Regarding the Fukushima Initiative of the Asia Institute, I am a bit torn about whether or not we should use an analogy to the Manhattan Project. The analogy is a good one in that the Manhattan Project brought together the best and the brightest to focus their full attention on the extremely complex task of developing an atomic weapon quickly. Under the inspired leadership of Robert Oppenheimer, a group including such scientists as Richard Feynman,  John Manley and Enrico Fermi put together their collective wisdom and creativity to pursue in a period of a few years a project that would have perhaps taken more than a decade under normal circumstances. Certainly that is the sort of intensity and focus we are imagining with regards to Fukushima.

At the same time, the Manhattan Project is not a neutral analogy. It was, after all, the tragic beginning of nuclear weapons and by extension all nuclear technologies. To invoke the Manhattan Project requires us in a sense to strip it of its original political significance and use it almost in reverse. Perhaps the Fukushima Initiative is a Manhattan project to clean up the mess that resulted from the original Manhattan Project. In the words of Albert Einstein (a few books from whose library came into my possession through the assistance of Vince Rubino) the nuclear age “has changed everything but our thinking.” We need to see everything differently now. Fukushima has brought that message home and this is the moment for action.

I thought a bit about the recent interview in Arirang’s “Catch The Wave” with Adrien Lee.

Regarding K-Pop, I think we can say that Psy is like Elvis Presley: opening the door to new possibilities in music and a new direction in popular culture. The question is what the next step will be. If we look back on Elvis Presley, then the question is who will be the Beatles in Korea? Who will be Peter Paul & Mary? Who will be Simon and Garfunkel? The key, I think, is moving music back towards a concern with contemporary social issues so that is speaks to youth at multiple levels.

“Ultimately, the most critical element for ethical behavior in this day and age is imagination. Without a strong imagination, we cannot imagine the complex manner in which our actions, even those that seem so innocuous and innocent, impact the rest of the world. We need an imagination to put together the links between what happens here and what happens in Syria. Without an imagination, the two are forever unrelated.”

Emanuel Pastreich
September 1, 2013

“Oedipus and the Super rich”

Emanuel Pastreich

September 1, 2013

The story of King Oedipus is so important for us in this age because describes a man who is forced to confront a terrible truth that he had been entirely ignorant of. When he was confronted with indications of his own responsibility, he continued to ignore them. Like Oedipus, we want to imagine that out there lurk some terrible people in corporations, in government, in positions of power who are constantly launching conspiracies to do terrible things to us, to ordinary people, out of their own greed and cruelty. Although it is certainly true that there are any number of conspiracies in government and that there is a group of extremely self-interested wealthy people around the world, if we confront this problem honestly will learn eventually, and painfully, that the causes point back to ourselves. We must ask ourselves whether such a selfish class exists, or whether what we see is but part of a sick culture that we all occupy. The latter interpretation is much harder for us to accept, of course. It is much easier to imagine some bad people out there. But there is much we can learn from the tragedy of Oedipus: our own actions are part of the reason for what we see around us and if we want change, we should start with modifying our own behavior.

We are very much a part of this world and we play a far larger role in the evils that we see around us than we imagined possible. But like Oedipus, we were either unaware, or tried to ignore, the indications of our role in parasitic forms of capitalist exchange so common today. Even when confronted by the relationship between our actions and what we see around us, we fight against the truth just as Oedipus did.

You may object, as would Oedipus, that not all humans are equally responsible for the problems of the world. There are those 1% who live in luxury and waste, and then there is the rest of us. This point is of course entirely accurate, but it is not much of an excuse for the actions of most of us. There are some who are downtrodden and impoverished who have little to do with the problems that we witness, but I assume that my audience consists of those who have had the opportunity to attend high schools and universities. We do not have the same excuses.

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Below is the letter that I sent to Ms. Amy Goodman, host of the popular television news program “Democracy Now” that broadcasts from New York City. In the letter, I draw attention to the almost complete absence of coverage on Democracy Now about Asia. This rather liberal show takes a great interest in the downtrodden of the world, and for that I am most thankful, but for some reason, it appears that social, economic and political issues are of interest if they are in the Middle East, Central America and Latin America, but Asia is not of any particular interest to their programming.

Of course my observation may be incorrect, but I would like to note for the record that I sent this letter twice via the on-line format and mailed the hard copy to Ms. Goodman.

I only wrote her after three attempts to get someone on the phone who would respond to me concerning this issue failed. I think you could say I was stonewalled by the team at Democracy Now.

I never received any sort of response to a very serious and important point that I raised in the letter. I find this rather baffling since Ms. Goodman is constantly attacking people for stonewalling her and not answering her questions. Could it be that stonewalling is something that only applies to other people?

I sometimes wonder whether many traditional liberals in the United States have simply written off East Asia as belonging to business and the Republicans, and prefer to focus on their pet concerns: Latin America and the Middle East. I do not claim to understand. Do enlighten me on this point.

By the way, I still watch Democracy Now for news reports today. it covers many important issues, even as it has enormous blind spots.

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Neo-Confucian Learning in Korea

The Forgotten Origins of Modernity and the Platform for the Future

Emanuel Pastreich

August 10, 2013

There is a powerful myth that dominates Korean society today, one which severely undermines Korea’s cultural potential because it labels a tremendous chunk of the Korean cultural tradition as irrelevant, making it seem as if the intellectual achievements of Korean intellectuals before the twentieth century was misguided. You can find this argument in high school textbooks, or even in the introductions written in English for foreigners about Korean culture.

The myth concerns Korea’s intellectual tradition and the importance of the Neo-Confucian tradition in Korea. Neo-Confucianism is a general term for the philosophical system codified by the Southern Song Dynasty (1127–1279) scholar Zhu Xi (1130-1200) which formed the basis for much of the state ideologies of later dynasties in China and Korea. Neo-Confucianism was a synthetic approach to epistemology that combined early Confucian teachings with metaphysical terms developed in Buddhism to create an overarching world view that embraced the natural world, governance and ethics.

The Neo-Confucian vision of the world as a moral whole in which the scholar had the most privileged position by access to the Confucian classics became the basis for literally all formal education in the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1911). As Korea strove to modernize in the 20^th century, during the colonial occupation by Japan, a myth about Neo-Confucianism took root that remains powerful to this day.

The myth goes something like this:

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