Split from PC018 regarding Atheism, Mao, and Language

[Heradel]

... Perhaps people in more developed worlds can hide behind Starbuck's Lattes and snarky attitudes, and construct some abstract treatise on how "enlightened" or non-religious people could/would never do this sort of thing.  I happen to know from first-hand accounts that this is not
only plausible, but it can happen, and it has happened many times....

I wouldn't refer to Mao or the Cultural Revolution as 'enlightened' or primarily for atheistic purposes. I thought about the Cultural Revolution as well while listening to the story, though I have no personal connection to it (also the Stazi, SS, Index Librorum Prohibitorum, and various other secret police/intellectual purges). 

[yicheng]

...

I wouldn't refer to Mao or the Cultural Revolution as 'enlightened' or primarily for atheistic purposes. I thought about the Cultural Revolution as well while listening to the story, though I have no personal connection to it (also the Stazi, SS, Index Librorum Prohibitorum, and various other secret police/intellectual purges). 

I used "enlightened" in the ironic sense.  Like someone else said, "atheism" is just a label.  It's a fact that Mao was decidedly anti-religious and fiercely nationalistic.  Whether that makes him atheist or not in your eyes is entirely up to you.  For me, I don't see a difference.

Not in the minds of those who come up with the term, no. Their successors, though, are a whole different story.

One thing worth noting about the story is that we don't know what sparked the "rationalist" movement. We get to see magic from the perspective of a kindly old man who has survived because he was unthreatening. Maybe others were using magic in ways that were less pleasant for the people around them. I can easily imagine a backstory to the rationalists which starts with a group of philosophers/scientists thinking "magic is unpredictable and dangerous, and over-emphasis on magic has kept our society back. We should push the magic-users from power and rule based on reliable science" - that may be an entirely rational line of thought. It is also one that can very quickly become "let's exterminate all magic and all art because art leads to magic", which is not rational in any way.

I know this is not your original meaning, but I should point out that the same sort of rational discourse occurred as a basis for the Cultural Revolution.  Mao and his followers posed the question of what made China go from dominant world superpower to subjugated western colony in the span of a few hundred years.  Their answer was the Chinese traditions and superstitions (i.e. religion), western influence, and general corruption.  Given their assumptions, this was a perfectly logical and rational conclusion.  Their next logical step was that, given that the country needs to be strong, and given that superstitions and western influences were making the country weak, they should eliminate those superstitions and western influences.  If you've ever read Plato's Republic, this is the exact same line of reasoning which culminated in basically a totalitarian society where all art/music is strictly controlled, eugenics is instituted by the state, and slavery and continuous war a matter of policy.

I also urge you to watch Fog of War, with Robert McNamara, former Secretary of State under JFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Pay special attention to his Lesson #2: Rationality Won't Save Us.  What totally blew me away was how he described the events and decisions leading up to the Cuban Missile crisis, and how at every step every person made exactly the rational logical decision, and yet the chain of decisions still almost led to the annihilation of human civilization.

[Heradel]

...
I wouldn't refer to Mao or the Cultural Revolution as 'enlightened' or primarily for atheistic purposes. I thought about the Cultural Revolution as well while listening to the story, though I have no personal connection to it (also the Stazi, SS, Index Librorum Prohibitorum, and various other secret police/intellectual purges). 

I used "enlightened" in the ironic sense.  Like someone else said, "atheism" is just a label.  It's a fact that Mao was decidedly anti-religious and fiercely nationalistic.  Whether that makes him atheist or not in your eyes is entirely up to you.  For me, I don't see a difference.

He may have been an atheist, but I find that his tyranny and greed were the deciding factors in his personality and acts, and the Cultural Revolution was more a power struggle after the Great Leap Forward than anything else. Crushing the religious institutions and people was a function of eliminating the power than religious leaders and religions have. There are a fair number of atheists on the forum, and saying that an atheist is responsible rather than a tyrant makes it seem like all atheists would do something like this. One can argue about morality and where it comes from, but it's clear that an atheist can be moral and a theist can be immoral. So saying an atheist caused it is the same as saying that Muslims caused 9/11 — true in that the terrorists self-identified as Muslim but to say it in such clumsy terms makes it seem that it was Muslims as a whole who caused it, which is certainly not true and very unfair to the vast majority of Muslims who repudiate terrorism.

[yicheng]

He may have been an atheist, but I find that his tyranny and greed were the deciding factors in his personality and acts, and the Cultural Revolution was more a power struggle after the Great Leap Forward than anything else. Crushing the religious institutions and people was a function of eliminating the power than religious leaders and religions have.

