Extract from Mythbusting the Cult of Confucius, © Wayne Deeker 2013, available here. The remainder of the book discusses the dreadful consequences of the following realities about Confucian values, foremost of which is control. Confucianism is a brutal control system, nothing more or less, and all the worse because it’s disguised as morality. Regarding sources and extra material, note that the printed version of this chapter alone has about eighty endnotes, though as they do not copy over to WordPress very effectively, I have left them out.

# # #

If we want to understand the Chinese, we must start with Confucianism.

[Optional summary: Confucianism for beginners.]

Confucianism is the number one influence defining Chinese culture. The Chinese often say that Buddhism and Taoism equally contributed to their character, and maybe that was true for a little while long ago, but today, as for most of the last 2200-odd years, Confucianism has an absolute stranglehold over China. Even if the Chinese don’t realise or accept it, actually Confucianism is central to everything about them; very little about the Chinese makes sense without that context. Most Chinese accept their Confucian heritage without question.

Many books and websites document the full details of Confucianist writings and teachings, so I won’t be doing that. Instead the real meaning and social effect of Confucian philosophy interest me far more. These are also the bits that explain nearly everything about China.

To understand Confucianism we have to know a bit about Confucius (Kung Fu-zi) and his world, particularly how his system became the official philosophy of China. He was born around 551 BCE during China’s “Spring and Autumn” era. Starting hundreds of years before Confucius’ birth, this was a tumultuous time of the gradual decline and breakup of an earlier, larger Chinese kingdom (Eastern Zhou: pronounced jo). The era’s heightened intra- and inter-state intrigues preluded the outright warfare of the later “Warring States” period.

Raised in privilege, the young Confucius had no real responsibilities and devoted his time to studying classics. As he considered the early Zhou period the pinnacle of government and society (for no better reason than it being his own native culture), he believed the Zhou moral system should apply to his own time. Though virtually alone in this view, he believed contemporary rulers were behaving immorally by Zhou standards. Hence Confucius made it his life’s work to systemise what the Zhou would have considered “proper” conduct: his famous “rules of propriety”.

Promoting himself as a learned scholar, Confucius gained his first government position (Chief of police) at age fifty though his advice was not appreciated. A few years later he left on a roadshow of neighbouring states, offering his services as freelance counsel. Most rulers wouldn’t see him, and those who did were unimpressed. The Duke of Wei, for example, asked Confucius’ thoughts on military strategy; Confucius replied that his expertise was odes and ancient sacrificial rituals, not practical matters. Almost totally impotent and useless when it came to contemporary government, he spent most of his time teaching a band of followers.

I suppose that if Chinese today ever wonder about the general non-acceptance of Confucius’ philosophies during his life, they might reason that people of his time were too immoral or uncouth to understand. Chinese venerate Confucius as the quintessential wise man whose influence was wholly positive. If they ever think about how easily Confucius’ theories could have been lost to history, they might argue that we were lucky to have avoided that.

I will argue the opposite: that his legacy was anything but positive. Actually the substance and spirit of Confucius’ teachings have retarded Chinese development ever since. It’s also an interesting, if sinister, story of how Confucianism went from almost total non-acceptance to the complete opposite we see today.

Yet it’s quite difficult for a modern person to access and judge Confucianism without being influenced by the Chinese reverence for it. The fact of it still being published and discussed suggests some worth. We also usually encounter Confucianism as selected tidbits of fortune-cookie wisdom. For example: “Good people go inside and rest when the sun goes down”, “Good people are careful about what they say and moderate in eating and drinking”, “Good people forgive faults and pardon crimes”. It’s difficult to argue with such truisms.

Likewise, on the surface, other parts of Confucianism seem to suggest some simple value. Confucius warned of the abuses of power, and generally suggested an idealism where privileged people have an obligation to help the less privileged. (Here he wasn’t really speaking of material assistance as we might assume, rather of moral guidance.) He maintained that educated men should cultivate themselves towards higher morality. In enacting moral conduct, and serving as ministers and educators, the cultivated man positively influences the whole political/social framework. Confucius further believed only the most qualified people should work in public office. All this sounds very reasonable and astute, as intended. A selected reading of standard Confucian quotes reinforces Chinese interpretations, and makes it easy for westerners to go along with their assumptions that all of Confucianism must have the same value.

