The course on globalization has finally reached ZW’s report; it looks as though next week it will be my turn……
Today’s topic feels as though it can be linked both to my last talk on “preserving commonality while seeking difference” and to the issue of media culture that I will be discussing next time.
One of the most basic questions that ZW did not develop is: why cultural self-consciousness? Why should we identify with our own culture? In the eyes of people like us, “stubbornly attached to the old,” what we urgently need is to revive a cultural identity that is steadily fading. But to those fashionable new-century new human beings, since traditional culture really has declined and seems unable to keep up with the times, why bother picking it back up? Let bygones be bygones; how wonderful it would be to open our hearts and embrace the universal culture brought by the West? — Even if scholars analyze Western cultural identity as the so-called dialectic of the particular and the universal, saying that it was originally particular and only later “proclaimed itself” as universal. But the fact remains that Western culture is indeed strong; survival of the fittest. Who cares whether its origin was a monkey or an ape—anyway, it has now survived and won, so it naturally becomes universal. What is there to pity about a culture on the verge of extinction? Its disappearance proves that it is unfit, so why should we identify with something obsolete?
We “conservatives,” stubbornly attached to the old, are utterly powerless when faced with such a rebuttal. Some people who do not like to lose will try hard to argue that promoting traditional culture is beneficial to our real-life survival and development, that traditional culture can coexist with modernization without conflict, and so on. These arguments are somewhat persuasive, especially when it comes to the vast and profound Chinese civilization: our tradition does indeed contain many wisdoms and inspirations still waiting to be excavated, and these treasures may well be advantageous to China’s footing and development in the modern world. However, if it is a weaker culture, such as indigenous cultures like Native American culture, the argument that cultural self-consciousness is beneficial to survival and development is probably far less convincing. Not to mention that the things in Chinese traditional culture that are beneficial to the process of modernization and to international competition are not all that easy to persuade people of either. The reality may be this: there are not many utilitarian reasons capable of supporting the preservation and continuation of weaker cultures.
An important insight in ZW’s introduction is that the key to preserving and continuing a culture is not preserving customs that have become empty shells, but cultural self-consciousness. But the question is: why is “culture” worth preserving and continuing?
And the reason I brought up pluralism’s “preserving commonality while seeking difference” is actually also meant to address this predicament. First, the persistence of a culture is not a simple matter of gains and losses, because the “value system” by which gains and losses are measured is itself part of culture. When we use survival and development as our yardsticks, and use survival of the fittest to judge whether traditional culture is worth promoting, we have in fact already fallen within the cognitive framework of Western modern culture.
This is a bit like what is called “incommensurability”: the relative merits of different cultures cannot be compared logically (though they may perhaps be compared intuitively). In other words, there is no value standard that transcends culture itself; we can only evaluate other cultures from within some particular culture, and it is difficult to leap outside any culture to seek a detached standpoint.
The pluralist view is that, just as some like cabbage and others like radish, the particularity of a culture does not need to seek universalization; dialogue between cultures is not about “seeking commonality,” still less about arguing over who is right and who is wrong, who is better and who is worse. The purpose of exchange and dialogue is to “establish oneself,” that is, to become “self-conscious.” In other words, I regard “self-consciousness” as some highest end, and need not ask further, “What is cultural self-consciousness for?”
To regard self-consciousness as the highest end may not be easy to agree with, but the reason is also very natural. For an individual, what is most important? Life and health? Growth and reproduction? I think that for many rational people, “self-consciousness” is probably crucial: imagine if you could obtain eternal life, but the price was that most or all of your memories would be erased—would you gladly accept it? I think many people would not. This shows that, for human beings, survival is not necessarily the most important thing, or perhaps “self-consciousness,” identification with and memory of the self, is the human “existence” itself?
For a certain culture or a certain nation, perhaps the same is true. Survival is of course important, but what is an amnesiac, hollow, self-lost “lingering on,” if not just another form of extinction?
A view of life I want to introduce is this: the purpose of living lies precisely in “seeking oneself” (Fromm). The whole course of life is an inquiry into and interpretation of “Who am I? Who should I be?”
Whether from the perspective of the individual or from that of the nation, the question “Who am I?” will inevitably involve my “culture.”
On the one hand, human beings always have a desire: they hope that others will be like themselves and hope that others will accept them. But before one can say this, one must already face directly the word “self.” Thus, on the other hand, everyone also has this kind of desire—hoping to find oneself, hoping to establish individuality, that is, to find the differences and distinctions between oneself and others. Therefore, when I discover disagreements between myself and others, I may not necessarily feel discouraged; sometimes I may instead feel delighted.
We will be able to understand why, in this age of homogenization, it is precisely also an age in which people most pursue so-called “personality.” This is not a contradiction. It is precisely because homogenizing tendencies are rampant that people find it increasingly difficult to establish their own characteristics, and lose themselves in the crowd. But the innate desire to “seek oneself” has not disappeared; thus, many fashionable people can only use “external” means—such as dyeing their hair green, turning their pants into rags, and so on—to “display individuality,” doing everything possible to mark out “the self” in the crowd.
What, then, is the significance of cultural self-consciousness? In fact, cultural self-consciousness is precisely part of “self-consciousness,” and “self-consciousness,” that is, “seeking oneself,” is an innate, unconditional desire. We should recall history and continue tradition, just as we should recall childhood and carry on the thoughts of the past—not because without them we could no longer “live,” but because without them our “living” would lose its meaning. What we need is not merely to live on, but to live on as “ourselves.”
November 22, 2006
A Zhudan
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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