Well, there’s a first time for everything: I’m apparently an ideological brother to Andrew Sullivan, according to The Poor Man, who seems a bit miffed that I’m not a Patriot.
The Poor Man makes the link by comparing Sullivan’s opposition to affirmative action to this statement I made, in my post on Patriotism:
I phrased that sentence with care, and I stick by it. I’m not ashamed because of all the wrongs that have been done to women, to minorities, to gays in the USA. I didn’t do these things, and if I could I’d reverse them; so why should I feel guilt or shame?
That said, I don’t make the leap Sullivan does, and assume that because I’m not personally guilty I don’t bear any responsibility. As a straight white guy, I’ve been the beneficiary of homophobia, racism and sexism since before my first breath. Starting with my parent’s relative affluence – which was to some degree a product of minorities being unfairly kept out of competition with them for education and for jobs – to my own life, where I’ve always done better than I otherwise would have due to other folks being kept down – racism, sexism and homophobia has helped me to a large degree. And (from my straight white male perspective) it has always done so in a conveniently invisible fashion.
I don’t feel shame for that. I didn’t ask for that, and I don’t want it. What good would my personal shame do anyone, anyhow?
But I do feel responsibility. All my life, in mostly quiet and invisible ways, I’ve benefited from advantages I shouldn’t have and don’t deserve. This is why I support affirmative action, and reparations, and almost every reasonable measure I’ve come across for fighting racism, sexism and homophobia (and classism, and imperialism, etc etc).
It doesn’t matter whether or not I’m personally guilty of anything: my responsibility to my fellow human beings is not a punishment for anything I’ve done. Being in favor of justice – especially where injustice has favored your interests – doesn’t require being ashamed; it’s just a considtion of being a decent human being.
As for the Poor Man’s linkage of responsibility and patriotism, I just don’t see it. Some of the most patriotic people I’ve met seem to feel no responsibility at all for trying to fight bigotry and prejudice. Maybe The Poor Man sees a connection there, but I don’t..
Before you totally beat yourself up over your privileges, let me remind you that:
1.) Your family is Jewish. Anti-Semitism probably affected it at some point, and definitely before you were born….
2.) Your mother, grandmothers, and other female members of your family are/were women. Sexism probably held them back.
Who do you think you are, George W. Bush? Your daddy couldn’t get you into Yale if you were a C student…:P
well said!
I’m a Asian (Indian subcontinent) straight male, and I still feel teh same sense of responsibility that you do. and no shame.
Shame is for the narcissistic. We don’t need fucking shame. We need solutions to real problems. The injustices of this world should not induce a sense of guilt but a sense of outrage leading to a sense of responsiblity leading to real action.
Grrr. Sorry. Just had too many conversations like this with me ideological confreres to not get exasperated by the topic of liberal guilt.
Oh, but….nice post, Barry.
These people would be self-proclaimed patriots, no doubt. Ceci n’est pas une pipe.
Wow, someone used a french phrase that I knew the meaning of! I feel so literate now! :p
Anyhow, point well taken.
I probably shouldn’t post on this site, but oh well. The basic flaw of liberalism is that you think mankind is inherently good and that we can collectively solve the world’s injustices. We can’t. Only through Christ can we achieve real peace and maintain any semblance of civilized society.
As for justice, trust in the wisdom of the Lord and his Word, not the goodness of people. You’ll be let down everytime!
The whole frigging universe of affirmative action would not be an issue if the bill of rights included a right to have the means to support oneself. Policy would be much different towards makeing sure that everyone had the best chance at living a decent life.
We have too much competition and not enough cooperation. We have the resources to feed the world, and to have decent housing. The problem is in distribution of the wealth of the world. It is a sad commentary that we are more cannibalistic towards our neighbors thinking that if they have we have less.
It is not a matter of good or evil but of lack of compassion.
“Some of the most patriotic people I’ve met seem to feel no responsibility at all for trying to fight bigotry and prejudice.”
Some of the most patriotic people I know (btw, I call them “surface-level patriots”, since they’re only patriotic in that flag-waving way) are convinced that “American” is the following: White Christian heterosexual male, carnivore, country music-lovin’, etc etc. Therefore racism, sexism, and homophobia are not things they need concern themselves with. In fact, their view of America actually supports those principals.