Yet anyone who reads Confucianism in its entirety can see that the commonly-quoted lines are definitely the choice bits. The vast bulk of the rest is nebulous and apparently meaningless. This is why it’s difficult for the western person to get a critical hold on it, which again leaves us with the Chinese interpretation by default. However, for those who persevere, it becomes clear that most of Confucianism is confused, certainly disorganised, plus often self-contradictory or outright nonsensical. Being often difficult to understand may itself contribute to the general interpretation of Confucianism as wisdom.

I will be introducing a new interpretation: Confucianism is difficult to understand because it’s unclear and vague, thin and weak, not to mention tangled and illogical. Except for the well-known bits, its fundamental content has very little philosophical or literary value by our standards.

Behind the wispiness, Confucianism is extraordinarily simple. Confucius believed that effective government maintains a smooth society. Obviously it does, but for him its mechanism was virtue: good rulers, acting properly, make the world good. Again, superficially, this idea is not without merit (depending on what virtue and goodness mean). However, for Confucius, virtue meant adherence to traditional rituals, roles and hierarchies. Without unfair exaggeration, the most important things in Confucian thinking were prissy manners and empty rituals as these lead to good government:

He who understands the ceremonies and sacrifices to Heaven and Earth, and the meaning of the several sacrifices to ancestors, would find the government of a kingdom as easy as to look into his palm.

The Doctrine of the Mean

Reduced to its stark essence like this, Confucianism reveals a very naïve grasp of sociological principles. The world has long since moved on from where formalised ritual could be a sound basis for governing a complex society.

We will examine the reasoning behind this central Confucian idea, and why Confucianism’s other core beliefs are similarly limited.

# # #

For starters, Confucianism is old. While it’s not necessarily true that old philosophical systems must be simple, they usually are, and antiquity certainly is the biggest part of the reason Confucianism is.

It’s widely believed that Confucius’ teachings merely revived Eastern Zhou values. Superficially, indeed he did, though this story also has a deeper layer.

From the beginning, Confucianism was a deeply conservative philosophy and always valued conservatism. Confucius admitted, proudly, that he had nothing new to say. He thought people should look to the past for answers and that life should be formulaic; not coincidentally, these attitudes excluded original ideas, individual goals, or deviation from established patterns. Confucius’ legacy amounts to developing the perfect recipe for stagnation. China certainly did stagnate as even the Chinese themselves eventually acknowledged. Towards the end of the imperial era it was almost petrified.

However, according to the renowned Asian-classics scholar Dr. Thomas Cleary, the origins of Zhou thought date back to the very beginning of Chinese civilisation.

This means that China’s stagnation under Confucianism was far worse than generally acknowledged, and didn’t merely start when the Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 0220 CE), early in its reign, installed Legalist-Confucianism as the official state philosophy. Beyond the standard interpretation, where Confucius enshrined Zhou values, in fact those came from a culture that peaked nearly two thousand years before the Zhou. That means Confucianism today (and Chinese life) embodies values which have hardly changed since Stonehenge was new roughly 4500 years ago.

We will shortly examine the reasons for this backward focus, though one of its main effects is that Chinese truly believe they have already achieved perfection. The trouble with philosophies or belief systems claiming to have found some ultimate is that this belief stops people looking further. That’s what we see with Chinese: they expend no effort seeking higher understanding. Why bother? Chinese tend to wallow in the “perfection” they believe their ancestors achieved rather than strive towards any future ideas of it. So they’re smug and backward-looking. And since they started being backward-looking thousands of years ago, they really haven’t come very far since then.

Central to this book is the idea that the study of Confucianism is really the study of ancient cultural values.

