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The evolution of the
Chinese civilization, and ethnopsychology (character)
are discussed in
Therivel's GAM/DP Theory of Personality and Creativity.
Chinese Ethnopsychology
Did the Mandarins Kill the Chinese
Civilization?
The above is the title of chapter 7 of volume 2 of
William A. Therivel's The GAM/DP Theory of Personality
and Creativity (G stands for genetic
endowment, A for assistances of youth, M
for misfortunes of youth, DP for division of
power, UP for unity of power). For an introduction
to the GAM part of the theory click "Introduction
to GAM"; for an introduction to the DP
part click on "Introduction
to DP".
In this website, the reader is also offered a shortcut:
The GAM/DP Synopsis
and an expanded version, The GAM/DP
Summary of volumes 1 through 4.
Hereafter I report the table of contents, the first
part of the introduction and the conclusion of this
chapter.
This chapter is divided into the following sections:
I. Introduction
II. The Mandarins
1. Who Were They?
2. National Uniformity
Poisons Creativity
3. Imperial Confucianism
4. No Merchant Class and
No Bourgeoisie
5. Control of Education,
Literature, and Science
III. Two Other Killers: Footbinding and Eunuchism
1. Footbinding
2. Eunuchism
IV. The Main Killer: The Emperors
1. Copying Castiglione?
2. Secret Police
3. Cruelty
4. Abolition of the Office
of Prime Minister
5. In the West, on the
contrary, Eminent First Ministers Were Cardinals With
Ecclesiastical
Scripts and Parallel Allegiance to the Church
V. Tradition and Mistrust of the New
VI. Conclusions
I. Introduction
The decline and fall of
a great and long-lived civilization, in this case the
Chinese, has been studied by many scholars and deserves
to be studied here as an important case of the application
of what I have said all along on the long-term impact
of the unity of power on both personality and creativity.
For many scholars, the main culprits of this decline
were the mandarins:
- "The
straightjacket into which the scholar-officials
forced the amorphous body of China was agonizingly
uncomfortable and inflicted innumerable frustrations
and suffering" (Balazs, 1964, p. 20)
- "The
mandarinate exacted a heavy price in terms of
economic progress. By attracting, at least in
principle, the best and the brightest from the
commercial class, the system focused the nation's
intellectual resources toward bureaucratic activity,
which was by its very nature conservative"
(Mokyr, 1990, pp. 256-57).
- "China
had a vigorous industrial technology at the
end of the first millennium A.D…. However,
the Chinese ruling class gradually withdrew
from its involvement in economic matters, and
by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
the education and interests of the mandarins
were purely literary and intellectual. The mandarins
lost interest in and even knowledge of science….
The mandarin class was so traditional, so congealed
in its genteel style….Even in the face
of military threat and economic disasters, it
was too unprogressive to adjust to changed circumstances"
(Cantor, 1993, pp. 43-44).
- "The
movement for modernization in China was obstructed
at every turn by the narrow ignorance and prejudice
of the Confucian literati" (Fairbank, 1948,
p. 156)
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Yet the situation is far from simple, and the mandarins
may be neither the only nor even the main culprits for
the killing of the Chinese civilization.
VI. Conclusions
Did the mandarins kill the Chinese civilization? Definitely
not by themselves nor because of intrinsic defects of
the mandarinate system. The Chinese civilization was
killed by the unity of power of its emperors. The mandarins
were unconscious henchmen, spreading nationwide the
imperial leprosy. Before criticizing the mandarins,
one must pity them, pity how they were steadily manipulated
first, and then mentally deformed, by the imperial unity
of power.
Did the mandarins kill the Chinese Civilization? Yes,
but as part of a machinery whose principal mover was
the emperor and whose other parts, as discussed, were
the courtly eunuchism and later the widespread footbinding
of women.
Were the emperors the only ones at fault? No: as human
beings they, too, belonged to the system and could not
escape it. Everybody was prisoner of the system, prisoner
of its scripts, including the emperors.
In essence, the Chinese civilization was killed by the
unity of power that became gradually more and more pervasive
and was acting on a more and more ossified national
system.
Along the centuries, the system lost the DP elements
that were there at the beginning. In a gradual evolution,
Confucianism became Neo-Confucianism, then Imperial
Confucianism, losing in freshness at each stage. The
same happened to the working relations between the emperor
and his ministers. Footbinding, which was first an exception
at court, became the norm even for every respected farmer.
The emperor could reach effectively every corner of
his empire only through the mandarins, and these could
be so "efficient" only through an ideology
that evolved under imperial influence and expressed
the imperial desiderata.
Should we put the fault only on the emperors? No. As
in every civilizational decline and fall, others had
to participate and willingly because so instructed by
a global ideology that told them what to do, and said
that what they were doing was right. Clearly the system
was one, and reasonably integrated: correspondingly,
a precise allocation of the responsibilities for the
killing of the Chinese civilization, among emperor,
mandarins, eunuchism, footbinding, Imperial Confucianism
and other sclerotic scripts, cannot be made beyond seeing
each as an active participant in the tragedy which inevitably
accompanies the most advanced stages of the unity of
power.
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