Faith and Trust   In whom can you trust? Epistemological optimism and pessimism

This is the fourth post in the series on civil society in China

An ancient proverb – “The Center is our benefactor, the province is our relative, the county is a good person, the township is an evil person and the village is our enemy” 

This Chinese proverb suggests optimism about the relationship of the peasant to higher levels of government. Nothing at all like the American conception of pushing government decision-making to as low a level as possible, and certainly nothing like Republican avowals to “drown the federal government in a bathtub.” And most assuredly nothing like “Keep your government hands off my Medicare.”

Non-History of Civil Society in China  -  If you don’t build it, they won’t come

This is the second post in the series on civil society in China.

We took the Chinese government officials to a city council meeting in Evanston, IL, a town of about 70,000 people adjacent to Chicago and on Lake Michigan. The students watched … meeting discussions were about citizen involvement and relations with other suburbs and the federal government. The students later met with the city manager. The questions came fast and furious … who elects the city manager? Why is the mayor just a ceremonial post? Is the mayor just the party leader?

Then we got into the surreal. The city is a corporation?  Can sue and be sued? How can you sue a government? You sue other governments? 

Note: this is first in a series of posts on civil society in China. Some posts will be too long for some readers, but the citations make this more than just personal opinion. These are notes to myself, with some analysis.  These civil society posts are themselves part of a far larger work on zhongguoxing – Chineseness. 

 Posts are –

1. Society, Civil and Un - Definition of civil society and some history in China
2. Non-History of Civil Society in China -  If you don’t build it, they won’t come
3. Some Notes on Ancient Trust - Particular and generalized trust
4. Faith and Trust - In whom can you trust? Epistemological optimism and pessimism
5. How Lack Of Trust and Communication Manifests In Government - what happens with no ability to call foul
6. Between Family and State – The Center Cannot Hold
7. Moral Freedom and Nihilism - See, hear, speak no evil … What, me worry?
8. Failures Of Civility and Social Capital In China Now - No generalized trust means no loyalty and no moral authority  
9. International Difficulties - Forget civil society, we’ll take civility
10. Trusting is Believing. To Evaluate is to Doubt - meiyou wenti
11. Legitimacy - Who else you gonna call?
12. Does China need civil society to innovate or prosper?

What is this moral freedom business?

Part 3 – How freedom and identification fail

The two models - agency through freedom and agency through identification - are culturally determined.  A child must be acculturated to use freedom in decision-making or defer to an exemplar. No society adopt one or the other completely, but the social tendencies run deep, particularly in China and in the US.  Think of “freedom” in the US, and perhaps “harmony” in China.  Those words might well describe the political and social culture of each country. 

What is this moral freedom business?

 Part 2  Agency through identification

Moral philosophers – Ci Jiwei, Joseph Chan, and many others, probably beginning with Kant – define several kinds of freedom - personal freedom, economic freedom, political freedom and moral freedom.  For my purposes here – and as Ci and Chan do as well – I merge personal and economic freedom, and political and moral freedom.  That seems to me a reasonable change that does no harm to the discussion. 

Every society necessarily allows for some personal freedom – traveling to work, some form of leisure, some choices about buying personal items. 

Not so for moral freedom.

What is this moral freedom business?

Some notes, in four parts

Part 1

I referred to moral freedom in the recent post on Ai Fen, the Wuhan doctor who first told her colleagues about the coronavirus.  She was threatened severely for releasing information.  Under threat, she said no more, until her moral sense overcame her decades of prior training to do as she was told by leaders. See Moral Freedom.

Several people have asked for clarification on moral freedom. The term means what?