12/16/14

Analects 2:3



Analects 2:3

The Master said: “If you govern the people legalistically and control them by punishment, they will avoid crime, but have no personal sense of shame. If you govern them by means of virtue and control them with propriety, they will gain their own sense of shame, and thus correct themselves.”

I will give a simple example for this yet it will explain what the whole meaning of this analects. If you have a child and your child does bad things, you automatically punish him/her by spanking him/her or hurting him/her and he/she will not do what the wrong thing he/she has done again because of the pain he felt and fear of being hurt again but the sense of shame will not instill in his/her mind or heart. When you teach a child that stealing is bad and will make others laugh at him/her and not respect him/her because of the act of stealing, a child will reflect and will not do the act of stealing because of shame and not because of punishment. When a person has a personal sense of shame, he/she will not do the bad doings because he/she knows that if he/she will do the bad doing, people will laugh at him/her and will not respect him/her and therefore because of shame, he/she will not do bad doings.

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