This “third essay” was begun not long after the “second essay” was finished, and then written fitfully until today, taking well over ten days in all. So there is no need to be surprised at the confusion of thought in this piece. Generally speaking, the faster I write an article, the more coherent and fluent its line of thought is — on the one hand, precisely because the thought is flowing smoothly, it becomes possible for it to pour out in a torrent; on the other hand, too many interruptions make a line of thought that was already not entirely smooth become even more fragmented. But in any case, since I had started it, I eventually squeezed this piece of writing out to the end.
The reason the thought is so incoherent, and the language so awkward, is that several important concepts related to this article, especially the conceptual systems around “love” and “nation,” have not yet been sorted out. The usage of many concepts still needs to be weighed, so they are still employed rather ambiguously and vaguely. This is also why I have been straining to squeeze out this nauseating piece of writing: it can be regarded as the process of my thinking and weighing rather than its result, a process of association beginning from the Olympics and trying to reconnect these concepts anew.
If you are not interested in my thought process, or have read very little of my other writing, then I do not recommend that you read this chaotic essay. If you unfortunately do read it, you will probably find yourself bewildered in many places: what on earth is it that I am concerned with?
This third essay is different from the previous two not only in itself but even in the blog folder where they are stored.
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Whether from the standpoint of athletes, spectators, or organizers, winning gold and silver at the Olympics is not simply a matter concerning personal glory. A gold medal is always linked to the glory of the nation, or to what is called patriotic feeling.
This connection is reasonable. Although one should not elevate the idea of “patriotism” to the supreme position so that it replaces “fun,” the fundamental pursuit of the game, we can still properly connect patriotism with gold medals, and through the connection between gold medals and patriotism, come to experience how “loving one’s country” is possible.
How is “patriotism” possible? — This is an important question. “Love” itself, as a feeling, is not something to be judged right or wrong, but if you want to use the concept of “love” to name some emotion of yours, and to use the concept of “country” to indicate the object toward which that emotion is directed, then one can ask and challenge: am I mistaking hatred for love, and what exactly is this so-called “country”?
The most common mistake is to confuse hatred or contempt for the alien or for alien opinions with love for one’s own country. Of course, this kind of love born of hatred can still be called love, just as so-called hatred often is also born of love. But if that is the case, then “patriotism” is not enough to serve as the “reason” for certain actions. For example: “because I love my country, therefore I must boycott Japanese products”; “because I love my country, therefore I must boycott Carrefour.” These statements can of course serve as private reasons for action, but they do not contain a universal truth, because resentment is the reason for taking a boycott, and there is no reason why love must lead to hatred.
As for what love actually is, that is really a long story and not something convenient to linger over here. Put simply, love is always linked to the feeling of “good.” If I say that I love something, it is always because of its “goodness,” or because I hope it will become even more “good.” But I do not want to interpret “love” through “good,” because in fact I would rather regard “love” as a more originary emotion. That means I would rather say, “If I say something is ‘good,’ it is always because of my ‘love.’” But here we need not concern ourselves with the ordering of concepts in terms of priority or derivation; we need only point out their connection.
The question now is the connection between gold medals and patriotism. First, what relation is there between gold medals and the nation?
Let us begin from the spectator’s standpoint: we can all feel that when watching a contest, if one has a certain bias in one’s heart — that is, if one pays special attention to one side rather than treating all competitors indiscriminately — then the contest will become more splendid, more exciting, and more engaging.
This mood is easy to understand. By supporting one side, we allow ourselves to become more deeply involved in the splendid contest. It is rather like reading a novel or watching a play: if one can project oneself into a particular character in the story, as though one were breathing and sharing a fate with that protagonist, experiencing all these situations together, then the whole plot seems to acquire an extra layer of meaning, and the tension, thrill, pleasure, sorrow, and so on that one gains from watching are all multiplied several times over. Watching a competition works the same way. If you merely stand by coolly and observe, or keep shifting the focus of your concern while watching, you can of course still derive enjoyment, but the tension will certainly be greatly diminished.
Generally speaking, the reasons for choosing which side to support can be various. The reason I initially supported Italy when I first watched the World Cup was simply that I liked the color of their jerseys. Later on, one could slowly discover all sorts of merits of the Italian team. That is to say, the main significance of choosing to support one side is to make the competition seem more enjoyable to watch, and there is no need to drag in any grand principles, much less to endow it with a moral lever of right and wrong of cosmic importance.
