Should We Go Chinese?

by Mary W Maxwell, LLB

There are two major things that all humans need help with:

A. How to grab our rights and grab whatever is out there for the taking (including food, health, love, opportunity to do something creative, etc.), and

B. How to cooperate with other persons to do a task that one person can’t do alone.

As an American, I grew up learning mostly #A. Not that I was taught to be aggressively selfish, just that I was taught that my rights were very important and that the US govt should stick up for me in pursuing them. “Rights make for a happy society.” As an American, I did not get much #B training.

As a Catholic, I just took for granted that good things were obtainable by me, and probably by all people in developed countries. “God is in charge, so no real need for the Bill of Rights.” In our church, the #B emphasis was on charity rather than on working as a team. “Help the poor or the disabled” was heavily promoted. “God teaches kindness.”)

As a Republican (since around age 30), I became very fussy about #A rights – making no distinction whether the rights were for me, or for another particular individual, or for the whole human race. “Rights are fabulous.” Per the ideology of the day, my republicanism praised capitalism over communism. The theme of #B was: Let each person start a business if she wants. Handouts from government end up degrading people and cancel their freedoms.

Note: In high school, during the Cold War, we were encouraged to do whatever was needed to keep communism away. That struck me as incompatible with Christian kindness, and I was a bit surprised that priests in the pulpit never called attention to this ethical dilemma.

Now Let’s talk about “C”.

Above, I described A as a kind of selfishness, and B as “How to cooperate with other persons to do a task that one person can’t do alone.” But that description of B mixes apples and oranges. The apples are the charity factor. Sure, some people need charity, and ought to receive it from the lucky ones who don’t need it. But in the describing of un-selfishness, we needn’t be limited to talking about charity. There is an additional possibility of human cooperativeness.

So now let’s make room for #C. It’s not based on giving a gift, but on working alongside someone – on shouldering your share. Of course, in the military this approach is mandatory. You have to look upon the other guys in the platoon as absolutely equal to you in right and responsibilities. The goal is that all the men merge into one for defeating the enemy. Or all merge into one for, say, building a dam.

When I first moved to Australia (from US) I was fascinated by the way “men helped men.” If one man’s car got stuck in the sand, other drivers who saw it would get out of their cars, come over and help push the car back to freedom, and then walk away, with no word having been spoken. You just “did it.”

That sort of “C” may have been the norm, in the distant past, for all of humanity. Even today, most things (e.g., your riding the subway to work, or your picking ground coffee beans off the grocery shelf) are based on the combined efforts of many people -- but it is hardly mentioned or even noticed. Each September, we have a ‘Labor Day,’ but I’ve never so much as heard a person reading out a hymn to The Workers on that day. Have you?

China and the #D Element

Now let’s talk about one more thing; I’ll give it the name: #D. Apparently it doesn’t take much for a society to end up in the grip of an authoritarian ruler. There you’d have neither the search for rights (“Rights? What a joke!”), not kindness of the warm kind – although there may perhaps be some forced sharing. “The state owns all the property.”. As for the building of a dam together, it will be provided for by the boss of a work crew.

The article I am writing here has come about on the day after Trump’s visit to China. Some Americans may be rehearsing the idea of living in a more Chinese way. Already it has been said that in many countries the digital ID is being used to create a “social credit score” for each person.

In China -- or so we’re told -- this already exists. If you do something the government doesn’t like (spouting the religion of Falun Gong is an example), a mark goes against your score. This is connected electronically to your bank account, and may cause you to have money deducted. If your misbehavior continues, you could end up with zero funds and hence no food. We can agree that this is extremely undesirable.

Recapping, we have:

A -- rights (both civil rights, such as voting, and human rights, such as to not be brutalized by cops

B – ways to help another, such as to treat a person charitably

C – the coordination of the work of many people into a whole, whether in ancient or modern society

D – people being asked to march in line per authoritarian direction from the top.

It’s Time To Deal Simultaneously with A, B, C, and D

This morning at RobertReich.substack.com, Professor Reich, who was US Sec’y of Labor from 1993 to 2001, stated (but not in these words): “Our current President is yucksville.” The commenters responded by disgorging their many gripes about Republicans, or more generally, about their sadness today (May 15, 2026), owing to America’s international downgrade.

I think we will never get anywhere by mere lamentation. I particularly think “both sides of the aisle” are doing us in by making decisions on Party lines. Does either Party have a terrific program to offer the public? SURELY NOT.

To be fair to Reich, what he actually wrote was:

“

Friends,

“Words matter. When describing a government, they inevitably carry moral weight.

