Forgive, forget or regret? The Dao of education in times of catastrophe

We are living in a time of catastrophes, natural or man-made, such as hurricanes, typhoons, earthquakes, tsunamis, global warming, extreme weather, wildfire, terrorism, industrial accidents, chemical and nuclear accidents, transportation accidents, war, genocide and plague. The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) that triggered an outbreak in China in December 2019 and soon became a worldwide pandemic was highly representative. Millions have been locked down in their cities, millions have been infected and hundreds of thousands of people have died. Human beings are always facing unexpected natural or man-made crises and threats, some of which may turn into unavoidable and damaging disasters or catastrophes. Catastrophes cause great psychological or physiological suffering for and damage to survivors and witnesses. How can human beings face and accommodate themselves to such calamities and how should they? There are many different types of disaster that are the result of interactions between natural and social processes. There is no purely natural disaster at the age of Anthropocene. Even the inevitable natural disasters, such as earthquakes and tsunamis, have social and political features. Decision making about crisis management and reaction affects the extent of the losses that result. In addition to the disasters that are caused by the natural processes of the Earth, man-made disasters, or anthropogenic hazards, are becoming more and more pressing in the technological era. For researchers in any field of education, it is important to make the human factor a mitigator rather than an activator of potential disaster. Therefore, learning from past catastrophes is extremely important. Learning from history helps us to understand our past and then helps us to understand the present and the future. Understanding the past includes learning about the mistakes that human beings have made, which will help us to develop the measures to correct, compensate and do justice in the future. It is necessary to face past wrongs in order to take responsibility. Furthermore, learning about the past is not only about amendments and healing but also about prevention. Overall, memory is of the profoundest importance. The words of Former Secretary General of the United Nations Annan (1999) might give us some direction: ‘We must, above all, shift from a culture of reaction to a culture of prevention. Prevention is not only more humane than cure; it is also much cheaper.… Above all, let us not forget that disaster prevention is a moral imperative, no less than reducing the risks of war’. Education for the prevention of disaster and catastrophe relies on the education of memory. Nevertheless, the memory of past catastrophes involves pain and trauma. For victims and survivors, memories may lead to difficulty with recovering. How, then, shall education of memory be implemented? Nietzsche (1983, p. 62) writes:

Forgetting is essential to action of any kind, just as not only light but darkness too is essential for the life of everything organic. A man who wanted to feel historically through and through would be like one forcibly deprived of sleep, or an animal that had to live only by rumination and ever repeated rumination.

Not forgetting would lead to a conscious but sleepless life. It is surely a miserable life as well. But memory is not something that we can easily give up, even if it is of catastrophe, even if it is traumatic. Who should learn or teach catastrophe education? How can we learn about a disaster with or without hardship? How do we live and learn from great loss? How can we do justice to victims or survivors? Can we learn from Eastern wisdom to overcome the difficulties caused by disasters? What inspiration can we gain from Confucius’ saying ‘Recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with kindness’ (以直報怨, 以德報德)? In contrast, as the traditional Daoists and Buddhists teach, in order to follow the Dao, we learn to cultivate ourselves to be wúwŭo (無我nonself) and to do wúwéi (無為nonaction) (Hung, 2018). Does this imply that we accept whatever happens to us and do nothing, rather than, say, pursuing compensatory or restorative justice? What does ‘justice’ mean in catastrophe education? It is illuminating to return to Nietzsche:

To determine this degree and therewith the boundary at which the past has to be forgotten if it is not to become the gravedigger of the present, one would have to know exactly how great the plastic power of a man, a people, a culture is: I mean by plastic power the capacity to develop out of oneself in one’s own way, to transform and incorporate into oneself what is past and foreign, to heal wounds, to replace what has been lost, to recreate broken moulds. (Nietzsche, 1983, p. 62)

To relieve the pain, to reduce the trauma, is not to abandon the memory. Rather, the memory needs to be processed with care, respect, decency, dignity, sincerity and responsibility. Memory should be the proof of the past and history. Moreover, what needs to be thought next is the place for education about catastrophes. Where shall such catastrophe education take place? Ground Zero, museums, concentration camps, detention centres, prisons or other historical sites? Where and how shall we learn about the contesting memory and the disturbing place? The place of memory should be a focus of education about catastrophes.

