A Few Ways to Become a Venerable Authority — People First, or Relationships First?

People sometimes describe “putting people first” as the defining feature of traditional Chinese culture. It sounds admirable. But I always want to ask: which people are we talking about?

An actual person with feelings, wishes and judgements of their own, or someone whose identity has already been assigned? Do we recognise your worth as a person and then discuss your responsibilities? Or do we first establish whose child you are, whose subordinate, whose student, and only then decide how to treat you? There is a considerable difference.

The expression “putting people first” in contemporary political messaging cannot simply be treated as identical to the same expression used to describe traditional culture. Even within a discussion of tradition, caring about people's lives and valuing ethical relationships do not automatically amount to respecting each individual's equal standing and independent judgement. Someone may care whether you have enough to eat. They may also care whether you have been obedient. Both kinds of concern can be quite earnest. They do not necessarily feel the same to the person receiving them.

If I had to describe the traditional social order shaped by Confucian ethics in one accessible phrase, I would say that it is organised around relationships. That captures its structure better than “putting people first”.

By relationships, I do not mean exchanging gifts at festivals or calling in favours. I mean a person's position within the family, society and the state, and the relationships between those positions.

In the Analects, Confucius speaks of rulers behaving as rulers, ministers as ministers, fathers as fathers and sons as sons. Mencius describes affection between parent and child, righteousness between ruler and minister, distinctions between husband and wife, precedence between older and younger, and trust between friends. Ethical life is articulated through relationships. The demands are not exclusively for obedience from below: those above also have duties. But the framework organising these duties remains one of ethical relationships.[1][2]

Where you stand determines what you should say and do, whom you answer to, and whose instructions you should follow. Before you have introduced yourself, your position has already supplied the instructions.

Of course, every society has relationships and divisions of responsibility. A hospital cannot put equality into practice by having the patient and surgeon take turns holding the scalpel. The question is whether differences between roles become differences in people's worth; whether authority over a particular task expands into authority over a whole person; and whether someone can step outside an assigned identity and say, for reasons of their own, “I disagree.”

That is where the traditional hierarchical order becomes significant.

A father is not merely older than his child: that position may also be taken to authorise him to determine the child's future. A superior does not merely oversee a particular responsibility: the position may be assumed to confer greater authority on questions of insight, morality and even how to live. The higher the position, the more a statement sounds like wisdom. Lower down, even if you have a sound argument, you must first work out the appropriate tone of voice.

When a conflict arises, the first question is often whether you have fulfilled your proper duty. Whether that duty is reasonable, or whether you wish to undertake it, may come later.

The structure also constrains people at the top. Even an emperor could not simply do whatever he pleased. He too faced ancestral precedents, ritual obligations, dynastic responsibilities and the demands of his office. He possessed enormous power, but he still had to live as an emperor. These constraints were far from equal, however. The emperor having troubles of his own did not put everyone in much the same situation.

What I mean by an order organised around relationships is that individuals often receive their identities, responsibilities and recognised worth through established relationships, while preserving that order often takes precedence over their wishes. This does not deny the care or benevolence within traditional Chinese culture, or suggest that all its schools of thought fit into one bag. My judgement concerns the ethical structure that long occupied a dominant position. It values people, but often places them in a position before deciding how to value them.

With that in mind, the entrance of certain contemporary “masters” and “great authorities” becomes rather interesting.

There can certainly be masters, and towering figures too. The difficulty is that these titles require neither a common examination nor an annual renewal. An outsider cannot always tell whether a title was earned through research or gradually acquired by everyone calling its holder the same thing.

I once worked out a few ways of becoming a towering authority. They should work for becoming a master too.

First, look like one. The appearance alone can overawe people. Leave the scholarship aside for the moment: if people take one look at you and think, “He must know a great deal,” you have completed the first step.

Second, live long enough. Outlive everybody else and you become the towering authority. A standing others acquire through achievement can sometimes be obtained by continuing to turn up.

And there is another requirement: have a name that sounds the part. In Chinese, the characters should be either exceptionally simple, with very few strokes, or exceptionally complicated, preferably so obscure that nobody dares try to pronounce them. Simplicity suggests a return to the essentials; complexity suggests unfathomable depth. Either way, before anyone has checked the scholarship, the name has already inspired reverence.

