The Source Like Herodotus

 

Conference calls.  Some people I suppose, certainly some of my team in China and Korea are back to meeting people face to face.  Some people are going to conferences.  I’m still a virtual attender to everything.  I rise early.  On Tuesday’s that means 4:00AM, to attend virtual meetings.  The etiquette is different for each one.  For some they expect to see you.  For many it doesn’t matter.  For some it would be nice to see you but I demur.  It’s four in the morning, thank you.  And for some, it would probably be better if I was on video, as I’d be less inclined to mute and make the coffee and empty the dishwasher.          

Back-to-back meetings takes me to beyond ten in the morning.  I might go back to bed by now but I decide to go out and make a bit more progress on the lawn with our new electric mower.  The poor device can’t take on the lawn the way it is, with weeks over overgrowth, set as it is on the lowest setting to the ground.  The crew- cut will need to wait and I raise the setting and all continues on a bit more effectively, down in the furthest section of the grass from my office window. 

I’ve read “The Analects” a few times.  They’re dry and difficult to follow the clear logic of, the way it is with Mencius “Confucian” writings which follow.  But I’d never read the Shang Shu which is also attributed to the great Sage.  Why not?  It is certainly more fun.  And here is the source like Herodotus for so much of what later comes down to us as this history that precedes it.  This is where we learn about Yao and Shun and controlling the waters.  This is why people speak authoritatively about the Xia Dynasty, when we really don’t know much at all.  And this is where the Duke of Zhou and the ideal-type of Chinese heaven on earth is established. 

 

Looking back over just what I’d dog-eared I’m a bit crestfallen to find that most of it concerns admonitions against drunken officials suggesting what punishments would be appropriate and when to show leniency.  Perhaps I was perplexed by how that could stand alongside the hard drinking Qi_Lu traditions that come down to us through the ages.  Further along though, regardless, in anchoring a the building blocks for how it is Chinse constructed their prehistoric history and their idealized rulers and dynastic cycles.  As Martin Palmer points out in the introduction, this work was at the top of the list for texts Qin Shi Huang wanted to destroy and we are lucky to have this come down through the ages as he very nearly succeeded. 

 

 

 

Tuesday, 7/13/21