Yi-Fu Tuan - Dear Colleague Archive

Dear Colleague Archive

29 July 2008: Today we have reorganized the archived letters into folders by year to prepare for an expanded archive. If you cannot locate a letter in this site, add a year folder after the term /archive/ as in the following example:
WAS - http://www.yifutuan.org/archive/20060214.htm
NOW - http://www.yifutuan.org/archive/2006/20060214.htm

Archived Yi-Fu Tuan 'Dear Colleague' Letters
Date of Letter	Topic Summary
28-August-2008	On the program 'Planet Earth," Western Civilization courses: "The idea of achievement, that anything worthwhile was done, that great institutions, noble buildings, sublime artworks, and astonishing science had been added to the Earth, seems to have disappeared from serious history."
17-August-2008	" "We are all created equal." Ever since the eighteenth century, Westerners of conscience have been hassled by this statement. At one level, it is manifestly false."
4-August-2008	Regarding differences in official cruelty practiced by the Imperial Roman and the Imperial Chinese empires.
25-July-2008	Regarding the film The Dark Knight and the book Human Goodness: "If we fear evil—and who doesn't?—one answer is to be evil. The other answer is to escape into good."
14-July-2008	On Joseph Epstein's book, Friendship, and the surprising variety of conditions under which friendship is possible.
1-July-2008	"In science and technology, again what impress me are not the techniques of survival, which we share with other animals, but rather thrusts into neverland and the results they bring back that have little or no practical value."
21-June-2008	"Does this mean that war is inevitable, that it is grounded in human nature? Whatever the answer, war does one thing well: it heightens the emotions and projects people out of the dullness of their lives to participate, however humbly, on the stage of history."
10-June-2008	"George W's outstanding achievement is to restore, almost single-handedly, the idea of "The ugly American." With remarkable political skill, he has—in just seven years—turned the country from being the most admired and most loved in the world to one of the least admired, least loved."
30-May-2008	"What expenditure is justified to keep a human being alive? The answer depends on the wealth of the society and on the value society places on a human individual, and that gets us back to the question, 'What is man that Thou shouldst be mindful of him?'"
22-May-2008	"Are we afraid of deeper revelations? Or are we afraid that there are no deeper revelations? For me, it is the latter."
10-May-2008	" I find this difference between physicists and biologists puzzling. The only explanation I can come up with hinges on "beauty." Physicists are struck by the beauty—the mathematical elegance—of natural laws. Biologists, so far as I know, never see anything beautiful in what they study..."
25-April-2008	"The Chinese government is supposed to be wily and nefarious, yet it seems helpless in the face of this onslaught. It is helpless because, in part, the words used in the onslaught are all invented by the West—democracy, freedom, human rights, and such like."
14-April-2008	On exile: "...what happened to ancient Israel and Babylon seems to be happening to Tibet."
1-April-2008	"China forgets that it was once an imperial power, spreading domination, but also high culture, to distant lands and peoples. What it cannot forget are the humiliations, especially since they occurred so recently."
21-March-2008	On Tibet and protest against "cultural genocide." On Hilary Clinton and her character.
15-March-2008	On luxury, Ghengis Khan: "...luxury is a certain bareness, apparently because, whereas the one offer[s] a surfeit of sensations, the other in its bareness allow[s] imagination to soar. Imagination levels the playing field, compensating material lack with imagined wealth."
4-March-2008	"To most people, wealth means material possessions. But there are other kinds of wealth—social wealth, cultural wealth, and environmental wealth."
22-February-2008	" 'Hope' is a favorite word with Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton counters it with 'experience.' These words are tricky to use because they have both negative and positive meanings."
12-February-2008	"Money clogs the spiritual arteries just as cholesterol clogs the biological ones. The effect of both is death—spiritual death in the one, physical death in the other."
1-February-2008	On words, language, and the debates between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama
21-January-2008	On "...the degree of consistency between a scholar/thinker's life and his articulated thoughts. No consistency is demanded if one's subject matter is technical...But what if one is a moral or political philosopher?"
3-January-2008	On Samuel Johnson: " I have known contentment but not genuine happiness. They are not the same."
17-December-2007	"There is a curious difference between the physical scientist and the biological scientist."
