A vision / on human conditions
German writer Goethe was one of the first scholars in the western tradition to pick up a Chinese novel. Even though most people of his time viewed eastern culture as eccentric and inscrutable, he was able to find the universality about the characters and the story. He realized how provincial the intellectuals were by appreciating only each other’s work and turned to even more creations from remote lands. Once he saw it, he couldn’t unsee it. For him, arts is no longer the production of a particular nation or race, but instead, a common good shared with the universal humanity.
Goethe then coined the phrase “world literature” that represents an idea of a world in which no single language or nation dominated, and the emergence of “world literature” was the cultural expression of a new political order that moved beyond the nationalism and colonialism in his time.
Arts drive social changes by exposing possibilities and challenging existing orders. Goethe discovered a new paradigm for creation, as the raw material now come from all over the world, and therefore a product that belongs universally to mankind. But now as we fast forward to 200 years later, how far have we progressed for this cultural exchange? Have we been more aware of our inevitable narrow-mindedness and biases? Have we been more exposed to the full spectrum of human condition beyond of our comfort zone? When we create a piece of art, product, company, have we been thinking beyond the bounds of our nation, regardless of the state of dominance of a particular industry at that point in time.
Just like Goethe who picked up a Chinese novel and was shocked to see that “the [Chinese] people think, act, and feel almost exactly as [Germans] do, and very soon one sense that one is like them.” We want to learn how to let go of our assumptions and embrace the limitations of our ability. One of the biggest problems of the superpower nations right now is the polarizing positivity and desperation without the fundamental understanding of this universal human condition that Goethe discovered through a foreign book.
In the U.S., the sentiment towards the leaders is hugely negative, and in the valley, the outlook of the future so bright. In China, the digital innovation serving the stabilizing middle class becomes ever more creative that they almost could forget about the housing prices they could never ever afford. And both sides make up narratives of each other to appease the curiosity and anesthetize the wound.
We like familiarity, and we fear change. The optimists believe the future in heaven, and the pessimists think it will be hell. It will be both. History is cyclical, and good things have bad effects, bad things can have good outcomes, things sometimes happen that you couldn’t anticipate. In a time like ours, with the technology like ours, and with the communication means like ours, I want to bring up “world literature” because it presents a quite idealistic vision. And a vision that I believe in our time we shall strive for. Culture will win over politics, as world history is superior to national biases. Perspectives will win over rhetorics, as true diversity can hardly be captured by one language, one story, one game, one nation.
If there is one, there’s the other.
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