Similar to the color of a jersey, “China” is one of the identifiers of the competitors; it is precisely these various identifiers that allow us to distinguish different competitors from one another. If one wants to choose whom to support, it is of course natural to pick those identifiers that feel closer to oneself — not to mention that we share so many of the same symbols and characteristics with them.
Competitive sport originally arises from the desire to “seek excellence.” Everyone hopes to win, and if one oneself is not competing, then naturally one will hope that the person closest to oneself will win. The person I care about has more in common with me, so I more easily experience sympathy, and more easily share in the joy of the contest,
The feeling of “patriotism” is actually this simple: I respect all countries, just as I respect all athletes, respect the arena of fair and friendly competition, respect rules and etiquette, but at the same time I always have a certain preference — namely, I especially care about my own country and especially hope that she can achieve better results in fair games, run a little faster, leap a little higher. Her actions and accomplishments will attract my attention all the more. The reason is very simple: she makes me feel the most亲切; the aim is also very simple: so that the world may seem more splendid and more interesting. In this sense, “patriotism” does not require any grand moral justification, nor any complicated argument, and it will certainly not be refuted by reasons such as so-called internationalism or universalism.
But when we turn to the athlete’s standpoint, things are not so simple. “Bring honor to the nation” is a concept often mentioned; this concept certainly also makes sense. Even at the ancient Greek Olympics, where all competitors participated only in their personal capacity and had no notion of a “city-state team” or the like, we see that the city-states at the time still attached great importance to the honor of the champion. The glory that an Olympic champion could bring to his city-state was such that even the gold medals of the modern Olympics cannot compare. When called or recorded, the names of ancient Greeks were often placed alongside the city-state they came from, in forms such as “Thales of Miletus,” “Solon of Athens,” “Cicetas of Syracuse,” and so on. This also reflects the association between personal reputation and the city-state.
What is honor? In Chinese characters, both 荣 and 誉 are ideophonetic compounds. 荣 is formed by the ideas of trees and a bonfire, from which the meaning of luxuriant vegetation is extended; 誉 is formed by the ideas of lifting and speech, and to lift with words is to praise. Thus honor contains both glory and praise: to shine forth and thereby be praised by others.
Fundamentally speaking, the participants in the Olympics are after all individual athletes, and victory is the radiance they display as competing individuals. But the radiance that comes from the individual can also become the glory of the nation, because when people wish to praise this glory, they will always attach the name of the nation to it — the winner is: XX of Sparta, XX of China… The name of the city-state or nation often becomes part of the name by which the praised person is celebrated. And that is no surprise. In fact, although every person can abstractly be regarded as an independent individual, when we want to put his identity into words, just as when we state what any thing “is,” we always delimit its position by means of classification. Of course we can simply address a certain individual with a meaningless sign such as a name or number, but although such signs differ in form, in content they are completely indistinguishable.
When I want to introduce myself and say “Who am I?”, I always need to borrow all sorts of classifications — male or female, how old, from where, what educational background, what one is good at, what one likes… Every word of self-introduction will place me into some group, confirming my identity through layers upon layers of limitation. Among these words, apart from sex and age, the most primary and most common limitations — naturally, like sex and age, often omitted in many cases — are nationality or ethnicity. Especially when the name of this nation can also be used to delimit one’s culture, language, and living environment, it can be counted as an even more central and important qualifier than sex, age, appearance, and the like. For in people’s eyes, the distinction of age, appearance, and even sex is probably not the key sign by which one recognizes a person’s identity; the simple and clear designation “China” is often the most basic and richest marker for delimiting an individual’s identity. (Note: The phrase “personal identity” is not everyday language, and I cannot think of a better term for the moment, so I have to use it cautiously here. One may substitute the quoted “I”; the general meaning is that when people ordinarily think that age, appearance, and even sex change, “I/he” still remains the “same I/he.” Compared with those characteristics, continuous “memory” or a unified “personality,” and so on, are usually the main references for distinguishing personal identity. But although memory and temperament are the most important things for personal self-reflection, they are not convenient to convey in speech to others. In other words, these characteristics are difficult to symbolize and display as straightforward and clear markers, whereas the most effective way to mark a person’s key traits in a concise symbol is none other than limitations such as culture, language, and region.)