Of course, the fact that I live in Florida might be part of the reason why I see so much of that. Liberal state this is not.
burk said: “Only through Christ can we achieve real peace and maintain any semblance of civilized society.”
I don’t want to get into a big religious debate, but telling someone what religion to follow isn’t going to exactly bring civility out of them.
Sayeth blunted: “I don’t want to get into a big religious debate, but telling someone what religion to follow isn’t going to exactly bring civility out of them.”
Pah! You know not of what you speak. Tell them what religion to follow and back that up with threat of torture & death. That’ll make ’em civil. It’s worked for millenia.
Burk said: “Only through Christ can we achieve real peace and maintain any semblance of civilized society.”
If that hasn’t happened in the last 2k years, what makes you think it’s gonna happen now? Especially in a country that guarantees freedom of religion? I don’t think the Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindis, etc. are going to go the JC route. What do you propose as the solution to that?
Jake, it’s “Hindus”. Hindi would be someone from India, it’s the term I always use so as to easily differentiate an Indian from a Native American to who I speak with. Hindu is the religion, one that is so ancient that the word Hindu means, literally, “religion of India”. Kind of like how Shinto means “religion of Japan” (I hope I got that right). And how the Greek/Roman religion was never really given a name. They’re so ancient and engrained in society that only recently has it ever occurred to the followers that it needs a name. Which is also why Buddhism, which formed in contrary to Hinduism, is often considered to be more of a philosophy rather than a religion. But that’s enough of that.
Burk, I’d rather not trust to a God I really know nothing about, and you don’t either. As Sartre said, “since man loves God, he cannot expect God to love him back.” I know who people are, so I can rely on them. But I prefer to prescribe to the First Church of God the Utterly Indifferent or Bokononism than your brand of unthinking Christianity.
Oh, and as for the post – all good. You go, Amp.
Amp: “And (from my straight white male perspective) it has always done so in a conveniently invisible fashion.”
Great, moral compass post, great line. You cut through the BS. Imagine if all this were visible: for instance, when eating meat (as I do). My odd belief is that anyone who eats meat should kill and eat one animal in their lives. Others do this for us, as Pontius Pilate found (there’s MY Bible reference).
Good responses to Burk. “What does not reply is the answer to a prayer.”
Amp: “Some of the most patriotic people I’ve met seem to feel no responsibility at all for trying to fight bigotry and prejudice.”
Roger Ailes and Sullywatch are posting a song Andrew Sullivan views as patriotic, which evidently says nothing about America but instead focuses on killing Muslims. I think Nazi songs tended to celebrate Germany. Sullivan inhabits a strange world.
I’ve told folks white privilege is like a financial inheritance… it speaks about one’s circumstances, not one’s nature.
I think there are as many definitions of patriotism as their are people. Personally, I think that line of people standing outside Elmer’s Flag and Banner on 9/11 were not being patriotic, they were sheep (apologies to sheep everywhere). I wanted to get off the bus and ask every one of them if they had voted in the last election. If they hadn’t, they should have gotten out of line. They have no right to even pretend to patriotism.
All this flag-waving is more about fashion than feeling.
Folks who don’t allow criticism of our government are not patriots. Someone willing to settle for a second-rate democracy and sell out on the values that make this country different from most is not a patriot.
The only patriots are those who work to make this a better country — to fulfill its values of freedom, democracy, and that old –all-too-forgotten–pursuit of happiness (which I think could be read to include health care, housing and a full education.
You’ve brushed off most of your other post, which is a step in the right direction. Today’s incarnation of your argument (“I’m a rich straight white male, so I have a responsibility to other people, although I’m ‘indifferent to the world‘”) maybe makes some sort of sense, if you can argue that you can care about something you don’t love, which maybe you can do, and if you are all right with everyone less privelidged than you telling the world to go to hell. It’s a pretty tortuous path to take just to avoid saying you love your country, but if this is what you’re saying today, swell. Better than yesterday’s, by a mile. Maybe tomorrow’s will be even better. Here are a couple of complaints which you might address:
A) You’re still hung up on what other people do who call themselves patriots, and hold this up as a reason not to be one yourself. (Some of the most patriotic people I’ve met seem to feel no responsibility at all for trying to fight bigotry and prejudice.) It’s absurd. Do all cartoonists fight for bigotry and prejudice? Do all webloggers? All self-described “feminists”? Do you reject these identities? I make the linkage between patriotism and civic responsibility because I can’t see it any other way. If you love something, then you care for it, and want it to be well and do right. The methods by which this can be achieved are the hard part, of course, but if you do love something, I don’t see how it’s possible not to want it to be good.
