Why old wise guys confuse me

A group of starry-eyed men gathered on a mountaintop to listen to the man in a flowing robe. The afternoon light danced on the teacher's beard, and the pilgrims could see their master's aura. Love each other and you will be of great benefit to the world, he told them. This was his answer to life, the universe and everything.

Good old Mo Zi (470-391 BC) was one of the many philosophers who triggered an explosion of ideas, which laid the foundations of today's Chinese psyche. The Hundred Schools of Thought period emerged during an era of great upheaval in Chinese history, which I have been overdosing on over the past week.

I love the golden week holidays. It is always a time for long lunches, relaxing afternoons with friends and a little reading. And when it comes to Chinese history, too much reading is not enough. I discovered that for more than 450 years, seven major states battled to rule the Middle Kingdom and rivers of blood flowed as the sovereigns adopted different strategies to conquer each other. Although the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (770-221 BC) was scarred by civil unrest, it also was an unprecedented era of cultural prosperity.

Today, China is enjoying a similar prosperous time, so I thought I would spend the recent holidays thinking up a school of thought I could embrace. I started with Confucius (551-479 BC), who has been followed by numerous people for generations. But the school of thought that impressed me the most was the ideas of Mo Zi. He opposed Confucius and his emphasis on ritual, regarded warfare as wasteful and advocated pacifism. He called for a universal love encompassing all human beings in equal degree. Non-aggression was the key, which was an interesting concept in an era called the Warring States.

In developing my own school of thought, I kept reading Chinese history, looking for clues. As well as Mohism and Confucianism, there was Taoism, Legalism, Yin-Yang school, Logicians, Strategists, Legalists, as well as the Eclectics.

One of the founders of the Taoist school was Lao Zi, who developed the Way - an absolute, overriding spirit transcending time, space and the whole universe. He advocated doing nothing and believed in letting events take their own course. I really like this idea about doing nothing.

The school of yin-yang and the five elements explained the universe in terms of basic forces in nature, the complementary agents of yin (dark, cold, female, negative) and yang (light, hot, male, positive) and the five elements (water, fire, wood, metal, and earth).

The Logicians were represented by Sun Long, who wrote a book called Gongsunlongzi, which reflected his art of elegance. He took ideas from everybody, just like me.

All these thinkers were an eclectic bunch, and funnily enough, there was even a group who called themselves the Eclectics. A key theme of all these schools of thought was importance of learning from history, which is a little overwhelming here in China. The more I learn about China, the more confused I become.

So, I guess that makes me a Confusion-ist, which isn't so bad, because I can confidently answer every question with: "I don't know."

(China Daily 10/09/2007 page20)