It is so in self-introduction; it is even more so when others use such labels to distinguish us — so it is hardly surprising that nationality is one of the qualifiers most often used when naming a person. Thus when a person’s glory is praised, the name of the nation is often naturally praised along with it. Hence the radiance of the individual also becomes the honor of the nation. This is exactly what is meant by “bringing honor to the nation”: the light is emitted by the individual, but the honor is simultaneously bestowed upon the nation. What shines is always the thing in the eye, while what is spoken is always the concept in the mouth; glory comes from the individual, while praise must always be ascribed to the name. And after all, a name and what it refers to are two different things; they can never correspond one-to-one. When we demand that names be more precise and more exclusive, the price is that names, by becoming too formalized, lose their rich connotations, and thereby lose a more intrinsic and vivid connection with their objects. To say “Competitor No. 1357 won the championship,” or “Competitor Zhang San won the championship,” is no different from saying “that person won the championship”; so why not simply say “the champion won the championship”? From the sentence “Zhang San won the championship” alone, people cannot obtain any more information than “at least one person won the championship,” unless they have already heard his background from the name “Zhang San.” The most abstract and precise sentence is no different from a tautology, whereas richer connotations come from more inclusive concepts. For example, to say “the veteran Zhang San from Shanghai, China won the championship” makes this praise seem much more meaningful. But too verbose an array of modifiers will make the praise look bloated and cumbersome; on the premise of guaranteeing at least a little more important content than “the champion is the champion,” the simplest and clearest way of naming is none other than: “Zhang San of China is the champion.”
From this we can see that the nation’s honor becoming a focal point of the Olympic arena is by no means accidental. Whether the athletes merely want to display their own radiance or actively strive for the nation’s reputation, the final result is often that the name of the nation is praised because of their glory. Likewise, whether spectators are first concerned with the nation or with the individual, the nation’s name is always the most conspicuous, because even when what you are focusing on is the individual, if you want to discern his living personality rather than treat him as an abstract, undifferentiated number, the foremost identifier you notice is still nationality. Thus people watch the athletes’ radiance, but it is the nation’s name that is praised. This is why, in the athlete, the glory of the gold medal that belongs to the individual is always linked with the nation’s honor.
Perhaps you will ask: is this what “patriotism” is? To support one’s own country more readily in fair competition, to attribute part of the praise to the nation when oneself wins glory — are these really “patriotism”? Isn’t that too simple? In fact, this is precisely the key question I have been circling around: “patriotism” is exactly this simplest and most natural of feelings. It does not need heroic sacrifice to express itself, nor is it some moral standard of right and wrong of cosmic significance; it is simply this most straightforward and most honest expression. “Love” ought to be the most natural, the simplest, and the most comfortable and joyful of emotions; when you discover that so-called “love” must endure immense pain or undergo extreme anxiety and struggle in order to be expressed, then you can quietly raise a question mark in your heart: is this really still “love”?
Of course, besides serving as the object of “patriotism,” the nation more often represents an integrated whole sustained by etiquette, economy, law, and violence. Therefore, the concept of the nation can indeed become entangled with issues on the ethical and moral level. But one must note that “patriotism” is not suitable to be treated as a demand of an ethical rule. The “requirements” of rules, etiquette, or law all target human conduct, not human thought, and still less human emotion (for reasons concerning “free will,” discussion is omitted here). Therefore, when discussing from the standpoint of regulating and guiding behavior, one cannot say “…so you must love…”. Rather, one may ask: “Given that you love your country, how should you act (most appropriately/most effectively)? (a matter of strategy)”; “In order to insist that you are patriotic (or in order to respect others’ patriotism), what must be done so as to make it self-consistent? (a question of practical rationality, an ethical question)”; “How is ‘patriotism’ (as a concept) possible? (a question of conceptual rationality, a philosophical question)”; “Because of the existence of the nation’s (culture/law/authority), how should you (must you/best you) act (in order to preserve yourself / make yourself self-consistent)? (a strategic question or question of rationality unrelated to love)” and so on.
