High Water

"Anyone so venal as to assert her [own] right to inherit... clearly knew no humility," writes author Thulani Davis. Davis, a thoroughly American woman, who records her search for her ancestors, the family that is her own inheritance continuing to the present. She writes of a time long ago, the struggles of that Civil War era family, and their lives. "[She] took an almost hysterical exception to Chloe's [the author's great-grandmother] ability to act on her own behalf, to exercise power over her own life..." My Confederate Kinfolk is a tale of a family struggling with the changes wrought in their world by the Civil War and  its consequences.

Davis writes ultimately about justice and her family struggle toward that end. You see, the family story isn't all that straightforward; it isn't all that apparent. Some parts fell, submerged into the passing of  time. Nearly forgotten, Davis rediscovers and tells a story about her ancestors. Her great grandmother, Chloe inspires her. Davis comes to see herself a part the story, just as much as her grandmothers. It's a complex story with surprising twists that the author openly explores, confiding to the reader her discovery.

Continuing with what she has learned, Davis writes, Sarah, (Chloe's sister in law) in tangling with Chloe, put herself in direct confrontation with Chloe's pragmatic, practiced world views. Views that had been tested through a lifetime of making family primary, "a preference for decision-making rather than dependency, and a dogged determination borne of already knowing what what one can endure."

"That first harvest... was an incredible victory over slavery, starvation, the loss of loved ones, and the terrible odds against many. It was a triumph for the bond between Chloe and Will and the promises that people make to live on, to keep going what has been built, and to take care of those who need help... a task we have actually chosen. Chosen not by force of a whip, but by our own determination to win another day. And this victory was sweet... to know so well the difference between a chance and no chance at all.
A freed [person] would know survival alone can be a triumph," a justice to know that she, Chloe was free. The rest of her life was in her own hands. Whether her time was long or short, her life was a gift to create; a sight that each of us possesses, a destiny that we are perhaps already where we ought be.

Confucius, the Meaning of Ren and Yi

"If what you don't want for yourself, you shouldn't to do others, then you would like others to do for you what you would indeed like for yourself." --Confucius (also K'ung Fuzi), ancient Chinese philosopher

While "the gentleman understands Yi, the small/mean man understands Li," wrote Confucius, Analects IV:16.
Here in the United States many of us grow up with the occasional, "Confucius said..." and sometimes responding with laughter. But what did Confucius really say? Why does it matter at all?
In his book, The Ways of Confucianism by David S. Nivens, Philosopher and Sinologist, writes that Confucius remains important now as then, forming a sort of moral compass with principles to guide one in positive and fruitful pathways.
The practice of Confucianism is heavily invested in what is virtue, being Ren and doing Yi. In other words, one is mostly to be concerned with Xiao, honor, along with Ren love, charity and Yi, right conduct.

Nivens takes these base ideas and draws them out over the milenia of Chinese practice. He investigates virtue in the form of  De, the power or charisma of a king or ruler who practices without force or violence. Insisting this is key to understanding the philosophy of Confucius he compares the practice of De with an example, "Humans typically feel gratitude for gifts. However in some societies, this feeling becomes magnified so that my gratitude to you comes to seem like force... De was originally this "force" kings acquired through their willingness to make sacrifices to the ancestors and to the spirits..."
However, here it 's important to be cognizant of the difference between gifts given freely and those given to obtain a measure of force. True De is in contact with humility, generosity and virtue, generally.

To do good in Confucius' view, one must be in possession of this virtue, free of simple, unrestrained self-interest. In contrast, Chinese philosopher, Mozi in an attitude of "consequentialism," takes the tack of an extreme voluntarist, or one who willingly 'scratches your back, so you will scratch my own.' Mozi then is the quintessential anti-Confucianist.
Confucius argues that virtue is every one's business and everyone is to strive within this virtue. Thus Confucius also falls into the business of enforcing the bolstering of, what the West calls, the 'weakness of the will.' "So the problem of weakness of the will enters into Chinese moral philosophy in general," writes Nivens.

 Nivens, a scholar in his own right, posits some interpretations of the ancient Chinese texts rather than mere erudition of them.  Within his book, he examines Neo-Confucianism through the study of Wang Yang Ming, another influential, early Chinese Buddhist-influenced  philosopher. "For Wang, self-cultivation is a matter of escaping the obscuration [enigma] of selfish desires, and attending  instead to the voice of one's true self.
Because one's true self is in identification with the universe... self cultivation results in the unity of all things [harmony]." So in Wang's Neo-Confucianist view, harmony with the universe, openness in mind and heart to the nature of things, the persistence of spontaneity and joy, even while in mourning, is expressive of the action of one's true, authentic self.