中文对人的奴役
Chinese Language as Prison and Shackles


[size=18]每日一语：

Only truth can set you free. --- Jesus Christ

只有真实才能使你自由。 --- 耶稣 [/size]

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Dear Visitors:

I have sent this message to all my email-partners. Now I am posting it here so all of you can read it.

[size=18]CHINESE LANGUAGE AS PRISON, CHAINS AND SHACKLES TO HUMANS[/size]

By Kai Chen

As I have installed a Chinese softwar and started to traslate some of my works into Chinese, I painfully realized how inept and incapable the Chinese language is in accurately conveying new ideas and new concepts. A common sense analysis probably will help you understand what I have been through.

By definition, Chinese characters can never be invented and created again and due to this intrinsic rigidity, on can only use the existing characters to describe as close as possible what one has experienced, but not accurately reflect the new concepts that you have just come up with. For Chinese characters are NOT abstract expressions.

But the fact is today is the information age and an information explosion has occured. New ideas and new concepts are increasing exponentially with tremendous speed. Due to the limited numbers of Chinese pictorial characters in use, the already heavily laden Chinese characters now have to be forced to put more concepts and meanings into each.

It is much like the ancient horse-drawn wagons, already heavily loaded with cargos, sometime just garbage, now more people are trying to load more cargos into the wagons and these new cargos are much heaviers and much larger with different shapes. The wagons are about to burst or collapse under the heavy burden, if they have not already collapsed. So now the ancient Chinese character-based, pictorial, syllabic language is being exposed of its fatal weaknesses and flaw of its original design, much like the ancient Great Wall - a useless military defense measure that had never worked no matter how grand it looks. Simply, the idea and original concept the original designer of Chinese language about the world is wrong. It can only be described as a language for the convenience by the mentally lazy, no matter how diligent they physically were.

It is simply Not a tool to be used by humans, but rather it is a prison and shackle that needs to be broken so humans can be finally free.

The Chinese are here only to worship their ancestors and what they have created at the time, not realizing using their ancestors' creation they can only see metal, wood, water, fire and soil, and will never see and understand molecules and atoms. This creation can only be used in certain, ancient stage of human development, but never as a tool to free human imagination and creativity that our creator intended us to express. No wonder all the Chinese value confusion and despise clartiy, for their ancestors' language is confusing indeed by its own very nature. To worship their ancestors, the Chinese have to worship their creation, like a sacred cow, even it is only chains and shackles on their own mind. With this permament confusion, of course a dictator is needed to dictate what is right and wrong, true and false, just and unjust...

The squeaking wagons only slow, if not entirely stop, the progress of the Chinese into the future. And as more and more meanings and concepts are piled into the wagons, the already muddy characters are becoming muddier and muddier as we are forcing each wagon to carry even more meaning. This is exactly what has happened to the Chinese in the last century as the world was moving toward industrialization. Many concepts and ideas in China from the West were distorted and warped via translation, from Marxism (Chinese style with Mao's uninhibited murder and mayhem) to today's Capitalism (Chinese style with governmental bureaucratic manipulation and corruption combined with market competition), nothing from the West and foreign countries that had reached China is without distortion and misconception. Today's Freedom, Democracy, Rule of Law and Constitutional Republic are the same. Nothing remains original and true.

Now the muddy water in the Yellow River becomes muddier as the world information explosion has reached its full force. The wagons are simply blown to pieces. Yet we are still holding onto the broken pieces wishing they are still of some value, for it is in our pride to hold onto what our ancestors left for us, regardless how useless it is and how oppressing it is and how limiting and dehumanizing it is.

Combination of characters to form new phrases to describe modern ideas and concepts can only add to the confusion, for Chinese characters are pictorial and physical in nature. They are NOT abstract symbols designed to express abstract values and ideas and concepts. More descriptive combinationsof Chinese characters will simply warp the original meaning of the original ideas and concepts even more.

I hope all of you rethink your positions on this important and fundamental issue, for if we don't resolve it in our mind, the progress in China will be severely hampered and damaged. You just have to ask yourselves honestly:

Can a basket hold water? Can a wagon keep up with jetliners? Can a man-made box forever imprison human beings? Can we afford to keep piling more and more cargos onto a physically very limited, inhumane space and get away with it? Can we survive with broken wagons and burst boxes that simply are not designed and able to hold space shuttles? Should we allow these little boxes forever hold us hostage and hold us back so we forever lag behind human progress happening everywhere else on earth? Is it moral to do so?

I can guaranty you that if we don't resolve this issue and evolve to replace our tools to express and convey and communicating among ourselves and with other parts of the world, we will be eternally doomed to be irrelevent.

Let me know what you think.

Best regard. Kai Chen