B) I don’t know if it’s kosher to bring up your old post, because you’ve abandoned so much of it, but this I think is the heart of the problem – How can anyone love a country? It’s a thing, an organization of people. You might as well profess love for the National Association of Vending Machine Distributors.
How, then, could one love a family? It must similiarly be impossible. It is, of course, not at all difficult to love an abstraction, particularly when that abstraction is the thing which guards freedom, which you said cared about yesterday, and which, again, gave you and 300 million others like and unlike you every opportunity they’ve had. The National Association of Vending machine Distributors, as you well know, did not, and your analogy is sophistry, which you probably also know. A far better analogy is family. Almost everyone loves their family, some people hate their family, if it was especially awful, but I’ve never met anyone who was indifferent to it. And I’ve never met a person who thought that all other families suck, and theirs was the best family in the world, but, even if I did, this wouldn’t make me indifferent to mine, even if this person was my brother.
With all due respect, Mr. Northrup, I think you’ve missed Amp’s entire point. As I understand it, Amp is saying that he’s not a patriot because he has a responsibility to defend and advocate the rights of all humans every where, not just those humans contained within the area between two imaginary borders that people happen to call “America.”
As such, he’s advancing a concept of civic duty on a much wider scale than you, a scale that encompasses the whole of the human race and not just America, where he happened to have been born.
“All my life, in mostly quiet and invisible ways, I’ve benefited from advantages I shouldn’t have and don’t deserve. This is why I support affirmative action, and reparations, and almost every reasonable measure I’ve come across for fighting racism, sexism and homophobia (and classism, and imperialism, etc etc)….
‘There’s a lot that’s wonderful in our history (read Howard Zinn), but also a lot that’s shameful, and you know what? I can’t take pride or shame in any of it, because I wasn’t around then, and I’m not the author of the good or the bad things those folks did.’
I phrased that sentence with care, and I stick by it. I’m not ashamed because of all the wrongs that have been done to women, to minorities, to gays in the USA. I didn’t do these things, and if I could I’d reverse them; so why should I feel guilt or shame?”
The reason you should feel shame (but not guilt), Amp, is because until you tear up your passport and renounce you right to vote in American elections you are an American; even after that, you would still probably be American. You were (I presume) born in America and you live in America. This doesn’t make you personally responsible or guilty of America’s past acts, but it does mean that they symbolize you, just as, say, the way you dress, whether you have nice skin, or your family name reflect on who you are. The difference is that your nationality goes a little deeper–unlike your clothes, your nationality makes up, or one would expect it to make up, a constitutive part of your identity that you can’t just remove. If it doesn’t, other people would immediately assume it did as soon as they heard your accent or read your driver’s license, and that means something; namely, it means something symbolic.
“As for the Poor Man’s linkage of responsibility and patriotism, I just don’t see it. Some of the most patriotic people I’ve met seem to feel no responsibility at all for trying to fight bigotry and prejudice. Maybe The Poor Man sees a connection there, but I don’t.”
How are responsibility and patriotism connected? Assume (for the sake of argument) that the average German and Germany itself today bear no responsibility for the holocaust, nor have retained material advantage from the horrors they inflicted upon Europe’s Jews and Roma.
Yet if you travel to Germany, you will find many people who quite rationally feel responsible for what their ancestors did to the Jews. Why? Because they feel ashamed of what their country and their ancestors did to the Jews. I would argue that this is a perfectly reasonable sentiment–unless they are willing to move to another country and renounce their citizenship, they would like to be able to say that they are German with some degree of dignity, and, yes, pride. They still feel a special responsibility toward Jews and Roma, a responsibility that one wouldn’t expect, say, the Chinese to feel out of “basic human decency,” but because they were born as Germans and therefore born with the mark of belonging to a certain country with a certain history, a country whose name and common identity they want to do something to rehabilitate. The responsibility such a German would bear to try to expediate such a rehabilitation clearly goes beyond the basic love one feels for humanity in general, just as the responsibility one might feel for helping, say, a hard on his luck uncle with whom one has only recently become acquainted exceeds any responsibility one would be expected to feel to help a down on his luck stranger who shared no ties of blood.
