dr. simmons was talking about and that is, with the political upheaval with mao, and so forth and the current curbing of population by saying one child per family, how is this going to either erode or strengthen the confucian idea of family and there other related religions? >> it is a very good question because it's something they are facing right now, the first generation of one child family is emerging in the collage campuses there. it started in 1980, when i was in shanghai, remember the campaigns to sort of first walk through the streets and sort of have one child, and this was so against what people had been otherwise taught. and, to think of a culture 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 paren

dr. simmons. >> now we've got a sense here of islam in the united states, and as i may have mentioned, islam has taken over as the number two faith, so we're going to see more and more of islamic activity. yeah, chris? >> i just wanted to make a couple of comments. that was such a profound interview that it really brought up some points here for me is that by facing mecca, no matter where you all right e, really keeps the focus on what you're about, who you are, identity and relationship- all those questions are answered just from praying five times a day in the same direction that every other muslim in the world will. >> i felt the same way. you know, you get that sense of unity there. yeah, fire away. >> and it was neat that you had him sing, or speak in arabic his translation- well, like the same words that you actually said- and that reminded me a little bit of homer in the odyssey and the iliad, and how the two traditions can really collide- the sung and beautifully lyric way, and then when we actually just say it and how english is such a dry language. >> i guess it is. you know, we ta

dr. simmons was talking about and that is, with the political upheaval with mao, and so forth and the current curbing of population by saying one child per family, how is this going to either erode or strengthen the confucian idea of family and there other related religions? >> it is a very good question because it's something they are facing right now, the first generation of one child family is emerging in the collage campuses there. it started in 1980, when i was in shanghai, remember the campaigns to sort of first walk through the streets and sort of have one child, and this was so against what people had been otherwise taught. and, to think of a culture 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 paren

dr. john simmons, and as happens, we are moving into another dimension, the ethical dimension. and in many ways, when we speak of ethics, it cuts to the core of this course, as you probably know by now, because we're talking about behavior. what people believe- well, we've seen many, many different examples of it. but how they behave- proper patterns of action- that's what we want to look at as we move through this very, very important dimension, because you know, believing, i mean, it's an important part of identity and relationship. but how one behaves affects us all, and we've been linking the doctrinal and the ethical and the social dimension together as we've been moving through this, and we're going to do some more formal notes on the ethical dimension. but how people behave certainly does affect us all. and you know, we're supposed to not date the teleclass, but i don't know, when really tragic events occur, i don't think it necessarily dates them to bring it up. and of course, as we are involved in this class, you know, we've just had a hugely tragic worldwide event in