Daring to question

Earlier this month I wrote about Liu Xiabo, winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize (Freedom is an obscenity). I wanted to offer this brave man a tiny drop of support for his moral courage, his determination to stand for a simple principle of freedom. Beyond the fact that he is a leading Chinese dissident I did not know terribly much about him. However, my friend Yun Yi has been busy adding translations from The Mist of Metaphysics , a major philosophical work, to one of her own blogs (Human without God). With her permission I’m adding a selection of these here, a tribute to a clever, subtle thinker in the best Socratic tradition. That a man like this should languish in prison for daring to pose questions is a tragedy for us all. It's as if Socrates had never quite finished his cup of hemlock


From Human without God by Yun Yi

Liu Xiaobo is the Nobel Peace Prize winner of 2010 who is currently in jail in mainland China. I don't know much about him but just discovered one of his books "Mist of metaphysics" and it appears very thoughtful to me, also a bit pessimistic.
Below are some quotes from the book (my own English translation):

About metaphysics:
"Metaphysics is a compound of ways of our thinking and existence, an entirety of our behavior and motive."

"All knowledge of mankind is process of questions and answers. The history of thought is the history of questions."

"Whereas everything that man creates is for transcending his own limitation, the limitation of existence itself decides that he could never break the boundary."p6

"Discovery is creativity, common sense is imitation."

Space and Time:
"...the importance of time and space lies in the fact that they are the measurement of our life, the reference for the meaning of life - which work as a leverage for our survive will."

The value of thinkers:
"The value of a thinker is not about what problems he solves, but what kind of problems/questions he presents, because a new question means a new start and new development. Even if he does solve problems, the solutions must be open and provocative, must conceive new problems/questions"

About human wisdom, the separation of human and nature:
"If we ask: why under God's supervise Adam and Eve still stole the forbidden fruit, choosing the misery of knowing instead of the happiness of unknown? Was it really because of the temptation of Snake? I think, this temptation of snake was not the true cause of this action, the true cause was our human nature. And the reason that we created such a story to put the responsibility to others (snake) was because we have fear - we fear we have such kind of instinct. Indeed, giving a outside cause to our human tragedy can more or less alleviate the cruelty of this destiny." p14

About Time - the value also the limitation of life:
"The Buddhist concept of reincarnation is an avoidance of time, a murder of the sense of time. This avoidance of time creates a psychological satisfaction, a triumph over death, but the price is all our current life. Being apathetic to time is being apathetic to life. If all our hardship was caused by our previous life, we should not fight, be completely obedient to whatever come to us. Those whoever lack vitality, would also lack the sense about time. The sense of time is the sense of life... " p22

Freedom is an obscenity

Does anyone know the definition of ‘obscenity’ in China, or rather how the Chinese government defines ‘obscenity’? No? Well, let me tell you: it’s article 35 of the country’s constitution, the passage in this noble document where it is clearly stated that the “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.”

Liu Xiaobo is clearly a very simple man, a very trusting man, because he took this declaration seriously, which is why he was sentenced to eleven years imprisonment last Christmas for ‘subversion’, namely insisting that the citizens of China should enjoy the rights set out in article 35, not just in theory but in practice. For his courage, or his naivety, I can’t be sure which, he has now been awarded with the Nobel Prize for Peace, dismissed by the Chinese government as an “obscenity.”

I actually thought the Nobel committee a bit of a joke especially after their condescending and inverted racism in awarding this prize last year to Barack Obama for no better reason than he was a Black Man in the White House. He is, at least in my estimation, also quite a stupid man, a man with little tactical or political sense. A shrewder individual would have rejected the award, saying that they had done nothing as yet to deserve it, thereby gaining merit by honesty. Liu, in contrast, does deserve it, something Obama himself has recognised, saying that his sacrifice was much greater; that he had sacrificed his freedom for his beliefs.

Not only is the Chinese government ignorant of its own basic law but it is ignorant of how things work in the world beyond their stupid tyranny. The Nobel Committee sits in Norway so, the logic goes in Beijing, the Norwegian government is clearly responsible for this award. Threats have now been issued by the Chinese foreign ministry, saying that the Nobel decision could ‘damage’ relations between the two countries, on the verge of concluding a new trade deal. I suppose the idea that there are independent sources of thought beyond government is yet another ‘obscenity’.

The paradox is that Liu is virtually unknown in his native land, where his struggle and his martyrdom remain unreported. I have little doubt that, given their past history, most Chinese people have more interest in a decent and tolerable life than human rights, than in the noble causes that Liu has embraced. His savage punishment for believing in a principle of freedom is a measure of the government’s insecurity, a measure of how much they fear their own people or any challenge mounted to the Communist Party’s monopoly of power. What they cannot understand is that it is not the demand for freedom that would upset China’s stability but their own practical and moral corruption, their own political obscenity.

The Not the George W Bush Prize

I have little time for President Obama politically. Still, I can recognise that he is a clever man, a good speaker and a public figure with a warming personality. I also thought that he had a certain degree of tactical skill. The acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize proves that he has none.

Just think: how much greater he would have looked if he had declined, if he had simply thanked the committee for its generosity but said that the goals set out have still to be achieved. But he could not, because this unexpected and quixotic decision by the Nobel people came at the end of a bad period for Super Obama, capped by a humiliating personal snub by the International Olympic Committee.

I now have a deeper understanding than ever of Obama: he is no more than a celebrity president for a celebrity age, an age where style and image have triumphed over substance and results. Having failed in Copenhagen he bounced back in Oslo. As far as the X factor stakes go he is still up there with a chance.

Now a word or two about the Nobel Committee. My first reaction on hearing the announcement-after thinking it must be a spoof- was that it says nothing at all about President Obama, nothing about his achievements, and heaps about them, about the obvious political bias of these people and, I would add, their desperate attempts at political correctness. It seems obvious to me that Obama is being awarded less for what he is and more for what he is not; he is not a Republican; he is not George W Bush.

Look back on the history of this absurd prize, to whom it was given and, just as important, to whom it was not. Did you know, for example, that Ghandi was nominated five times but never recognised? Those who were recognised included such doves of peace as Henry Kissinger, Yasser Arafat and Menachem Begin. And now Obama joins their company, still at the outset not at the end of his career. From this point forward he has the burden of being a peace laureate who most likely will have to take his country ever deeper into war. On the domestic stage he raised expectations that he has been unable to meet. Now on the world stage impossible expectations have been thrust upon him. Who, but a fool, would accept the role of Messiah for a day?

So, there he stands, with one disappointment laid hard upon another. He is dithering over Afghanistan while Americans die; his health reform programme slips and slips; Guantanamo Bay is still open in the face of all of the liberal hopes; he has provoked a quarrel between the politicians and the generals; he looks less and less plausible. And in the midst of all this, all the domestic and foreign problems, he and Michelle had the time to slip over to Copenhagen to put their weight behind Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics, yet another failure, another sign that ‘Obama power’ does not work.

But cast down in one Scandinavian capital he was raised up in another, a form of personal compensation. He did not get the Olympics but at least he got ‘Peace.’ I rather suspect that the celebrity President has not the wit to understand that he did not get peace either, that he is unlikely ever to get peace. It’s the triumph of pious hopes over solid achievements.