And we are all born, not as atomistic individuals as libertarians might think, or as human beings, as extreme Kantians might think, but rather as the natonals of a certain country with a certain history, and, yes, certain obligations, and these attributes become automatically attached to us and can only be renounced with a good degree of effort. As you’re a feminist, I’m surprised that you don’t accept this–the “givenness” of certain parts of our identities is a key part of most strands of feminist thought.
Sisyphus had a good post on the 4th of July:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/jmhm/389961.html
And I responded to someone who trolled her site on the topic of patriotism here:
http://antidotal.blogspot.com/2003_07_06_antidotal_archive.html#105763122291982156
Er, to prevent confusion, “This doesn’t make you personally responsible or guilty of America’s past acts” should read “This doesn’t make you guilty of or personally responsible for committing America’s past acts”
AND
“Assume (for the sake of argument) that the average German and Germany itself today bear no responsibility for the holocaust” should read “bear no responsbility for causing.”
Hope that helps…
Jake, it’s “Hindus”. Hindi would be someone from India
Well, you’re half-right. It would, indeed be Hindu, not Hindi. But, Hindi is the language they speak. A person from India would be an Indian — a Hindu person from India would be a Hindu. (Keep in mind, while Hindu may literally mean “religion of India,” it is one of only 3 main religions predominant in India, the other two being Muslim and Christianity.)
Andrew W. wrote:
You’ve brushed off most of your other post, which is a step in the right direction.
Dear me, you do make assumptions, don’t you? I didn’t repeat my entire other post (why should I have?), but I still stand by everything I said in it.
You ask “Do all cartoonists fight for bigotry and prejudice?” No; cartoonists as a class don’t fight either for or against bigotry and prejudice. Therefore, I make no generalized connection between cartooning and fighting (or supporting). Similarly, patriots as a class don’t fight against (or for) bigotry, and so I make no generalized connection between patriotism and opposing (or supporting) bigotry. And I think people who do make a connection, like you, are being foolish.
“I make the linkage between patriotism and civic responsibility because I can’t see it any other way.”
In this, you’re a lot like religious people who claim that it’s impossible to have any morality if you don’t believe in God, because they “can’t see it any other way.” They’re mistaken, and so are you; just as an athiest can still be a moral person, so can a non-patriot still feel civic responsibility.
“… but if you do love something, I don’t see how it’s possible not to want it to be good.”
But I think the real issue is, is it possible to want something to be good, even if you don’t love that something?
“I don’t know if it’s kosher to bring up your old post, because you’ve abandoned so much of it…”
I haven’t abandoned any of it (wistful thinking on your part?), and you’re welcome to keep bringing it up.
The difference between a country and my family is that the USA is a collection of people I don’t know 99.99999999% of; my family, as I use the term, refers pretty much exclusively to people I know and have reason to love. Loving people you know makes sense to me, in a way loving a particular collection of strangers does not.
Now, my “family” might also be construed as meaning everyone I’m related to by blood, many of whom I’ve never met and will never know anything about (cousins 15 times removed and so forth). I don’t love my family in that sense, and to proclaim a love of my family in that sense seems just as absurb to me as loving a manufacturing association, or a country.
“It is, of course, not at all difficult to love an abstraction, particularly when that abstraction is the thing which guards freedom, which you said cared about yesterday, and which, again, gave you and 300 million others like and unlike you every opportunity they’ve had.”
So do you think the country should also be given the blame for things it does badly, or are you saying I should love it based solely on the good things it does, while the bad things aren’t allowed to be part of my judgement?
It seems to me that if I’m to credit the USA with “every opportunity I’ve ever had” (including, presumably, the opportunities I’ve had that I didn’t deserve, due to racism, sexism, etc?), then I also have to credit the USA with the lack of opportunity I see around me – the lack of opportunity to participate in elections that are dominated by issues rather than money; the lack of opportunity for medical care for folks without much money; etc, etc.
If (like your argument above) I considered only the good things, it might make sense for me to love America. If I considered only the bad things, it might make sense for me to hate America. But I consider both the good and the bad, and I don’t think either love or hate is the reaction that makes sense for me.
