ThatOldRedMagic

I've only just spotted this part of the forums - I had no idea such topics were being debated on The Caf.

China eh? Well there are certainly lots of Chinese. And we automatically think of them as being less free, more controlled, having little in the way of meaningful human rights. But as more than one poster has just observed, the west in general and the USA in particular has no monopoly on decency and an unequivocal commitment to upholding such rights.

To me, the main differences between our two broad cultures lie not in the fields of politics or commerce, but in the realms of religious faith. Apart from the rather trendy upsurge in interest in Falun Gong within China, it is essentially a secular society. Its history, furthermore, has very little of the kind of religious belief which characterises the west's culture. Ours is so shaped by christianity that its extent goes largely unnoticed. Saying 'bless you' to a sneeze, the presence of a huge and expensive building in every village, and many more of them in towns, where no-one lives and no practical work or trade is carried on in them (churches); the almost inevitable religious theme in most art, music, sculpture - even poetry - prior to the eighteenth century. The list is endless and yet we hardly notice.

All of this, of course, is the result of a bizarre cult of petty tribal, even village rivalries, played out three thousand years ago within an insignificant and ultimately politically irrelevant group of people in the middle east, and the twin strokes of luck which one of its offshoots received. Firstly, in the early and mid first century CE, when a tormented, shaman-like mystic invented certain theological ideas which he synthesized onto this small cult (and in so doing massively upset those who were actually the stakeholders in the cult, as even the Book of Acts fails entirely to deny) - I refer of course to Saul of Tarsus, later St Paul, who never actually met the man onto whom he foisted his bizarre theologies. And secondly when the George W Bush of the early third century, a guy called Constantine, the Roman Emperor, realised that this new(ish) christianity thing was just the wheeze he needed to save money; trying to contol his empire's troublesome population by force was both costly and uncertain in outcome. These christians, on the other hand, espoused certain beliefs which, in skillful hands, could result in control being achieved internally; imposed from within the individual's beliefs. Thus he declared that the whole of the Empire should henceforth convert to this new religion. Once the Superpower of the day had picked it up and run with it there was no looking back it need hardly be added. This was thus a leg-up provided by good old-fashioned realpolitik, (Constantine cannot have actually believed in it, in spite of his own mother, St Helen's, earlier conversion, as it is well documented that he continued in his own faith - that of the undefeated Sun, or Sol Invictus, until a more or less forcible deathbed conversion of a dying man by bishop Eusebius of Caeserea)

Thus was born the religion based on the myth of christ (as opposed to the Jesus of history, whom all scholars who have tried have concluded is beyond retrieve). When in the early seventh century Islam also emerged from that tiny old Jewish faith the entire toxic mixture was fully in place.

I've gone on too long already, but it seems to me that if there is a spark of hope for humanity it lies in an opportunity to throw off the atrocious shackles of this curse of religious belief. That is as likely to come about via the pre-eminance of China as by any means I can think of. Their associations with Confucius and Buddha, to say nothing of Taoism, are not theistic; they are essentially humanist, and interestingly pre-date christianity by about five centuries in each case; Sidartha Gautama (Buddha), Confucius and Lao-Tzu (founder of Taoism) all lived around 500 BCE

Political tyranny and lack of freedom of the individual in the west and China appear, in any case, to be moving in opposite directions. There is no doubt that even in the past ten years these areas of western life have become more restrictive (why there was a guy on the news the other day who'd got a criminal record for over-filling his rubbish bin!) whilst once the Chinese people get a taste for the liberal aspects of wesern life they are sure to erode the monolith of state control, albeit gradually. As the saying goes, you can't put toothpaste back into the tube!

Oh well, this has been a good way to spend forty five minutes when the house is quiet and there's nothing on the telly!