5-December-2007	On Liberal and Conservative pleasures
23-June-2007	"A mountain of data can so weigh down a scholar that he loses the freshness of outlook, the energy and even the desire to make something of it."
14-June-2007	"What is the evidence for English anti-militarism? There are several, and this is how Orwell sums them up."
8-June-2007	Commentary on John Updike's most recent novel, Terrorist
31-May-2007	"Today, in part under the influence of e-mail, affectional modes of address have almost completely disappeared..."
16-May-2007	On the ends of power: "Who would think of putting Hitler and Confucius side by side? Answer: Elias Canetti, author of Crowds and Power, which won him the Nobel Prize for Literature..."
9-May-2007	"My fundamental egalitarianism makes immortality problematic. The condition for immortality, if it exists, must be so stringent and demanding that only a very small number can hope to qualify."
1-May-2007	"...a grown person eating is not a pretty sight, which is why no pretense to civilization can be taken seriously without some effort at covering up."
8-April-2007	On coffee and companions. "Starbucks and Steep-and-Brew are coffee shops I visit every day. Coffee makes me feel nurtured, as does the ambience of these places, which, during term time, are filled with students."
27-March-2007	On science. "Magic predates science. But so did something else—wisdom. Wisdom strove for knowledge about reality, but not so much to gain mastery over it as to enable humans to adapt. Ecological science is thus more like ancient wisdom than it is like modern, technology-driven science."
20-March-2007	"If Chinese dress like Americans and Tibetans dress like Chinese, certainly the tourist trade will suffer. But isn't it just possible that the differences in morality, by which I don't mean whether one eats with fork or chopsticks but rather how one human being regards and treats another, will persist?"
13-March-2007	"British society may be class-ridden, but it doesn't allow the privileged to escape military service...Yet the American upper-class feel no obligation to die for their country and no compunction letting the 'lower orders' die in their place."
6-March-2007	"When Kennedy urged Americans to ask what they can do for their country, he wasn't appealing to narrow patriotism. He was appealing to an American ideal that flourished earlier..."
28-February-2007	On the words 'we' and 'I': "St. Paul's prediction that, in the new covenant, there will be no such thing as Jew and Greek, slave and freeman, male and female, proves—alas—false. More than ever the world is divided into Jews and Greeks, and all other sorts of ethnic, religious, and gender groups."
20-February-2007	On modesty and pride: "I am just astounded by the modesty of my colleagues. It has always been there, but it is now more evident--more out in the open--than ever. True, there are still a number of the prideful who chase after Truth, to the neglect of nearly everything else. But more and more simply want merit raise, promotion ahead of their fellows, extra research funds, less teaching, and so on."
13-February-2007	"So why did [Feng Shan Ho] discard all that he has personally gained to save Jews? What was there in it for him? How will sociobiology explain a hero like him?"
6-February-2007	"How do I know I am in love? Tolstoy is the authority I consulted..."
31-January-2007	"Both carrot and stick serve to improve our understanding, but, if Ecclesiastes is right, contrary to contemporary liberal thinking, the stick is more effective than the carrot. Life as a whole contains more sorrow than joy."
23-January-2007	..." I can't see how we can maintain the belief that humans are valuable, each one unique and irreplaceable. As a matter of fact, through much of history, ordinary people were not considered either unique or irreplaceable by their superiors."
8-January-2007	On Bruce Lahn and "What scientists cannot countenance—what they fear—is any evidence that suggests an unevenness in the devaluation. And so both groups—Christian fundamentalists and liberal scientists—permit a moral imperative to trump the ideal of unbridled search for truth."
1-January-2007	"I have come up with a different criterion of success—happiness. To have lived our allotted time happy, surely that is success."
25-December-2006	On Andrew Delbanco's Massey lectures at Harvard: God, Nation, and Self
5-December-2006	On time and work. "Work—the work we have to do to earn a living—is our salvation. In the end, only work is worthy of our time, only work fulfills and justifies our life."
23-November-2006	"How much of human goodness is needed for any society to not only survive but flourish? I bet social scientists don't have a clue—and don't simply assume that Darwin's theory will somehow provide an answer."
