If you want to make a stand, help others make a stand, and if you want to reach your goal, help others reach their goal. Consider yourself and treat … - Confucius

Respect yourself and others will respect you.

Who can (make) the muddy water (clear)? Let it be still, and it will gradually become clear.

The dominant philosophical preoccupations of cultures are often a function of tacit assumptions made early in their narratives that are often reflected in their languages. Greek metaphysical presuppositions melded with Judeo-Christian beliefs to produce a “God-model,” where an independent and superordinate principle determines order and value in the world while remaining aloof from it, making human freedom, autonomy, creativity, and individuality at once problematic and of key philosophical interest. On the Chinese side, the commitment to the processional, transformative, and always provisional nature of experience renders the “ten thousand things [or, perhaps better, ‘events’] (wanwu )” which make up the world, including the human world, at once continuous one with another, and at the same time, unique. Thus the primary philosophical problem that emerges from these assumptions is ars contextualis: how do we correlate these unique particulars to achieve their most productive continuities? (This is the underlying general form of “questions” posed to the Book of Changes when casting the stalks.)