The Levelheadedness of Chinese Religions
And the downside of Chinese pragmatism
Religion begins prehistorically with animistic, shamanic protoscience or with what the animists regarded as magical negotiations with the “spirits” that seemed intuitively to animate natural processes.
With the rise of civilizations, religions were politicized, and the spirits gathered into strict social hierarchies that mirrored the human class or caste divisions. Animism morphed into polytheism, and the slaves, women, and minorities of the lower classes tended to accept their lots in the natural, divinely ordained order.
And religion wasn’t yet driven by alienation or resentment.
The intolerance implicit in monotheism changed all of that, as I’ve explained elsewhere in the cases of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. But monotheism wasn’t the only source of religious alienation. The Axial Age reforms were generally alienating in that they empowered marginalized members (gurus, ascetics, philosophers, monks) who personalized religion.
Religion no longer served just the state, but became “spiritual,” an imperative to enlighten every soul, and “enlightenment” meant seeing through natural illusions into a secret, uplifting reality. Consequently, the religions of India, which were driven by that mystical vision were profoundly alienating. The enlightened sage is implicitly locked in a cold war with the follies perpetrated by all manner of collective hallucinations and thus with mainstream society.
Curiously, though, China stands out as a source not of alienation but of pragmatism. Chinese civilization is perhaps the least alienated, compared to the others.
As in the other cases, Chinese religion begins with quasi-naturalistic, shamanic animism. This was a folk religion that promoted “the veneration of shen (spirits) and ancestors, exorcism of demonic forces, and a belief in the rational order of nature, balance in the universe and reality that can be influenced by human beings and their rulers, as well as spirits and gods.”
More specifically, according to the comparative philosopher Ulrich Libbrecht, we should distinguish between
two layers in the development of the Chinese theology and religion that continues to this day, traditions derived respectively from the Shang (1600–1046 BCE) and subsequent Zhou dynasties (1046–256 BCE). The religion of the Shang was based on the worship of ancestors and god-kings, who survived as unseen divine forces after death. They were not transcendent entities, since the universe was “by itself so”, not created by a force outside of it but generated by internal rhythms and cosmic powers.
By contrast,
The Zhou dynasty, which overthrew the Shang, was more rooted in an agricultural worldview, and they emphasized a more universal idea of Tian (天 “Heaven”). The Shang dynasty’s identification of Shangdi as their ancestor-god had asserted their claim to power by divine right; the Zhou transformed this claim into a legitimacy based on moral power, the Mandate of Heaven. In Zhou theology, Tian had no singular earthly progeny, but bestowed divine favour on virtuous rulers. Zhou kings declared that their victory over the Shang was because they were virtuous and loved their people, while the Shang were tyrants and thus were deprived of power by Tian.
We see in that development the rise of ideas that culminated in China’s Axial Age codifications, known as Confucianism and Taoism. In Western terms, Confucius was a liberal (rather than an aristocratic) version of Aristotle in that he combined a teleological view of nature with secular humanist ethics. According to Confucius, society should take on the responsibility of cultivating its citizens’ potential for moral progress, by instilling the values of familial and broader social harmonies. For Confucius, the trappings of secularism are sacred when they enable people to flourish because in that case life on Earth will fulfill “heavenly” ideals.
Confucian humanism is potentially alienating in distinguishing between human rights in society, and the wilderness in which there’s no such glorified cultivation, but the emphases on family and social stability are far from the Western secular alienation that’s prominent in the technoscientific war on nature.
Taoists took those early themes in another direction, emphasizing the universality of “Heaven” and thus the priority of natural processes, not cultural refinements. By cultivating our ability to function in social settings, we may lose sight of more mystical, universal life patterns, called the natural “ways” and specifically “wu wei (action without intention), naturalness, simplicity, spontaneity and the Three Treasures: compassion, frugality and humility.”
At the extremes, the distinction here between Confucianism and Taoism is something like that between the Machiavellian calculations needed to negotiate social mores, and a Cynical, reductive take on civilization that prescribes some withdrawal from society as we recognize our naturalness (that is, the universality of certain patterns).
Taoist renunciation of social sophistications is potentially aligned with Cynical or Indian sources of alienation, but that kind of antipathy is apparently blocked by the immanence of Taoist ideals. Taoists are pantheistic in denying that there’s a supernatural endpoint we should reach, such as moksha, the freedom from reincarnation.
In short, Chinese religions are extraordinarily secular and naturalistic, and therefore they don’t promote alienation, the setting of ourselves in opposition to some implacable enemy, such as ruling empires, infidels, heretics, fallen nature, natural illusions, the ego, karmic gravity, and so on.
This isn’t to say that Chinese culture is saintly. On the contrary, the eschewing of otherworldly moral ideals has made China pragmatic to the point of being amoral. From a traditional Chinese standpoint, modern China’ technocracy and tolerance of dystopian police states are mere efficiencies that secure collective harmony. Imagination itself may be anathema as a source of creativity, assuming that the fruits of artistry are often subversive.
Still, whatever their pitfalls may be, Chinese religions are outliers in the context of theistic and mystical alienation. Most Chinese people in the modern period are secular, and the main religion that flourishes there is the practical, nondogmatic therapy of Buddhism. Western secularists should reflect, then, on the possible synergy between atheism and systemic, dystopian amorality/pragmatism, a synergy that’s flourished in China.
