By Geoffrey Chen
The previous essay was about “county-town psychology”. On the surface, county-town psychology appears to be a geographical idea. In reality, it describes a psychological structure produced by a certain social position. A person, a city or a group may be neither at the very bottom nor at the centre; it may carry a slight sense of superiority when looking downward, while also feeling inferior when facing the centre. Caught between above and below, between the periphery and the centre, it develops a complicated spiritual condition.
This condition does not exist only in small county towns in China. The county town is simply where it becomes most visible. More abstractly, whenever a person or a place occupies a non-leading, non-central, non-dominant position, while not being completely excluded from the order, a similar psychological structure may emerge. It is not the emptiness of total marginality, nor the ease of being at the centre. It is the condition of knowing that the centre exists, while also knowing that one does not belong to it.
This position first brings limitation.
Because one is not at the centre, the information, resources, people, opportunities and aesthetic experience one encounters are all limited. A person from a small county town looking at the big city may feel that there are more opportunities, more knowledge, more mobility and a larger world there. A small city looking at an international metropolis may feel that its own density of life is not enough, its cultural scene is not enough, its commercial vitality is not enough, and its sense of modernity is not enough. In such an environment, people easily develop an upward anxiety. They know that a larger world exists, and they also know that there is a distance between themselves and that world.
But this position is not only a disadvantage. It has another side, which is liberation.
The centre has its prosperity, but it also has its pressure. Big cities have a high density of information and more opportunities, but they also generate stronger comparison and faster rhythms. At the centre, people are easily drawn into competition, trends, consumption, reputation and instant feedback. The centre appears to possess the world, but sometimes it is also more easily possessed by the world. A peripheral position may have limited resources, but it can also provide distance. It is precisely this distance that allows one not to live entirely according to the rhythm of the centre, and not to be measured constantly by the standards of the centre.
So a non-central position has two possibilities. One is to turn into inferiority, display, sensitivity and inner distortion. The other is to turn into observation, sedimentation, independence and transcendence. The former is the lower form of county-town psychology. The latter is the higher form of peripheral position.
Canberra is a very interesting example.
Canberra is not a large city in Australia. It does not have Sydney’s harbour temperament, nor Melbourne’s cultural density. Nor does it have the modern metropolitan feeling produced by the dense concentration of commerce, population and desire. For people used to Sydney or Melbourne, Canberra can appear quiet, sparse, orderly, even slightly unlike a city in the conventional sense. It does not have many lively districts, it does not have a strong nightlife, and it does not carry the energy of a big city constantly displaying itself.
But Canberra is not an ordinary small city either. It is the capital. Its existence did not grow naturally out of commerce, but was designed through the structure of the state. It has Parliament, national institutions, museums, universities, a lake, mountains, large public spaces, and a distinctive sense of order. It is not prosperous in the commercial sense, but it has a quiet centrality. It is not the economic centre, but it is the political centre. It is not the centre of popular culture, but it carries national symbolic meaning. It is not the liveliest city, but it possesses a temperament that does not need liveliness in order to prove itself.
This gives Canberra a special psychological condition. On the one hand, it knows that it is not as prosperous as Sydney or Melbourne. On the other hand, it also knows that it is not an ordinary small city. It does not need to prove itself through commercial prosperity, nor through population size. Its value comes from another structure. It is not the loudest character at the centre of the stage, but it is not a nameless figure in the audience either. It is more like a quiet institutional position. Its presence does not come from noise, but from structure.
If this condition is not handled well, it can also become a form of small-city self-defence. For example, one may repeatedly say that “this place is more suitable for living”, “this place is more orderly”, or “this place is not as chaotic as the big cities”. These statements are not necessarily wrong. But if they are said too forcefully, they become another inverted expression of inferiority. A mature Canberra psychology does not need to compare itself with Sydney or Melbourne to decide which is better. It simply recognises that it is not that kind of city, and that it does not need to become that kind of city. Its charm lies precisely in the fact that it is neither Sydney nor Melbourne.