# # #

Western people naturally interpret Chinese society as alien, though in fact there are strong similarities. To see them we have to look far back into our history.

Consider the ancient Romans. While clearly ancestral to most western peoples, many of their values — especially their pleasure in conquest, cruelty, and death — would seem barbaric and abhorrent to us were any ancient Romans alive today: so much have our values evolved. Yet the Chinese preserve ways of thinking even more ancient than the Romans’. So the gulf between us and the Chinese is similar to what it would be between us and our own peoples from 45 centuries ago. Confucianist thinking really is that primitive.

Imperial Chinese society was full of concepts common in the ancient world: absolute authority; association of authority with divinity; hierarchical, caste-based society; duty, obedience, conformity; ritual; blood-sacrifice. They came as a set in ancient societies. Everyone, including kings, had specific roles, and so structured that “anything not compulsory was forbidden”. This is one reason Chinese have so little idea of personal freedom today. In their continuing adherence to most of the above practices and attitudes (or very recent abandonment of, in cases of blood-sacrifice and caste-society), Chinese are still much more like ancient Egyptians than like any modern culture.

So modern Chinese are living, remnant Bronze-Age people. This is a startling but clarifying idea: once one realises it, examples pop out everywhere as we will see throughout this book. Furthermore, much of the blame lies with Confucius personally.

Though greater biographical accuracy about him would be highly desirable, historically he’s sketchy, and I don’t consider Chinese speculations about the missing details very reliable. Nevertheless, at least certain key facts about his life suggest a more realistic interpretation of his personality. Not only did he preach the values of a culture from two millennia before his own time, he did so during one of China’s very few creative eras (the “hundred schools of thought” period). Then, rulers were willing to consider any radical ideas that would secure advantage over their rivals. This put great strain on the traditional order; that was almost certainly the source of Confucius’ lament about “immorality”, and is the reason rulers of nearby Chinese states troubled him so. For Confucius, tradition and established patterns were good, everything else wanton and decadent: immoral really meant anything not traditional. We still know people who think this way. However, given the importance of conformity and ritual in ancient societies, one such as Confucius who completely identified with those ways would have found new styles of thinking especially threatening. While maybe we can understand his motivation, Confucius’ anachronistic slogans and proverbs would have sounded even more stale and trite to his contemporaries than they do to us. To find a modern parallel, we’d have to imagine some wiener preaching “useth not fire on the sabbath” at a hippie love-in.

Though an amusing image of the wannabe-prophet no-one would listen to, there’s actually a deep wrongness to Confucius’ actions. That possibility would never have occurred to him, which only shows how incompatible his “morality” is with ours (as we will see in other ways throughout this book). Today we might see the holding back of a culture trying to find a new truth as highly immoral. This may be the most serious reason not to think of Confucianism as wisdom. Thanks to Confucius, and especially to those who later enforced his ideas, the Chinese lost a tremendous opportunity to finally break out of the Bronze-Age. Confucius didn’t just set China back, his fear of innovation personally helped lock it into the past.

# # #

Being so old, very little of Confucianism’s ancient thinking stands up to modern reasoning.

Although Confucius zealously believed that the Zhou represented the optimal form of society, this classic fallacy involving belief in the perfection of one’s own culture was no more true in that case than any other. At least it explains why, for Confucius, perfect virtue meant to behave like a Zhou king; he assumed that the “virtue” of ancient Zhou monarchs and the supposed “harmony” of that society were causally related. This translates to a Confucian philosophy of government: do what the Zhou did, and you’ll get what they had. Quite true, though we will see that for us this could not be a good thing.

This Confucian principle enshrines a mythologised, probably fantastic, view about the virtue of ancient Zhou society and its monarchs. Let’s face it: how many ancient rulers are really remembered for their virtue? Generally the more vividly they stand out in history, the less virtuous they were by any modern definition. That is certainly true for China’s historical cast of egotists, usurpers and tyrants. Could anyone really be naïve enough to believe otherwise?