13-November-2006	"One chasm that separates me from my fellows is the seriousness with which we take "good" and "evil." To me, there is real good and real evil, both within us and out there in the world."
7-November-2006	"K'ang-hsi, Emperor of China from 1661 to 1722...[might] make a better Emperor of USA than our current occupant, George W. Bush..."
23-October-2006	"The more important decisions in life never require a self-debate of pros and cons. You just know what's right for you."
17-October-2006	"What is troubling is that even today the Japanese refuse to fully acknowledge the extent of the horrors they committed in China. The contrast with Germany is striking."
9-October-2006	"I wonder whether a major cause of evil in humans is our ability to compartmentalize--to put impenetrable barriers between our different selves."
2-October-2006	"...marriage is an extraordinary human/divine institution that deserves our respect, and we should do our best to maintain it. But is it within human power to do so?"
25-Sept-2006	On Holland, Gaza, and those who "seemed to have had no hesitation sacrificing their own family for strangers "
18-Sept-2006	On Albert Schweitzer and " 'reverence for life' in practice"
11-Sept-2006	"China will never be absolutely first-rate until it learns to be touched by divine madness. When will it come?"
5-Sept-2006	"God's penchant for genocide is a hint of who God really is in the Old Testament—nature."
28-Aug-2006	On Simone Weil's school essay "The Beautiful and the Good"
1-Aug 2006	On the relationship between Charles De Gaulle and David Ben-Gurion
24-July-2006	"Friendship does not call for reciprocity. That's one of its unique features. Yet, since it occurs between humans, some kind of reciprocity is--in the long run--expected. Otherwise, it would not be friendship, but patronage."
17-July-2006	"...if we are looking for real differences--radical differences--of viewpoint, we are far more likely to find them in our past than in present populations."
5-July-2006	On the Israeilis, the people that Hitler "dismissed as weak who are today the superpower of the Middle East"
26-June-2006	"America, to its credit, is sacrificing blood and money to establish a democracy in Iraq. Can it be done? Can a democracy be established by an external power? The answer is yes, and the example is Japan."
20-June-2006	On the event of a lunch with some visiting Madison Hamilton Middle school students
13-June 2006	On Leonard Bernstein and the similarities and differences between conducting an orchestra and teaching
5-June-2006	"Socially, the image of man is brought so low in recent decades that the best models we offer the young for emulation are Rock Stars, football players, and CEOs, rather than--than what? Who ought to be our model?"
29-May-2006	"One reason why evangelical Christians found it hard to spread the gospel to China in the nineteenth century was that it ran smack against the Chinese cult of the family."
22-May-2006	"Rights can be freely given...Obligations, however, cannot be given."
15-May-2006	"We humans apparently have a built-in capacity to see reality from "nowhere," abstractly and impersonally"...could be a "way of showing how pedagogic culture and values have changed since the 1970s, a change promoted by the noble desire to admit as many challenged minorities as possible into the universities."
9-May-2006	"China and India are the two rising powers of the world. They are also seen by the West (and the United States in particular) as competitors."
1-May-2006	"In practice, what does true giving entail? It entails not lending."
24-April-2006	On longevity. "One thing that constantly amazes me is the humility of most human beings. We torture ourselves with exercise, go easy on the bouillabaisse, just so that we can live a bit longer."
17-April-2006	"...what we professors pass on to students who do not themselves become academics is not likely to be a skill, or a body of facts and ideas, but rather a way of being human."
9-April-2006	"Networking empowers an individual, but it also weakens him, as the expression 'being caught in a net' suggests. Being caught in a net—even being a willing part of a net—implies a loss of agency and mobility. A scholar in a tight network forfeits his right and ability to think for himself."
2-April-2006	On the journeys and poetic geography of Ernesto Guevara
24-March-2006	The ideological position in academic geography is by now so well established that certain key words in the title, alone, give me the impression that I already know how the argument will go, these key words being, for example, "Writing...," "Contesting...," "Discoursing..., "Gendering...," or "Neoliberalism." What about "old" geography?
19-March-2006	One area where the human imagination fails miserably is the envisagement of heaven. No wonder so few of us are tempted by its lures to behave well on earth.
