Bywords 80

80. East and West. Collective and Individual. Group geometry.

Western persons are interruptions in the undifferentiated continuity: we bob up and down like buoys in rough water seeking attention, vying to be received as individuals. There is no pattern apart from this continual seesaw, and the rough conditions are generated not by nature, but by us. Our movement is self-chosen. ‘What about me?’ is our battlecry.

Eastern persons (e.g., Taiwanese) are rather different. They do not bob or wobble individually, but tend to flow into each other like water in water. There is no leader, no collective ‘flock mind’, or ‘information center’. Distinguish behavioral qualities in university students in the USA and university students in Taiwan. A different paradigm is at play.

Compare the behavior of persons with the flock behavior of starlings when it returns to roost at dusk. Thinkers since Pliny the Elder have contemplated the synchronous movements of flocking birds. Let’s identify Taiwanese people as forming a class of persons akin to the starling flock, in terms of group behavior, and let’s contrast this arrangement with the behavior of western persons, caricatured above.

A prejudice in the West concerning Asia is that Eastern persons flock together because they are weak as individuals. This assumes that collectivism affords protection from hostiles or, to continue the analogy with starlings, ‘predators’. It is true that many flocking birds are weak fliers, and that they are not strong enough individually to escape from a hawk (compare mountain bluebirds who don’t forage in flocks, and are able as solitary fliers to outmaneuver hawks or falcons). Further, starling flocks also tend to ‘ball-up’ when attacked in flight. By contrast, when starling flocks return home to roost, they will spend an hour or more wheeling or turning before they land. If flocking is to avoid predation, then the longer they stay in the air, the more vulnerable they are to predators. Moreover, if Taiwanese flock for protection, who is the feared hostile? The PRC? This may have been the case during foreign occupation in Taiwan, but now?

But this question is wrong. There is no predator, for this flocking behavior is not directed at anything or anyone. It is undirected (like depression). I think it is largely expressive of unreflective continuity with the past, or rather, unchanging attitudes toward the past in Taiwan, which remain traditional and reproductive, and which simply have not been subjected to strong enough a challenge to change. No single stimulus is currently available which makes a direct appeal to reflect on the need to preserve the past in behavior and ways of living and acting. Can one say: the stimulus to reflect on the whole has yet to take root in Taiwan?

Bywords 79

79.  Why does a person believe that a thought occurs to him in his head? He doesn’t believe it; he lives it.

He holds his head when this happens, shuts his eyes to converge upon his thought, and makes a gesture to ward off outside interruptions. These actions are important.

Similarly, to ask of a piece of music the intention of the composer when he wrote it seems inappropriate. Music, like religion, doesn’t ask to be believed in; it is simply there. One only has to decide whether to live it, or not. In this context, ‘living it’ means a kind of resonation with what is perceived, an uninterrupted continuity.

Music isn’t an interruption in life, but continuous with life’s unceasing flow. We, who are its listeners, are not also interruptions, but merge with music like water in water. But, we are inclined to ask questions like, ‘Why do you believe in God?’ or, ‘Does music express a thought?’, and so on. The seal encasing our understanding of human perception is broken, and lies idle.

The tool that digs into the earth. He who holds the tool. Subject and object. The agricultural revolution changed forever our relation to the world. Before the invention of the tool, primitive humans existed as continuous with all the items in the natural world. Is music any different? Is it a tool that ploughs forth thoughts, ideas and intentions? And, are we who listen to music now interruptions – is music a mere tool? What of God?