Oh, and regarding this: “…and if you are all right with everyone less privelidged than you telling the world to go to hell.”
You seem to have read only part of my post, and thus have gotten confused about my meaning. Here’s the essential paragraph you apparently skipped:
It doesn’t matter whether or not I’m personally guilty of anything: my responsibility to my fellow human beings is not a punishment for anything I’ve done. Being in favor of justice – especially where injustice has favored your interests – doesn’t require being ashamed; it’s just a condition of being a decent human being.
Being in favor of justice is “a condition of being a decent human being,” not something limited to people who are as or more privileged than myself. I do think that the responsibility to act is “especially” clear for folks who have been unjustly privileged, but I think everyone has some responsibility to try and improve things around them.
I agree with Eric, and I think Amp here makes a pretty good case.
That line about “everyone … telling the world to go to hell” is a strange one, as is that spelling of “privileged.”
Okay, so I got it wrong…
Oh, cripes.
Since I seem to have set this whole thing off, can I make a slight distinction here?
America is a very young country, and everyone here either has, or is descended from someone who has, adopted it.
Adopting is a very complicated business if someone else has been doing the raising before you get there.
Basically, you have two choices – you can either reinforce the positive qualities a kid has and work to correct the negative ones, or you can wash your hands of the whole thing because it’s not your problem and it’s not really your kid.
After that, you can say it’s not your responsibility, but you’re in a bad position to deplore actions you could have helped to head off, and it would be a bit tactless to ask it to support you in its old age.
Being above the fray is a luxury. I have nothing against luxury, unless it masks itself as the status quo.
Not everyone has the privilege to indulge themselves in it.
Raznor wrote:
Kind of like how Shinto means “religion of Japan” (I hope I got that right).
Alas, shinto means (loosely) “way of the spirits/gods”. Interestingly, the word shinto itself is one of a large class of words composed of borrowed Chinese morphemes, roughly analogous to the influence of Latin on English. The -to part is the famous dao, or “way”. And I’ve heard persuasive arguments that shinto isn’t necessarily a religion, given that it has no dogma or organizational hierarchy, but I confess I haven’t really studied the matter.
Not to get too far off-topic, but nitpicking perceptions of Japanese language and culture is an old habit.
Anyway, I applaud Ampersand for his ability to articulate a feeling which is familiar to me.
Over ten years ago, I participated with a friend in an exercise called the World Game, which was an interesting and informative attempt to teach about global problems. At the end, the audience was asked to suggest a single overriding issue that affected humanity as a whole. I offered the progressive but bland “lack of education.” My friend, wise well beyond his years, said something to the effect of “reliance on and attachment to abstracts.” I am in awe of the clarity and foresight of his response even to this day.
Cheers,
-scott
ScooterD wrote:
“Anyway, I applaud Ampersand for his ability to articulate a feeling which is familiar to me.”
Same here. What makes Ampersand’s arguments so valuable is that most of them are valid for any other country in the world. This is one of the few issues I get so passionate about that I have to give up explaining my position to people who don’t seem to understand it from the beginning, i. e. usually people who belong to the same category as the majority of the citizens and never had to face racism or social disdain and the likes (all things familiar to me, though I do not belong to a “visible” minority).
As for shintô, just as an appendix to ScooterD’s comprehensive explanation, the expression “shendao” is quite common in Chinese writings as it first appears in the “Zhouyi”, aka “Yijing”, “The Book of Change” (more famous under the transcription “Yi-king”), 20th hexagram: “Guan”, with a meaning close to “tiandao”, “the way of Heaven”, as opposed to “rendao”, “the way of the Human”. It is said that “the Saint establishes his teaching through the way of the spirit, and then the world/society follows it” (lousy translation, please do not quote).
[One should always keep in mind that “dao” is the “way” in both meanings of the term.]
To differentiate this notion from Japan’s shintoist religion in Chinese, you have to add a “jiao”=teaching (“kyû” in sino-Jap. reading) to “shendao”.
ScooterD, please correct me if I’m wrong, but I was a bit puzzled by the second part of your paragraph, as I seem to recall that Shintô was established as Japan’s State religion during the militaristic regime in the Thirties, and was officially separated from the State by the Allied HQ in 1945. I think the Emperor himself plays a central part in the organisation of the religion, which does have a clerical hierarchy (not anybody can be a shintô priest). If this is correct, Shintô is no less a religion than, say, Taoism (or Daoism).