I don't know how much of a real statement that is, since every historical event could be put in the terms of a power struggle, and in a sense 100% of religious movements *are* power struggles.  I mean, that's what organized religion is.  What were the Crusades except power struggles by a weakening Byzantia against an encroaching Turkish invasion?  What was the Reformation except a power struggle?  What was the Spanish Inquisition except a power struggle against Islamic influence?  If we can agree that events like the Crusades have distinctly christian element, then we must also agree that the Cultural Revolution has a distinctly atheistic element.

There are a fair number of atheists on the forum, and saying that an atheist is responsible rather than a tyrant makes it seem like all atheists would do something like this. ...

I don't know where this comes from.  Muslims did cause and perpetrate 9/11.  That does not mean every muslim is culpable.  Christians did cause and perpetrate ethnic cleansing in the balkans.  That doesn't mean every christian is culpable.  Buddhists did cause and perpetrate suicide bombings in Sri Lanka.  That doesn't mean every buddhist is culpable.  Logic fallacy is logical fallacy.  Just because certain people make incorrect (and foolish) generalizations should not be a reason to refrain from saying the truth.

[Heradel]

He may have been an atheist, but I find that his tyranny and greed were the deciding factors in his personality and acts, and the Cultural Revolution was more a power struggle after the Great Leap Forward than anything else. Crushing the religious institutions and people was a function of eliminating the power than religious leaders and religions have.

I don't know how much of a real statement that is, since every historical event could be put in the terms of a power struggle, and in a sense 100% of religious movements *are* power struggles.  I mean, that's what organized religion is.  What were the Crusades except power struggles by a weakening Byzantia against an encroaching Turkish invasion?  What was the Reformation except a power struggle?  What was the Spanish Inquisition except a power struggle against Islamic influence?  If we can agree that events like the Crusades have distinctly christian element, then we must also agree that the Cultural Revolution has a distinctly atheistic element.

I just don't think the atheistic element is as prominent as all the other elements. If I remember correctly, the campaign that did a lot of damage to the religious houses and establishments was the Destruction of the Four Olds, and that took out a lot of cultural/philosophical stuff as well.

There are a fair number of atheists on the forum, and saying that an atheist is responsible rather than a tyrant makes it seem like all atheists would do something like this. ...

I don't know where this comes from.  Muslims did cause and perpetrate 9/11.  That does not mean every muslim is culpable.  Christians did cause and perpetrate ethnic cleansing in the balkans.  That doesn't mean every christian is culpable.  Buddhists did cause and perpetrate suicide bombings in Sri Lanka.  That doesn't mean every buddhist is culpable.  Logic fallacy is logical fallacy.  Just because certain people make incorrect (and foolish) generalizations should not be a reason to refrain from saying the truth.

I said it was clumsy, not technically incorrect. Using a generic descriptor gives one the image of the entire class of people — mechanics, Muslims, Atheists, writers. Muslim extremists or Muslim terrorists gives one the image of the perpetrators and not the entire class.

[yicheng]

I just don't think the atheistic element is as prominent as all the other elements. If I remember correctly, the campaign that did a lot of damage to the religious houses and establishments was the Destruction of the Four Olds, and that took out a lot of cultural/philosophical stuff as well.

First, you're drawing artificial academic lines between culture, philosophy, and religion where there aren't any.  Most Asian countries have never had the sort of religiously divisive struggle like the European Reformation or the Rational Movement.  It really doesn't make any sense to say something affected religion less than cultural/philosophical because they are intimately connected.  To give an example, much of traditional chinese medicine (acupuncture, cupping, herbal medicine) was denounced during CR as backwards superstition.  Chinese internal medicine theory is based on the balance of elements (metal, fire, earth, water, wood) within the body.  This theory also extends beyond merely the human physiological body, and is the driving principle behind Fengshui (rearrangement of living spaces for harmonious living, including health and material success), Taoist fortune-telling (I-Ching), Traditional Chinese Cooking (balancing 5 flavors of sour, spicy, bitter, sweet, salty), to Chinese theory of aesthetics in art, poetry, and music, and even Chinese martial arts (like Taiji or Hsing-I).  So when the red guards come and beat up a Taoist Qigong master who practices acupuncture and healing in a rural community, is it about religion, or culture, or philosophy?  Or maybe it's the case that such divisions is meaningless.

Second, the impact of the CR extends before and after the actual events and resulted in decades of harsh crackdowns on minority ethnic/religious groups like the Muslim Uyghurs.  Towards the end, there was so much chaos that the Communist politburo was afraid that these groups would rise up and rebel (many of them started to).  The crackdown that ensued included the banning of all religious symbols and displays, and the outlawing of speaking minority languages like Uyghur and Tibetan.  There were other groups too, but I bring these two up because they're most widely known.

