in retaining the
thousands of individual characters that are needed
in learning and using that stunningly difficult
language. Literacy in China is defined as someone
who can read and write 1,500 Chinese characters. At
a median level, some 5,000 Chinese characters (as
the ones illustrated herein) are needed to be
memorized. College graduates are required to know
7,000 to 10,000 characters. (Chinese dictionaries
contain a far greater number of characters that can
be in excess of 50,000.) All that is truly an
almost impossible task for the capability of the
Western Mind to cope with !
That
the evolved Chinese Mind is capable of performing
such a monumental memory task is not only short of
an evolutionary miracle, but it is also a most
powerful testament of the power of evolution
--the ultimate engine of Nature.
Due
to the enormous capabilities of the Memory
functionality of the transformed Han-Chinese Mind,
the entire current educational system in Mainland
China is memory based and not logical based as in
the Western world. (Logical inferences are being
memorized rather than being created.) That memory
based education in China is being implanted from an
early age in a Chinese child development program
and continue vigorously through the primary and
high school system to the college and university
levels.
The
evolutionary seeds that led the Han-Chinese brain
to develop into a memory-grabber machine must, of
course, been implanted long before the Chinese
civilization embraced its memory based writing
character system, and as such we need to dig far
deeper into the Han-Chinese history in discovering
the origin of those seeds --the subject of the next
section.
II.
On the Singular Evolutionary Origin of the
Han-Chinese Mind
The
dominant and continuous characteristic of the
Chinese civilization, from its prehistoric times,
has been vested in cultivating "harmony" with
Nature and its surrounding. The establishment of
that "harmony" required in memorizing what was
"good" and what was "bad" from Nature and
transmitting that knowledge from generation to
generation. For that evolutionary track, Logic was
not needed or required and, as such, the evolution
never demanded its development in any great extent.
Memory, by far, became the dominant player in the
development and the evolution of the Han-Chinese
Mind. A foremost example that can be traced to that
Memory development is the one provided by the
millennia-long evolution of the traditional Chinese
medicine (TCM) whose core evolved through the
cultivation and the cataloging of herbal medicinal
plants as in the sample Catalog provided below,
thousands of years in the making ...
As the Han-Chinese civilization evolved so was the
demand for the Memory storage to increase. The
appearance of a memory-based writing system using
characters for each word employed appeared to be
both a natural outgrow and an additional burden for
the Memory capability to expand. As a result of
that memory-pattern need of growth, the evolution
continued unabated to push forward towards the
fulfillment of that memory expansion need. To
accomplish that need, the evolution has had at its
disposal two venues that were both used:
1)
one, through a limited physical
expansion of the brain itself; and
2) the other, through a compression of
a functionality of the Mind that was
less in use and need which, as noted,
turned out to be its Logic
functionality.
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With respect to the existing evidence in regard to
a limited physical expansion of the Chinese brain,
we note Professor J. Philippe Rushton's book
Race,
Evolution, and
Behaviour,
published online by the Charles Darwin Research
Institute where the Table below is being
provided:
With
respect to the compression of the Logic
functionality of the Han-Chinese, we have a number
of most visible signs. An evolutionary compression
of the Mind's Logic functionality implies a
deformation or an impairment of Logic that, if it
is big enough, becomes noticeable for an entire
population. So hard-to-understand behaviour of an
entire population, by a Western Mind standard, is
where we need to look in finding evolutionary Logic
impairments.
You
see, when someone enters into his/her own house and
begins destroying the most valuable possessions the
he/she has in the house --that can be explained and
interpreted, through the Logic of the Western Mind,
as an outburst of rage, anger, despair, or
frustration. However, when the same act is not a
single isolated occurrence, but it is being
repeated over and over, every day, for a number of
years --then that is something entirely different
and, in the Western world that behaviour is being
attributed to a mental illness and referred to as
an act of clinical insanity.
Well,
exactly such an act of mass insanity has been made
visible to the world from the mainland China
beginning from 1966 and continuing for several
years. During that time, a movement in China began,
on a national scale, of destroying priceless art
work some of them thousand-year old. Paradoxically,
that mass self-sustained rampage was called and
labeled the "Cultural Revolution." It was
paradoxical indeed, because that self-destructive
movement (initiated by no other than the China's
leader --the Communist dictator, Chairman Mao
Zedong) has had noting to do with "culture" (being
in fact, par excellence, anti-culture) nor has had
anything to do with a "revolution" (as it was
carried out by punks). No foreign enemy could have
done more damage to China's national art patrimony
than the damage created by its insane home-made
"Cultural Revolution."
Less
dramatic and perhaps humorous "strange" signs can
be seen in a number of Chinese representations and
behaviour defying again all Western logic. For
instance, by far the biggest holiday in China is
its Lunar New Year Day that falls in the middle of
its winter (around the end of January or the
beginning of February) yet, strangely enough, that
holiday is also being dubbed as the Spring
Festival. No country in the world will celebrate
spring in the middle of its winter!
Strange indeed.
