The Cultural Revolution???

[GrandTrinity]

I started reading Solala Towler's A Gathering of Cranes. In it he interviews 9 tao masters in the West. This has sparked my interst to find out more about the cultural rev. Particulary how it relates to indiginous people like tibetans and taoists...religion...some 30-80 million people died, I have read. Whats the real story???

 

This makes me wonder what other recent genocides have happened which they dodnt teach to normal Americans in high school or college?

 

What was the largest genocides in history?

 

I just saw the movie Cry of the Snow Lion, a very nice flick.

Edited August 12, 2006 by GrandTrinity

[SifuPhil]

...some 30-80 million people died, I have read. Whats the real story???

 

This makes me wonder what other recent genocides have happened which they dodnt teach to normal Americans in high school or college?

 

What was the largest genocides in history?

Depending upon what numbers you use, the number is usually quoted by authorities as about 77 million. This includes deaths from the Great Famine of 1958-1961 (although the Famine falls outside the "official" time line of the Cultural Revolution's 1966-1976, it is often included as another misjudgement/ purposeful mistake that Mao made). The deaths from the famine alone are said to be on the order of 40 million, so that leaves 37 million killed one way or another during the CR.

 

However you break the numbers down, the man out-genocided Hitler, Stalin, and probably most other despots you could think of. Given that the cost in lives of ALL major wars from 1900-1987 was approx. 34 million, you can see how horrifying it is that ONE man was responsible for more than twice that amount of deaths within less than 20 years.

 

As for the largest genocides - depends if you differentiate between that and democides, which is what many choose to call the Cultural Revolution. Either way, in my eyes, the CR was the worst case of willful murder since at least the beginning of written history.

Edited August 16, 2006 by SifuPhil

[affenbrot]

I started reading Solala Towler's A Gathering of Cranes. In it he interviews 9 tao masters in the West. This has sparked my interst to find out more about the cultural rev. Particulary how it relates to indiginous people like tibetans and taoists...religion...some 30-80 million people died, I have read. Whats the real story???

if you want to find out about how people 's life was during the cultural revolution in china I really can recommend

Jung Chang's novel "Wild Swans"! This book changed my view on the chinese a lot.

Edited August 18, 2006 by affenbrot

[Gigi]

Jung Chang's novel "Wild Swans"! This book changed my view on the chinese a lot.

 

In good or bad ?

 

Bye

[affenbrot]

In good or bad ?

 

Bye

i have never been to china so my view on the chinese was and is mostly prejudice ...

 

By reading the book I learnt for the first time what kind of horror Mao and anybody brainwashed or intimideted enough by him

and the government dumped out over the whole of china. Brutal and grotesque. Like the whole country changed into some insane religious cult!

 

The stories are written so vividly - sometimes I was quite hypnotized by it,

at the verge of abusing ("du schwein, how could you do that to her poor mother?!") the next chinese

tourist inncocently doing sightseeing in Berlin.

 

Some patterns and ways to handle issues I observed with chinese qigong teachers became

more clear and understandable knowing the political context they were raised in - e.g. the way

information is released or just in general what they think is good PR (but actually isn't) or the positive

attitude towards mass movements (quite contrary to the views of many western practitioners of course...)

and other things that cannot only be explained by the difference in chinese versus western culture but is obviously shaped by mao and his "communism". And wasn't the Qigong Craze of the 80s in China an outlet of the previously supressed spirituality but still strangly used ways of propagating this, which just smelled like thought up by Mao.

 

the very few older chinese people i have met who experienced the cultural revolution impressed me a lot

especially and even more so after reading this book. They were so joyful and positive!

 

affenbrot

[GrandTrinity]

Interesting...what was Mao's policy on religion? It was outlawed?

[affenbrot]

Interesting...what was Mao's policy on religion? It was outlawed?

during the cultural revolution his red guards distroyed most of the monasteries and temples.

I guess this demonstrates how his "policy" regarding religion was....