BTW, lest someone get the wrong idea, Mao did a lot of good things too, like banning foot-binding, eliminating arranged marriages (which was usually a young woman to a much older man), virtual serfdom of many chinese peasants, and improving the overall quality of life of the majority of chinese people.

I said it was clumsy, not technically incorrect. Using a generic descriptor gives one the image of the entire class of people — mechanics, Muslims, Atheists, writers. Muslim extremists or Muslim terrorists gives one the image of the perpetrators and not the entire class.

Truth is still truth, even if it's uncomfortable, inconvenient, or politically incorrect.  Again, general ignorance should not be a hindrance of stating things as they are.  Would you feel more comfortable with calling Mao an Militant or Extreme Atheist?

[Heradel]

I just don't think the atheistic element is as prominent as all the other elements. If I remember correctly, the campaign that did a lot of damage to the religious houses and establishments was the Destruction of the Four Olds, and that took out a lot of cultural/philosophical stuff as well.

First, you're drawing artificial academic lines between culture, philosophy, and religion where there aren't any.  Most Asian countries have never had the sort of religiously divisive struggle like the European Reformation or the Rational Movement.  It really doesn't make any sense to say something affected religion less than cultural/philosophical because they are intimately connected.  ...   BTW, lest someone get the wrong idea, Mao did a lot of good things too, like banning foot-binding, eliminating arranged marriages (which was usually a young woman to a much older man), virtual serfdom of many chinese peasants, and improving the overall quality of life of the majority of chinese people.

Not being an eastern studies major I'll cede the point.

I said it was clumsy, not technically incorrect. Using a generic descriptor gives one the image of the entire class of people — mechanics, Muslims, Atheists, writers. Muslim extremists or Muslim terrorists gives one the image of the perpetrators and not the entire class.

Truth is still truth, even if it's uncomfortable, inconvenient, or politically incorrect.  Again, general ignorance should not be a hindrance of stating things as they are.  Would you feel more comfortable with calling Mao an Militant or Extreme Atheist?

Truth can be comfortable and inconvenient and politically incorrect, but those things aren't occurring in this situation. Now, it's technically correct to say that the terrorists were Muslims without a modifier. Should you? I don't think so. Some of it's political correctness that, yes, gets boring and aggravating, some if it is just knowing that it's really easy for the reader to read things that aren't there, so you have to be very clear with your text. And even then people will still read something very different than what you wrote. Textually, the specific is far preferable than the generic.

Should general ignorance be a hindrance to stating things plainly? Ideally, no, but you're talking in a public forum, so it is. This topic's been read over a thousand times, by people like me that have been here a very long time and have a good feel for almost everybody on the forum that's been here over a month and doesn't Post exclusively in the Pseudopod forum. The plain talk you can use amongst friends isn't really appropriate here most of the time. There are certainly conversations I've had among friends of mine that would never have in a place like this — there are people reading this that don't know me. Those of you I've PM'd or who have PM'd me probably read a little different tone there than in my other posts.

That said, I'm sure I've said plenty of stupid and insensitive things here, especially before I was made a moderator, and even since then. C'est la vie. But I do try to not do it in the future, and make apologies when I realize I've done so.

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To calling Mao a 'Militant or Extreme Atheist', possibly , but I don't view him as an Atheist. At least, if I was going to come up with labels for him, it's not one of the ones I would use. What he was was anti-religion, which isn't the same thing as atheist. And it seems like the anti-religion was more out of a desire for ideological purity and uniformity among the populace than him thinking that enforced atheism would help the people. Now, I'm not a Mao scholar, I don't hold any special knowledge of him besides that which was taught in IB history classes, and I don't know much about his particular thoughts about atheism — nor were they readily available via google.

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And now, putting on the mod hat, splitting this thread.

[alllie]

I also urge you to watch Fog of War, with Robert McNamara, former Secretary of State under JFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Pay special attention to his Lesson #2: Rationality Won't Save Us.  What totally blew me away was how he described the events and decisions leading up to the Cuban Missile crisis, and how at every step every person made exactly the rational logical decision, and yet the chain of decisions still almost led to the annihilation of human civilization.

It wasn't that the rational steps nearly led to the annihilation of human civilization, it was that the basic assumption that put us in that position in the first place was irrational: That it would be better to have a nuclear war than the entrenched plutocracy losing their money and power and either be killed, imprisoned or worse, have to work for a living and be just one of the "herd". They would destroy civilization to avoid that because they would rather be dead than one of us. Their hatred of communism had nothing to do with freedom or democracy, it only had to do with them retaining their money and power. The first thing that happened after any communist revolution was the nationalization of the property of the wealthy. That was why they hated communism so much.