Why this book: Recommended to my by my friend Peter Rae.

Summary in 3 sentences:  Imagine taking a fairly random group of about 2000 civilians from a number of different countries, locking  them inside a small compound, taking away all rank privilege or previous status, providing food and basic necessities, isolating them from all contact with the outside world, and telling them to figure it out.  That’s what the Japanese did with western civilians in China when they occupied China during WWII. Langdon Gilkey, an idealistic young Harvard grad teaching in Peking was one of those 2000, and in Shantung Compound, he shares his experiences in that compound, and draws his very interesting conclusions about human nature and morality.

My impressions:  This is fascinating book that is full of wisdom and insight about human nature and man-the-social-animal.  It is a book I would love to read and discuss with people who are thoughtful about communities, society, politics and how people can best live together.  It is real – it really happened. This author was there, and writes about his experience with care and compassion, and shares the many insights and lessons learned he gained from his experience.  This book is a gift. I’m surprised it isn’t better known.

Shantung Compound is a fascinating memoir of approximately 3 years in the author’s life. He was an idealistic young man, a summa cum laude graduate from Harvard in philosophy,, teaching English as part of the faculty at a university in Peking.  In early 1943, he and other residents of northern China were rounded up and sent to a compound near the village of Weihsien, in Shantung province in China.  Here they stayed until late 1945 when the compound was finally liberated and its occupants dispersed to their various countries and future lives.   Gilkey wrote Shantung Compound 20 years later, when he had become an ecumenical Protestant theologian.  He based his detailed accounts of events and conversations in the compound on his very extensive diaries from his time there.   The insights he shared on what those experiences might have meant, and might mean to us today, came after 2 decades of living, teaching, and reflecting.

The internees in the compound were largely British and American, a number of missionaries, business people, British colonialists, teachers and representatives from a number of European countries and a few others.  There were families, as well as single men and women, children, teenagers as well as some older folks in their 70s and 80s. They had been allowed to bring just a few belongings from their homes.  The compound they were sent to was a looted monastery, almost in ruins. The new internees were on their own to repair the infrastructure and make it livable, sort out berthing, cooking, sanitation, work parties, managing relations with their captors.  Within the compound their movements were not restricted, but no contact was permitted with the world outside the compound walls.  For a while, a black market flourished with the outside villagers and a few of the Japanese guards (shades of Clavell’s King Rat.)

In short it was a mini-society of diverse people with mostly western values forced to live together and cooperate or perish.  And that is what made this “experiment” so interesting.  Gilkey noted, “Each of us had barely enough food and space to make living possible and bearable.  In such a situation, the virtues of fair-mindedness and generosity completely changed their complexion. ” 91

The idealism of the young Harvard philosophy graduate unravelled as a result of his experience of his fellow internees under pressure.  He came to realize that most people are driven primarily by self interest.  As a young, single, intelligent, and idealistic man,  he volunteered for and took on positions of responsibility that were essential to functioning of the camp.  But he had no authority (no one did – except their Japanese wardens), and taking care of the best interests of the group depended entirely on the willingness of various players to cooperate.  Here he was repeatedly astonished and disappointed at the selfishness, self-centeredness, greediness of many in the camp.  He noted that for the majority of his fellow internees, the ethic of preserving and enhancing their own personal well-being always took precedence over the welfare of others, or even of the group as a whole.

Throughout the  book he gives examples, and draws conclusions and insights from his experience of this selfishness.  While he also offers examples of a number of genuinely honest people who were willing to work extra hard, sacrifice and suffer for the good of the whole, they were the exception.  He gave an example of a woman who was not well regarded by other women in the camp for her rather progressive views on sex and relations between the genders. But her virtues of courage, “rugged and undeviating honesty,” and her sense of humor were the rare qualities that made her one of the most effective leaders in the camp.

