Of religion and secularism - Reply to a friend's email (II)

As humans seek for a meaning to their lives, a way out of their personal agonies, they tend to need to fall back upon someone wise in their communities. Of course, today we have evolved and even the arts, literature, etc can provide an outlet for our troubled minds and souls. But if you realized, all religions arm themselves with the desire to free others from their troubles. It is just a natural tendency of those who have "found happiness" to want others to be happy. But kind intentions can be interpreted in a different light, esp when society evolves; or perhaps the means of doing so becomes akin to coercion, as they get intertwined with politics, power and militarism. In Singapore, at least, we have two arenas that are "danger points". One is the global Muslim terrorism that is aimed at restoring the Islamic empire. The second is the way Christianity is increasingly portraying itself as the defenders of "social values" - and because of the religion's basis of Western thinking and history, it tends to impact some ways of behaviour among believers that contradict with the value systems and worldviews of those who have been brought up in traditional Chinese ways, with folk beliefs of their own.

If you re-read the previous mail, you will realize that I agree that we can have faith without having to subscribe to a religion. But to really achieve that state, and really possess a faith of one's own that can last him through all of life's difficulties to the very end, requires a high level of intellectual competence and what the Buddhists call "the seed of wisdom". The paradox is that not many people can really achieve this state of 大智大慧, that's why religions with personalized gods become a convenient medium; yet at the same time, we want to have the freedom to choose a religion, or to choose to develop our own faith based on self-contemplation of life's experiences and "ideals" like you said; but what this possibly results in is that there is a lack of consensus on our individual faiths, and people who choose not to have a religion but have no ability to develop their own faiths end up not subscribing to any ethical systems. And for this last group of people, if you imagine them gaining political dominance, they may end up oppressing those with religions and faiths - what is now termed as "secular fundamentalism".

To give u an idea of local developments, in Singapore, what we have tried to do is to gel neo-Confucianism with politics. In trying to imitate traditional China society, political leaders hoped to hold on to Chinese values through fostering a bridge between Confucianism and politics. But in the 1980s, when they tried pushing this out through the subject called "religious studies" in secondary schools, they made a fatal mistake of classifying Confucianism as one of the choices, in line with Buddhism, Christianity, Islam etc. The whole subject thus "failed“ as only a small portion of the Chinese chose Confucianism. Then PAP decided to turn Confucianist thinking into our five "national shared values", but because Confucianism has its roots in the Chinese context, it has not been well-accepted by our minorities. Thus, though Parliament passed the White Paper for the shared values, it's just laid on the table and seldom mentioned thereafter. What follows is that the shared values become the basis of "culture" in the Chinese language subject, but while "indoctrination-styled learning" of such moral values is feasible at primary school level, at the secondary level and beyond, there has been a lack of effort to encourage sufficient philosophical inquiry into these issues, not least because the Chinese language subject has its primary role of language education to fulfill, and our teachers may not have sufficient knowledge of Chinese philosophy to conduct 深入浅出的思辨. Thus, coupled with the rise of English usage in Singapore, and more importantly, superficial and often misinterpreted understanding of Western concepts like rights, freedom and choice, secular neo-Confucianism has not seemed to be able to resist movements towards individualism, personal choice, desires for staunch freedom, etc. And in the school system, due to the need to respect multi-religion, the line has to be drawn when it possibly involves faith and belief, whose distinction is always blur when compared with philosophy. As more Chinese begin rejecting folk practices, some switch to Buddhism, while many turn to Christianity - it's eventually about wanting to have some roots to fall back on in facing life's obstacles. But religion leads to personal values, which pervade and eventually forms social values. It's a complicated world...

Fundamentally speaking, I still think Singapore's "religious tolerance" still works well. What needs strengthening is how to form greater resistance against any "take-over" by a particular religion, and foster greater religious harmony - hopefully with each group deepening their own knowledge of their own faith. What I do know is that there is an increasing disdain for the ways some Christians evangelize, esp among non-Christian Chinese. In addition, our differences tend to be on particular controversial issues, such as homosexuality. Though this can exacerbate into greater strife among groups, I think generally people don't arm themselves against entire faiths - at least not yet.

As for secular morals and ethics, the fact that there are calls to return to Confucianism shows, ironically, that it is not forging sufficiently well with evolving social values. But I still do believe that neo-Confucianism has room for adaptability. That's why I'm trying to learn more about it myself. In due time, I think I'll be writing an article for Zaobao on the dilemma of Confucianism within the local Chinese community post-21st century.