CULTURAL SUSTAINABILITY

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Prof. Tu Weiming, former Director of Harvard's Yenching Institute, and a foremost scholar in Confucianism, believes that to protect or advance a culture, we must first understand it. But how do you define culture?
Prof. Tu suggests a "Four Dimensional Anthropo-Cosmic Framework", which looks at four universal dimensions of culture: Man's relationship with him/herself (Sense of Self), Man's relationship with his community of fellow humans (Sense of Community), Man's relationship with the environment, both natural and man-made (Sense of Place), and Man's relationship to the heavens (Sense of Spirit). Culture, in other words, is a manifestation of a person¡¯s holistic view of his/her relationship to the cosmic order - hence the term "anthropo-cosmic." Culture is therefore unique to each person, to each region, to each country, and it is constantly evolving, or rather co-evolving, among its constituents. Under this framework, it is clear that arts, music, philosophy, religion, etc., are expressions of culture, rather than its determinants.
Insofar as culture represents the integrated worldview of a person¡¯s relationship to Heaven (Ì죬spiritual realm), Earth (µØ£¬physical realm, including the man-made and natural environments), and Man (ÈË£¬social realm), a healthy culture fosters a harmonious relationship among the three. And this parallels the goal of sustainability as currently defined, which is to promote the health of the natural environment, the economy and society.
Moving beyond the current definition, I submit that a more complete definition of Sustainability is that it fosters the Health Of Human Culture, defined as the health of an individual¡¯s relationship to Self, Community, Environment and Spirit. Once the health of human culture is restored or sustained, we will not only sustain the health of the natural environment, the economy and society, but also the individual's physical, mental and spiritual health.
We will have achieved "Cultural Sustainability".

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