We
can go on and on, on that trail of peculiar things,
so let us mention just one more. The silverware was
introduced a long time ago in the Western world and
the comfort and the elegance that those utensils
are able to provide when we eat with them is a
given. Yet, in China, to this day, silverware is
hardly used. The thousand-year old primitive
utensils --the chopsticks are still almost
universally used and that, in itself, is baffling
indeed.
Yet,
perhaps the most dramatic and convincing evidence
of the impaired Logic functionality of the
transformed Han-Chinese Mind is in the academic
achievements seen coming from today's Communist
China: not one single Nobel Laureate recipient out
of a population of 1.3 billions! That is a
staggering statistics indeed and it must have a
logical explanation for it. In the following
section, we will provide that rational explanation
as we identify there another component for the
cause of that astonishing null result.
III.
Harmony, Dominance and Suppression
Versus
Disturbance and Singularity
In
Evolution
Evolution,
as noted and recognized, is the "engine" of Nature
and without it, Nature cannot exist. With that
fundamental recognition in place, we can explain
the evolutionary past of Nature and predict the
trends of its future. We also can explain the
evolutionary difference between the Western Mind
and the Han-Chinese Mind that is the primary focus
of this study.
Evolution
can occur only when stability is being disturbed.
That recognition in TRUTON is vested in its 2nd
Universal Transcendental Principle
(2nd UTPOT).
The agent for implementing that disturbance is the
Collision whose recognition in TRUTON is
placed into its 3rd Universal Transcendental
Principle (3rd UTPOT).
The anatomy
of evolution
presented in TRUTON is culminating in
14th UTPOT
with
presenting the
Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Evolution
to Emerge.
Continuing,
we note that no physical parameter in Nature can
continue to grow indefinitely and that fundamental
recognition is placed in TRUTON's finite mark of
creation (FV-MOC).
The
package 'harmony, dominance and suppression' is the
antidote of Evolution and thus, it is the recipe
for stagnation. A growth through harmony, dominance
and suppression is doomed to self-extinction. That
is because a self-destruction condition begins now
to work through a strangulation
process imposed by FV-MOC.
To give a concrete example of how a strangulation
process works when harmony, dominance and
suppression are in place, we can take a look at the
most famous and well known mass extinction in
Nature --the extinction of the
Dinosaur
some 65 million years ago. That mass extinction was
not the result of some willy-nilly cosmic
catastrophe (as currently is being speculated), but
it was because of starvation and of the depletion
of adequate quantities of oxygen.
The
great majority of dinosaurs were herbivores
(plan-eaters). And those plant-eater herbvores
were, in the end, responsible for the
mass-extinction of dinosaurs, and nothing
else.
Indeed,
the plant-eater dinosaurs, by having no predators,
became by far the most successful --and thus the
most dominant-- species on Earth. Being
vegetarians, they --through overpopulation--
depleted all the feeding vegetation on Earth, that
in turn reduced considerably the oxygen supply.
Without adequate supply of food and oxygen, they
had to become extinct. There was no way out. The
crocodile, on the other hand, living in the same
period with the dinosaurs, was able to survive as
the oxygen and the food available in their aquatic
medium was not much affected by the terrestrial
catastrophic depletion.
So
the extinction occurs when the domination and
suppression become the main ingredients of an
environment. That is because no (finite)
environment can sustain an uncontrollable growth
lacking an agent of transformation.
The
"harmony with Nature" that was at the foundation of
the Han-Chinese Mind evolutionary development,
created, as noted, a specialized memory-grabber
Mind unique in its memory storing capability.
Finding that "harmony with Nature" was based, as
noted, not on Logic (that became less and less in
use) but on Memory, pushing aside Logic to a
staggering extreme. The needed logical inferences
were being learned by memorizing them instead of
creating them. In this respect, the educated
Han-Chinese Mind resembled that of a computer whose
"brain" is a complex storage device capable of
storing not only events, pictures, sounds, or
smells, but also capable of storing entire logical
inferences.
By
contrast, and what a dramatic contrast, the
evolution of the Western Mind followed an entirely
different course that, in many way, was quite the
opposite to the one of the Han-Chinese Mind. The
evolutionary course of the Western Mind was a
course of constant collision between the
inquisitive minds probing Nature and the dogmas
provided and controlled by Religion. That
collision, that was absent in the evolutionary
development of the Han-Chinese Mind, was able to
generate a qualitatively different Mindset
where Logic and not Memory became their dominant
part of their functionality.
Out
of collision and disturbance and not out of
harmony and dominance evolution can continue
to develop. With that fundamental recognition in
place of how the evolution is being fueled in
Nature, we want to see now how those principles of
evolution manifest their existence when
transplanted from Nature to Society.
IV.
Extrapolating 'Harmony, Dominance and Suppression'
from Nature to Society
We
know that evolution in Nature cannot continue to
exist in an environment of 'dominance and harmony'
and, we also know that without the benefit of
evolution such an environment is doom to
self-destruction. Of course, the principles of
evolution work everywhere regardless of the
specific environment. As such, when that
environment is being applied to Society, the result
has to be the same. Looking back into the human
history and civilization, we see indeed that all
past civilizations of the so-called Great Empires
that were based on 'dominance, harmony, and
suppression' had become extinct, without exception,
through self-destructive mechanisms generated by
the strangulation process noted above.