It is the hope of this special issue to ‘transform and incorporate into oneself what is past and foreign, to heal wounds, to replace what has been lost, to recreate broken moulds’, by including articles that consider every aspect of catastrophe education in an East Asian context, such as philosophical elaboration of the space and the place, the witness and the survivor, the perpetrator and the victim, the curriculum and the pedagogy concerning catastrophe education. Each of the authors in this collection makes their contribution to different facets of memory education.

Hung (2020) discusses the problem of the education of memory in Taiwan in relation to place. When the memory—or part of it—of a place is veiled, covered, hidden, fragmented or lost, the place turns into a space of uncertainty, instability and untrustworthiness; that is, the place becomes placeless. The connection between the residents and the placeless space tends to be loose and thin, which means the residents are disengaged from the place. However, a place is not only a physical site but a place-world, to use Edward Casey’s (1993) term, that is composed of all the tangible and intangible elements in this space and time. Disengagement from the place may be dismaying, as Casey (1993, p. x) says about the emotional symptoms of placelessness—‘homesickness, disorientation, depression, desolation’. ‘Each of these symptoms involves a sense of unbearable emptiness’ (Casey, 1993, p. x). Nevertheless, disengagement also indicates freedom in a certain sense. To be placeless is to be free from place, to be without place. Could it be that the emptiness is too painfully unbearable that we just give in to forgetting by amusing ourselves with various kinds of entertainment or, in Eric Santner’s (1992) words, ‘narrative fetishism’? For Santner, narrative fetishism means ‘the construction and deployment of a narrative consciously or unconsciously designed to expunge the traces of the trauma and loss that called that narrative into being in the first place’ (Santner, 1992, p. 144). In this sense, the triad of being-without, comprising three pieces of observation by Hung about public space in Taiwan, is a chapter of narrative fetishism, aiming to amuse people with desolating memories. By going deeper into the past of the island, Hung notices a hidden wound—the 228 incident—that has never healed but has been covered over. The treatment has been transformed into different types of performance—almost entertainment—that may have the effect of expunging the traces of the trauma. Overall, this could lead to an unjust memory and social amnesia, which become a recurring inflammation once in a while. The unhealed wound agonises people and the impoverished memory haunts.

According to Yamana (2020), memory pedagogy is a form of Bildung, implying a complex of ‘formation’, ‘development’, ‘culture’, ‘self-formation’ and ‘education’. The issue concerning memory pedagogy is how to deal with collective negative memories, or memories of catastrophes. The Second World War was undeniably one of the most miserable catastrophes globally but its meaning is highly ambivalent, tricky and elusive for the Japanese people (Koshiro, 2001). On the one hand, the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy were responsible for the deaths of millions in the Pacific. On the other hand, Japan suffered two unprecedented atomic bombings, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, hopefully never to be repeated. It is estimated that, by the end of 1945, the atomic bombings of Japan had killed about 140,000 people at Hiroshima and 74,000 at Nagasaki, including those who died from radiation poisoning (Atomic Heritage Foundation, 27 July 2017). The bombing has become a part of the Japanese people’s collective memory, as well as a part of Japanese Bildung. In order to elaborate the meaning the Japanese Bildung, Yamana uses the art project ‘Picture of Atomic Bomb’ (PAB) to address the process of constructing the collective memory of the atomic bombing, communicated between generations by means of pictorial visualisation and verbalisation. However, Yamana perceptively detects a problem with the PAB project that needs much consideration. This project used artistic representation as a mediator to transmit the personal experiences of survivors and to communicate between survivors and young students. The artistic representation works as a buffer that keeps the students away from the disturbance caused by the testimony of the survivors. Yamana calls this problem ‘representation fetishism’, adapting Santner’s (1992) abovementioned ‘narrative fetishism’. Yamana argues that the art project is a kind of ‘translation’ that can cross borders to build communication between memories and produce relationships for what are ‘fundamentally untranslatable’.

