The Useless Tree

Current Affairs

  • The US is becoming a Confucian Society

    OK, not really.  But this report, on how American parents are spending more time with their children, suggests that more attention is being paid to the cultivation and care of our closest loving relationships: Working parents perpetually agonize that they… Continue reading

  • Why Don’t We Call China a “Legalist Society”?

    I am catching up on my work here (the forty papers that have been sitting on my desk are now graded and returned to students!); so, I can get back to some of the ideas that were running through my… Continue reading

  • Shanghai and the Cultural Implications of Emulative Spending

    Tomorrow I will give two talks here: one to the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and the other to the Foreign Correspondent's Club of Shanghai.  In both cases, one point that I will raise is the notion that China is… Continue reading

  • Branding Tao

    Can the principles of Taoism be commodified and sold?  It would seem that some are trying to do this: THE Chinese philosophy of Taoism advocates the natural way of things and the harmonious blending of the two opposite principles of… Continue reading

  • East Asia is not Confucian

    Materialism of an un-Confucian sort has popped up in various ways of late, and here is one more instance (h/t Western Confucian): More than two-thirds of Koreans consider money the most important sign of success, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll… Continue reading

  • Eight Rows of Dancers…and a Lamborghini

    In Analects 3.1 we read: Speaking of the Chi family patriarch, Confucius said: "Eight rows of dancers at this ancestral temple, as if he were an Emperor: if this can be endured, what can't be?" The Sage is bemoaning the… Continue reading

  • Integrity (德) and Gays in the Military

    A friend (thanks Tracy!) put me on to this connection… This week the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, came out in support of repealing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that had maintained a bar… Continue reading

  • Corporations are not People

    The big Supreme Court ruling that opens the floodgates to corporate cash flowing into elections takes as its key assumption that corporations are, essentially, persons.  Or, at least, that is what five justices believe.   Four others disagreed.  Justice Steven wrote… Continue reading

  • How can you govern by killing?

    A bit of blog silence the last few days.  I have been busy trying to write a paper and following the disastrous Massachusetts Senate election.  For the past twenty years, I have lived in Massachusetts and this has got to… Continue reading

  • Martin Luther King, Confucian Gentleman

    Here are some thoughts from MLK on his birthday, with Haiti in mind: An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. … Make… Continue reading