Has 'traditional' Chinese culture ever been anything but completely money-obsessed? All of the symbolism in Chinese New Year seems to be geared around wishing for more money (exchanging oranges, etc). The majority of Chinese people who go to Buddhist temples seem to be wishing for lottery numbers or continued business success, hoping their spiritual investment will generate greater financial returns. Are these latter day perversions or the way it's always been?earthfriendly wrote:The more mercenary the culture, the more problematic it is for those who are economically-unproductive to survive. I saw this coming for countries like Singapore and China. Where money is everything, and sometimes even more important than one's life. Ironically, the Confucian concept of filial piety (absent in western culture, or at least not dogmatically-preached like the Chinese) is as old as the Chinese civilization. The dogmatism is not working out so well, eh? And no match for the power of the moolah. No money, no talk.
I've always thought 'Confucian values' is like 'Asian values,' a smokescreen used by parents to tell their children to listen and shut up, and more significantly by East Asian tyrants to tell their subjects to listen and shut up, and taint criticisms of their rule as Orientalist cultural imperialism. Not that I have any particular past leader in mind, ahem...