The articles by Hung and Yamana place their focus on the suffering and pain caused by catastrophes that the victims could not reject. However, in East Asian thought, there is a tradition regarding suffering that may be related to the internal problem of the self. The following articles aim to expound a solution to internal suffering by means of ancient East Asian wisdom.

Lenehan (2020) raises an interesting question of catastrophe in relation to Zhuangzi’s idea of ‘acceptance of fate’ (anming). This idea has been interpreted in Confucian terms as ‘being contented in things spiritual and willing to suffer poverty’ and Zhuangzi therefore takes the position of fatalism. Ho argues that the fatalistic view of the Zhuangzian ‘acceptance of fate’ is a narrow and limited interpretation. The concept of fate in Zhuangzi not only involves the internal natural limit but also uncontrollable external factors. More importantly, fate involves the dynamic interaction between the internal and the external, the subjective and the objective. A Daoist does not and should not lose their own sense of justice and their capacity to make a judgement. Taking the position of ‘acceptance of fate’ means that one should be flexible and resilient when facing difficulties or catastrophes rather than suffering without any attempt to solve or overcome the problem. I agree with Lenehan’s view that the Zhuangzian idea of fate should not be simplified as passive acceptance of every happening. A Zhuangzian Daoist can take actions to deal with catastrophes. ‘Fate’ is translated by the Swiss sinologist and philosopher Billeter (2011) as ‘necessity’, which implies the need for mastery. One must devote great time and effort to acquire skill to a master’s level. When one becomes a master, practising the skill becomes effortless. As Zhuangzi states, it turns into a part of one’s human nature. Thus, it takes time and effort to turn ‘fate’ into necessity. Fate is by no means a definite, unbreakable limit. Rather, it encourages the individual to work diligently while considering both their personal internal condition and the external circumstances.

Echoing Lenehan, Wang (2020) focuses on ancient East Asian sagacity. By seeking inspiration from Buddhism and Daoism, Wang argues that ‘no-self realisation’ can be adopted as a therapeutic approach to dealing with adversity. The concept of wúwŭo (無我), meaning ‘non-I’, ‘non-self’ or ‘no-self’, inspires the most elusive but significant doctrine in East Asian thought (Hung, 2018). No-self originates as a Buddhist concept, anattā (Pérez-Remón, 1980), meaning the negation of the permanent soul or self (Agganyani, 2013). Wang points out that anattā does not mean the opposite of an intact self but rather an infinite and unlimited self that can be harmonious with all other beings in the universe. In this approach, the no-self relates to the Daoist ideas of tian-ren-he-yi and the fasting of the mind. On the one hand, the practitioner gets rid of selfhood or the ego by Buddhist meditation or Daoist discipline to become the no-self. On the other hand, the self is widened and unlimited by the negation of the no-self and an opening up to the world. In Buddhism, the ultimate aim is to achieve the no-self in which dukkha, or suffering, is dissolved. In Buddhism, birth, getting ill, ageing and death comprise the existential suffering—dukkha—of the worldly person (Somaratne, 2018). Apart from the unavoidable processes that cause suffering, the unsatisfactoriness of everyday life results in suffering as well. For example, avarice, lust and gluttony—the excessive and uncontrolled desires—cause great suffering because they cannot be satisfied. The greater the desire, the more the suffering. As the selfhood or the ego underpins these desires, the negation of the self is a remarkably important way of reducing suffering in Buddhism and Daoism.