Each person’s glory can add to the nation’s reputation — though of course it can also damage it. Likewise, the nation’s honor can be shared by every citizen, whether or not he directly participates in the pursuit of that honor. Although I did not take part in the Olympic competitions, nor in the construction and service of the Olympics, I can still feel “proud” of the success of the Chinese Olympics. Just as I can feel proud of China’s traditional culture, although that tradition was not created by me. I merely continued that history, made myself a part of that tradition, and also made the tradition a part of myself; thus taking pride in it becomes a kind of “pride.” Since I have already accepted the fate of being Chinese, and at the same time made the name of China part of me, then I can quite properly be proud of the honor of “China,” and this emotion is natural and reasonable. Of course, if I can also add to the glory of the motherland while striving for my own glory, thereby gaining double pride and double effect, then why not? — Of course, one’s own honor is not always identical with the nation’s honor. For example, if there is something that, if told truthfully, would harm the nation’s reputation, and if I can step forward and take the blame, sacrificing my own reputation while still being able (so long as the lie is not exposed) to salvage some of the nation’s reputation, then personal honor and national honor are in conflict. Moreover, here the glory recognized in one’s own heart and the reputation in the public mouth are also in conflict. At such a time, what matters more? One’s own conscience? One’s own reputation? Or the nation’s reputation?
Some people will place the “nation” in the highest position, or at least always place the nation before themselves so long as it does not violate conscience. Thus the mission of participating in the Olympics is first to bring honor to the nation, secondarily to obtain personal honor in the process, and only lastly to enjoy the fun of competition itself.
This ordering is also quite natural. When I participated in the Mathematics Olympiad at the time, the initial reason was nothing more than the demands of my parents and teachers. They enrolled me in an Olympiad math class and urged me to take part in competitions, and I went. Beforehand I did not understand the meaning of the competition, nor had I formed a concept of the “self.” Only after I had taken part in enough Olympiad training and competitions, and as my personality matured and my self-consciousness gradually formed, did I slowly come to experience the pleasure of Olympiad math “in itself.”
Many things are like this: those that are not made by my free will, but arranged for me by circumstances or by others, are called fate or destiny. For children who have not yet become independent, the relevant adults (such as parents and teachers) have both the right and the responsibility to help them make choices. In order to help children make better choices, one must adhere to one’s own principles and make adjustments according to the child’s traits. And for adults who have already become independent, there are still many occasions when they need to rely on fate or destiny to assist them in making choices, because many things cannot be understood as to whether they are interesting or not until you immerse yourself in them further. Making a choice requires being based on understanding, but only by choosing to invest oneself can one obtain a more complete understanding. Therefore, a choice that must be made in advance in the absence of sufficient understanding cannot be made merely with one’s reason, and must also invoke “chance.” For example, I can toss a coin to decide, or ask the opinions of relatives and friends. But for an adult’s choice, it is always the adult who makes the final decision; that is to say, it is the adult who bears responsibility, because the adult is already free. The heads or tails of a coin, and other people’s opinions, are merely components of chance; they do not need to be responsible for my choice — though of course they still need to be responsible for the opinions they themselves offer. When an adult makes a choice on behalf of a child, the adult is required to bear responsibility. Thus, if one adult induces another adult to kill, it merely constitutes the crime of instigation; but if one adult induces a child to kill, it should be treated directly as murder.
Many athletes’ road to the Olympics seems somewhat similar to my own road in math Olympiads — at the beginning too, when they were seven or eight, or even younger, and had no self-awareness or free will, their parents sent them to sports schools or some coach took a liking to them, and they began grueling training. When they grew up, many perhaps fell in love with the sport they were engaged in, but of course there would also be many who abandoned this path, or blamed the people who had sent them down it in the first place, believing that their youth had been wasted. This does not prove that people ought never to have made choices for their children in the first place. After all, free will always first manifests itself in rebellious form; rebellion is the sign of freedom awakening, only everyone rebels against different things and in different ways. So long as I take responsibility for the choice I made on your behalf, then no matter whether you ultimately persist in or betray this path, I can still have a clear conscience. And the first requirement of responsibility is to respect freedom, that is, to allow rebellion and to allow an independent choice when, upon awakening to freedom, you make one; the second is honesty: one must not lure others onto a certain path with promises one cannot fulfill, and one must live up to one’s own commitments. If he persists on the path I have pointed out, then I must strive to ensure that my promise is kept.
