Stone Life

Confucius Rolls Over In His Grave


Is this really what Confucius had in mind when he began giving his aphoristic proverbs, from which, my assumption would be, the idea of fortune cookies in some way arose? My class and I just this day studied ancient China, Confucius in particular, and it was today that I received this fortune in my cookie after lunch: You have executive ability.

Ancient China, in its empiristic infancy, according to the geniuses behind the 9th-10th grade World History book, was built originally upon the backs of scholars and philosophers, Confucius being the chief of these, who sought to order a society rationally and with the intent of creating “whole” people. They sought to feed the souls, minds and bodies of the inhabitants of their country, and they used wisdom and ideals to do so. They were eventually destroyed by totalitarian types that thirsted for power and money just as Plato predicts in the Republic I might add, but the original academics behind China’s growth and unity were much more Socrates than Napoleon.

Now Orient-wisdom is reduced to nothing more than the same business model that the rest of the world operates under. With lottery numbers on the back and Tony Robbins-esque business pick-me-ups on the front, fortune cookies have reached their ultimate low, barring their future messages “Sponsored by McDonald’s”.

Where have the idealists gone? Have those people that created empires and traveled the world in search of truth and freedom of ideas been killed-off by the Westernization and American Dreaming of the entire globe. I watch my classes sleep through Plato and Homer, the foundations of literature, struggle through Hemingway and Fitzgerald, both of which are only a step above headline-writing in newspapers, and go entire summers without so much as glancing towards a book, and I am troubled. I’ve no answers; just troubled today.