陈凯博客： www.kaichenblog.blogspot.com

皇帝与皇权
Appearance vs. Substance - What's the Chinese Ignore

陈凯一语： Kai Chen's Words:

Substance and essence of existence and truth exist only in abstraction, not appearances.

真实和存在的实质与精髓只基于抽象之中，而不在形象之中。

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By Kai Chen 陈凯 （Reprint 9/29/2011)

Through thousands of years, the Chinese have only fought against Emperors, but they have never fought against Despotism, they have only fought against oppressors, but never oppression, they have only fought against being slaves, but they have never fought against the institution of slavery and they have never fought to be free.

The Chinese have somehow failed forever to fight for essence of things, and failed to see the intangible and the abstract meaning in everything they do. I have to attribute this failure mainly through the Chinese character-based, syllabic language, for it has a deflecting effect on the Chinese vision, making them only see illusions, not reality. This distorting Chinese glasses make them unable to fight for a value: They see a nation only in a geographic and territorial sense. They see people only with their skin color and racial characteristics, they see only superficial and appearances, but not the essence, the character and the substance.

The Chinese never understand that Emperors and his subjects are only parts of Despotism, the oppressors and the oppressed are only parts of Oppression, slave-owners and slaves are only parts of the institution of Slavery.... Unless and until the Chinese can see through the surface and superficial appearances into the essence and substance of occurances, they will never fight for values such as justice, freedom, truth, joy and happiness, equality.., etc, for these values are abstract and intangible concept understood mainly via a vehicle that is facilitating such an understanding, namely - Alphabetic, multi-syllable language.

This is why I am promoting English to supplant Chinese as the official language in China. Only with such a tool, a vehicle that facilitates the abstract understanding of values, the Chinese people will stop fighting for the apprearance, for the concrete, for the superficial, and start fighting for the substance, the essence, the values, the intangibles. Then and only then, there is hope for China.