Way pedantic, but I have to correct this one:
“jiao” is “kyô” (not “kyû”) in sino-Japanese reading, as in “shûkyô” (“zongjiao”)=”religion”.
End of erratum.
I always learn the most interesting things from the responses to Raznor’s diversions. :p
Interesting! In that case, Shinto had less than 15 years as Japan’s state religion.
I had a discussion a week or two ago about how much Hirohito knew of what was going on. My $0.02: he knew. He was about twenty, wasn’t he? Which doesn’t mean he was calling the shots. I have a feeling the son issued an apology which the father never had.
First off, thanks to bean and Scooter for corrections to my post. And bean, glad to help. I think. Yeah.
Okay, I admit, I don’t know much of Japanese history, and what Japanese language I know is from memorizing lines from anime phonetically and paying attention to the subtitles. But first of all, it was my impression that Shinto was named the state religion of Japan during the Meiji restoration period, came about in the late 19th century, as opposed to 1930. And though I was wrong about the exact meaning of the word (I should have figured it out from watching tons of Rouroni Kenshin) it remained my impression that Shinto was never given a name until first Buddhism and later Christianity started making their ways to Japan’s shores, and hence creating a need to differentiate itself from other religious traditions. Kind of like how the term “monotheism” was created by a Roman Jew in order to differentiate Judaism from the religions of Rome and Greece and other “polytheistic” religions. No Roman was a self-described polytheist.
Okay, digression complete.
What Julia said.
Julia, to describe my attitiude as “being above the fray” is so ridiculous, that I can’t even respond to it. Please answer this question: Did you even READ the post you just responded to? What about this post – which is all about the responsibility I think I have to be IN the fray – suggests “above the fray” to you?
Good grief. Why do people have such a hard time understanding what Ampersand has been saying? Is it because we have had it drilled into our heads since day one that our first obligation is to love one’s country? That may be a rhetorical question; maybe not. Look, I love my country for any number of the positive reasons one can list (democratic ideals, freedom of speech, etc.) and despite any number of reasons one can list to argue for hating it (ongoing systemic exploitation, a jones for war, etc.) Such is the nature of love that is developed over a long period of time, if you are honest with yourself and try to approach life with an unblinkered eye. But like any love, you have to fall into it in the first place. Maybe Ampersand never fell in love with the US, with “America” as an ideal. So fucking what? I’m not in love with every person I see—in fact, I know quite a few I hate—but that doesn’t mean I don’t value their humanity nor would refrain from fighting for their rights.
And please, let no one ask Ampersand to love it or leave it: He doesn’t stay in America because he loves the place; he stays here because that’s where his loved ones are. As for the “fray”—I know him well enough to know he would jump into no matter where he happened to be, in America or on the polar ice cap of Mars.
Raznor,
I know you did not address my post nominally, but since I was the one writing that “Shintô was established as Japan’s State religion during the militaristic regime in the Thirties”, I feel that I have to answer your comment on this particular point (“it was my impression that Shinto was named the state religion of Japan during the Meiji restoration period…”).
As a matter of fact, you are totally right, and my formulation was undoubtedly wrong, for which I apologize, as I really do not feel comfortable in adding one more false historical statement to the tens of thousands the Web is dragging every day.
Anyway, Shintô was officially established as the State religion in the early Meiji era (1868-1912), and not in the Thirties, though it is true that the military regime intensified the role of shintô as the only “genuinly” Japanese religion, in opposition to Buddhism, and instrumentalized it that way in its nationalistic propaganda.
What I initially wanted to point out when writing this was that one has to distinguish carefully the expressions “national/popular/common religion” (as being naturally predominant without having to be bound to the State) and “State religion” (with priests-functionaries, official shrines, governmental funding, etc.), but this has no value as long as I base it on uncorrect facts. All I can say for my defense is that it was quite late when I wrote this, making the mistake to rely on my memory (today, at least, I checked both the “Encyclopaedia Universalis” and the Chinese “Cihai”). However, the rest of the post stands, but next time I will stick to China.
