Differences in moral values between Chinese and Western cultures! Thanks!

I . Inland and Oceanic Cultures

Based on the differences in the geographic environments on which their respective cultures are based, we can attribute the Chinese and Western cultures to inland and oceanic cultures, the so-called "yellow civilization" and "blue civilization," respectively. "

"One side of the soil and water nurtures one side of the people" and "Yan and Zhao are full of generous and sorrowful people", which is the work of creation, but also shows the great influence of the natural environment on the shaping of personality. "Human personality is the product of both innate organization and the environment in which a person lives during his own life, especially during the period of development." [2] The environment here includes not only the social environment but also the natural environment. The natural environment has a subtle effect on people, so that people consciously and unconsciously get some kind of inculcation and influence. Marx pointed out that "different communes find different means of production and different means of life in their respective natural environments. Consequently, they produce in different ways, live in different ways and have different products." [3]

Chinese civilization originated in the Yellow River basin, and the geographical environment of being surrounded on three sides by land and on one side by the sea put China in a state of virtual isolation, thus enabling its own culture to maintain strong stability and historical continuity. This unique natural environment has created the unique cultural traditions and social psychology of the Chinese people. Born in the semi-enclosed continental natural environment of Confucian ethics, teaching people to emphasize the importance of the land, peace and poverty, sunrise and sunset, so that people in the long tradition precipitated a closed inert psychological and inertia thinking methods, conservative, lack of openness to the consciousness; attachment to the homeland and native land, the promotion of quiet and inertia; resting on the status quo, the rules and regulations, the old-fashioned, the awareness of risk and the competitive spirit of the spirit of the weak, the concept of time and the sense of progress is indifferent. Indifference to the concept of time and sense of progress. The so-called "mountain nature makes a person blocked, the water nature makes a person through", is this truth. "Oriental people do not have the busyness and competitiveness of Westerners, they are always serious and serious, never in a hurry, and have little sense of time. Just as the word 'efficiency' represents the tone that governs people's thinking in Western society, so the Chinese often use the word 'sloppy' to indicate their attitude toward life." [4] The narrowness and closeness of the circle of life, the fixedness and permanence of contact between people, in order to be able to get along with each other, the Chinese people pay great attention to human feelings, "Insight into the world's affairs is all learning, and the practice of human feelings is both articles", which also cultivates into the Chinese people's traditional virtues of modesty, prudence, forbearance, and subtlety. This natural environment of China and the cultural traditions under the influence of this environment have nurtured the introverted personality of the Chinese people. As the source of Western culture, ancient Greece and Rome were located on peninsulas, facing the sea, with developed sea transportation and prosperous maritime trade, which led to the formation of open societies in these countries, breaking the blood relationship. Intense social unrest, frequent exchanges of people and the turbulent, unpredictable ocean to form its open and changeable cultural character, casting its flexible, open, courageous, enterprising, collaborative spirit of the nation, advocating hard work and self-improvement. Therefore, Westerners like to be new, innovative, adventurous and courageous. In the West, it is also this natural environment formed in the cultural traditions of Westerners to develop the kind of extroverted personality. "In Marx's view, geography influences people through the relations of production that arise in a certain place and on the basis of certain productive forces ......"[5]/p>

Therefore, for the cultural concepts formed with a great influence of the The influence of the natural environment on personality, we should neither add to the exaggerated nor too narrow, neither over-emphasized nor arbitrarily ignored, but should be objective and fair. As Russell said, "The present science cannot give a complete account of the problem of national character. Climate and economic circumstances, though they tell part of it, are not the whole of it." [6]

II . Ethical and Utilitarian Culture

According to the difference in value orientation between China and the West, we can generalize Chinese and Western cultures into ethical and utilitarian cultures respectively.

