Confucianist consensus-based society v Western Individualism

Post Reply New Topic

One thing this crisis may be telling us is that Western Individualism is failing. Not just now but in the face of future crises as well. Just look at which countries are dealing most effectively, and please disregard NZ which has been able to isolate itself due to its geography.

Confucius was rather conservative and western friendly compared with Buddist,Hinduist,Taoist and other eastern religions.There are real differences between Judeo-Christian western individualism and Confucism but compared with most eastern religions Confucius was very west friendly IMHO

I could be wrong it's been 25 years since I studied eastern religion but I studied it none the less.Just my thoughts

Just to make this clear, this isn't about the "religion" associated with Confucius. It is about East Asian societies that have traditionally revered his teachings e.g. China, Korea, Japan etc. In those societies, people seem more naturally inclined to cooperate and go along with the consensus, for example when they told people to wear masks in public or to stay in their homes people just did what was expected. No protesting groups etc. The fact is that these places seem to have weathered the crisis especially well, for example Korea seems to have been very successful at controlling the spread of the virus. Taiwan as well, although both those places are somewhat isolated either by water or closed borders. Kids in Taiwan are attending school in person although they are required to wear both masks and plastic face shields all day. OTOH China, which is by no means isolated, managed to assert control over the situation, despite being the first country affected and having a huge population. They imposed a very strict quarantine and people cooperated. They've even been able to resume a lot of economic activity. I think if China had an individualistic Western society they'd be in serious trouble right now. Maybe it's not such a bad thing. Chinese people don't seem bothered by the pressure to conform.

What about Germany?
That's where I live, and it weathered the storm quite well so far, so did Austria. And all eithout the total lockdown the Chinese imposed on Wuhan.
There is one major thing that made a different impression here tgan in other places: the way Angela Merkel immediately understood and backed the science. She's a physicist, not a lawyer, she knows you can't argue your case out this. And 50% of Germans get their news from one of the public broadcasts channels who all sent the same message. No fox news.

But there's also a difference in the way countries are structured. The US is largely incapable to deal with a situation like this, the structures aren't there. So the republicans had the choice between lock down and ruining the value of their assets, or letting the virus rip through the country, hoping it'll mainly kill old people, but try to keep business going. If people loose health insurance when they loose their jobs, then, at times of 14% unemployment, you're just screwed.

Italy and Spain's healthcare suffered unfer austerity imposed from 2008 onwards and were unsurprisingly struggling, and so far it seems the virus was circulating in France already in December, so it had plenty of time to spread there. Britain had austerity ruining healthcare and a government led by it's version of Trump, but they have the structures in place so eventually came around to lockdown and helicopter money.

What I'm trying to say is: western countries didn't necessarily fail this because of individualism, but due to conflicting interests and dismantling of healthcare since 2008.
The wealthy Northern European countries did well so far, partly because of much better scirnce communication on the news.

Oh, and Chinese people don't seem botheted by the pressure to conform? Well, the punishment of not conforming to a government that has it's own interpretation of human rights might play a role in that.
Also, very strict control of communication. Certainly no fox news telling the president what to say.

The problem with any generalization is that one can spend all day citing contradictory examples.

First, I don't have a side-by-side comparison of how well Germany has handled the crisis compared to Taiwan, Korea, and China, so I can't comment on that.

Another thing, and I don't know exactly why this is, but German culture seems to emphasize cooperation more than most other European cultures.

Also, Germany has a genuine leader in Ms. Merkel whereas most other countries in Europe and North America just have politicians. I could compare to my state Maryland in which our Governor is widely accepted as a leader and things have been better managed than in a lot of US states.

By no means do I wish to minimize whatever success Germany has had.

The question I'm trying to raise is: is it the comparison of individualism vs. obedience the right comparison?
By citing counterexamples, I'm trying to raise doubt about that and trying to propose different mechanisms. One being the media landscape that shapes public opinion and behaviour, another is the specific structure of a given country's social institutions that are relevant to the handling of a pandemic - i.e., can you even lock down a country like the Europeans did, or will that create such turmoil that 100.000 mainly elderly people dying is the lesser evil.

Btw. - In Germany, Merkel is only very occasionally considered "a leader", but for better or worse, a moderating factor.
Particularly in the case of the pandemic, it was very smart of her to not act as a leader but to merely cite the scientists, i.e. act as an evangelust, rather than a prophet.
I wish she'd do that with climate change as well, instead, here it's a swedish teenage girl taking the role of saying 'you can't argue with physics'.

