Seeing the City for the First Time

I am impressed with the number of people who are simply out and about in Beijing. We took a walk with Andy and Judy to find a 700 year old hutong street and ended up just wandering around the hutong area, walking through shops, and exploring some city parks. The first thing I noticed was that people weren’t shut up in stores or offices. They were out on the streets socializing with one another. Shop owners would set chairs outside their stores and sit with friends and family while they ate and talked. Bicyclers would stop and talk to each other or talk to walkers along their way. In the parks, there were groups of families and friends sitting out and enjoying the beautiful sun and scenery around them. It didn’t seem like something that would happen in the United States—maybe in a small town, but not in a huge city like Beijing. In the United States, people would be rushing to work, too busy to stop and chat. They would be shut in their cars with the air conditioning blowing before they shut themselves in their offices and stores, also with the air conditioning blasting. Beijing was busy with all of the people, but it seemed so much warmer and friendlier simply because people were so open with each other. 

Another aspect of Beijing that caught my attention at first glance was how dusty the city is. The city cars seem to be covered in a layer of dust or dirt. You can even taste it in your mouth. The hutongs seem dilapidated and there is garbage piled in the nooks and crannies. The laundry we saw hanging in some of the living areas looked stained and dirty. Even the people look warn and leathery. Nothing looked new or pristine, but used and broken in. It was as if you could see the age of the culture simply by watching the way people live.

The Things Parrol Said

There were a few things that Parrol told us in his introduction to Beijing that threw me off.

He noted that there were many towers in China that were left over after the walls came down. He said this was a symbol for China’s past tendency to be a closed country and that the walls coming down mean the country is becoming more open. Another guide told us that the walls came down to expand the city and that the towers were a reminder of growth and how far China had come. It seems to me that although China was very closed-off in the past, once it was realized that its privacy was damaging its ability to compete with the western world, an extreme eagerness to westernize, or at least appear westernized, developed. With this in mind, the latter symbolism of the towers seem more valid in that the people remember how far they have come and how far they must still go rather than reminisce of a time that hindered current success.

Parrol also told us that family wasn’t as important as Dr. Hinderer had originally said. He told us that many children hate their parents because they are pushed too hard in school. He said that’s why they go away to college or go to Beijing – to get away from their parents. He did admit that he ran from his parents but eventually went back to them because of how much they helped him. But it seemed like such a different presentation of family and respect than we had learned about in class. Even when we visited the hutongs, we saw a private family owned hutong that, although worth a lot of money, would never be sold because it was a family heirloom and family was of the utmost importance. Our guide told us many families also lived in the public hutongs and that young couples would move away from their families in those situations to get more space and privacy, but she did not say anything about disregarding the importance of family. I asked Yeyi about it later and she simply laughed and said Parrol was probably a bad student in school and that family was just as important as we had seen in the other situations. It made me wonder how many of the things Parrol said we should take with a grain of salt. 

Leadership and Culture in Asia: The Beginning

We just got to the Capitol Hotel in Beijing. I don’t know if it’s hit me yet that we’re here, ready to experience everything that we’ve been learning about. Right now, I think I am caught up in the newness and excitement of it all. I was so thrilled when we arrived at the airport in Bay City and I was ready to get going. The adrenaline carried over to the flight from Detroit to Beijing. I was caught up in the fact that this was my first international flight, that the plane was huge, that there were so many people and things to take in. When we got to Beijing, our tour guide, Parrol, gave us even more information to consider as we drove to the hotel. We were also busy figuring out rooms and phone numbers and tipping – there was so much arrival and preparation to deal with that I haven’t really thought about the fact that we are in Beijing.

I did manage to stop and observe on the plane, though. I looked out the window when it was bright as day and saw the perpetual sunrise over the snowy Arctic Circle. My photos don’t even begin to do it justice. Although this landscape is not directly related to our upcoming experiences in East Asia, it made me realize how excited I am to simply be immersed in everything that is Asia and is not Michigan. I’m ready to leave everything behind and go on an adventure. 

Respect through Effort and Attention

Kant states that all people deserve a minimum of dignity and respect. He continues to say that it is our duty as people to do whatever we would consistently wish everyone else in a similar situation to do. To act in a way alternate of this would be immoral.

I find it extremely hard to accept that it is possible for a person not to deserve some form of respect. Therefore I am inclined to agree with Kant. All people, regardless of what they have done or from where they have come, deserve a minimum of respect simply because they are people. The reality of the matter is that we cannot know the motivations of people the backgrounds of nurturing that make them act the way they do. We cannot place labels on people and count them as immoral or undeserving of respect simply because of past decisions or actions.