The overall orientation of traditional Chinese ethics is to emphasize righteousness rather than profit. The "distinction between right and wrong" has been a fundamental issue throughout the history of Chinese civilization. The Mozi school, which advocates the balance between righteousness and profit, has lost the soil for survival and forgotten the middle way, while the Taoist school, which advocates the abandonment of righteousness, the abandonment of skill and the abandonment of profit, and the abandonment of both righteousness and profit, has completely excluded merit and fame from the standard of personality, and this kind of advocate, though once on a par with the Confucian concept of righteousness and profit, was not used by the ruling class because it did not fit in with the needs of society at that time. Confucianism, as the mainstream ideology that has dominated Chinese feudal society for thousands of years, basically advocates "emphasizing righteousness rather than profit", "thinking of righteousness in the face of profit", "curbing profit with righteousness", and advocating that when there is a conflict between righteousness and profit, one should give up one's life for the benefit of others. The basic idea of Confucianism is to "emphasize righteousness rather than profit", "think of profit as profit", and "control profit with righteousness", advocating that when there is a conflict between righteousness and profit, one should give up one's life for righteousness. The Chinese tradition of pan-moralism, which explains everything in terms of morality, has led to the value orientation of nationals who are happy to talk about righteousness and shameful to talk about profit, and who emphasize moral cultivation and emphasize external achievements, which has led to the loss of the independent personality value and social status of science in ancient China. People focused on their own inner world, lost interest in reason and nature, and lacked the rational tradition of Western culture and enthusiasm for scientific exploration. The separation of morality and rationality led to the emergence of an anti-rational tendency in the Chinese tradition, thus hindering the development of the Chinese scientific spirit. This is the deep-seated reason why empty talk prevailed in ancient China, while science declined and commerce was underdeveloped. Science and technology were regarded as obscene and strange, and merchants were relegated to the bottom of the list of the four peoples, which also led to the serious consequences of the difficulty of applying ancient Chinese science despite its advancement, the slow development of commerce, and the country's accumulation of poverty and weakness, which became the target of Western colonial aggression in the modern era.

In the West, despite the complexity and variety of social values that have developed over a long period of time, Western society is based on the individual, and seeks to realize the individual's rights and interests, which are considered to be sacrosanct, innate, and natural. It is the instinct of the individual to seek profit and avoid suffering, and to seek profit is the purpose of survival. In the process of pursuing one's own rights and interests, one does not have to bear any moral responsibility, and one can do whatever it takes. Therefore, utilitarianism always occupies the mainstream position and plays a dominant role in Western society. Undoubtedly, this utilitarianism plays a catalytic role in giving birth to the germ of capitalism in later times, but it also makes the primitive accumulation of capitalism very cruel and bloody. As Marx said, "Capital comes into the world dripping blood and filth from every pore, from head to foot." [7] This value orientation of Western society, which emphasizes righteousness over profit, mobilizes the enthusiasm of individuals to pursue material interests to a certain extent, thus promoting the development of Western society's economy and science, but the disdain and depreciation of righteousness can easily lead to Western society's lopsided pursuit of material interests at the expense of others and self-interests, but only for profit, which results in the alienation of the relationship between human beings and their deterioration into a naked relationship of money and material interests. In the history of the West, utilitarianism and pragmatism have prevailed and constituted the mainstream value orientation of the West, and the inviolability of private property has become the unchanging creed of society. Driven by the concept of maximizing one's own interests, science and technology are particularly valued in the West, and rationalism and scientism are very developed in the West. In real life, westerners show the spirit of seeking novelty, innovation and utilitarian personality. The concept of science and technology is y rooted in people's hearts, and has become an important factor in the composition of personality. This also leads to the western society emphasize reason and light emotion, long on reasoning and short on talking about feelings, good at logical thinking and detached from intuitive feeling.

Three . Harmonious Culture and Resistant Culture

Based on the differences in the specific forms of Chinese and Western cultures, we can categorize the two as harmonious culture and resistant culture respectively.

