Seeking Harmony

The traditional Oriental cosmology defines nature as consisting of two opposite principles: the masculine and positive one as of activity, height, light, heat or dryness and the feminine and negative one as of passivity, depth, darkness, cold or wetness. The one called yang is said to combine in harmony with the other called yin to produce all that comes to be in the whole universe.

 According to this definition then, everything in the world is the product of harmony between the yang and yin. This harmony is nothing more than a combination of the two opposites into a consistent whole. The notion of Hegel, a German philosopher, that thinking always proceeds according to the circular pattern of three dialectical stages; thesis, antithesis and synthesis is only a different expression of the Oriental idea since synthesis here means harmony.

 We actually see in the course of our life the natural phenomena of this harmony such as the alternate sun rising and setting of the sun and moon, the successive interchange between clear and rainy days, and the infallible cycling of the four seasons: spring, summer, autumn and winter.

 

 The Greek Pythagorean around 500 B.C., supposed an ethereal harmony to be produced by the vibration of the celestial spheres upon which the star and planets were thought to move. The vibration of the celestial spheres is called music of the spheres, which the Pythagorean insisted exists though it is not physically audible to ordinary human ears.

 The Oriental idea of the harmony of opposites and Greek, that is, Western scholars’ view of ethereal harmony have much in common. It is no wonder that the two share the same in as much as we are the same human being with the same physical organs living under once and the same heaven no matter how different skin colors and respective cultual aspects may be.

 

 The supreme good is another name for harmony. In a man we call a gentleman we find the virtue of harmony. We see in him tenderness and kindness as well as strength and determination. Physically healthy and internally calm, he can perform wonderfully the duty given to him by the community he belongs to. He never loses his courage in a predicament and never shows irritating arrogance when in a trifle higher position. It is very nice to see a man like him forgetting himself and devoting himself to his work. It is a beautiful picture itself.

 A good example of cacophony is drawn from the state the Japanese were in during the Pacific War. The Japanese lost the war because there was not a balance between their material and spiritual site at the time, aside from whether their cause in the war was good or bad. Their war materials were insufficient to fight the allied forces though their spirit was well prepared for battle. Their was no harmony of materials and spirit to achieve their aim. Generally, when a nation goes too far either materialistically or spiritually, it is bound to find itself in a state of disintegration or collapse.

 

 In the teaching of language also, I find harmony is required. All of the four elementary skills of language learning are important. Audio-lingual teaching and direct method teaching, both following on from the direction of behaviorism in connection with structural linguistics, accept speech as primary. It is true that speech is basic to all human activities and communities, irrespective of place or age, whereas writing develops later. We cannot say, however, which one of the four skills is primary or quaternary in it order of importance. The actual importance depends upon which skill the student needs most under the circumstances.

 

 Our high-school boys and girls study English three to five hours a week, but the English they are taught is what may be called “English for College Entrance Examination.” High-school teachers busy teaching this unique English have no time even to talk about or pay attention to the four elementary skills.

Such being the case, the study of English and American literature is almost entirely neglected. As a result, high-school graduates who have read through a widely-known English literary work by the original are hard to find. If this is allowed to continue, our students will forever lose the opportunity of studying a complete English literary masterpiece at their most respective and perceptive ages.

 Then came generative-transformational gramma based on Chomsky’s “Syntactic Structures” which turned the tables on Bloomfieldian linguistics in the sense that whereas Bloomfieldians limited themselves only to what could be verified empirically, Chomsky recognized the ability of the native speaker to create and understand new sentences.

 

 The cycling language theories with emphasis first on meaning, next on form, and again back to meaning gave not a little perplexity to Korean teachers of English at the front. Here again, however, harmony should be sought for ideal teaching. Possible fallacies come from the misunderstanding that audio-lingual doctrine and transformational-cognitive theory are formally different from each other. The truth is that the two are only different facts of the same diamond. The one is to the other as body is to soul. Eclecticism, harmony of the two, therefore, is the desirable direction in which the teaching of English in Korea should go.

 

  F. Werfel, a German poet, asked in his poem “Ein Lebens-lied:”

  Did you see the great good

  In the passing of a child,

  When the lovely corpus tenderly

  Glided away from our hands?

 

 The Poet has depicted in the poem an image of harmony between two extremes. Actually only a saint could find the great good he mentioned at this bitter moment of sorrow. Nevertheless we must try to find some harmony even chaos. In the ideal harmony of the rich and the poor, the governors and the governed, the strong and the week, the materialistic and the spiritual, physicism and mentalism, will be found the smooth operation of our society. The stage will come, if we try hard, when all of us can hear the music of the spheres.

 

 

                                                                                            The Korea Times

                                                                                            June 1, 1975