Confucius’ backward-looking Zhou-adoration becomes less puzzling knowing that Chinese culture rests on a platform of ancestor worship. Ancestor worship was not universal among ancient societies, and has separately evolved only a few times. It involves a belief that departed ancestors live on and can influence the lives of their descendants for good or ill, and therefore must be placated and bribed. The overwhelming importance of this in the Chinese case can be difficult for western people to grasp; we don’t do it, and have no cultural memory of ever doing it. Nevertheless, ancestor worship is central to Chinese belief and pervades Confucianism, for once quite explicitly. It was the belief system of China long before Confucius.

Even though Confucius accepted the obvious “truth” of the virtue of his ancestors, we can’t. For one thing, it is not virtuous to carry on like Bronze-Age despots. Secondly, Chinese ancestor worship boils down to a protection racket: you pay them to leave you alone. Not especially virtuous of the ancestral spirits, we would think, yet the true sickness of this belief shows in its root of indebtedness.

Later we will closely examine concepts of developmental psychology as applied to modern Chinese people (see Docillated and stunted); in brief, today Chinese show a preponderance of low developmental stages, whereas, intermediate ranges dominate modern societies.

Specifically, people at very low stages value others in terms of utility: you have value to me only via what I can get from you. So Chinese adults placate their dead ancestors with offerings to get protection from ghostly meddling. The harm of this comes when lowered one generation, and young people are expected to pay the same tributes to their living elders as the elders do to the ancestral spirits; if the tribute is the same, then logically it must be because parents pose the same threat as the ghosts. That would reveal a distinct lack of virtue among the ancient Chinese, however, I have never known any Chinese person to notice this quite disturbing implication. Instead, they morph it into an unjustified belief that respectful tributes are due simply because parents are older and presumably respectable for that. Therefore, in practice Chinese ancestor worship means children having to pay their parents, and Chinese children are raised with this sense of debt for being born and everything they ever received. It’s also a debt that cannot be repaid, for what is the value of one’s life? Chinese parents instil this debt in order to get stuff from their children for the rest of the parents’ lives. While transactional relationship characterises low developmental stages, people at stages higher than average for ancient China — today, nearly all adults — find this immoral. We no longer believe children owe their parents; parenting is a responsibility, not an excuse for exploitation. Therefore, Chinese ancestor worship is based on debt and transaction, which is utilitarian and so reflects a very simple moral reasoning.

Thus whichever way one looks at it, Confucianism is totally founded on ideas completely unacceptable to modern people. As we will soon see, Chinese ancestors were hardly exemplars of adult morality. Given that, all of Confucius’ reasoning founded on his primary faith in the Zhou virtue must be wrong too. For anyone not raised to share that faith, these simple ideas cannot suffice. Also, the entire Chinese justification for and practice of ancestor worship is utilitarian, which means childish. (We will return to this idea repeatedly: Confucianism is full of childish values.)

Ancestor worship aside, Thomas Cleary stated that the rest of Confucianism boils down to four specific platforms: culture, conduct, loyalty, and faith. These vague principles simply mean conformity to the Zhou’s infantile ways, while containing nothing of universal worth. As a structure for living a good life, they have no value for anyone who can determine what to do for themselves.

I am earnestly trying to accurately summarise the main Confucian ideas, such as they are, and honestly, that’s about as far as one can go critiquing Confucian philosophical content. The few miscellaneous remaining concepts are as insubstantial and naïve as what we’ve seen, and only of specialist interest. Some are plainly fallacious, based on false dichotomies. Hence most of the rest of this story is historical and social context.

# # #

One of Confucius’ specific goals was to guide humanity toward his moral utopia. However, walking around China today, common sense shows it didn’t work out that way: most of the remainder of this book illustrates that daily life shows the Chinese (with some exceptions) as perhaps the world’s least moral people. Most can lie, cheat and hurt others without the slightest thought for the effect of their actions; this must have been true in Confucius’ day too. Foreigners who adopt China often lose whatever morality they may have once had (the reverse of what Confucianists believe happens). So Confucianism doesn’t have a moralising influence. Given the complete failure of its stated reason for existence, one must wonder why the Chinese kept it. The fact that they did suggests the “moral” aspects of Confucianism were probably a distraction (in modern terms: a PR spin) and that it must have been effective for something else.