This is a joke, of course, not a system of academic assessment. If we really were compiling a tongue-in-cheek Handbook for Aspiring Masters, the next chapter would probably cover deportment. Grey hair helps. If yours refuses to cooperate, you can always cultivate an elderly expression. Do not speak too quickly. Take three sentences' worth of time to say what ordinary people say in one. The more specific the question, the more distant your answer may become. Someone asks about a particular matter; you can begin with five thousand years of civilisation.

There is an art to sitting down as well. Do not look like someone preparing to exchange ideas. Look like someone preparing to be recorded for posterity. Once the camera starts rolling, even the teacup beside you seems to have acquired seniority.

Finally, you need an introduction. The qualifications preceding your name should go on for as long as possible, until the audience has forgotten what it originally wanted to ask and remembers only that this is someone it must not question casually.

Grey hair is not the problem. Nor is speaking slowly. The problem is that we sometimes become so accustomed to recognising thought through these signals that respect arrives before the thought does.

This is not confined to academia.

Someone succeeds in business and seems, in passing, to acquire a lifetime chair in physics, education and the future of humanity. Someone writes fine books and wins a literary prize, and suddenly other people's marriages, careers and personal difficulties appear to fall within their explanatory jurisdiction.

Entrepreneurs are free to discuss physics. Writers are free to discuss life. Anyone is. But once we enter a particular question, we still need the relevant knowledge and reasons. A company's market capitalisation cannot substitute for a demonstration in physics. A literary prize is not a universal answer to life's problems.

Yet once everyone has accepted the person's standing, the process can run backwards. Instead of asking whether a statement is well founded, the audience thinks: surely someone like that would not say it without good reason.

The title has quietly changed its function. It once described what someone had accomplished in a particular field. Now it guarantees things they have not even said yet.

Some accomplished people I have encountered overseas have left precisely the opposite impression: they can still be quite ordinary. Someone in their sixties or seventies may look a little bashful when praised and smile with embarrassment. They do not feel that achievement obliges them to wear the expression of a person who has understood everything about life.

Nobel laureates cycling to work are not merely a story. The University of Groningen has described how chemistry laureate Ben Feringa usually cycles to work, and how it provided him with a special bicycle rack for Nobel laureates. The award can be grand. Getting to work afterwards can remain entirely everyday.[3]

Of course, riding a bicycle does not prove humility, and wearing jeans does not prove intellectual distinction. There are people who put on airs overseas, just as there are many approachable, unpretentious scholars in China. What interests me is whether achievement requires someone to turn their whole person into a social identity.

In some settings, people in their forties or fifties are already hurrying into the role of venerable authority. Even their voices and their walk acquire additional duties. Remarks must sound like pronouncements; walking must resemble an inspection tour, as though an ordinary stride could not adequately convey their net worth. Those around them must cooperate. Conversation must not be too casual, laughter too natural, or the occasion too suggestive of everyone being equal.

Nobody can construct a performance that grand alone. The scenery is usually a collective effort.

What concerns me in these situations is how much a person's sense of worth may depend on status. If someone fears that nobody will listen without a title or a particular manner, perhaps it is the position they are insisting upon. They need others to look up before they can feel respected.

This cannot explain every individual's psychology. But it does help explain a recurring scene: everyone appears to be showing great regard for the person in front of them, while busily establishing how high that person stands and how low everyone else should stand.

That has something in common with the structure of an order organised around relationships.

Scholars have their research, entrepreneurs their experience, and writers their work. Respecting those particular achievements is entirely compatible with questioning a particular statement. Someone may deserve considerable respect in their own field and still be ordinary, uncertain or simply wrong about something else.

As for masters and towering authorities, let people use the titles if they wish. Their recipients need not rush to inhabit the role, and their audiences need not rush to arrange the seating.

Once the introductions are over, let us have the question. There is no need to add another cushion to the chair.

Sources

[1] The Analects, “Yan Yuan”, Chinese Text Project: https://ctext.org/analects/yan-yuan/zh
[2] Mencius, “Teng Wen Gong I”, Chinese Text Project: https://ctext.org/mengzi/teng-wen-gong-i/zhs
[3] University of Groningen, “The Dutch way of dealing with private parking for Nobel Prize winners”, 25 August 2017: https://www.rug.nl/news/2017/08/the-dutch-way-of-dealing-with-private-parking-for-nobel-prize-winners?lang=en