that when you grow up you have no brothers, no sisters, no uncles, no aunts, no cousins i mean think in our own frame work, in our own culture how important these relationships are to us. and here we have a whole society of single child people. and the crisis in terms of not one set of parents for ten children taking care of them in their old age, but now the pyramid is reversed and you have one child who's taking care of four grand parents. so you have, in a sense, a demographic time bomb in china that's slowly ticking, yet given the expansive population of 1.2 billion people, they had literally no choice but to curb population and in a way that seems draconian to us and indeed draconian to them. but we see people in urban environments are very constricted housing, they understood that to continue

without regulation would create a population pressure that would eat up any surplus they would ever create. and they have especially in the country side this is still not very well under control, but in the cities those one child families are emerging more and less like the middle class of the west, where people - where the single child is of the parents and they go of to school and - >> my question really was, how is this affecting their religious beliefs? >> well the family structure is no longer, this extended family is not the same metaphor for which is based in the agrarian society. so the new metaphor for the family is more, there's me, and my parents, and there's individualism that's emerging in that and again the notion of these sets of this old metaphor of confucius and confucianism has been as a social philosophy has been diminish over time.

>> that's what i was wondering, what happens to the religions themselves and that as you say they're diminishing because it's become more of a social pressure? >> that's right, and marxism came in and said no to confucianism and replaced the concept of, not the family but the work unit, and production that was the principle metaphor of society. and that is breaking up and now you have in a sense a third metaphor that is no longer the old confucianism that's gone can't go back to it, except for the country side perhaps. the communist metaphor doesn't work in chinese society if any where, and you are starting to have an urban middle class society that looks more and more like our own. >> you know in terms of ethical patterns of action, almost it seems as though western ideas of individualism are working their way into china. now i'm always looking from other cultures what we might draw from them and of course we mention the family values and family issues here. you mentioned that in

a confucian family the children had to sit at a particular place at the table, but i can't even get my children to sit at the table, they're busy watching cartoons. anything from your insight that we might draw that could bring more harmony within the family which seems to be such a difficult cultural and ethical position here in the good old u.s. of a. >> i think it goes to yin yang concept and this is so intuitive to chinese that to - rather than to find how i'm different, and the other person is somehow how come there other and am different from that person, it's more or? here is something that we disagree about, let's define our disagreements and sort of work that - it's more like how can this interesting difference be - create a new harmony? and it's a instinct to harmony that i think is the brilliance of chinese thought and applied into the culture and into the psychology. and you have a very, because of this not so much

the need to assert individuality but to find social solidarity, to find a kind of belonging and to find a sense of community. and as we live beyond sort of familial and small villages; kin type communities but large urban settings, i think ability to find harmony and build community is something that the chinese thought system really has to offer us. >> in our last thirty seconds here, i think what you said is so profound and something we've been learning throughout the semester here. and susanna's fine comment i think also under girded that and it's this - how you put it about the observing harmony, paying attention to harmony. it seems to be something and i harken back once again to the harrison/shepherd interview where if a lawyer can look for harmony, any body can look for harmony. but seriously, it's that kind of attitude and ethical system that i hope

at its best religion brings out in people it teaches them to do that and i see that in all cultures. well we've come now to the end of the hour and i'm absolutely thrilled you came on dr. shive, thank you so much.

i'll get that one. must be careful. well, that's a nice picture. come on, anna. ok. announcer: foreclosure doesn't affect just you. it affects your whole family, too. if you've fallen behind on your mortgage, we can help.

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