He has a whole chapter on “meaning” entitled, “Living for What?”   Up front he states, “A man possesses a sense of ‘meaning’ when he feels there is a vital connection between the goals he values and the activities and relationships is which he is involved.” (p 193) He found that those who were not self-motivated for a bigger purpose than self-interest were bored, lazy and their behaviors were often detrimental to the group.  “Its was obvious that no great number of people would work for the sheer joy of it, or merely for the sake of their brothers’ welfare.”  (199)  That lack of “meaning” and larger incentive along with the lack of authority to punish or provide negative motivations, was a major challenge to those who sought to enhance the quality of life in the camp.

After telling his stories of life in the camp, his insights about human nature, and then of the final liberation of the camp by the allies (a great story in itself!)  Gilkey concludes with a final chapter in which he shares his perspectives about man, meaning, morality, and the life well-lived.

He realized that the same selfishness and unwillingness to share that he saw in the camp is also found in the the larger world outside the camp – in communities large and small, to include the community of nations.    When lecturing in America after the war about his experiences in the camp, he noticed how Americans found it hard to believe that other Americans would act so greedily and be unwilling to share when the American Red Cross provided them with food and other items that others in the camp did not receive.  But when he drew the analogy with how wealthy nations were unwilling to share their abundance with poorer nations, people drew back.

His final point was that without a loyalty and religious devotion to something larger than oneself and one’s immediate group, people will always eventually fall into self-centered and immoral behavior.  For Gilkey that something larger is God and God’s providence.

Fascinating book with some profound insights and implications for who we are, how and why we behave the way we do in groups, and concluding with his views on the spiritual implications of what he observed in the compound.

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There were a number of insights and quotes from Shantung Compound that captured my attention.  Here are quite a few of them:

Work was central  to each of us.  However dull it seemed, it gave a focus of interest and energy to a life that otherwise by its confinement and great limitations, would have been overwhelmed by boredom. 52

Those who had been poor and somehow risen to middle class were much less willing to do dirty labor, like latrine cleaning, than those who had no fear of falling back into the lower classes. Those who had been solidly in the middle or upper classes were generally more willing to do whatever needed to be done. 67

The intelligentsia tended to undervalue the importance of material goods – until they weren’t there.  But the value of the arts, the philosopher, the poet who feeds men’s souls is only possible when “material needs are so completely satisfied that they can be safely forgotten.”71

Intellectual, and especially “religious” vocations were so unrelated to the real needs of life that they became “avocations.” 74

Without moral health a community is as helpless and lost as it is without material supplies and services.76

Rational and moral arguments were futile when not backed by authority and when it meant asking someone to give up something s/he didn’t want or have to.   “Self interest seemed almost omnipotent nexts to the weak claims of logic and fair play.”79

Those with pretenses to virtue but driven by self-interest always found rational and “moral” reasons for what they had already determined was in their own best interest.

For one of the peculiar conceits of modern optimism, a conceit which I had fully shared, is the believe that in times of crisis the goodness of men comes forward.  ….Nothing could be so totally in error.” 92

Rational behavior in communal action is primarily a moral and not an intellectual achievement, possible only to a person who is morally capable of self-sacrifice. In a real sense, I came to believe, moral selflessness is a prerequisite for the life of reason – not its consequence, as so many philosophers contend. 93

For the first time it appeared to me that, contrary to most pacifist and anarchistic theory (to which I had been sympathetic), legitimate force is one of the necessary bases upon which justice can be established in human affairs. 119

Compromise is essential to politics.  “Can it be done?” is as relevant as the question , “Is it right?”  120  No program in the life of a community is really just if that program cannot be enacted.  121

We do not act in political life because our act is just. We act because the pressures of the moment force us to resolve in one way or another some vital problem in the community. 122

Gradually every position in camp which might become a focal point of conflict, suspicion, and turmoil, became an elective office….Democracy forces the strong to give up power, and the carping public to take it on – and with it a sense of responsibility. 128

How do you get lazy men to work and to work hard, if you don’t hire them,  if you don’t pay them wages and are thus unable to fire them?  No one in the camp ever discovered a way to stop a lazy man from being lazy.  129

The question of incentive remains one of the most serious problems for societies that offered total security regardless of work accomplished.   132

People claimed over and over, on no valid grounds, that they were special cases, and demanded “their fair extra portions.”137