10-March-2006	"Why, then, cannot sex be extended beyond procreation to an ideal of intimate communion between two individuals? Two individuals of the opposite sex, of course. But why not also of the same sex?"
3-March-2006	On justice and freedom: the film Amistad and prisoners in hunger strikes at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
23-February-2006	On the Danish cartoon controversy: "Moslem youths are angry because in the cartoons they see not a great historical figure, triumphant in all his endeavors, who therefore needs no protection and defense, but rather they themselves--poor, politically disenfranchised, and lacking in nearly all the skills necessary for success in the 21st century."
14-February-2006	On Kevin Warnke: "we meet as intellectuals but also as people who make their beds and brush their teeth, creating as we go about our business, a background of human sounds that is curiously reassuring."
7-February-2006	On C. S. Lewis and his friendship with Charles Williams.
26-January-2006	"Group diversity--grouping people together in accordance with their ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and so on--actually militates against individual diversity, against the recognition that each person is unique."
17-January-2006	On Annie Proulx's short story, "Brokeback Mountain"
6-January-2006	"If we modern and post-modern people no longer believe in immortality, is it because we have at last outgrown superstition, or is it because we have lost our faith in reason--its divine capacity to see truth?"
28-December-2005	"To the degree that wonderment is at the core of worship, only the child truly worships. We adults are too full of ourselves to look outward and praise, whether this be nature, the work of God, or artifacts, the work of humans."
12-December-2005	On the nature of religion and obedience
6-December-2005	"Now, seventy-five years old, I wonder whether I am still capable of learning. The answer is yes. Self-discovery continues, but it is not always pleasant or flattering."
5-December-2005	Happy Birthday greetings for Yi-Fu Tuan from some Friends
22-November-2005	"Some people think I have reversed the scale of value, that I have called work 'leisure' and 'leisure' work. But, of course, I haven't."
15-November-2005	Can a president be humble and forceful and great? It takes someone of enormous self-confidence and of confidence in his country to admit frailty. George W. Bush clearly has neither.
9-November-2005	"Heritage is not something one can celebrate. It is almost oxymoronic to put the two words "heritage" and "celebration" side by side. Why?"
2-November-2005	The name "Yi-Fu Tuan"
25-October-2005	Reply by Lloyd Bitzer to 10 October 'Dear Colleague' Letter
24-October-2005	"Unlike historians, geographers write about peace and peaceful processes almost exclusively. People, however, consider peace boring."
17-October-2005	"Like most Chinese, I consider listening a greater act of intelligence than speaking. But most Chinese of all is my belief in the greater importance of virtue--that virtue is the true path to knowledge."
10-October-2005	"If you want to be remembered by posterity, be an orator." See also 25 October 2005 reply
30-September-2005	"How to rise above corruption?"
19-September-2005	"We work 85 hours a week, toil and exhaust ourselves for what? Could it be to maintain UW's 18th ranking in the top 20 universities of the world?"
5-September-2005	"To rally the people, one has to speak with conviction and eloquence, and nothing makes it easier to do so than to have a clear enemy in view."
29-August-2005	On Platonic ideas in the middle of the night
22-August-2005	On the German film, Downfall
15-August-2005	On two endorsements and a preface: Paul C. Adams, The Boundless Self: Communication in Physical and Virtual Spaces; Deborah Larsen, The Tulip and the Pope; Allison Hayes-Conroy, South Jersey Under the Stars: Essays on Culture, Agriculture, and Place; and an endorsement received from John Kesseli.
8-August-2005	"To my way of thinking, the real debate ought to be over the nature of intelligence--whether it differs from the rest of our biological make-up, whether it merits special standing--and not over intelligent design."
1-August-2005	"The trip [to China] forces me to revise my view of culture. I now see it as deeply inscribed in the psychology of a people."
18-July-2005	"Being one of a huge crowd encourages belief in the righteousness of one's cause, raises the level of fanaticism."
12-July-2005	Questions of identification and loyalty
5-July-2005	"Why is social science so incapable of prediction?"
28-June-2005	Impressions from Journey to China, May-June 2005: Part 2
21-June-2005	Impressions from Journey to China, May-June 2005: Part 1
31-May-2005	"...what can Schopenhauer mean when he talks of disappointment with life in old age?"