The
modern societies that have embraced 'dominance and
harmony,' soon upon their formation have crumbled
down. Of course, those were the rigid Communist
societies of the Eastern Europe. Other Communist
societies still in existence had to make dramatic
changes for their continued survival. Most notable
in this respect is the giant Communist China where
its original Communist economic structure has
vastly been altered with the additions of new
economic 'capitalistic' reforms copied from the
Western societies. That, new capitalistic
business-type economic infusion, generated
considerable wealth in the deprived Communist China
and, as such, created the minimum condition
necessary for China to continue, for now, with its
altered Communist existence. But that altered
Communist existence is nevertheless based on
dominance and suppression with continued
cultivation of forced societal "harmony" --the
lethal ingredients of evolution. That is why the
ultimate fate of Communist China is sealed and
doomed for collapse. As in the case of the
Dinosaurs, there in no way out for Communism to
continue with its existence in China (or anywhere
else). Out of that collapse, a new China will
emerge where the societal evolution will continue
implanting new evolutionary seeds.
In
the nowadays Communist China, anyone that appear to
be a little bit different, or have a different
individual personality that could pose a threat to
the cultivation of the "harmonious" society is
immediately isolated and, if needed, eliminated.
That imposed forced "harmony" makes impossible for
a resident of mainland China to think "differently"
and to be able to raise his or her head above the
"harmonious" ceiling imposed from the top Communist
leadership without being crushed from that top.
In
such a climate of forced "harmony" no scientist of
mainland China could ever come with any original
ideas as the originality is being squashed by that
societal "harmony." And that is the additional
major component of the reason why out of 1.3
billion Chinese people residing in the Communist
mainland China not one single Nobel Laureate was
able to be produced. What a terrible sad
statistics.
If
one needs further evidence on that score, then we
need not travel too far and look at the nearby
Japan --the so-called great imitator-- with only a
fraction of mainland China's population (of about
127 million) that was able to produce 16 Nobel
Laureates since the end of World War II. The
explanation for that impressive result coming from
Japan is rather simple as Japan
- was
spared from embracing the Communism;
and
- was
spared from continuing with employing
the Chinese writing system that was
abandoned in favor of an alphabet
writing system, liberating thus the
Japanese Mind from the Memory burden
imposed by the Chinese character
writing system.
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V.
Concluding Remarks
Using
basic evolutionary principles, we were able to
decipher --on a rational basis-- some of the
mysteries and peculiarities surrounding the
Han-Chinese Mind as related to its singular
evolutionary road that has traveled.
The
recognition of the two different evolutionary
tracks that Nature has traveled with respect to the
evolution and the development of the human species
will open perhaps a new vista in our understanding
of the stunningly different Chinese Mindset that
was shaped and which shaped the unique Chinese
civilization in the making.
The
power of evolution, as we have seen has two swords:
on one hand, it is the instrument of growth and
development; and, on the other hand, when is
contained it transforms into a lethal instrument of
self-destruction. That arguably is part of the
grand universal cycle of Nature where new
evolutionary niches are being born out of the
destruction left behind by the suppressed
evolutionary forces.
In
a society, the evolution is its backbone of
existence that continuosly is forced to expand
creating new venues of development. For instance,
for several millennia, traditional Chinese medicine
(TCM) was the only system of medicine in China.
With the opening-up of China, the westernized
medicine reign now supreme in the nowadays China.
There are fewer and fewer TCM hospitals in China
that can offer only "pure" Chinese medicine. And
that, of course, is no accident.
The
betterment of a society cannot coexist without the
aid of evolution and that is why societies that
limit evolution are doomed to be left behind and
ultimately doomed to self-extiction. There is no
exception on that score.
The
Han-Chinese Mind has traveled a long evolutionary
road. With the advent of the Communism in the
mainland China, that road has been considerably
impaired. The roadblocks that have been placed are
not able to be contained for too much longer. That
is because, as in a snow avalanche, the build-up of
the unleashed accumulated forces can no longer be
contained. We are indeed at the verge of witnessing
a major social avalanche able through its tremor
and rumble to shake-up and crumble the Communism in
Red China any time now. That is because once the
conditions for an avalanche are met, the actual
triggering mechanism of an avalanche requires in
fact very little disturbance.
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Liu Xiaobo
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That little societal disturbance is what the
nowadays Chinese Communist leadership fears the
most in clinging desperately to their captured
power and control. "The writing on the wall" looms
larger and larger with every single passing day.
There is nothing, but absolutely nothing, that can
stop that trend although the current economic boom
in China will slow down for a little longer the
inevitable outcome... The voice of the murdered
Chinese political prisoner and Nobel Peace Laureate
Liu Xiaobo gets lauder and lauder with
each passing day... The day will come, with an
absolute certainty, when China will celebrate the
Liu Xiaobo Day as its National
Liberation Day!
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