Peng and Chen, (2020) ‘Discontinuous learning through destructive experiences: A “change” approach to catastrophe education in eco-pedagogy’ echoes Lenehan’s in foregrounding the contribution of the wisdom of Chinese philosophy for today’s catastrophe education’. In contrast to Lenehan’s focus on a durable and stable dimension, Peng and Chen highlight change and propose an alternative approach to the understanding of catastrophe in education. As they perceptively point out, ‘education is somewhat ineffective in reducing the frequency of catastrophe’; the point is to adopt the negative elements brought about by catastrophes into educational philosophy and practice. With respect to philosophy, Peng and Chen take ‘change’ as the key to re-examining and re-evaluating natural and social processes. The concept of change entails not only the positive implication of development but also negative meanings, including misfortune, misery and pain. The age-old concept of change in the Book of Changes or Daodejing can be related to ‘catastrophe’, which is broadly used to refer to different forms of dramatic change, such as negative events, economic depression, social recession, political crisis, life transitions and natural disasters. What is noteworthy is that ‘change’ in ancient philosophy is often understood as a cyclic development whereas catastrophe in modern times has more complicated meanings and triggers systematic and long-term effects. The exploration of the meaning of catastrophe in relation to change leads to the consideration of educational practice in terms of eco-pedagogy. Peng and Chen suggest that it may be useful to draw on the German anthropological philosopher Bollnow’s (2011) views on the creative aspect of catastrophe for children. Catastrophe can be seen as a moment of discontinuity and interruption that provides sources to develop Umlernen (learning from) and Dazulernen (learning about) and thus leads to ‘transformative education’ and ‘additive education’. Catastrophe is thereby turned into an opportunity for education rather than a mere obstacle.

Dong et al. (2020) explore the possibility of teaching morality by means of art education with a focus on natural catastrophes. Dong, Chen and Xu conducted a project to improve the quality of teaching at a primary school in a rural area in Chongqing in China. Chongqing is an area of frequent earthquakes. The devastating 2008 Sichuan earthquake, also called Wenchuan earthquake, which took the lives of over 69,000 people, is still an overwhelming event in everyone’s memory. Chongqing was one of the most damaged areas. Consequently, the design of architecture is an important aspect of catastrophe education for children in Chongqing. Children were asked to design and draw an ideal house that could avoid damage by earthquakes and improve the wellbeing of vulnerable people. In the art class, the children learned how to care about other people by considering their needs, such as earthquake damage prevention and harmonious living with nature, even though earthquakes are a natural disaster. It was an interesting finding that the children expressed the hope of living with nature. The authors do not dig into the reasons for this environmentally friendly attitude, perhaps, not to distract the readers. However, it could be related to a belief in tien-rén-hé-yi (天人合一), which is deeply seated in Chinese culture (Hung, 2019). It is shown that even young children take it for granted. Nevertheless, how this idea is understood, interpreted and taught certainly needs much more consideration.

Park’s (2020) article ‘Beyond the “two cultures” in the teaching of disaster: Or how disaster education and science education could benefit each other’ puts the focus on the aspect of science and technology of catastrophe. Taking inspiration from C. P. Snow’s ‘two cultures’, Park argues that disaster education and science education should recognise the complex interactions between science, technology and society and take an interdisciplinary and boundary-crossing approach to educational practice. Park raises an important question about the disconnect between science accounts and socio-political contexts when dealing with disaster education. Taking the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear accident as an example from Perrow (1999), Park points out that the official explanation of the TMI accident was human error. However, the factors related to technological disasters are multiple and complex and interact dynamically with each other. More importantly, there are always unanticipated concurrences in the interaction between the scientific-technological aspects and the human-social aspect. Thus, a Social, Technology and Science approach, with its interdisciplinarity, is able to provide a more credible and critical understanding of disaster education than one purely based on natural science and technology. Some disasters can thereby be understood as resulting from the failures of the science-technology-society system, which is closely related to miscommunication between the two cultures. Such miscommunication is not only due to the disconnect between natural scientists and literary intellectuals but also due to the individual decision maker who relies on partial knowledge, such as Romanticism or Utilitarianism.

All in all, life is always full of unpredictable challenges and opportunities but we hope that human beings can learn from the past to acquire greater wisdom to deal with unexpected occurrences. This is the significance of catastrophe education as well as the Dao of education.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).