太多青蛙,太多的井

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It’s a funny old place the world. So many things change but human nature hasn’t changed much over the centuries. In the classic work of philosophy named after Zhuangzi (360-290BC) we find the story of the frog in the well. This story is so familiar that it has given Chinese one of its many four character idioms and yet so few of us really take the true meaning of it seriously.

The other night, while watching CCTV International reporting on the forthcoming activity, I was struck by the comment of the reporter that “the eyes of the world will be on Beijing this month”. I started thinking about her words and realized that actually this will not be so. The “eyes of the world” tend to be focused on many different things and the vast majority of people in the world will be worrying about their jobs, their family and (just possibly) what their own government is doing rather than worrying about what is going to happen to the Chinese economy. It reminded me of a friend of mine who went to work in the USA for a few months. He was genuinely surprised that the American newspapers seldom covered any story coming from the UK. British newspapers always seem to have a story or two about something in America but there is no reciprocal interest. Conversely, I always find it a bit irritating that the UK press and TV seldom have any news about China or India the two largest populations in the world. Surely there is at least one interesting article to be written every day about so many people.

The trouble is that, on the whole, despite the Internet and the “global village” most of us are still like the frog, much more concerned that the level of water in our own cracked well just reaches our armpits and the mud just covers our feet. Chinese students that I meet tend to take a lot of interest in foreign affairs but if you investigate more deeply it tends to be viewed through a Chinese prism. There is nothing wrong with that at all but what they don’t realize is that their counterparts in the USA or the EU know almost nothing about China. In this age globalization and rapid international communication most of us really know almost as little about the world outside as the frog knew of the Eastern Ocean. We don’t know much because we don’t care very much. It is not a difficult thing these days to get some basic facts about any country on the net, to read a foreign “local” newspaper or to download foreign movies. We don’t really need to confine ourselves to out of date “culture guides” usually written by people who know little of the country. We can explore it all for ourselves. The question is do we really want to know?

It seems to me that one of the problems with the world today is that so many of us are so concerned with our own little world that we never take time to look at “the big picture”. Widening our horizon doesn’t just entail getting more and more facts about different places and peoples; it implies developing the ability to put things into perspective and considering what is important and what is less so.

Let us think about two big issues facing the world just now and we will realize how serious the problem of frog-like attitudes is. In the last two years the financial and economic “certainties” on which the relative prosperity of the developed and developing nations in the world were built have been greatly undermined mainly as a result of that perennial human failing greed. Greed from the rich and greed from those who wanted to be rich, but also unfortunately greed on the part of many governments to be considered big players in the world “game”. In the days of plenty there were few who looked at what was happening on a realistic scale and the few who did suggest that this situation was unsustainable were ignored and even ridiculed. There were just too many frogs and far too few turtles. The repairing of this broken system has shown that the frogs haven’t disappeared but are just fighting hard to get the water and mud levels back to their own satisfaction. The isolationist and beggar my neighbour attitude of the financial institutions and most governments makes this clear.

Unfortunately, a very similar attitude prevails in the matter of climate change. Words are easy to produce but concerted action to deal with this genuinely global problem is far less easy to come by. The most obvious signal produced by the expensive and eventually pointless Copenhagen Conference was that most countries are only really concerned with protecting the interests of their own people (or at least its own industries) and has shows little enthusiasm for seeking any kind of international accord. The frogs are all fighting for their own water; none of them cares that the water is likely to disappear from all the wells.

These are big problems and can’t be solved by little people. But in our own lives are we not also guilty of the same attitudes? As car drivers do we really care about the state of the pavements or whether we are parking in a most inconvenient spot? As passengers on the bus are we concerned about the elderly or mothers with small children or do we just want to make sure we have a seat ourselves? Big or small we are all to some extent frogs; if things are going well for us, then the world seems to be a wonderful place so why worry about others?

Many years ago, round about the time of Zhuangzi, the Romans had a saying quot hominess tot sententiae, which means that there are as many opinions as there are people or perhaps “everybody has his own idea”. Maybe we could translate the problem of the world today into Latin as quot ranae tot putei or every “frog has his own well”. Maybe the time has come to use the Internet as our turtle and climb out to have a better look at the world and our place in it.

