Additional information
by You-Sheng Li (Author)
Synopsis: In the last five thousand years, only six primary (or first) civilizations occurred in our human world, and such rare events were nothing but the result of special historical and environmental factors. Except China, all other five appeared on a narrow land near sea and desert. The vast mysterious sea water led prehistoric people to develop megalith culture and religion, and desert led to patriarchal and warrior culture, and narrow land led them to fight against each other in order to control the farm land: the five thousand years of civilization in upgrading war and economic classification.
The Chinese civilization appeared near the desert but on a wide land far from the sea. When we divide all human societies into the genetically coded primary society and the man-made secondary society, only Chinese civilization started with the super state of primary societies. Since they kept the original natural mind out of the influence of the mysterious sea water, their early historical memories indicate that their super state was only a chiefdom keeping peace and dealing with vast river flood. Once this super state of primary societies was established: all people of different races thanked this super state for the peaceful environment. During the Axial Age, China was still a mixture of different races and different people to live together and hatched the Taoist and Confucian philosophies which take the primary society and natural man as their ideal. As a result, Chinese peasants still lived in quasi-primary society in the 1950s and the author described his mother and grandmother and their serene mind and natural life. Anthropologists believe that human linguistic chat only replaces anthropological apes' brewing each other's hair: the pure aesthetic value. Civilized humans used it to make the secondary society and man-made men drive each other to work harder and harder by war, which may be God's plan to accumulate wealth and knowledge for a computer world in which humans can enjoy their serenity life again like other animals on earth.
This book uses 12 chapters and 3 appendix papers to establish this theory and describe this original but totally new lifestyle.
Autobiography: You-Sheng Li graduated from the best medical school in China and received his Ph.D from the University of Cambridge, England. He published more than 30 papers in English and Chinese medical journals and received rewards twice in China for his research work. He started to read extensively on Taoism in 1998 and has dedicated entirely to social science after he retired in 2005. He divided human societies into the genetically coded primary society and the man-made secondary society, and found that unlike all other ancient civilizations, Chinese civilization started from the super state of primary societies until the Axial Age when Taoism and Confucianism established to guide the national consciousness and leave the countryside in the primary society until late 1950s. His published books:
- You-Sheng Li: A New Interpretation of Chinese Taoist Philosophy: An Anthropological/Psychological View. Taoist Recovery Centre, London, Canada, 2005.
- You-Sheng Li: Life and the World in a New Perspective: Taoism in 21st Century. Xianzhuangshuju, Beijing, 2009. (In Chinese)
- You-Sheng Li: The Ancient Chinese Super State of Primary Societies: Taoist Philosophy for the 21st Century. Author House, Bloomington, USA, 2010.(It is ranked as five star book by San Francisco Book Review and selected by 2014 Paris Book Festival as honorable mention)
- You-Sheng Li: Confucius in a New Perspective. Suchou University Press, 2014. (In Chinese, and it is listed as one or even the first one of those in great demand in many Chinese libraries )
