A Chinese Looks at the Busy Man

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 169, 12 April 1930, Page 21

A Chinese Looks at the Busy Man

THE word “business” conveys the idea of being busy. To us Chinese scholars, and in fact to all Oriental philosophers, to. be busy is distasteful. Why should we always be busy? What is it all for? Are we too busy to live? I think one can live much better without being busy, and I am sorry to see that there are many people in the world who are too busy to live.

Are we too busy to die?’ Death is forever awaiting us, and we do not have to speed its approach.

I can never understand or be accustomed to modern western life, especially the American business man’s life. Every one is busy every moment —hurry, rush, push, pull and struggle.

One of our popular T’ang dynasty (618-906 A.D.) poets once expressed his lamentation in the following lines: “All events are experienced with too much anxiety. No one ever takes time to rest before he dies.”

We Chinese believe that human life is composed of two phases: thh positive or active, and the negative or passive. It is vastly important that we should balance them well. We have always been carefully taught to apply our positive or actiye forces inwardly, that is to say, spiritually, ideally, mentally and morally. The negative or passive forces should be directed to opposite ends.

In other words, we should sublimate our possessive Instincts toward the acquisition of knowledge, virtue and invisible property; the ambition for conquest should be turned to the conquest of ourselves—our own evil thoughts, our bad habits, and our vicious practices; the fighting spirit should be led toward literary and artistic contests or muscular and physical training. In our outward and material life, we prefer to live simply, humbly and economically.

We have also been taught that, when in government position or any official capacity, we should conduct our positive or active forces toward public utility, and our negative or passive forces toward private ends. The

things which belong to the Community or which are for the good of the public must be well taken care of, improved and perfected, while one’s private belongings are negligible from the eyes of a statesman or philosopher. Now, consider some basic theories hold in the psychology of the western business man from the viewpoint of a Chinese philosopher. First, we find in this country a firmly established money standard; in other words, a dollar-and-c Ont measurement of human activities and their values. I cannot agree that material conditions are the only determining factors of history. I can still less agree with the idea that national welfare and personal success are indicated mainly by the numerical figures of incomes and expenditures.

More pernicious yet is the growing conviction that everything is purchasable with money or that every phase of civilisation can be valued ouly In terms of merchandise. '

1 Money, though a very convenient means of life, is certainly not thb end. ,Why should we sacrifice everything, even our lives, for the accumulation of money, and reduce ourselves to machines and mechanisms? Unless there is some property in a nation or in a person that cannot be corrupted or bought by money, that nation or that person is not worth living. Second, the belief in the struggle for existence by the creation of a busy and noisy world is increasingly unbearable. It is necessary to work earnestly and diligently: it is also necessary to work with ease, quiet, and good taste. The best eflficiency test is not how to exert one’s ability and exhaust one’s strength, but how to preserve them and recreate them. • So, a restful night is of importance to a workiflg day, and the leisure hours are invaluable to the busy, minutes. Until 6fie knows how to regulate his labour and tranquilise his mind, he does not live, but simply exists. Here again we must not mistake means for ends. Strife is but one phase of life; it is neither its final-aim nor its original purpose.— Professor Kiang Kang-Hu, of the University of Nanking.