I continue to read in preparation for my trip to China, two weeks away. Beside the detective stories I wrote about earlier, I have perused a guide book, a history of that strange 1930s-40s episode in which European Jews found a haven from the Nazis in a sector of Shanghai under Japanese control, even Confucius. And guess what? - that ancient sage is very modern and thought-provoking.
I want to pass on just one of my discoveries. When asked what he would do first if given power over the country, Confucius says…"rectify the names."
What! Surely, he’s joking. But he explains that nothing good, certainly not governing, is possible when it is not perfectly clear what words mean.
That’s pure George Orwell or, to descend a a few levels, Arthur Alpert.
So it makes sense to fight over the meaning of words. And to watch what the professional word-wranglers in the news business are doing.
(Today, for example, it may be worth our while to consider what "sovereignty" is.)
PS Confucius sure isn’t dry in the translation I am reading, "The Analects of Confucius" by Simon Leys, published in1997 by WW Norton.