Beyond this the idea of owed respect requires more definition. It is not to say that we should turn bands of burglars loose, regarding their misdeeds as a consequence of their past. We still need rules and standards to keep society functioning. Rather, respect simply means an attempt to understand. We owe our fellows the respect of not judging or stereotyping or making rash decisions. We must give to others of our time so that we may know their backgrounds and motivations, searching beyond consequences and results. If an employee stole from a company because his family was struggling, the employee would need to be reprimanded for the good of the company. But also, his problems with his family also deserve to be addressed. We cannot solve problems without addressing them at the source. To do this, we must have the ability to recognize that the problem stats elsewhere than the fact that the employee is a thief. A manager would owe the employee enough respect to sit down and try to understand his situation and find the best solution.

Leaders are thus challenged with the task of complete awareness of their followers so that they can facilitate this form of respect and care for people and cultivate it through every aspect of their organizations. It is true that it may not be successful with all people – we all fall short in some respects – but it would be more of a failure if we did not recognize our duty and try to fulfill it.

A Vote for Deontology

Utilitarianism is the doctrine saying that what is useful is good. As Jeremy Bentham and James Mill outline, the aim is the greatest happiness for the greatest number. This doctrine creates a series of calculations to determine best possible combination of intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity, purity, and extent that a decision could create. The focus is on the ends rather than the means. It would be ethical in the utilitarian sense to torture one child in order to keep the whole town happy—an example so well outlined by Ursula LeGuin in her short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.”

Critics say that this form of thought highlight the fact that it creates extreme pain for one person even if it means that everyone else is happy. It exploits minority groups who would be sacrificed in order to promote the majority. Additionally, it risks an unequal distribution of justice. The form of thought most prominent in the debate of utilitarian thought is deontology. Deontologists argue that predicting the outcomes of an action is impossible and that a person should focus on his own actions and the things that he himself can control.

Democracy is a form of government ruled by all the people, or all eligible people, of a state. It is often described as rule by the common people. It is characterized by designated equality of rights and privileges. Basically, all people have the same rights and abilities in a state. They are all entitled to an opinion. In a democratic society, the people would have to vote in order to decide actions of the state.

Critics, like Plato, display the downsides of democracy. It can often become difficult to make decisions quickly as people must discuss, vote, and semi-agree. Additionally, as not all people involved in government are influenced by higher knowledge, society is simplified so that all can participate. For Plato, of all the forms of government, aristocracy would have been the best as the good would be leading the bad from falling astray. Further criticism shows that control by the common people can result in what we often call a “majority rule.” The decision is made by finding the item receiving the most votes. Thinking back, this seems eerily similar to problems with utilitarianism in which the minority are exploited for benefit of the greatest number. In the case of democracy, it is not the ultimate benefit of the greatest good that is emphasized, but rather greater number simply overpowers the smaller no matter the outcome.

In this sense I think an extreme in either category of thought (utilitarianism or democracy) could be detrimental to a society or organization. I don’t necessarily agree with Plato, however, when he states that an aristocracy is the best form of government. I have thought in the past that the United State’s combination of republic and democracy made a successful form of government by the people that was also limited in what the majority could accomplish. However, it does not seem that exploitation of the minorities has been reduced (i.e. civil rights movements – though successful eventually, the trials and tribulations are extensive).

This leaves me with the deontological frame of thought. We discussed three main theorists of deontology – Kant, Gert, and Rawls. Of these three, Bernard Gert had the clearest reasoning in order to develop an ethical society. Gert states that “ethical principles are universal, unchanging, discovered not invented, and not dependent on the will or decision of individuals.” He also states that there are ten basic rules which “apply all other things being equal, and can be outweighed in very unusual circumstances.” Basically, there are certain principles inherent in our way of life that should be followed at all times – but there are also situations in which a leader must make a tough decision when the principles are challenged. If there were never circumstances in which hard decisions needed to be made, we would have no need for leaders.

Thus, I agree with the critics in the fact the complete utilitarianism and complete democracy may lead to mediocrity, or some form of detriment to society or an organization. There must always be balance in the extremes and it is often up to the leader to find the proper combination. By removing the ability to adapt as leaders, we set ourselves up for failure. Instead, we must stay open to all possibilities and find the frames of thought that guide us through often uncharted territories.

The Complexity of Leadership

If there is one thing I have learned during this fellowship it is that ethics are anything but simple. The complexity of various situations and the extent of ethical history leave me wondering for hours over what is truly “right.”

People, or leaders, who fail to recognize the complexity of ethical behavior become prone to rash, uninformed actions. This became clear in our debate over dropping the atomic bombs in Japan, to use an extreme example.

The decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima entailed a number of ethical considerations before the final decision was made – and even after all of that, years later, there is still a debate as to whether the right choice was made.