In dealing with the relationship between man and nature, the mainstream of traditional Chinese culture focuses on advocating the "unity of man and nature", emphasizing respect for nature, follow the laws of nature, the pursuit of harmony between man and nature, that "sinned against the sky, there is no prayer" [8]. "One characteristic is that Chinese culture not only does not isolate people from human relationships, but also does not put people in opposition to nature ...... There are people in the sky, there is a sky in the people, and the idea of the unity of heaven and man in which the subject and the object are mutually dissolved constitutes a notable feature of Chinese culture." [9] Chinese culture primarily treats nature as an object of worship rather than an object of study and conquest, as an object of imagination rather than as an object of inquiry. With regard to nature, since "the way of heaven is far away and the way of man is far away,"[10] it is not only absurd but also futile to be too obsessed with the search for the illusory way of heaven. We only need to appeal to the heart, the human heart contains the universal law of nature, the heart can know the nature, know the nature of the knowledge of heaven, "all things are ready for me." [11] Therefore, ancient Chinese culture emphasized more on personnel than on heaven, and more on morality than on knowledge. In dealing with human relations, Chinese culture since ancient times has always emphasized groups over individuals, harmony over resistance, and patriarchy and discipline. It exhorts and restrains people, restricts their free will and creative spirit, and disregards the value and dignity of individual life. Chinese culture has always sought harmony and unity between man and nature and society as the main theme of the ideal of life, opposing man's independent will and enterprising, cultivating man's group concept, obedience, sincerity and respect, and so on, and looking for a kind of mediocrity and reconciliation of the way to deal with the situation. The concept of harmony in Chinese culture also embodies and cultivates the spirit of obedience, submission, conservatism and inactivity of the people, who are content with the status quo, with little sense of resistance and courage to rebel. "The Chinese generally believe in the historical concept of 'Heaven remains unchanged, and the Tao remains unchanged,' which has led Europeans and Americans to believe that the China of 1990 is no different from the China of Confucius' time." "All the old things are extremely valuable, and all the new things are meaningless." [12] This in turn has resulted in a soft cultural character that is modest and cautious, subtle and introverted.

In the West, the philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome from the very beginning set their sights on nature, exploring its mysteries and conquering and dominating it to be its master. Heraclitus peeped out "harmony from the struggle" [13], Protegra's "man is the measure of all things" is the distinctive portrayal of the separation of man and nature. Although to Socrates, the philosophy from the sky back to earth, but the western culture of nature exploration and conquest has never stopped. Western commercial society maritime shipping adventure career, as well as in which inevitably encountered difficult to grasp the laws of nature so that Westerners always feel the sharp confrontation between man and nature and the intense conflict, it is in the bizarre natural phenomena of surprise and confusion in the beginning of philosophical exploration. Ancient Greek philosophy from the beginning is mainly a kind of natural philosophy, taking nature as the object of people's thinking and exploration. Under the domination of the dichotomous thinking mode of separating heaven and man, the western society has been distinguishing and opposing nature and man since ancient times, and nature is only the object to be recognized, utilized and conquered by man, emphasizing man's independence and positive progress, and pursuing the spirit of free will and independence. In dealing with human relations, the West is more respect for individual freedom of will and personality independence, emphasizing the value and dignity of individual life, the importance of private property acquisition and protection, overall awareness and collective concept is weak. Westerners are rich in challenges, bold pursuit, Chong Li Shangwu, eager to make quick profits, even at the expense of one-sided digging into the way of thinking and unscrupulous behavior to achieve the goal, to win the spirit of quality and state of mind, so as to form a straightforward, open-minded, with a hard cultural character.

Chinese culture advocates "unity of heaven and man", humane law of heaven, to humane should be heavenly, to heavenly set up humane, to virtue with heaven, heaven and man together, so the sense of existence is exceptionally developed, image thinking is very prominent, focusing on intuitive sensation and poetic imagination, emphasis on the human being and light of the heavenly way, light of the evidence and heavy metaphysical thinking, resulting in the natural sciences is not very developed humanities are exceptionally prosperous. The natural sciences are not very developed, and the humanities are exceptionally prosperous. "If, according to this logic, the development of epistemological consciousness was partly responsible for the emergence of science in Europe, then the underdevelopment of this consciousness should also be partly responsible for the non-emergence of science in China." [14] Western culture advocates the separation of heaven and man, man's victory over heaven, not only recognizing and interpreting nature but also conquering and transforming nature, developed scientific and technological consciousness, prominent abstract thinking, and emphasis on logical inference and empirical research. Therefore, China has a "careful proof" of Chen Jingrun, while the West has a "bold assumptions" of Goldbach.