It seems that the Beatles and Confucious differ in their views of how to "create a harmonious social order." The Beatles felt that the world would be a much better place if everyone was loving and nice, and that we should avoid violence. However, Confucious felt that love alone would not create a powerful social structure.
The main problem with having a world based on love is that no true leader would emerge. If everyone was kind, no one would want to agrue against one another because they could potentially hurt the other persons feelings. For example, we've all worked on group projects in school and when planning your project everyone seems to have different ideas of how to complete it. But there's always one person who shoots down the bad ideas and decides on the best idea. Sometimes this can result with someones feelings getting hurt. Now, if everyone in that group was completely kind-hearted, then there wouldn't be anyone to decide what ideas are bad and what are good because they wouldn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. If you apply this same concept to a country like the US then there would be no leader. Without a leader, there in turn would be no rules and no structure and people would be running around doing whatever loving things they wanted to do. Obama is an excellent leader and naturally a very nice person, but you cant say that he became President without hurting a few peoples feelings along the way.
So in conclusion, I agree more with Confucious and I think it would nice to have an earth that is full of nice people but it would not be an effective world. We wouldn't have a leader and without a leader nothing would get done and we would have no structure. Basically, a fully loving world would be nice and relaxing but it would not be effective and stable.
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I think this is a really interesting idea. I hadn't actually thought of the fact that if everyone was just nice all the time things just wouldn't get done. I completely agree that people need leaders to weed out good ideas from bad and get people to do things. These leaders would eventually end up hurting at least one person's feelings (it would be impossible not to), but in the end it would be for the good of everyone.
ReplyDeleteyou are totally right a society based on love as it only foundation would get us no where. we would have no leaders and would never question the worlds myserties in fear of harming others beliefs
ReplyDeleteYou brought up some things that i didnt think about when answering my question. I completley forgot that love and order really dont go together and that makes all the more sense as to why a world based on love isnt going to cut it. When has love of any form been "orderly"? disorder is kind of what makes love so unique for each person. And since love is different for each person, how can there be order?
ReplyDeleteDaniel, you do a pretty good job addressing the first part of my question (realizing that love alone is too problematic), but need to give more thought to the second part. You seem to say that leaders must also play a role in a better social order. But leaders can get us into a great deal of trouble, can't they? When they choose to over tax or go to war can completely destroy a society and have done so over the centuries. Confucius suggested it's not merely a leader that is needed to keep an ordered society (or an ordered school project group), but li. Leaders and citizens need guidance. What is he talking about?
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