Introduction to Eastern Civilization Discussion Week 2

This is a continuation of what I've written above. As a recap of my last post, I was being absent in my last session which is yesterday and one of my classmates Stephan who was the leader of the class discussion. I was being really blur when I was asked to do this. I forgot that I need to do this. So here goes. Here are some question that was posted by Stephan and was discussed throughout the session. I have to do it on my own. Yay for me. :(

1. What are the sorts of philosophies the East Asian Culture/Civilization lived by?

Asia is a really big continent with many different but unique country. They all have their own unique structure that made what they are now. So talking about the East Asian countries, we are talking about Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and China. These are the most notable country in the Eastern Asia. Korea, Japan, and Taiwan's roots were all part of the China civilization, if I am correct. In in 4 of these country alone, there are already countless types of philosophy. What do I mean by philosophy here? By definition, It was given by my friend Stephan here that Philosophy is the Study of Fundamental Nature of Knowledge, reality and existence. It is we can put as another word, believes and theories.

Speaking on Believes, like how I've mention in my previous post, it varies a lot with culture and cultures we often put them together with our religions. So, correct me if I'm mistaken here, can I assume that believes is also speaking about religion? Well, that is what I think of. There are so many religion in China. COUNTLESS if I may. China is such a big country and who knows when there exists so many types of religion. But we here today are going to discuss on Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Confucianism and Shintoism.

2. Were there any differences between these philosophies in comparison to the Westerns at that time?

So relate back to the different materials that we are reading every single week, China was often marked as a curious land and remarkable. Well, I personally don't understand why they are marked as curious? Are there gold to dig in? I don't know. But Yeah. Westerners always mark this land as curious and remarkable. This made all these curious westerners research on the great land of China. What those westerners are doing is that they are looking across the ocean. So this is what the Westerners assume. They assume things that somehow are not true like how the China have all these religions.

Aside from that, there are these One World Cosmetology that was followed by the Chinese. It is somehow for me, like Feng Shui. Everything has to be in place. As we perceive, we Chinese people do believe in a lot of 'Qi' which translate in the Chinese Character as 气. This Qi is somehow like psychophysical energy that releases in various form and context. When we go into the jungle, we will pray and watch out for our mouth as there are spiritual energy in those forests. It may sound funny to some but this is what taught by my grandfather and what I will be teaching to my grandchild next time. It is all a part of the civilization. Back to our question. any differences? I say yes. Does the westerners thinks that there is qi? And we also have Ying and Yang which converse to Positive Energy and Negative Energy. Does the Westerners believe in those? I think they do. Only for the positive polar and negative polar. Just a Joke. Nothing too serious here.

Besides, we do also have Radial Harmony. It's that how we always revolves around a centre point. In my culture, we always do find a balance in things. Often we can hear that when there is too much Positive energy in one place, we will put some negative energy there. So to balance up something. Even our human characteristic. One couple, the female who talks a lot is better to find a male who listen more. This is where I agree that both the eastern and western culture have. They have the same thought on this thing but we do not know what it is called for each side. So, Cheers. It's simple science. When there is too much negativity, put in some positivity. So one more thing that I can conclude is that Civilization have a lot to do with science. We might talk about it later..

Lastly we have Philosophical Syncreticism. This means that even though there are differences in our culture and the civilization that happened, we still have things that are shared together. Not only western culture but also their teachings were brought into us when they came to us. Take Malaysia for an example. We are a multinational country that have different ethnicity and so with different believes and everything. So talking back to history. When the Britian came and concur us, they brought in their way of handling a country and so this is how we run our country now. Like the parliament and everything. So we learned things from them and not to say anything but they have also learned things from us. This is what we all can agree on.

3. What are the outcomes from these philosophies?

The outcome are so visible even those who are blind can see it. We are now living in a peaceful world and every country helps each other for things that they need. All these are moral values that came from those times when we were taught by our ancestors. They were brought down generation by generations, year by years, day by days. All the teaching from our culture and believes that we hugged so tightly on, embracing every single detail that were passed on by our ancestors, were it not part of the civilization we are talking about? All these are the good outcomes. The bad outcome is that one globe have to be separated into so many different parts. We all are human race. We should be as one. Everyday I can see news from everywhere saying that people died from being verbally bullied and the authorities could not do anything. Those bullies are the bad outcome of those philosophies. If there is no believes that teaches us to segregate among ourselves, there would not be any of these issues. This is just purely what I think of. Please don't be offended.

How does it been applied into present times? I must say that I'm currently out of ideas. Let me have a rest and I will edit this once I am clear of my mind.

So here is where I'm going to stop for this week's review. Tata for now.

Cheerios,
YiXin