Confucianism’s frequent use of “harmony” gives us a clue. For anyone who has seen the eternal squabbling reality of China, this word clangs. Chinese harmony is really a Taoist concept, meaning inner personal non-conflict with the messy world as-is, which Confucianists co-opted and corrupted; I very much doubt that any society has ever been truly harmonious in the Confucian mythologised sense. Zhou culture was, to say the least, quite different to our ideas of a harmonious society.

Actually Zhou morality meant a tyrannical control state. Authority and obedience were the social order: rulers and the ruled, just like any other Bronze-Age society. It had no other complexity or subtlety.

Modern western people are generally removed from and tend to overlook the selfish motives of ancient rulers, and the brutality with which they achieved their goals. Confucian thinking says “moral conduct” is good but doesn’t specify good for whom. Today we might assume this meant the common good, but it definitely did not. Confucian morality squarely means the good of rulers; Confucianism was never about the people who lived under that system. This is clear by Confucius’ statement that faith in government authority is more important even than food: “… [if necessary] part with the food. From of old, death has been the lot of an men [sic]; but if the people have no faith in their rulers, there is no standing for the state.” That’s just what dictators would think, anything else would undermine their ability to rule. Yet it’s also consistent with their belief that moral rightness meant “you all exist to serve me”. Maintaining their own privilege and luxury gave rulers a vested interest in a strict hierarchy based on a slave economy. So, for the lower classes, Confucius equates virtue with service. Everyone in Confucian/Zhou society was expected to “concern themselves with their responsibilities to others” and “wholeheartedly accept the roles assigned to them”. Thus duty and obedience are the strongest concepts in Chinese thinking: not freedom, not choice. (Chinese today still celebrate ancient stories of pointless obedience.) Right is whatever the authority says is right: do as it dictates. To enforce this, Zhou morality also meant a secret police plus horrific punishments.

This is the philosophy Confucianism preserves. It also puts a new perspective on Confucius’ interpretation of ancient rulers as “virtuous”. Virtuous like Pol Pot.

We should always beware people who presume to lecture others about morality; there’s usually an agenda. With Confucianism it’s control. Conveniently built into it are passive acceptance of authority, lack of critical examination, and dogmatic adherence to status quo. Sound familiar? These are some of the most defining Chinese characteristics today. The long dominance of Confucianism is exactly why the Chinese are like that.

# # #

China’s Warring States era ended in 221 BCE when the king of Qin (pronounced chin) finished conquering the other six Chinese states, thereby establishing the first true Chinese empire. In spite of fanfare that the new imperial dynasty would last “ten thousand generations”, in fact it barely lasted fourteen years. After the Qin dynasty collapsed, rulers of the former Han state seized power, effectively making themselves runners-up to the Warring States wars. They founded the Han Dynasty, virtually continuous with the Qin. The Han and Confucianism are closely linked.

Though the Han eventually became the longest-lasting of all imperial dynasties, and one of the most powerful, early in its reign it was an insecure, illegitimate government which urgently needed to consolidate its fragile authority. Also, during this period the Han installed Confucianism as the official state philosophy. These facts must be related. The relationship is that Confucianism perfectly emphasises ruling-class interests through totalitarian state authority, while also ensuring authority is never challenged: pretty convenient.

Confucianism began as an oral tradition; no-one alive today knows exactly what Confucius said because it was not written down until centuries later. What survives is known to have been supplemented. Though it’s unknown when Confucianism first appeared in written form, this still had not occurred roughly forty years before the Han. Yet the Han government is known to have used a written version of Confucianism influenced by Legalism. This is the version of Confucianism that survived, and is almost certainly a Han creation.

