By Shenzhan 申展
This is a summary of fragmented thoughts during the week. Often these thoughts come to me when I am reading on the subway, watching something happening in the street or listening to a podcast. Thoughts appear, then disappear into the ocean of unconsciousness, as if they have never existed.
As if I have never lived that moment.
I hope these notes are at least a proof of those living moments.
Loyal to yourself or your family?
In Your Loyalties Are Your Life, a New York Times Op-Ed on Jan. 24, David Brooks writes Josiah Royce is the kind of philosopher that we need more in today’s world. Royce is an American Philosopher in 1900 who thinks “the good life meant tightly binding yourself to others - giving yourself away with others for the sake of a noble cause.” His views are not so popular today as the world has been singing the songs for tolerance in a pluralistic society and giving each other space for being themselves. Brooks continues, for Royce, the good human life meant loyalty, “the willing and practical and thoroughgoing devotion of a person to a cause.”
It resonates with me as I recently spoke with a dear friend of mine (Tuzi) the other day about my anxiety - the fact of me being in New York appears not to bring good to anyone else (perhaps even including myself) after living alone here for over 10 years. Meanwhile Tuzi shared her frustration of juggling between two families, hers and her husband’s, during the Spring Festival - she had to make herself available, reluctantly, to her husband’s family reunion, instead of going back to her own family to celebrate a time together.
It’s about loyalties. Being alone in New York, I am looking for the reason that I can be loyal to, a cause bigger than myself to stay here. For Tuzi, or many of my friends in China who are married, with often too many families and relatives to attend to, loyalty seems not a choice, but a responsibility by nature, sometimes can be a little overbearing.
For Chinese in general, the question of loyalty is relatively pre-defined: you have to choose to be loyal to your family, which is bond by principles according to the Confucian tradition. Of course, it’s not always the case as the tradition changes over time, and young generations find ways to push the boundaries, especially in today’s world full of choices, distractions, and temptations. For example, I am in New York, single, and will likely not give birth to my own child. Traditionally all these are considered to be taboos. But at least in my family and among my friends, it’s tolerated, which in part is the reason that I’m able to stay in New York. Nevertheless, one’s family is a cause bigger than oneself. Compared to aimlessly roaming in the world and feeling the burden of searching for the cause, Chinese seem to find a way, early on, to anchor oneself even before the philosophical quest of loyalty surfaces. It may be a relatively apparent cause (in the end, who can say there is anything wrong with being loyal to your own family?), but if it’s a predetermined cause, it limites one’s own quest when negotiates loyalty and at the same time could be the source of frustration: in the end, we are creatures always trying to keep the balance between loyalty and freedom.
January 27, 2019
Astoria, New York