All you need is love. This viewpoint of the Beatles is very interesting. Of course people will argue that you need food, water, and shelter, but I think the Beatles knew that too, so I refuse to look at this statement like that. What the band was trying to say was that if we were all nice to each other, then everything in the world would work out. A sense of social order would always be present. There would be no hatred, discrimination, war, but there would be overall social stability. The world would just be all rainbows and unicorns. A utopia.
Then there is the view of Confucius that says we also need li, or respect towards rituals and customs to balance out goodwill and benevolence, or jen. With respect to a certain set of rules, many of which involve being loyal to your parents and authority figures, comes social order.
Personally, I see eye to eye with Confucius that we do need more than just love. The world to me seems to be filled with opposites that balance each other out. We learned about Taoism's similar idea of yin and yang, and their idea that opposites are the key to life. So then we come back to Confucius that we need li to balance out jen, which makes sense. The world needs love. That is definitely a fact we can relate to after watching the Westboro Baptist Church invade our turf with signs of hatred. But we also needed to respect their right to protest no matter how much we disagreed with their views. We respected them by letting them come and say what they thought was goodwill, and through this respect of the practice of protesting came social order between the protesters and the students. That and maybe a few cops, yeah, but still there was no violence against any person. This is just one of the many examples of how social order is cause through respect and goodwill. It also proves that examples of Confucius' ideas are present in everyday life, whereas the Beatles would be too difficult to see if it worked because obviously there is too much hate in the world to see what would happen if everybody loved everybody. It's the sad truth.
So in conclusion, I have to agree with Confucius over the Beatles because when deciding between a somewhat realistic idea and a very abstract idea, it's an easy decision.
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Having the Westboro Church come to the school was disturbing, yeah, but as we've been talking about through these questions, we all got the chance to stand out there and let them voice their opinions without violecnce. Doing so showed them, and others, that we dont need violence to settle our differences but they aldo cant be settled with love and peace. Their church wil probably never come to an agreement with our views, and vise versa, but with the balance we've all set for ourselves automatically, allowed us to avoid each other.
ReplyDeleteHaving just love creates an utopia, as you stated. And as we've all probably read in books, they're not always what they seem to be. The people in society are misleaded, and there's always one or a group that rebels agaisnt it. Therefore, leading into the hate and all these other emotions - throwing love entirely out of the picture.
Interesting connection to the Westboro people, Sam. Would it surprise you that Confucius was not for free speech, at least not for everybody? A big part of li had to do with respecting elders, not questioning or talking back.
ReplyDeleteSomething else to consider...if everybody loved--if everyone looked out for the well being of their neighbor--would we have people like the Westboro folks?
Just some food for thought.