Shinto was made the official state religion of Japan during the Meiji restoration for political reasons. The Meiji restoration was primarily concerned with taking power away from the shogunate and, by extention, the samurai, and returning it to the Emperor (who had, up to that point, really been more of a pretty bauble than an actual ruler). The official religion under the reign of most of the shoguns had been Mahayana Buddhism because it reinforced a caste system that was central to the samurai’s ability to stay in power; thus why the Emperor was so keen to do away with it. At the same time, the Emperor’s power is supposed to derive from his being a descendent of Amaterasu, the Shinto sun goddess. So, by making Shinto the official state religion of Japan, the Emperor conveniently bolstered his own power and lessened the power of his enemies (the samurai) during the Meiji restoration.
On a related note, concerning whether or not Shinto is a religion or a philosophy, it’s actually something of both. While Shinto has a priesthood, temples, and prescribed rituals (most of which revolve around purity, a concern that pervaded Japanese culture even while Buddhism was the dominant religion, which contributed to Japan being so much cleaner than Europe during the same time period), it doesn’t have a central text or set of rules (i.e., no Bible and no Ten Commandments). Shinto is, however, unified by belief in the nebulous kami (spirits that, contrary to Western reinterpretation, are not divided up into “good” kami and “bad” kami but are, rather, more akin to the morally ambiguous jinn of Arabian culture) and the practice of placating the kami. So, really, whether Shinto is a “real” religion or not is a matter of how one chooses to define “religion.”
And since I’m already very off topic, I’ll follow up a bit more on what Jimmy said about the Chinese word “tao” (meaning “way.”) “Tao” can also be rendered as “do” (depending on what Romanization one uses when transliterating Chinese) because the “t” sound is the aspirated form of the “d” sound (this is why “tao” is actually pronounded “dao.”) This word has trickled out of Chinese and into all of the other major languages of East Asian, especially in the realm of marial arts, which all have a heavy philosophical Taoist influence. Examples of this include the Japanese kendo (“way of the sword”) and Bushido (“way of the warrior”), the Korean tae kwon do (I believe “way of the kick,” but I’m not sure), and judo (“way of the fist.”)
PinkDreamPoppies:
Tae Kwon Do is the Korean form of the Chinese phrase Kenpo which means way of the fist.
Besides that, you’re post seems to be quite accurate, and I won’t further divert from it.
I am kind of disappointed that no one seems to be reacting to my Vonnegut references though. Oh well, que sera sera.
I should know better than to indulge my penchant for digression. But hey, everybody else was game.
For those still following along at home, the ‘kami’ mentioned in PinkDreamPoppies’ post is written with the same Chinese character as the ‘shin’ in shinto.
I would politely disagree on Jimmy Ho’s description of my post as ‘comprehensive’; condensed and unsubstantiated would be more accurate. That aside, my Chinese is only slightly above awful: is shendao written with the same characters as shinto?
As PinkDreamPoppies points out, and rightly so, whether shinto is a ‘real’ religion depends on one’s definition of ‘religion’. Notwithstanding it’s institutionalization during the Meiji era, I don’t think of shinto as being particularly organized, and so would entertain the semantic notion that it is not a religion. A set of spiritual traditions with broad cultural ramifications, sure; but capable of Crusades? I defer to wiser minds, mine being of a peculiar bent when it comes to words.
Finally, I have heard that it is said Japanese are “born shinto, wed Christian, and die Buddhist.” Assuming I got the order right. My memory is little good to me lately.
Cheers,
-s
Thank you, Raznor, for the correction about tae kwon do (is it also capitalized as well?) My knowledge of East Asia is good around Japan but becomes hazy beyond that. I’m better with China than Korea, but not by much.
That said, my knowledge of Vonnegut is limited to a single reading of “Harrison Bergeron” when I was in high school and obsessed with dystopian stories. Other than that, I’ve not read his work and so can’t respond to your references. Any recommendations as to which Vonnegut book I should begin with?