Legalism was synthesised from related earlier sources by a prince of the Han ruling family, Han Fei-Zi, in the last years of the Warring States period. He intended it as a means of securing state interests, which we must remember meant the interests of ruling families such as his. So Legalism was a brutal and totally unbenevolent control system, premised on the idea that people are fundamentally flawed and need strict laws/punishments to keep them in line. Legalism insisted that all crimes must be punished as deterrent; it also shunned mercy, pity and dissent, which supposedly endanger the state. If Legalism recognised individual rights at all, it was only as something to be crushed.

This style comes naturally to Chinese governments. All since the Han have maintained this utilitarian viewpoint.

Though often discussed as separate philosophies, actually Legalism and Confucianism were difficult to separate from the outset. Many key figures of both systems had studied the other, and most were members of the same ruling class. Han Fei-Zi studied under a noted Confucian scholar sympathetic to proto-Legalism, and based his theories on the Guan-Zi school of philosophy which had been based on Confucianism and was intermediate between Confucianism and Legalism. Legalism was a bit harsher, especially concerning clemency, and Confucianism more concerned about ritual, but really the two systems had considerable overlap, differing mainly by degree. Entangled from the start, the Zhou would have approved of both.

Han Fei-Zi offered the Legalist system to the Qin, who used it to defeat all internal rivals. When the Han inherited the Qin empire, they continued the Qin’s use of Legalism but soon switched to Legalist-Confucianism. Historians of China sometimes write as if the Han wholly replaced one system with another, though really the change was one of emphasis: from Confucian-Legalism to Legalist-Confucianism. The real question: why bother?

Legalist-Confucianism was very similar to Legalism in terms of control, but cleverly links this control to morality. A veneer of Confucianism gave Legalism, and thus the Han government, its much-needed moral authority.

Legalism controlled people with fear and/or violence; and while Confucianism in its Legalist clothing did too, it also directly linked passive obedience with morality. Of course most people want to be moral; for the majority not quite sure what that means, they’ll conform to culturally-accepted definitions of it, even contrived ones in this case. So it’s moral for plebs to obey authority, as it’s moral for rulers to impose their dictatorial will on them. Confucianism also elevates conformity, thereby allowing authorities to crush dissent and free-thinking. Yet simultaneously the controlled don’t know they are controlled; they willingly embrace and defend the philosophy, and often try to live up to its controlling principles even more. Confucian morality even requires that people make themselves happy about their situation.

In that sense, Confucianism is the control system other dictatorships wish they had. With its soft, morally-acceptable cover, Confucianism is a more effective control system. It makes people want to follow it, and on the surface even sounds a bit spiritual.

Calling Confucianism wisdom or morality may have been propaganda from the start. This conveniently makes people, especially ancestor-worshippers, more likely to believe and accept it. The Han government certainly didn’t want a return to the free-thinking days of its recent history. For a government wanting to keep people docillated and controlled, Confucianism is unbeatable. That’s also why all subsequent regimes, including two separate foreign conquerors (Mongols and Manchus), continued to use it.

Now we come to the real Confucian meaning of “harmony”: that authorities can do anything to anyone; victims have to take it, make themselves happy about it, and accept its rightness. No questions allowed, ever.

To Harmonise: For an authority to suppress a legitimate grievance, conflict or debate. “That problem’s been harmonised.”

# # #

Speaking of control, the Chinese attachment to traditional Confucianism is actually even deeper than it seems.

We have seen that most of Confucianism doesn’t withstand critical examination and requires belief. Authorities “encouraged” that belief and sustained it through state mechanisms and processes; for example, China’s entire ancient legal system was based on Confucian values. So in these ways, Confucianism was China’s state religion. It has remarkable parallels with the Catholic Church’s severe control of Europe during the Dark Ages, except that Confucianism had a stronger grip on China and for longer. It is still the religion of China.

Many people, not least Chinese themselves, will dispute that Confucianism is a religion. Many authorities also take this position; Confucianism is conspicuously absent from discussion of world religions. At best it’s referred to as a philosophy, followed religiously. However, this view is complete nonsense.

