Sensitive words have won the Sensitive Nobel Prize; in any case, that is worth celebrating. Unfortunately, China still seems not to have a “citizen” who has won the Sensitive Nobel Prize.
A lot of classmates on the campus network have once again dug up Mr. Sensitive Word’s “final statement” from the eve of last Christmas to share. It was titled “I Have No Enemies,” and of course the relevant information was quickly harmonized.
I ought to have reposted this article, but for the safety of my blog, I decided against it. To express remembrance and respect, I will at least quote one line here; I won’t note the source, since in any case the URL of any repost of this piece may disappear at any time: “Hatred can corrode a person’s wisdom and conscience; an enemy mentality will poison the spirit of a nation, incite a cruel struggle in which it is kill or be killed, destroy a society’s tolerance and humanity, and obstruct a country’s progress toward freedom and democracy.”
Mr. Influenza Word is indeed a man of ren, and well deserves the Sensitive Prize. Many so-called dissidents probably do not have such magnanimity. Opposing a regime with a heart full of hatred will not lead society toward the light. In any case, we do not hate those in power, nor do we hate the machinery of violence; even if resentment in our hearts is hard to dispel, we must not let hostility guide our actions, and even less should we use resentment to shape our ideals. Love, not hate—this is the essence of the starry-sky philosophy that Suixuan has always held aloft at the very top. Friends unfamiliar with the relevant position may look back at the articles in the “Talking Affection—Speaking of Love” folder.
“Invincibility” does not mean “repaying injury with virtue,” and still less does it mean extending an undifferentiated, universal love to everyone. This is the difference between Confucianism and Christianity. The love Confucianism advocates is differentiated. But what Confucianism advocates is of course still love, not hatred; one must not “repay resentment with resentment.” Yet neither may one “repay injury with virtue”; as the saying goes, “If one repays injury with virtue, then with what does one repay virtue?” Confucianism advocates “repaying resentment with uprightness”: one should treat one’s enemies uprightly and fairly, neither pretending to love them nor allowing oneself to be ruled by feelings of resentment, but rather treating one’s enemies rationally and objectively. Correspondingly, in dealing with family and the ren, one is not “upright,” but rather engages with them with private feeling. Hence Confucianism advocates “loving one’s kin,” rather than the Western manner of treating everyone uniformly, objectively, rationally, and equally. My own view is similar: the way people relate to one another is always full of emotional entanglements, not a wholly rational, objective relation. But if one is to let emotion guide how people treat one another, then it should be: love, not hate.
Love is emotion, not theory; it can never be equal. The “love all things” that I advocate does not mean a kind of egalitarian universal benevolence. Such love can only be some abstract and illusory thing. It is impossible for you to regard your father’s murderer and your own mother as equal; if you put these two on the same footing, then rather than being full of universal love, it is better described as being utterly numb and callous. But you can still love your enemy. The key is that so-called “love” is not directed toward some abstract, objective “object,” but rather toward the relation between you and him. For example, when I say I love cake, I often mean that I love to eat cake, not that I love to smear cake on my face; and when I say I love some cosmetic product, I often mean that I love to smear it on my face, not that I love to eat it. When I say “I love A,” there is always implicitly a relational structure of the form “I—how to act—A.” Any “love” signifies some kind of relational structure, one that connects me and the object in a particular way. And in the real world of life, there is no abstract relation of “I—A” that contains no structure whatsoever (no medium). Relations are always mediational (which is why media philosophy is the further development of what I once called relation philosophy). If I neither eat cake, nor spread cake on myself, nor make cake, nor design cake, nor sell cake… in short, if there is no real relation whatsoever between me and cake, then saying “I love cake” is completely empty and meaningless.
The object called “human being” is different from ordinary objects. Human beings are not for use; the meaning of human beings lies in freedom (see the old article “Seeking a Girl” for details). But so-called “freedom” is also something real, not some abstract and empty label. Every person is unique and different; the ways people interact with society differ from one another, and the relations by which each other person interacts with me also differ. There are mothers, relatives, classmates, partners; there are extroverted friends, introverted friends, intimate friends, and friends who are only half-familiar; there are people I respect, people I cannot stand, people who oppress me, people who have hurt me, and so on and so forth. Every person is different to me, and I am related to them in different ways. When I say “love others,” that does not mean erasing all these vastly different relations and rising to some kind of equal universal love. To say that one loves everyone is precisely to acknowledge and receive all these real relations, and with a positive feeling, to plan and improve those relations. For example, when I love cake, that means I enjoy the relation structure of “I—eat—cake”; but I will also go on to plan further: exactly how should I eat it? In several sittings, or all at once? Share it with others, or keep it for myself? Eat it chilled, or warm? Eat it every now and then, or only once every few months? And so on and so forth. When my relation to something is guided by “love,” that does not mean the relation is thereby simply and clearly fixed. The relation remains dynamic, constantly changing and adjusting. Through adjustments in relation, love may become faint and indifferent, or it may deepen continuously. When I say I love so-and-so, that does not mean I think the existing relation between us is the most appropriate one; quite the opposite, I may well be trying to adjust our relation. For instance, when I can’t even eat cake once every few months, if I say I love cake, I may mean that I need to increase the frequency with which I eat cake. When a person says “I love you,” he is often precisely trying to change his relation to you from that point on. Of course, when I say I love, rather than hate, this regime, that does not mean I think the status quo is satisfactory. When I say I love my enemies, even those who persecute me, that does not mean I am able to love them the way I love my wife, nor does it mean I am satisfied with the past and present relations between us. Rather, it means I am seeking, full of hope, a proper way of living together.
I have strayed far off topic. Finally, returning to today’s main subject, I want to dig up an old piece from two years ago and air it out: “A Little Essay on Freedom of Speech.” China’s current problem is not a matter of introducing a multiparty system or universal suffrage, but a matter of building the rule of law. And the first issue in building the rule of law is the abolition of “punishing people for their words.” I have already said everything that needed to be said; I’m bringing it up again here only as a memorial, so I won’t say more.
October 9, 2010
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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