Reading Confucius in the Internet age

Wang Meng delivers a speech at the press conference. [Photo/culture.people]

Wang made humorous and insightful comments on the Analects of Confucius. “The Master said 'Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.’” (Chapter XV, Book II) Wang said that in modern society, people have become too reliant on the Internet, rather than figuring things out by their own thinking. In Confucius eyes, learning and thinking should not be separated, otherwise, one can only be a person thinking instead of a thinking person.

He further pointed out that opinion leaders on social media are drowning themselves in an ocean of fragmented data, which is perilous to their own thinking and the people who resort to them for solutions. Guest professor Zhao Shilin also found that Confucius was the best blogger ever, for he knew too well how to compress his wisdom into lines with no more than 140 words.

Wang Meng is one of the most prestigious writers and thinkers in Chinese literature. His previous work includes The Help of Lao Zi and The Gallop of Zhuang Zi, in which he explored the core values of Chinese traditional culture and discussed their application to contemporary social context.