The Psychological Depth of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms

This book has played a major developmental role in the psycho-cultural development of Chinese civilization up to this very day. Why?

Every culture has their story. Each story contains the fundamental building blocks necessary to build a psychologically well developed person as they answer to basic question: "how to live." In the modern age of rationalism, the old stories of bygone eras have been discarded for more materially substantive answers on the bigger questions but they fundamentally forgo the role of ethics, philosophy or the even the question of 'how to live a good life.' This is the value of these stories and since learning Chinese 8 years ago, the stories that have fascinated me the most are these grand narrative type stories, the kind that are fundamental to the identity of the Han people; in particular the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Like any book, the structure has a pretty basic format; a dichotomy of two opposing sides interreacting with each other; typically it's good verse evil. In the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the line between good and evil is blurred but the real dichotomy is between two major schools of classical philosophical thought, Confucianism verse Legalism. For those who haven't seen my video on Legalism, it's essentially the discipline of statecraft for the purpose building power for the state. Imagine The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli but instead of one book it's a whole school of thought developed over a period of 2 thousand years plus and is still being widely studied by Communist party princelings to this day.

Legalism is about seeing the world through the most pragmatic lense possible and the world in the Legalist view is essentially an unending power struggle; a Hobbesian nightmare where the strong dominate the week. The Marxists have the same philosophy which is why the CCP still follow the old stratagems so closely.

Confucianism on the other hand espouses a system of morals and ethics to keep civilization sane and stable; these include things like loyalty, filial piety, honesty, integrity etc. These edicts run counter to Legalism because these are things only to be exploited for ones own personal gain - thousands of years of constant warfare would teach you this.

Should one discard their principles for their own gain? What are the costs of doing so? How does one retain their integrity whilst not being weak. These are questions that the book goes through and in this video I talk about all these points and the deep psychological nature of this amazing book.