Introduction

I subscribe to a Mohist approach to the eternal
Mengzi/Xunzi polemic. The root of the disagreement is
not whether human nature is an inherently good or evil
canvass that society slathers in soot. The difference lies
in the fact that for Mengzi, morality is innate to human
beings, while Xunzi believes it is a human construct –
an artifice crafted by the sages of Zhou and is
something that one must learn and internalise over the
course of one’s life to attain wisdom. But Xunzi has
always been a bastard, which is why my next work will
be a dynamic representation of the four hearts of
Mengzi sitting in a throne with their arteries wrapped
around each other. To represent shame,
commiseration, reverence and the sense of right and
wrong, a swan, a duck, a pigeon and a crow
respectively will be portrayed all lined up against a
backdrop of tubes and yellow bricks. Xunzi has some
use in informing a depiction of social divisions as
necessary. To illustrate this complex idea I shall draw a
woman being dragged through the streets of Naples by
a rope tied to a ring between her vagina and her anus.
Around her will be women in the later phases of
childbirth with chains hanging from their vaginas. The
Chinese character for child, ‘孩’ hai, will be divided up
to show the boar inside and be plastered on walls.
Xunzi is a boar. Last year I went to the Shaolin
temple where I bought new Kungfu shoes with
rubber soles and decried the spread of materialism
because it is fashionable. But deep down I believe
that materialism is good because it is objective and
all poetry should be erased from the world.
Because as I said above I am a Mohist. Like
Master Mozi I dislike music, I believe the goal of
life is to maximise utility, and ritual, burial and
ceremonial madrigals are a waste of the wonderful
human potential to make machines, skyscrapers,
and beef burgers.