Truman had to consider the lives of American citizens in the country he was to be leading. He had to consider the lives of Japanese citizens who equally deserve simple respect simply because they are people—but also who were fighting under bushido code, meaning they would fight to the death no matter what. He had to consider the actions of other countries like the Soviet Union and what consequences those actions would have and how dropping the bomb would affect the way these countries viewed and interacted with the United States. He had to consider the long term effects of introducing nuclear warfare in to the world. 

With all of these considerations, a simple statement such as “don’t harm others” is inadequate. Without being critical or “playing devil’s advocate” as some would say, not all of these considerations would have been brought to light. It would not have been considered that a warning should have been delivered before hand, or why a conditional surrender was offered and what that would have entailed, or that communication with Hiroshima would be completely cut off after the bomb and what that would mean for the country. And many of these things were not considered – but are discussed in the present day as people still try to muddle through the bombing and what was or was not ethical.

It is true that these implications can create a substantial task for a leader as he considers a decision. It can be easy, then, to try and disregard several aspects. People may stop themselves from asking the hard questions or fail to push themselves to look at all of sides of a situation. They take the easy way out, or lump groups together and ignore certain consequences, thus developing the uncritical relativist approach to a more complex aspect of leadership.

To prevent this, a leader, or even a person simply trying to act ethically, must put himself in a position in which he is supported in all aspects of tough situations. We read an example of this in the speech at West Point – a recommendation that leaders should have solitude in order to think and reflect with themselves, but that they should also have someone around to talk to, bounce ideas with, and get advice about life and decisions. Someone one can trust and be honest with. Similarly, in a play I’ve been working on, two of the characters, though complete opposites, visit each other constantly and debate about current topics in their lives and in the town. They talk about life decisions and serious matters as well as frivolous things like gossip. They disagree often and they argue, but it helps them figure things out. When asked why they spend time together, Elsa, the younger of the characters, states that it is because Helen challenges her. She has developed a relationship that keeps her on her toes, thinking and questioning. Elsa knows herself and her beliefs better because of Helen. Even as I have been sitting composing this journal entry, I have been bouncing ideas off of Liz, and she’s been doing the same with me. Our entries are more thought out and well composed after talking and brainstorming with each other and figuring out the answers to the harder or confusing questions.

Often times, ethics cannot be figured out on one’s own. We all come from differing backgrounds and influences, with have different perceptions of the world and different ideas about the way people function. If we were to focus only on the way we think and feel, we would miss the ways of many different people around the world. Without these other perceptions, we lose the ability to perceive certain complexities when making ethical decisions and become blinded. We must surround ourselves with people who also make us think in order to really begin to understand the world around us and delve deep in to ethical discussion.

On the Nature of Humans

I believe it would be false to say humans are either entirely good or evil. If we leaned clearly in one direction or the other, there would not be a debate at all. We would all understand the nature of who we are. Clearly this is not the case.

Menxi makes an interesting point while defending Confucianism against Mo. He, however, states that humans are fundamentally good and go wrong because of poverty, competition, materialism, laziness, and lack of cultivation; i.e. the stresses and strains of daily life. He claims that Confucianism teaches people to cultivate the good and sacred things in life, keeping them on track in times of trouble.

While instead of believing that humans are fundamentally good and choosing to say that they exist in a fundamentally neutral state, I agree with the idea that Menxi presents. Humans are born as a clean slate. Our personality, though determined in part by genetics, it is also determined by our environment and interactions as we grow and develop. We are influenced by our surroundings and pulled to act in a positive or negative manner. The way that we develop and act then affects the way that we perceive people, leading us to think humans are either good or evil, contrary to our actual state of affected neutrality.

A good leader must have the ability to remove himself from an assumption of good or evil nature. He must be able to view each involved follower, the situation and context, and the possible consequences of his decisions before he acts. Only then will the leader be able to treat each human in a just fashion.

When a leader fails to act with this form of objectivity he makes assumptions not only about a person’s fundamental nature, but also of his motivations and possible actions. A leader expecting all humans to be fundamentally evil and therefore act in a negative fashion will close himself off from his followers, provide strict rules, and limit his followers. This will create a very cold leader-follower relationship. A leader expecting humans to be fundamentally good and act in a positive fashion may risk extensive openness with his followers. Though good hearted, he will be pushed over and abused, blind to the misdeeds of which humans are capable.

Instead, by viewing humanity through a lens of neutrality and removing assumptions, a leader remains open to all possibilities of human function. He is able to connect with and relate to each follower and truly understand actions, decisions, and consequences before acting on behalf of the group. It is with this form of clear, level thinking and interacting that the strongest leaders are realized.