24-May-2005	On Woolf and Saint-Exupéry: "What is it, but original sin, that prevents us from grasping at happinesses that God, like a fond and indulgent parent, dangles so invitingly before us?"
17-May-2005	On literacy, language, and upward mobility. "One of the biggest generation leaps I can think of is between John Shakespeare and William Shakespeare."
10-May-2005	"...a human being is also the product of a particular place, time, and custom." Thoughts on Nick Bauch's MS thesis, Food and Place: Consuming Parma, Italy
3-May-2005	"Is the notion of intelligent design a mere trick of making creationism more respectable, an underhanded way of getting God back in business? Or do we have here a serious issue that establishment science, through intellectual laziness, refuses to countenance?"
26-April-2005	Some observations on presentations by Kim Coulter and Melanie McCalmont
19-April-2005	On adulation of the late Pope: "Why do we have so little self-respect that we can stand in absolute awe of another?"
12-April-2005	"The enormous fuss over the death of John Paul II--five million pilgrims, two hundred kings, queens, presidents, and premiers--is quickly undermining my faith in Christianity and in my fellow human beings..."
5-April-2005	"On that day in Rome five years ago, would Jesus have stood by the Pope's side and condemned a people who happened to have a special tenderness for members of their own sex, and who, by the way, are the only human group remaining in the world today that is still officially OK to exclude or condemn?"
29-March-2005	"Society is a cover-up and it is honest to expose what lies underneath."
22-March-2005	"...within a week one accident led to another: two parabolas touched--one unhappily, the other happily--and then swung apart. Isn't this what real life is like, rather than the tidy packages I deliver to students?"
15-March-2005	"I have lived long enough to see some striking changes in geographical fashion..."
8-March-2005	Of Dr. Kevin Ward's lecture on the 'Expansion of Business Improvement Districts (BID)'
1-March-2005	"...isn't the trouble with Lawrence H. Sommers, President of Harvard, that he is somewhat autistic in a world of normal, well-adjusted, nice-talk people?"
22-February-2005	"...value exists in nature quite apart from humans because consciousness, and with it the ability to evaluate, exists apart from humans."
15-February-2005	In Gilgamesh, "Friendship between king and wild man--between culture and nature--entailed changes on both sides; indeed both could change for the better."
8-February-2005	"...religion--if not Buddhism, then certainly Christianity--has also been a powerful drug that severely clouds our moral vision..."
2-February-2005	"Isn't it strange that whereas a Chinese Emperor can openly admit mistakes, an American President cannot?"
25-January-2005	"Where do I belong?"
18-January-2005	"...the last opportunity to be totally honest"
11-January-2005	"...other disasters of our time fail to command the world's attention in the way the tsunami havoc of December 26, 2004 does. Why is this?"
01-January-2005	"...though the years flow, the days hardly move at all."
21-December-2004	"Panama, 1959...this was the sort of realism I could appreciate."
14-December-2004	"It's strange that universities should claim truth as its primary value, for what are the consequences of its dedicated pursuit?"
07-December-2004	"To what degree is our enjoyment of life and the world based on naivete (ignorance), and do we have a right to protect it?"
30-November-2004	"How little the world has changed...the remarkable persistence of the Apollonian and Mercurian world views."
23-November-2004	"Can we ask to be paid for, or copyright, what are hints and nudges from God?"
16-November-2004	" Humanistic geography is neglected because it is too hard. Nevertheless, it should attract the tough-minded and idealistic..."
09-November-2004	"To a humanist geographer, words do matter."
02-November-2004	"A book reading and some unexpected consideration from a total stranger... "
25-October-2004	"I am surprised that a president can advocate treating a whole segment of the population as second-class citizens and have his message received with the drunken roar of approval."
20-September-2004	"Can the course of history be altered by a tiny fact, a chance event?"
23-August-2004	"The young of this country do respect the old for wisdom."
5-August-2004	"A sense of humor is unique to the species, yet rare among its members."
15-June-2004	"Tolstoy was torn by opposite pulls-the joy of awareness and the bliss of ignorance."
08-June-2004	"We think not only with our brain but with our entire self."
11-March-2002	"If rejection hurts, why do I continue to risk it—why do I continue to write these letters?"