Celebrating Leonard Swidler and Arlene Anderson Swidler at Age 75

Rebecca Alpert
Jim Biechler
Marcus Braybrooke
Ellen T. Charry
Leobard D'Souza
David Efroymson
Gabriele Feyler
Stefan Feyler
Eugene Fisher
Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer
Krystina Gorniak-Kocikowska
Yitz Greenberg
Wan-Li Ho
Sanaullah Kirmani
Reinhard Kirste
Hans Küng
Lihua Liu
Jack Malinowski
Patricia Martinez
Sergio Mazza
Alan Mittleman
Ronald Modras
Paul Mojzes
Malcolm Nazareth
Angelika Quade
Ida Raming
Virginia Kaib Ratigan
John Sahadat
Simone Schaupp
Ingrid Shafer
Shu-hsien Liu
Thomas Thompson
Catherine Berry Stidsen

Lihua Liu

Len, an American Horse

Len was born in January of 1930, according to our Chinese lunar calendar, he was born in the end of the dragon year. So if he was a Chinese he could introduce himself like this: "I belong to dragon." People would say: "Wow! You are a dragon!" This of course does not mean Len would be seen as a dragon but means that people here could know something about Len from the fact he was born in a dragon year and they could imagine very much from this attribute. In ancient times, We Chinese selected twelve animals: mouse, cow, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, cock, dog and pig to represent serial and sequential twelve years which make a circle just as seven days are composed of a week and twelve months are composed of a year. The dragon is the ancient Chinese nation, and in our famous classic, the Book of Changes ( I Ching) heaven, the first one of 64 hexagrams made of the Yang Yao (---) and the Yin Yao (- -), was explained by a dragon who holds a leading role, with a very capable character and highly righteous morality. In Chinese, the dragon is a celestial being and represents the strength of a deity.

However, because of my lack of the necessary mathematical brain I figured Len's animal year out wrongly as horse year after I learned of his birthday in 2003. Horse as a noun, to my limited English knowledge, is not like sheep, cock, rabbit, dog, snake, etc., meaning a good or bad kind of person, and it can only be used as cavalry. However, in Chinese this animal symbolizes a forward-thinking or a positive and active spirit and we have many idioms, fairy tales, and poems to praise the spirit a horse displays by its inherent nature. The Horse is not lazy but diligent, not delicate but strong, not temporary but enduring, not deceptive but honest, not hostile but friendly, not arrogant but dependable, and not alientating but always amiable and helpful. We have and idion :dragon and horse spirit" (Long Ma Jingshen) to express their sameness. But the dragon is too elevated. So I would like to take Len as a horse in my heart according to my mistaken computation, as an American horse rather than an American dragon. Len grew up in the American land, and so fortunately he absorbs the best of the western culture and claims as his mission to bear the burden of rebuilding the healthy human spirit.

I met Len in the beginning of that November in 2002 when I had read the Global Ethic in a Chinese article and sought its English original on the web. In fact I wanted to attend the forum on Global Ethics and discovered that the web page of the Center for Global Ethic was outdated, and so I wrote to Leonard Swidler's email address which was on the web page and told him "I am a teacher in People's University of China (in Beijing) and interested in the universal value now. I think it is an extremely important issue to every human and nation." Very soon I got the reply: "We would be glad to have you, and your contacts, join in our discussion on a Global Ethic and related issues." Since then I have had one of my best friends, a tutor and a comrade of spirit.

At the time, such a friend was very important to me. I used to be a Marxist, and I thought I was a committed one, not just an official one. So, for many years I studied Marxist philosophy and Chinese Marxism, and taught Marxism at the University. In this thought frame I analyzed other schools of thought and was sure Marxism was the relatively highest truth. Even after I began to practice Fa Lun Gong I integrated the two ideologies and attributed the Gong to the field of cultivating the self's personality and improve the self's health and Marxism to the field of changing the outside world. As all know, the Gong was suppressed in 1999 by the Chinese government, and because I thought this suppression was wrong and insisted on my objections and wrote reports to the party organization and criticized the treatment, I was prohibited from teaching and deprived of other qualifications, such as that of doctoral candidacy, that of accepting an academic invitation abroad, and so forth, and was assigned to the position of librarian. I was regarded as opposing Marxism, so I was no longer allowed to teach students Marxist lessons.

It was in this time of adversity that I began to think of the fatal limitations of Marxism. In May, 2001, though I had left the Gong, I still was not trusted to teach Marxism until spring 2003. And before this I had realized that human, all humans, all peoples, all nations can be very different in many ways but as human beings they certainly have something fundamental in common which distinguishes them from other beings, and that common characteristic determines that they are human rather than others. This characteristic is nothing but the human universal value. One of the fatal Marxism limitations is that Marxism systemically opposes the very existence of the human universal value with its historical materialism, with its working class value.

I was lonely then both in life and in my work. I was eager to look for the studies of human universal value, and this quest was not an academic need but also an eagerness for finding someone who could understand me and affirm that I was seeking the true value. So when I met Len and knew he was an advocate of a global ethic, I was sure I met a spirit friend. After we met, Len almost became a part of my life. He answered my questions about the western religions and culture as a careful teacher, discussed some issues and exchanged the different ideas with me as a familiar colleague, he encouraged me to spread the global ethic as I could and we were concerned for each other health, his great wife Arlene and my lovely daughter as relatives. I felt and was moved strongly by his inexhaustible energy, his abundant creation, his warm heart, his bright and honest personality. He possesses really the excellent nature just as a horse.

In the spring term 2003 I was invited by Len to attend a graduate seminar he directed on the web with the title Deep-Dialogue and Critical-Thinking. That term I finally returned to my teaching post after a nearly three and a half years hiatus, and I offered a course: English, Learning Writing from Reading. Len treated his students as friends and even treated my students as his friends. He graciously found for my students English-speaking pen-pals among his students and replied to my students' emails to him. I selected his Dialogue Decalogue and an excerpt of Hans Kung's Declaration toward A Global Ethic translated into English from the German by him as two chapters of my English writing course. The reading materials helped with broadening my students' eyesight and as well as heightening their personality. See, how much the American horse brought to us Chinese!

Len is 75 years old. He used to tell me he felt age somehow differently. I, a Chinese woman, know the reason. Since he was born to have all the horse advantages he always feels young and full of spirit no matter how many years he has walked through.

I wish that this American horse carry more spirit treasure to all human!I wish that he and his Arlene share and enjoy all happiness of all peoples!

(Lihua Liu, born in 1957, Philosophy Bachelor and Master in Philosophy Department of Peking University and now associate professor of Marxism School of People's University of China, Beijing. email: llihua2003@vip.163.com )