Reasonable hypothesis, but hard to prove/disprove by just using one historic event like this global pandemic.

The Confucian culture of the whole far east values things like filial piety (showing devotion to your parents grandparents and elders) and viewing the extended family as more basic than viewing the individual. Also the one nation of Japan adds to that the code of Bushido (the way of the warrior) giving a Japan a militantly conformist culture that sets it apart even from the rest of east asia. So to the outsider east Asian societies seem like conformists ant hills. Though the locals view their nations as being just as rife with factionalism as any place else.

I wonder, if individualism played any role in our responding more poorly (interpreting the claim as 'rogue individualism gave us more perfect mercenaries in both the corporate and political world'), it might have had to do with our treating it like a fire without a fire pit, where 'more is better' so the best of all worlds then is a forest fire.

From what little I know of Confucianism it's a double-edged sword. It's a radical conservatism in many ways, of the sort where 'the nail that sticks out gets hammered down' - great for stability, bad for progress and worse for competitive edge with other countries. Also, as cited above, it causes group selection for compliance to authority to go even farther meaning that China's style of communism could potentially last through the end of the 21st century in tact because it found the right populace with all of the right values. Innovation and dynamism, OTOH, comes from having plenty of highly disagreeable a***holes given tons of room to do what they do. IMHO I'd rather give that freedom to Nassim Taleb than give it to a Twitter mob. The question is - is there a happy medium where we can light the fires of individualism, gain the benefits of its intrepidness, and at the same time keep the fire in a pit rather than burning down the forest. People have often talked about markets as if they're that sort of thing, ie. a fire that's great in a stove, bad when it's burning down a neighborhood, it was a popular enough trope and yet we see it doing exactly the later - burning down the neighborhood.

This also makes me wonder if there is some sort of light, modular, open-source version of philosophic or religious values that we could bring back without the eternalist baggage for the sake of re-engendering some kind of social contract or understood civility. It seems like that project is about creating a comfortable rut that certain kinds of human impulse can fall into, the more people who fall into it the easier mutual cooperation is as trust increases, and it's like a civilization having coolant in the radiator. I'm actually partial even to such a thing having Mysterianism at it's core - ie. marveling at the immensity of the possibility space we find ourselves in, the immensity of even the distance that our inner worlds traverse which goes well beyond our comprehension, and rooting that awe in some sort of practical common sense where we really have it socially ingrained that even the most parochial petty despot who enjoys supremacy in some region is not even a mote of dust in the broader scheme of things and that in our smallness we should find a more radical humility.

To clarify I am addressing consensus-based society as a society in which members typically do what's expected of them without hesitation if it furthers the needs of the community. This does not necessarily mean a society in which creativity or independent thought is suppressed although that can also happen. Modern-day China produces plenty of creative work and independent thought although of course they fall short of what we think of as "free speech".

Western individualism to me implies the individual putting their personal concerns ahead of those of the group. My original premise was that this makes Western societies (although perhaps some more than others, consider Germany) poorly equipped to deal with a crisis such as the current one.

Please consider this video as a graphic demonstration of what I mean.

That's a funny video. Also, nine these measures do a lot except for the face mask which the kid took off.
The stuff gets spread by coughing, speaking and even mere exhaling.

Confucianism in this case means obedience to authority. Whether this is good or bad depends on the figure of authority.
Legitimate authority like virologists should be listemed to, but some people are obediently listening to Trump and are drinking bleach.
It's not that they're being individualistic, they are doing their best, but they are merely listening to an authority that, in this context, is not legitimate (as in: does not have the scientific understanding to act as authority on questions of epidemiology).

That basically is so-called Wester individual society. Business is only successful with a collective. It just sells people on the idea they are all amazing individuals. It's not like we're all making our own homes and clothing.

Logically, I think they give him a new mask inside for sure.

China is 20% of world population, cramped in one single country. Most Eastern Asian countries are very densely populated.

I can't even fathom how it can possibly function normally in an individualist manner, just imagine the mess.

Western Europe, parts of North America are not that far behind.

My society is individualist and quite chaotic even for Western standards, but with a pronounced trait of solidarity in crisis.
It seems to be paying off now.

You guys invented solidarity. It's one of the few words I know how to say in Polish, along with dupa.

EDIT: I wonder if having a strong trade union movement is another indicator of how well a society will fare in a crisis like this. The US has about the weakest trade union movement in the Western world. You could say it means we don't know how to organize the rank and file in our population when needed.

2ND EDIT: I guess you could say the only sort of organizing that succeeds here is what we call "astroturfing".