Xu Zhuoyun was when he was head of the Department of History at National Taiwan University.

  Interview with Xu Zhuoyun:

  Everyone has clouds that they can't catch, dreams they can't dream

  "China News Weekly" reporter / Li Jing

  Published in the 958th issue of China News Weekly on August 3, 2020

  "China's people-oriented,

  This is the biggest difference between the cultural and spiritual foundations of the two countries"

  China News Weekly: In "Xu Zhuoyun Says America", you sorted out the development of American culture in detail. As you said before, the spiritual foundation of American culture is tolerance, love, undecidedness, and non-blind obedience to authority. What do you think is the spiritual foundation of Chinese culture? What is the biggest difference in the spiritual foundation of the two cultures? Now there are many problems between the two countries. Are they related to the differences in cultural and spiritual foundations? Where should we go to find answers to the problems?

  Xu Zhuoyun: The United States itself expects Christian ideals: love, tolerance, freedom, and equality. But has the US actually done it? It doesn't seem to be. From the ideal of establishing a nation, the United States is now step by step away from its original ideal.

  When the United States was founded, the Puritan Christian ideal of tolerating love was also brought about, but later, the arbitrariness of Christian monotheism gradually emerged: those who do not believe in or enter Christianity are not counted, and they are not considered civilized. The dictatorship of Christian exclusivity has gradually developed into a characteristic of the behavioral pattern of white American culture-self-righteousness, only willing to let others be distant friends. You must compete with the opponents.

  Where is China's ideal? China's ideal is based on the individual's standpoint. From communities, communities, associations, society to the country, individuals are the foundation of various groups, and everyone has relative rights and responsibilities. Relative rights mean that people respect themselves as well as others, and have the characteristic of valuing people. I have used an analogy. The creation of China was Pangu transformed into a universe. The creator of the universe and the universe itself are one. The entire universe is an individual, which is different from the universe created by God.

  The spiritual foundation of Chinese culture is based on human beings. People as individuals, as groups, between each other, between people, between people, between groups, between groups, and between groups at all levels, constantly expand, constantly communicate, constantly change, constantly modify and adjust, make Everyone can live in a frame without stepping on others' feet. Or after stepping on other people's feet, everyone will tolerate half a step. Everyone has a little space to cooperate and coordinate with each other. This is the characteristic of Chinese social integration. I think this feature has been forgotten in China today, and I hope this aspect can be revived.

  China's people-oriented approach is the biggest difference between the cultural and spiritual foundations of the two countries.

  Chinese thinking is a combination of Confucianism and Buddhism. Confucianism puts people first, while Buddhism says that spirit is greater than material. The change of time in Buddhist thought is empty in the end. This is used to supplement Confucianism to emphasize the most prone problems of joining the world.

  The combination of Confucianism and Buddhism makes Chinese thinking and Western thinking very different. Many gods in China, even functional gods, functional gods, gods do not live arbitrarily, nor can they arbitrarily determine the authority of the world. The Chinese speak of "fairness and integrity, although there is no child to die as a god." Integrity means not being crooked by being a person; being fair, treating each other with each other is maintained in a spirit of fairness, cooperation, and coordination. I think the spiritual foundation of China lies here. In our daily life, from coordination and harmony in traditional Chinese medicine, to Fengshui, to gossip, and even folk religious beliefs, this set of thoughts is taken as its focus.

  In the book "The Spirit of Chinese Culture", I elaborated on the same phenomenon that appeared in different angles and fields. For example, some natural images in Chinese literary poems and songs are personified. Human nature and natural environment are often superimposed to show the relationship between man and nature.

  Why is Su Dongpo's "Chibi Fu" moving? He placed himself in a lone boat, boundless off-road, and there were just a few people on a boat. At this moment, he thought of the infinity of the universe and the insignificance of individuals. He thought of the past and the present constantly changing like flowing water. I also thought of discerning where I am and whether I can hold my heels? Can you control yourself?

  Chinese people show the aesthetics of life in time and space in artistic poetry, expressing their mutual adaptation with nature, and they have reached the realm of describing aesthetics with natural scenery. Chinese spiritual culture is unknowingly reappearing in the daily lives of the people, but most people don't pay much attention to this matter.