大千世界,无奇不有。在过去数千年时间里,很多事情都发生了变化,但是人的本性却依然如故。在以庄子(公元前360-公元前290)的名字命名的中国古典哲学著作中,我们可以找到青蛙坐井观天的故事。这个故事耳熟能详,以至于由此在汉语中产生了许多4个字组成的成语。但是,很少有人能认真地去领略“坐井观天”这个成语的真正含义。

某天晚上,在看中央电视台国际频道的一个关于即将在北京举办的一个活动报道的时候,我被记者的评述给雷倒了:“本月,世界的目光将聚焦北京。”我开始思考记者的说话,并意识到,事实情况将绝非如记者所说,相反,“世界目光”将聚焦到很多不同的事情上。世界上多数人将关心他们自己的工作、家庭以及(在可能的情况下)他们自己的政府的所作所为,而不会为中国经济领域里发生了什么事去操心。这又使我想起了一个去美国工作了几个月的朋友。他在美国很诧异地发现,美国的报纸很少报道英国的事情。英国的报纸每天似乎总能报道一两件美国发生的事。英国在美国却没有得到这种对等的待遇。相反,对英国报纸和电视很少报道中国和印度这两个世界上的人口大国的事,我感到愤愤不平。这两个国家有那么多人,每天至少还是能有一篇关于他们的有意思的文章可写的。

虽然有了互联网和所谓的“地球村”观念,我们多数人仍然像那个“坐井观天”的青蛙一样,更多关心的是自己井里那点刚及自己腋窝深的水和脚底下刚能覆盖住脚丫子的泥巴。我认识的中国学生,都对国外的事情感兴趣。但是,如果和他们往深里探讨就会发现,他们对国外的认识,是建立在中国式思维之上的。这本身并没什么错。但是,他们却并没有意识到,和他们同龄的美国或欧洲学生,对中国几乎一无所知。在这个全球化迅捷的国际交往时代,我们多数人对外部世界的真正了解甚少,这和“坐井观天”故事里的青蛙对东海一无所知没什么差别。对外界知道的不多,是因为我们没有去给予太多的关注。当今,从网上去获取一个国家的情况、读外国的“当地”报纸或下载外国电影,都不是什么难做的事。因此,我们完全没必要把自己局限于去读那些对外国的了解只限于皮毛的人士撰写的过时的“文化指南”。我们完全可以自己去探索。问题是,我们是否真有去了解的欲望?

在我看来,关乎当今世界的一个问题是我们当中太多的人只关心自己的小世界,而从不花点时间去看一下世界“大画面”。拓宽视野不仅能使你获得对更多不同地方和不同人的认知,而且有助于拓展你辨别是非的能力。

思考一下当今世界面临的两件大事,我们就会意识到青蛙“坐井观天”态度的严重性。在过去的两年时间里,由于人类的长期贪婪,发达国家和发展中国家繁荣得以立足的金融和经济稳定性受到了严重的削弱。富人的贪婪、想致富的人的贪婪以及很多政府的贪婪在这场世界“游戏”中扮演了主演角色。在经济繁荣时期,很少有人去注意现实中实际发生了什么。即使有少数人提出繁荣形势将不会持续的观点,也总是被大家忽视和嘲笑。这个世界上,“坐井观天”的青蛙实在是太太多,而龟兔赛跑中的乌龟却又实在太太少。在修复被破坏的体制过程中,我们会发现,青蛙们不但没有消失,而且还在拼命挣扎着要把井里的水和泥巴恢复到原来的水平上。金融机构和大多数政府采取的孤立主义政策和向邻国乞求援助的态度充分论证了这一切。

不幸的是,在有关全球气候变化方面,类似的态度也是大行其道。嘴上功夫最容易练,但是,真正付诸于行动去解决这个全球性的问题可不是件简单的事情。花费昂贵却最终虎头蛇尾的哥本哈根会议最明显的一个信号就是多数国家真正关心的只是自己国家人民的利益(至少也是本国工业),却没有显示出一丁点寻找国际化解决方案的热情。所有的青蛙都在为自己井里有水而抗争,却没有一只青蛙去关心所有井里的水即将枯竭这一现实。

这些大问题是我们小人物们所解决不了的。但是,在我们的生活中,难道不应该为有这种态度而感到愧疚么?如果我们是开车的人,我们是否真正关心过走路人的生活状况或者我们是否把车停在了造成不便的地方?坐在公交车上,我们是关心老人或带小孩的母亲还是仅仅惦记着自己有没有座位?不管大人物还是小人物,从某种程度上来说,我们都是青蛙,总认为,如果我们自己过好了,世界就是个大同之地,因此,干么还要去关心别人呢?

许多年前,与庄子时代同期,有句罗马谚语叫quot hominess tot sententiae,意思是“有多少人就有多少主意”或者“每个人都有自己的主见”。以此类推,我们可以把当今世界的问题用类似的拉丁语quot ranae tot putei来诠释,意思“每个青蛙都有自己的井”。因此,也许到了把互联网当成乌龟的时候了。我们应该从自己的井里爬出来,好好去看看世界,再回头看看自己的井底。