Scooter: I’m not much of a wiser mind, but I tend to agree with you that Shinto isn’t a “religion” in the Western sense of the word. I have noticed, though, that the East and West have slightly different concepts about what constitutes a religion and how closely one ought to follow a religion. There are a lot of stories of Japanese people who, after encountering Catholic missionaries, considered themselves to be Buddhist, Christian, and Shinto all at once (this is probably what that phrase you quoted was referring to, but I haven’t heard it before). This meshing of religions is fairly prevalent as near as I can tell (with some Hindus in India considering themselves Buddhists as well, some Buddhists in China also being Taoist, and so forth) and is in sharp contrast to the almos fanatical nit-picking divisiveness of Western religions. Actually, that applies fairly well to all Western philosophies in general: observe the practice of drawing very sharp, distinct lines between branches of political parties.
Or even, to attempt, in a half-assed sort of way, to end this threadjacking, the very fine distinctions made about who is and is not a patriot. Is one a patriot if one is very concerned for the well-being of the nation’s poor, or does one have to compulsively collect flags, or does one merely have to self-identify as a patriot while trashing the Constitution on which the country was founded? Ahem. Sorry about the dig.
Okay, so it was a weak effort to end a threadjacking.
ScooterD,
Please, “buyao keqi” (no need to be polite, Cant. “msei haghei”)!
To answer your question, yes, “shendao” is nothing else than the (Mandarin) Chinese pronunciation of the two characters “shinto”, or more exactly, “shinto” is the so-called “sino-japanese” reading (“on’yomi”), inspired from Southern Chinese dialects, corresponding to “shendao”. “Kami” is just the “current” pronunciation (“kun yomi”) for the first char., “shen” (spirit), as in “kamikaze” (divine wind), which reads “shenfeng” in Chinese.
To respond now to PinkDreamPoppies’ post, I’d like to clarify that, if we are talking about Mandarin (“guoyu”/”putonghua”, the official language of both the PRC and the ROC), “dao” is the only way to transcribe the second char. in the pinyin system, while “do” sounds more like the Cantonese pronunciation (“dou”), which is closer to the various “sino-” readings in the Eastern Asian languages that have borrowed the Chinese writing.
By the way, “judo” (roudao) is the way of the soft/gentle (Raznor, “kenpo” does not look like a Chinese word, but taekwondo stands for “taiquandao”=”way of the kicks and fists(kicking and boxing)”, so both you and PinkDreamPoppies were half right).
(“Raznor, ‘kenpo’ does not look like a Chinese word”. More exactly, it could be one phonetically, but not one composed with the “way” element).
Jimmy: When I mentioned the transcribing “dao” as “tao,” I was referring to the atrocity that is the Wade-Giles system of Romanization.
Thanks for the correction on the meaning of judo. As soon as I posted that it meant “way of the fist” I felt like kicking myself because I knew that that wasn’t right, but couldn’t think of what was.
PinkDreamPoppies: a good place to start Vonnegut would be _Slaughterhouse Five_, probably his best known novel. If you don’t like that, you probalby won’t like much of the rest of his novels.
Patriotism: loving one’s country creeps me out, because it’s such a monogamous love.
I dunno Martin, Slaughterhouse Five does give away the ending of Mother Night, so I’d recommend reading the latter first, but then that’s me.
Hmm, maybe Kenpo isn’t the exact Chinese word used, but the art originated in China more than 3000 years ago, and it’s recognizable as a Chinese art due to it’s focus on hand techniques. Tae Kwon Do is a spin off of this technique, but the Chinese considered the specific hand techniques to be nearly a national secret, which is why Tae Kwon Do focuses more on kicks. Kenpo eventually made it’s way to Japan and, most recently, to America by way of Hawaii. So what we know as Kenpo (and that is what the Japanese call it, I know from watching Kenshin, dammit) may have been called something else by the ancient Chinese, but I really have no idea.
Now back to the post. I think the problem with the concept of patriotism is that it is often confused with nationalism, and that shouldn’t be the point. The purpose of the Constitution was to create a nation of laws, not men. We are not patriotically obligated to stand by the President any more than he stands by the Constitution. And in the case of this administration, that means punching the President in the gut then urinating on him.
No wait, I shouldn’t be so hard on the President. The poor guy has nothing to do but stay back at his home in Tennessee.
Short answer to the language point only : kenpo=Jap. for Chin. “quanfa”=”law/rule of the fist/boxing”=all things “kung fu” (gongfu), e.g. Shaolin Temple Quanfa Institute (http://henan.ccpit.org/baixianzhaoshang/zhengzhou/quanfaxueyuan/).