>>pk@columbia

5.14.02 - confucius says

Why is it that I enjoy making my finals into a topic for my website? Well, it's like killing two birds with one stone; I can find the "time" to have another entry, and at the same time, I can study in a way.

Tomorrow is my oral examination for Colloquium on Major East Asian Texts. It's my major culture's requirement and I have no idea why I took it as a first year. What a dumb idea now that I think about it! We're talking about 200-400 pages a week in reading and a boring two-hour seminar once a week, which always degenerates into a lecture from the world-reknown, century-old Professor De Bary. I guess I would have gotten a lot more out of it if I actually bought all those books and read them all, but no - I sat through all those class discussions drawing circles and squares on my notebook. So tomorrow is my oral exam and with my lack of knowledge, or as Lao-Tzu would probably put it, my "no-knowledge," I guess the best way to feel better would be to fool around and script what tomorrow's exam may be like.

I know that Steve Mariucci, the coach of the 49ers, following the trend started by offensive guru Bill Walsh, does what is called "scripting the plays." Before games, he would have a board-like meeting with his quarterback and other offensive personnel and script out the first twenty to thirty plays that the team may want to run on offense. Some people have dismissed this process as counterproductive because the game's circumstances may change and different defensive schemes may show themselves throughout the game. I believe that this process can be helpful because after the twenty or thirty-so plays have all been run, the offense can then get a better feel for how the defense will react to each of the plays. Then, referring back to the "script," the team can then choose what has worked best from the scripted sequence. Ok, so why am I expounding on this NFL coaching method? Well, I will be attempting to script out my oral examination in hopes of better preparing myself for tomorrow. I will be the offense, De Bary and his TA will be the defense, and my scouting reports have come in from the students who've already taken the exam. Excellent. It's game time.

[I enter De Bary's office, sit on chair across from De Bary, whose TA is sitting alongside him]

De Bary: Your name is... Peter Kang? Ok, Peter, what will you be talking about today?

Me: Hmm.. um... I'll talk about government.

De Bary: Well, start with Confucius and work your way down.

Me: Hmm... Confucius didn't really talk about political theories as much as his successors. His views on government are mostly from the advice he gives to different rulers that he meets as he travels around. His main advice was that a ruler should rule with compassion and righteousness. I think it's jen and yi in Chinese? Well, I'm not Chinese, but I think I read them as those two things. He believed in an active government that people could look up to and admire for its moral goodness. And then, from Confucius was Mencius, who believed that the sage-king should be the ruler. This sage-king would rule by moral instruction and education. Like Confucius said, Mencius agreed that the sage-king should be compassionate and righteous. And Mencius talked about "extending the scope" of compassion so that a ruler would not only care about his own needs, but by realizing that others have their own desires, he would be able to care for them, too. And like Confucius, who avoided rulers who were violent and engaged in wars, Mencius was against the military style of government. He believed that governing the people by punishing them would only force them to do what the government wanted. Instead, if the government showed the people that a certain way was right or a certain way was beneficial, then they would gladly go along and not need any forcing.

De Bary: Ok, what about Hsun-tzu, Han Fei Tzu, Zhuzi, and Wang Yangming?

Me: Well, Hsun-tzu believed that people were inherently evil, but that culture would help them to develop goodness. And this culture would be achieved by social organization and social distinctions. The social organizations would be a rule of conduct that would establish for the people what is right and what they ought to do. Han Fei Tzu - I wrote my paper on him. He was a Legalist and he believed in his system of rewards and punishments. He believed that a ruler didn't have to be a sage-king, but that the system would make it virtually foolproof. But I believe that the Legalist principle of government was impractical by trying to be too practical because it would inevitably become a totalitarian state that would cause discontent in the people as observed in the Ch'in dynasty, in which local officials were too afraid to report the revolts for fear that reporting them would anger the authorities! As for Zhuzi and Wang Yangming - I know that Zhuzi had his Li principle going on and he talks about self-cultivation of self through the "investigation of things" along with a certain degree of "awareness." So he bascially believed that learning was the way to go and that a government supportive of this would be the best. And as for Wang Yangming, since he believed that self-cultivation was achieved by ridding selfish thoughts, and that everyone inherently possessed a cultivated mind, a government that is compassionate and active in the education of its people, so as to help rid selfish thoughts, would be the most effective.

De Bary: How about Lao-Tzu and Chuang-Tzu?

Me: The Taoists were more into the idea of "non-activity" for governing. They believed, like the Confucianists, that a sage-king would be the best ruler, but instead of an active one, a great ruler achieved more by doing less. A ruler who did nothing and tried to ban knowledge would be most beneficial to the people because then they would become ignorant of desires that trigger evil acts and they would be innocent, like children. But the ruler himself would achieve "no-knowledge" by a willful process of forgetting. That was what Lao-tzu had to say. Chuang-tzu also believed in the "non-activity" of government, but he emphasized nature and man. He believed that man's attempts at uniformity through laws and government were often harmful and led people to act with evil intentions. He believed that letting things be the way they are, or simply to let things be natural would make people happy and good.

De Bary: How about the Buddhists?

Me: Uh... Buddhists were more concerned with introspective issues, such as overcoming the worldly desires and escaping the Wheel of Life and Death. Their aim, which was to become enlightened and achieve a state of Nirvana, had little to do with actual government structures and duties.

De Bary: Let's talk about the literary texts. Which did you like best?

Me: Um... I liked the Manyoshu poems. I just liked how they were vivid in nature imagery and were short, so I was able to read them quick.

De Bary: Hmm... how about the novels? Tale of Genji? Monkey? Dream of the Red Chamber?

Me: (Uh-oh!) Well... Monkey was funny in the way it satirized Lao-Tzu as a deity and Monkey starts out as a rock - the "Uncarved Block" that we learn from Taoist philosophy.

De Bary: Ok. Your time is up. Thank you and have a wonderful summer.

Me: (Whew!) Thank you, professor. Goodbye.

[exuent]

Haha - yea. If it was this easy, I wouldn't even have bothered to cram so much or write this dumb entry! What's going to happen is obvious: I'm going to be really nervous, my voice is going to shake, I'm not going to remember anything at all, and I'll sound really foolish. PLUS, De Bary's going to ask me some hardcore questions that I'll have no clue at all for, and it's going to make me look around the room, look at the TA for some help, and cause sweat beads to form on my forehead. So maybe this oral exam will be the Green Bay Packers and I will be the pitiful 49ers who suffered a stifling loss in the playoffs because their normally high-powered offense couldn't get going. And the terrible feeling this exam will leave me with will force me to become an Asian professor in the European history department giving oral exams to white kids who I'll torture because I'll expect them to know their own history. Sweet.