Isolation of Intellectuals: Letter to Mr. Zhijia Wang

Dear Zhijia

I am so happy that we met and so happy to receive your letter (see below) and to communicate with you.

You mentioned that there might be unwanted opposition in China to my description of Mao in the Blog, Dear People of China. In the interests of honesty, I’m going to leave it as it is at the moment – but I can see that it’s probably diplomatic to leave it out. I’m very pleased that you would like to translate the Blog into Chinese for us, but just give me a chance to look it over before you do. 

Perhaps the main cause of the confusion and catastrophe in the world is the Isolation of Intellectuals.
The effect has been a loss of guiding ethic and search for truth; people stopped asking: What is a good life?

They stopped because, excited by the Industrial Revolution, they accepted the mechanistic model of human affairs – accepted to become consumers and producers of consumption (and waste) with a belief in material progress: Do what you want and manipulate (or force) everyone else into the same mold.
Today we have the ethic of the businessman and a life against human potential and against nature.
So, back to the isolation of intellectuals and to us and to the AR Manifesto; it aims at those who are intellectually inclined and the site is mostly popular with young people.

My idea is to email my latest Blogs to friends and self confessed intellectuals such as you and me and to form a club – this way you won’t need to keep checking the AR site to see what’s new. (I am new to internet communication. So far, I write my Blogs in longhand and then give it to Cynthia to type, then work with Joe, my computer graphics man.)

I would like our club to be an open forum on the AR website. What do you think? In that case, please post any responses directly in the comment section of the site.
AR refers to this abdication of responsibility by intellectuals and their confusion (see AR Manifesto, p.6; 20^th century progress was a bad idea, p.29, Conference on Culture). They wanted to be popular and democratic. What we want is to give courage to academics and teachers to insist upon a hierarchy of values: not everything is good: some things are better than others.

Intellectuals unite!

Vivienne

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Over the past few decades, the Chinese government funded Confucius institutes around the world to teach Chinese language and culture. Recently, the statue of Confucius mysteriously disappeared from in front of the National Museum.
You can read an interesting article about the ideological conflict between liberals and hardliners in China today in the Financial Times:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/eb239472-8d48-11e0-bf23-00144feab49a.html#axzz1SdsiY6VF

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Response from Zhijia Wang to Open Letter to the People of China:

Dear Vivienne,
Thank you for the open letter to the people of China through Cynthia. Highly appreciated!
Sorry for not getting back to you earlier. It took me a while to digest the philosophy and thought contained in your letter.
My humble comments are as follows:
1, Questions: Who will be the target groups of this article? My guess is for different group of people, but it will affect mainly on the intellectuals and the officials at the different levels.
2, The points of view in the article are very sharp and valuable. I could not agree more. It touches the fundamental issue in the society, economy and culture. It advocates to the Chinese people to reconsider how to heritage the rich and excellent traditional way of thinking and behaviors. It also reminds us of the questions, such as what is the value of life, money and economic development, what is the goal that we are living and persuade for. And it reflects your clear and wise views, an example, banks should provide a service, not be run for profit.
This article is like a clear and fresh breeze that would sweep the busy and apathetic minds of the modern Chinese people.
3, Advice: This year, the Chinese Communist Party celebrates its 90 anniversary and Mao is still a highly respected figure among the majority of the Chinese people due to several reasons relating to the current social problems. For making this excellent article going easily in China without unwanted opposition, you may wish to consider the design of Mao in the article.
4, How to let more Chinese to have access to this article? I am willing to share this article with my listeners through my micro blog in Tencent and to my friends both in culture circle and in the central and local governments through my email.
Do you have anyone to translate it into Chinese? If no, I would be very pleased to do so if you wish and allow.

I did enjoy meeting and talking with you in Nairobi and hope we could meet again somewhere in this small world.
By the way, how do you like my calligraphy sent to you earlier by email?

Warm regards from East Africa!

Your Chinese friend
Zhijia Wang