Unite Your Thoughts!

In class today we were learning a grammatical structure using the word "to unite." So we gave some examples, ie, unite a country or unite a people. And then the teacher raised the following: Do you think that people's thoughts can be united? For instance, she said, Chinese people's thoughts are all united around the concept of the family as the center of societal organization. And then she said, do you think that by uniting people's thoughts, we can better manage society? If people's thoughts are all united, and their ways of life are similar, then societal organization will go more smoothly. She said, we Chinese, from the time we are very small, all learn to have united thoughts. She gave some examples about the nature of family and of collective identity in Chinese society.

I asked, is this your view or the government's view? Her response was basically, it doesn't matter. It is traditional for Chinese people's thoughts to be united around many issues and it is the nature of collectivist society. If the government further promotes thought unification as a means of managing and/or controlling society, this is just in keeping with tradition, and is thus perfectly acceptable.

I think we in the West always think that the Chinese think as we do: they are censored so thoroughly that they always say what they "should," no matter what the circumstances, but inside they have individual thoughts and views on all issues, the same as Americans; the only difference being that they are not free to express them as they choose. Now I don't actually think this is perfectly true: I think that "thought unification" really is so complete that the average person's views really are in keeping with society's and with the government's. Thus they don't toe the Party line, if you will, out of fear or repression or something like that, but because the Party line IS the collective view on any given issue.