To start with, anything followed religiously is religion. Moreover, philosophies are systems of reason and thought, and Confucianism plainly is not. It is full of dogmatic pronouncements. There is no reason in Confucianism anywhere: it contains nothing we could recognise as rational argument, discussion or analysis. Anything requiring unreasoning belief, and/or eliminating possibility of questioning, is religion, not philosophy.

Also, it would be quite strange if Confucianism were not religion as that would make China’s the only non-religious major culture. That would be virtually a contradiction in terms: nearly all common people need some kind of religion. If the Chinese religion were not Confucianism, then what? Certainly not Taoism or Buddhism, both virtually extinct in China. Confucianism almost totally fills the Chinese space for guidance and ritual, and resembles a religion in every other way.

It’s really a matter of definition. The American Heritage Dictionary’s first definition mentions “belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe”. While Confucianism itself has no position on supernatural issues (and like Legalism, does not address meaning-of-life questions), it embraces without contradiction the entirety of pre-Confucian Chinese spirit-religion which directly invokes the supernatural: gods, demi-gods, demons, spirits, and ghosts. Ancient people could hardly have imagined any other way of thinking, so of course the state ideology would be compatible with the daily practices of its people. Confucianism is also full of references to “heaven” which in Chinese thinking isn’t a place so much as a governing process (see also karma, below). The next two definitions from the same entry define religion as: “A set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader; A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion”. Chinese see Confucius as a spiritual leader, and follow his teachings zealously, therefore these definitions match Confucianism perfectly. Many definitions might also mention theism (belief in a god or gods), and Confucianism isn’t directly theistic, but again it enfolds ancient Chinese spirit-worship which included an extensive pantheon. Another, more academically accepted definition, equates religion with social bonds and control systems, for which Confucianism is probably the ultimate example.

Perhaps the strongest and most useful indicator of religion is faith, or unquestioning acceptance. One could also call that irrational belief. If there’s no rational reason for believing something, yet people do anyway, that’s religion. Such a definition would include many surprising things, including various modern ideologies, not usually classed as religion, but so be it. Confucianism has this kind of blind belief in spades, plus all the above definitions of religion. Like all belief, it need not be rational.

The religious side of Confucianism similarly shows in its frequent use of “disciple”. Its primary meaning is directly religious; and though officially its secondary meaning can denote a follower of some philosophical teacher, the devotional and uncritical nature of that following again suggests religion. Also, like many religions, Confucianism has long been forced upon people. Maybe most telling, Confucianism has temples throughout China, and what possible value could temples have except as places of religious practice? Many Chinese people worship Confucius as a deity, making offerings and asking him for blessings.

So Confucianism is a religion; and, as it happens, a fundamentalist one.

Like all such religions, Confucianism is highly intolerant of heresy. Most Chinese are not the slightest bit open minded; very few can stand legitimate disagreement with or questioning of their cherished dogma. Even today most still turn on anyone who disagrees, sometimes with the same fanatical venom they also use for political topics. For them disagreement (non-belief) is reason enough. First they try to browbeat you into submission and if that doesn’t work they dismiss you, saying you can’t understand because you’re not Chinese. A few more educated Chinese try to convince you their beliefs are rationally-based, but they are not. Take the whole ancestor worship “you must respect your parents” (or old people generally) package, the most common example: Chinese lecture you about its rightness, but if you ask why, they can’t explain the reasoning behind it without resorting to “you just should” or “it just is”. There is no reason beyond “Confucius say”; actually that prefaces most statements of Chinese belief. Yet Chinese become upset with anyone who points out that acceptance of dogma indicates religion because of the lack of questioning. Belief is always blinding.

# # #

Other extracts from Mythbusting the Cult of Confucius.

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Categories: Book extracts, Confucianism

Tags: brutality, China, Chinese, confucianism, confucius, control, fundamentalist, history, Kung Fu-zi, legalism, morality, philosophy, religion, virtue, Zhou