  China News Weekly: In the new book "Xu Zhuoyun Says America", you believe that the Western world represented by the United States is declining, and you also believe that China is no longer the face of traditional China, and that the 21st century world is out of touch with the past human history. So, do you also think that the alienation of human nature by modern technology has made the spiritual world of mankind dry up day by day, and that mankind is on a path of no return? Is the development of modern technology so incompatible with the true spirit of man? If so, how do you think humans should save themselves?

  Xu Zhuoyun: This is indeed a very serious problem. The human science and technology civilization has been upgraded step by step from the earliest practical production tools to today. Artificial intelligence should replace our wisdom. The huge and fast-running computers can run faster and more than the sum of thousands of us put together. Give it the most complicated problem, it can solve it.

  From another point of view, the machine processes dry, rigid data, and there is no problem at all, but people must feed in the data and problems before the machine can think. What ultimately determines how the massive artificial intelligence works is what humans feed in every day. Therefore, mankind still holds a considerable part of sovereignty.

  We should ask some new questions at this time, when there are so many tools for us to use.

  For example, we can ask a machine: "If all conditions remain the same, how long can our society last?" I think it will answer soon: "We are almost at the end." If we ask it: "What kind of new is needed? Can factors save destiny?” It will probably answer you: “You need to find new space, new ways of thinking, find flexibility, and find change.” However, we can only grasp the source of change, the speed of change, and the nature of change. Variety. Machines can only follow and follow changes. If the process of change cannot be grasped, we cannot go beyond change.

  We can cooperate with machines in this part. We finally learned this wisdom. I think we can continue to use the strengths of today's technology to make up for the lack of human intelligence. Note that I separate intelligence and wisdom. Intelligence is your ability to calculate problems, and wisdom is your ability to foresee consequences. This is not the same.

  Don't lose your wisdom and increase your own abilities. This may make the development of science and technology bring considerable help to the improvement and evolution of the spiritual realm of mankind. I hope that more philosophers will appear in the physicist's house.

  Family portrait of Xu Zhuoyun.

  "You are the subject of existence,

  Instead of following the trend to change"

  China News Weekly: The sudden epidemic now has an impact on global politics, economy, and society. Some intellectuals are very pessimistic, believing that the golden age of rapid economic development, high globalization, and prosperity has passed and will not return. What do you think of the post-epidemic era? Will people be farther away from each other, and all ethnic groups will be more isolated and will no longer cooperate for common interests? When future historians are studying the huge impact of today's epidemic on the world, can you stand at this point in time and space to give them some advice and help?

  Xu Zhuoyun: This epidemic is indeed a very big blow to the world, but in fact this is not the first time a major plague has occurred. The Black Death had a great impact in the history of the world. It reduced the European population by almost a quarter, so that the European labor force was insufficient. Insufficient labor will slowly find other ways to remedy it, which led to the tool revolution and the industrial revolution after the tool revolution; it also guided people’s reliance on theology at that time, and broke out from theological reliance to find and understand people’s interior The structure constitutes the first step in the progress of modern medicine.

  But the plague is a plague after all. During the Black Death, humans did not have so many tools. Now we have much more tools than before, and we can think of much more methods than before. Now we are actually controlling these plagues.

  The plague caused the current results. The biggest surprise is that the plague happened to run into Trump's administration.

  In the history of China, during the development of each dynasty, they continued to make more contacts, learn more, and adapt to the world outside of China at that time, and they were constantly in contact, exchange and integration with the world. Today's globalization is the same. No one can stop people from cooperating and communicating with other places.

  The world will slowly return to the situation where everyone cooperates with each other and move towards a better and more harmonious future. This kind of exchanges and exchanges continue. In the future world, we can finally realize the ideals of modernization and globalization. At that time, the world does not need a hegemon, and we all become one family.

  China News Weekly: For a long time, people may have to adapt to the life of social isolation and have to get along with themselves more. You once said "Go inside and settle down", this is actually what everyone needs. How to go inside? How to settle yourself?

  Xu Zhuoyun: When in isolation, it is to give everyone an opportunity to think about ourselves, think about others, and think about how much we rely on others for help. We miss the days when we cooperated and communicated freely. We look forward to returning soon. Because of this cherishment and love, when we are together again, the relationship between people will be more sincere, which will have a more substantial influence on each other.