Kant is an even deeper example.
Kant spent most of his life in Königsberg. By today’s standards, it was not a world centre. Kant did not travel widely like many Romantic figures, nor did he build his intellectual legend upon a rich range of external experiences. His life could even be described as highly regular, local and limited in radius. Yet it was in such a relatively peripheral and stable town that he built one of the most important edifices of modern philosophy. Transcendental idealism, critical philosophy, the knowing subject, the moral law — these ideas did not grow directly out of the splendour of the external world, but out of a highly internalised and highly structured form of thinking.
This shows that a non-central position does not necessarily lead to spiritual poverty. On the contrary, in some cases, a non-central position can allow one to step back from the noise of the external world and concentrate on more fundamental questions. Kant did not become Kant because he had seen the most places. He became Kant because, within a limited radius of life, he pushed thought to an extremely high level of abstraction. He did not stand at the geographical centre, but he stood at the centre of thought. This example is important because it shows that a person’s centrality is not determined only by geography, resources or the social stage. It can also be determined by the structure of thought.
This is the most valuable aspect of a peripheral position. It limits you, but it can also force you to develop another kind of capacity. If you cannot win your position through spectacle, then you have to win it through structure. If you cannot rely on the density of resources to gain an advantage, then you have to rely on observation, judgement, sedimentation and abstraction. The centre gives people more material. The periphery may give people stronger distance. Material is certainly important, but distance is also important. Without material, a person becomes empty. Without distance, a person is drowned by material.
The problem with county-town psychology is not that it exists on the periphery. The problem is that it cannot properly handle its own peripheral condition. It looks downward for superiority and hides its inferiority when looking upward. As a result, it repeatedly performs respectability within a limited space. It does not turn its peripheral position into a position of observation. It turns it into a position of comparison. It keeps asking who it is above and who it is below. It does not truly ask what it can see, understand or form from this position.
For a person to truly move beyond county-town psychology does not necessarily mean that they must move to a big city. Moving to a big city is only a movement in space. It is not necessarily a movement of the spirit. Some people arrive in big cities and still carry county-town psychology with them, simply continuing the same comparisons on a larger stage. By contrast, some people can live in small places and still move beyond county-town psychology. They no longer use upward and downward comparison to confirm themselves. Instead, they turn their own position into a point of observation, thought and creation.
This is the real liberation of the peripheral position. You are not at the centre, so you do not have to obey the centre completely. You do not have as many resources, so you must become clearer about what you truly want. You do not have as much noise, so you can develop a more stable inner order. You do not receive as much instant feedback, so you can lengthen your sense of time and deepen your judgement. If the periphery is merely periphery, it makes people inferior. If the periphery is understood as distance, it can make people lucid.
Of course, this lucidity does not happen automatically. Many people in peripheral positions only become narrow, sensitive, face-conscious and obsessed with comparison. A peripheral position is not noble in itself. It only provides a possibility. It can produce county-town psychology, but it can also produce a Kantian inner centre. The key is not the geographical position itself, but how a person transforms their position into a spiritual structure.
If the previous essay on county-town psychology described the pathological form of a peripheral position, this essay argues that the peripheral position also has another possibility. It does not necessarily lead only to inferiority and display. It can also lead to distance, independence and transcendence. A non-leading position does not necessarily mean failure. Sometimes, precisely because a person is not on the main stage, they have the chance to see the stage itself more clearly. Precisely because a city is not at the centre of commercial prosperity, it may preserve another kind of order. Precisely because a thinker is not constantly pulled by the external world, he may be able to push thought deeper.
There is not only one kind of centre. Big cities have their centre. Capitals have their centre. Thought has its centre. A human life also has its own centre. After a person becomes truly mature, they no longer keep asking how far they are from someone else’s centre. They begin to ask whether they can build their own.
The lower state of county-town psychology is to search for one’s position inside someone else’s hierarchy. The higher state of the peripheral spirit is to build a centre within one’s own structure. The former is always anxious. Only the latter can become free.
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