“Over the last 16 months, Trump and his appointees have so profoundly undermined the United States government that we should use different words to describe these people than we’ve used to describe all previous administrations. To begin with, they shouldn’t be called an “administration” at all. They should be referred to as a regime.

“The Trump regime has flagrantly defied court orders [Examples provided….]. The regime has also vilified judges who rule against it and demanded their impeachment. [Impeachment of some judges is OK with me, by the way. I love it!]

“The regime has usurped Congress’s powers to declare war, issue tariffs, and appropriate public funds. The regime is seeking to stifle speech and silence criticism — in universities, law firms, and the media.

“Secondly, this regime is not headed by a ‘president,’ as the Constitution of the United States and our laws and history have designated the head of the executive branch of the U.S. government. To put the term ‘President’ before Trump’s name defiles the Constitution. He is an authoritarian.” [bolding in original]

I agree that we cannot have a man in the Oval Office who hasn’t got a sense – a YUGE sense – of his subservience to the United States Constitution. It is indeed terrible to hear the list (thank you, Prof Reich) of this man’s sins. (Note: at the same moment in Substack, Trump’s niece Mary Trump offered an even longer list of sins, or what she considers to be Uncle Donald’s mental handicaps.)

I have written plenty about ousting the current president, preferably before dawn. But for this article, that is not the big deal. What is vital is for us to know what things we want. And it’s vital to know the order in which we want them.

Number D on the above list is what we Americans don’t want. Speaking personally, I don’t want to “march in line” to any leader. If, today, I were a young person imagining that my whole life would consist of marching in line, I think I would hike up to a high cliff and do the needful

OK, How about A, B, and C?

When someone asks me to write my telephone number, “preceded by the Country code,” I cringe a bit at having to shout “I’m Number 1; I’m in the most enviable United States …blah blah blah.” And I used to feel just as cringey when our country was doing a great job. It’s so stupid to insist that your own country is better than all others – you can’t possibly have checked them all out, can you?

Anyway, I did enjoy, and value, the rights displayed on the Bill of Rights. Did enjoy? Past tense? Yes, we have lost most of the rights. Here is one, the Fourth Amendment:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated….”

Since I happen to be a privacy maniac (by nature, I think, not by ideology), the Fourth just about sends me into ecstasy. Don’t eavesdrop my phone calls. Don’t read my diary (had I one). Don’t print a record of what I purchase, or which streets I drove on today, or whom I sent a package to last year. Don’t ask me impertinent questions. Don’t produce a profile of my habits. In fact, just drop dead, will you?

Seems I can’t help thinking old-school American. But I’ll bet other cultures have ways to treat all people with dignity, too. Japanese culture is famous for that, even to the point of being ceremonious about it.

And so to B – treating others kindly and generously; not being an “I’m-the-only-one-who matters” type creep. Altruism is biologically a universal trait in all mammals since, by definition, an infant mammal has to get milk from the mother. Mom is wired up to be helpful, and it seems to have spilled over to the male, too. In the human species, it starts with kin but spills over to the group.

As I said earlier, for us Catholics, giving to charity was in no way up for discussion. You just did it. It was THE DONE THING. All right, maybe Baptism transferred the message into our DNA. But then again, the religion of Christ is not the only one that urges the sharing of wealth. Muslims, for example must give a tenth of their income to the needy.

Come to think of it, it may not be religion that causes kindness! It could be that a particular religion gains acceptance in the first place by having, on its manifesto, a prominent rule of BE GOOD. Folks want to be good.

Now for C. I think that’s the one we must beef up. Cleary we have a talent for working as a group. (Granted, some individuals love to mess it up by insisting on their selfish way.) The military was mentioned above as a typical venue for a sort of subconscious discipline. Most veterans are proud that they learned that skill and are willing to re-use it in civilian contexts.

But we hardly have a way to do this since our systems have become globalized. Think of this, if you have a problem with something on your computer – say you booked a flight to AL, meaning Alaska, but then realized AL means Alabama. ,, You want to be able to get some help from a human being, but you can’t. It is set up for mass industry convenience, and you must talk to “Sally.”

That’s just an example of the way many things are set up. These will have to be redesigned, creatively, to make use of our natural ability to work together. In fact, size is a major barrier to good relationships. The group needs to be small enough so that you can act mutually with the same person you last worked with.

Another thing is redistribution of goods. Obviously some wealthy people today hold more wealth than a person or even a large extended family can deal with. They could own, say, 60 thousand pairs of ice skates, or a trip to safari in Africa every week for ten years. Who needs it? The whole thing is embarrassing. (Plus, owning too much apparently makes your rational brain go into retreat.)

Conclusion. The situation is ripe for inventing a better society. See what you can do, please. Cuz if you don’t, you gonna be sor-ree.