  Then you also try to look back and think, are you really doing something you should do reasonably? Have you been overly greedy, overbearing, over demanding, forgetting others, stepping on other people's feet, hurting others' hearts, and betraying others' good intentions? This is where we go inside and settle ourselves.

  The more important thing to settle down is that when your desires cannot be achieved, you must know that people cannot achieve all their desires. Everyone has clouds that they cannot grasp, and dreams that they cannot achieve. You have to understand. Let the cloud that you can't catch, let it float away, dream that you can't dream, if you have a chance, do it again, if you don't have a chance, you have another dream. You must be in control of yourself, you yourself are the main body of existence, instead of following the trend to change, and you don’t need to follow the opinions of others. Take a ladder and walk straight or sideways? Have your own judgment. Just like the "father and son riding a donkey" fable, is it the old man or the child? Are two people riding or two people holding a donkey? He listens to the opinions of others, and this kind of person cannot settle himself. You must first find yourself and find the real problem before you can go inside and settle yourself down.

 "I am always ready to face new problems when they come,

  There are new ways of thinking about it"

  China News Weekly: You have recorded many fragments of your youth in your past books. Those experiences have profoundly affected you, but you also mentioned that those experiences are not necessarily the factors that contributed to the "insight". If you have ever had an "enlightenment" moment in your life, what are the factors that contributed to your "enlightenment" and the opportunity that triggered it? What did you "understand"?

  Xu Zhuoyun: You ask me if I have an epiphany. In fact, epiphany and gradual enlightenment are the same thing. Some irritation, accidentally encountered a mechanism, suddenly opened a door, so that you understand a problem that often troubles you, and suddenly alert you to a special mental state. Many of the epiphanies I have encountered in my life are due to chance.

  During the war of resistance and fleeing, I didn’t know where I would go next, or whether I would have food at the next stop. I have seen the suffering around me, and I have also seen people around me trying to help each other. People who don’t know helped me when necessary. A fellow traveler who ran side by side for a while told us, "Beware of the pit ahead", come over and hold me so that I don't fall into the pit. When the Japanese plane was hovering in the sky and shooting machine guns, the person next to me grabbed me and lay on the ground. He saw that I was a child, so he lay on my back and blocked the bullets for me. This situation made people feel human. The spirit is great.

  I have the experience of my epiphany. At that time, I fled to the top of a peak of Daba Mountain. The sky was stricken by the wind, and there were hidden hillsides and tops all around. Only the far west, a ray of sunlight fell there. At that time, not only me, but the porters and refugees on the top of the mountain were shocked, shocked, and the power of nature made people feel how small.

  Back when I went to study in the United States, I came from the sea on a freighter. My father was born in the navy. He told me early on that you should be careful when the sea is at its calmest. It calmed down, and smelled an astringent taste. Be very careful. A huge storm is coming soon. At the moment when the sea was calm, it happened to be a gap. The front area of ​​the storm had already passed, and a large number of storms and big turbulence would soon arrive. The moment of calm is short. What is the best time on the sea? It is the beginning of the small white waves, this is the best sea. Although it is calm, there are always small changes. The lower one turns over, the upper one turns over, always flowing forward.

  All these experiences gave me a stimulus and allowed me to understand various situations in life. Sometimes it suddenly inspired me a question I had been thinking about and gave me the answer.

  China News Weekly: When you were almost 60 years old, you said that you don’t think your character and thoughts have been set, and you still have opportunities and needs for growth. Now that you are 90 years old, have your character and thoughts set in shape? Are there some of your earlier views that have now been updated and revised?

  Xu Zhuoyun: I don't think I have finalized the shape yet. I am always ready to face a new problem when it comes, with a new way of thinking to deal with it. I will not always use the same way of thinking to deal with the problems that I have been facing in the past. I will try new perspectives and learn some new things every day. I have doubts about some past thinking methods every day. This is what I developed habit. Those of us who do academic research will never think that we have reached the end point. There will always be a longer road ahead, a longer way, and more complex issues waiting for us to deal with.

  (Intern Zhu Enmin also contributed to this article)

  China News Weekly, Issue 28, 2020

Statement: The publication of "China News Weekly" manuscript is authorized in writing