There are indeed some people who use “the nation needs you” to bind athletes’ choices. Although we use terms like active-duty and retired to describe athletes, sports competition is not military service after all, so this kind of binding is unreasonable. In fact, it is those who conscript and employ those young athletes in the name of the nation who are the ones who need to bear responsibility; it is not that the athletes must be responsible to the “nation” as the conscriber, but rather that the latter must be responsible for the former. The “nation” has made a certain arrangement for the fate of the young athletes; that arrangement itself is not wrong or sinful, but the “nation” must be responsible for it. When the athlete has grown to the point of being able to make new arrangements for his own future, rebellion must be allowed and encouraged.
Some people will say: the nation has invested so much manpower and material resources in cultivating an athlete, so how can you say he can just stop? Wouldn’t that be letting down the nation? But the people who choose to invest manpower and material resources in cultivating a particular athlete are free adults, and they need to be responsible for their choice; while an athlete, when he first steps onto the training ground, is often only a child, and need not be responsible for it. Whether the people who arrange the fate of children are more like competent parents and elders, or more like self-important enslavers, depends on whether they respect freedom—namely, whether they allow rebellion.
Of course, in other situations, individuals do have certain obligations to the “nation,” such as the obligation to perform military service, or the obligation to receive an education; in short, the obligations required by “law.” But law is established to maintain order, and is akin to the rules of a game; it is neither absolute nor boundless. For example, in games such as football or basketball, “fouls” violate certain rules and will incur corresponding penalties; yet the rules and their penalties are all part of the game’s internal order. A “foul” is not absolutely forbidden; in fact, fouls often become part of game strategy. The only tangible ultimate goal within the world of the game is winning, while the intangible ultimate goal that runs through both inside and outside the world of the game is that it be “fun.” All strategic choices in a game are based on consideration of these two goals, and have nothing to do with anything else. I will not discuss here the legal obligations individuals owe the nation; it is enough to say this: if they do not happen to overlap with certain ethical responsibilities, then whether or not one fulfills these legal obligations is a matter of strategy, not ethics. “Committing a foul. Breaking the law” will incur corresponding penalties; whether to break the law is a strategy of weighing gain against punishment, whereas a truly ethical choice does not incur “punishment,” because ethics (the rationality of conduct) is fundamentally each person’s own demand.
In what circumstances, then, does one bear some ethical responsibility toward the nation? For example, if I have already chosen, out of free will, to shoulder my mission, or if I choose another path, then I must be responsible for my own choice—only “one’s own choice” needs and must be “responsible for.” For instance, if the “nation” cultivates me—by providing me with food, drink, lodging, training conditions, and so on—it is asking me to enter competitions and “bring honor to the country.” I can certainly choose rebellion; yet if I choose to continue accepting those待遇, then I should do my utmost to participate in competitions and strive to bring honor to the country. This is somewhat like a contract, in which both sides are free. Therefore, to speak of “responsibility to the nation” is not quite accurate; at bottom, responsibility is always oneself being responsible to oneself. It is more accurate to say “responsibility regarding the nation.”
For example, in badminton matches, in order to ensure victory over foreign players, the “nation” requires certain athletes to “give way” during “internal battles.” Of course, as a coach, he has the right to make such an instruction, but as a competitor, he has even more right to refuse such an instruction. Is “giving way” right or wrong? That question depends on whom you regard as the participant in the match. If the true participant in the match is the “nation,” then arranging the team members is also part of game strategy, much like the strategy in the Tian Ji horse race. But the premise for viewing such an arrangement as a rational strategy is that we need to regard the competing athletes as “horses” or chess pieces, as tools of the match.
People can make use of one another; signing a contract is one way in which people make use of one another. It is just that one must not treat people merely as tools; only when each respects the other’s freedom does one have the right to make use of the other. If a competitor willingly becomes a chess piece in certain situations in exchange for benefits in other respects, then he of course has the right to choose such a strategy.
But whatever strategy one adopts, people still have to be responsible for their own choices. For example, the participants in the Olympics are at least nominally not the “nation,” but individual athletes or teams. The gold medals and honors are awarded to individuals, not to the nation, even though the whole nation may ultimately share in that honor. Even if you still take yourself to be a chess piece, choosing strategies such as giving way is not merely treating yourself as a tool; it is also treating your opponent as a tool, and even treating the referees, organizers, and spectators of the match as tools. This is of course a lack of respect for others. If you still insist on carrying out such a strategy, you may as well choose to withdraw directly, rather than play a sham match to deceive others.
August 25, 2008
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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