The only place moral pressure or moral force really works is where the government is immensely respected, where an absolutely unified public opinion can be created and where each member is so intimately related to the others, and so dependent on them that disapproval really hurts him. “155

Without the threat of some sort of harm to the offender, without some form of force, no system of law is possible in a world where universal morality cannot be assumed. And if it could, then after all, no system of law would really be necessary! 156

No group can legislate itself above its own moral level.  157

Apparently,  as long as men did not feel a sense of identification with and moral responsibility for the community of the camp, they would continue both to steal from it and to vote against punishment for stealing. 160

Any civilization rests only on some ethical basis.  160

Hardheaded men of affairs are inclined to smile at the moralist and religionist for concentrating his energies on the problems of morality and conscience far removed from what he considers to be the real business of life:  that is to say, producing food, building houses, making clothes, curing bodies and defining laws.  But as this experience so cogently showed, while these things are essential for life, ultimately they are ineffective unless they stem from some cooperative spirit within the community  161-62

I was even more surprised when I found that it was Claire to whom he had given charge of women’s labor in the kitchen….It took courage enough to enforce the working rules..it took a sense of humor to do this without causing too many conflicts, and it took a rugged and undeviating honesty to stem the mounting tide of stealing.  Looked upon by most of the pious as so wicked they were embarrassed to be seen talking with her, she had in fact a higher moral character than they did.  164

The Catholic fathers possessed a religious and moral seriousness free of spiritual pride. They communicated to others not how holy they were but their inexhaustible acceptance and warmth toward the more worldly and wayward laymen. Nothing and no one seemed to offend them or shock them; no person outraged their moral sense.  172

Above all, it was evident that among all the Westerners of many nations who had left their massive imprint on China, the missionary was the only one who had had a sincere wish to help the Chinese rather than either to dominate or to milk them.  178

The merchants’ picture of the missionary is more familiar to us all.  To them, the missionary was a loveless, sexless, viceless, disapproving, and hypocritical fanatic.  He was repressed and repressive, trying to force others into the narrow straightjacket of his own list of rigid “do’s and don’ts,” and thus squeezing out of his own life and out of theirs all its natural and redeeming joys.  180

For him, holiness had so thoroughly displaced love as the goal of Christian living that he could voice such a prejudiced and inhuman policy with no realization that he was in any way compromising the character of his Christian faith or his own moral qualities.  182

Protestantism has produced a degenerate moralism, a kind of legalism of life’s petty vices that would be boring and pathetic did it not have such a terrible hold on so many hundreds of otherwise good-hearted people. For many of them being a good Christian appeared to mean almost exclusively keeping one’s life free from such vices as smoking gambling, drinking, swearing, card-playing, dancing, and movies.  185

In their frantic effort to escape the fleshly vices and so to be “holy,” many fell unwittingly into the far more crippling sins of the spirit, such as pride, rejection , and lovelessness. This, I continue to feel, has been the greatest tragedy of Protestant life.  188

A man possesses a sense of “meaning” when he feels there is a vital connection between the goals he values and the activities and relationship in which he is involved.  193

Why do men work hard? What goals call forth their ambitions and so their energies? For most of us the answer involved two interrelated concerns:  our progress in our careers and our status in the community in which we live.   196

If a difficult task seems to provide a man with no desired values, then his ambitious for that task withers, however prestigious it may seem to be.    Without a sense of the significance of what they do, men become too indifferent to use their full powers and they do merely what they have to do to keep going.  196

“Yes, ” Matt replied, “coming here is not unlike death: you can’t bring your career or your social eminence with you. ”  197

Only if a man can find a creative role in some community – be it his local community , or the wider society of scientist, writers, or artist – can a man be a creative person inside.  198

We were puzzled, among other things, by the problem of incentive.  It was obvious that no great number of people would work for the sheer joy of it or merely for the sake of their brothers’ welfare.  Is the problem of meaning resolved then by the familiar capitalist solution: reward a man with money and the problem of the meaning of his work is resolved?  199

Work is not merely an economic reality, producing only material results and running only on material fuel. Its motivations lie in the most central meanings of a man’s life, be they self-centered, trivial, or  profound.  If men work only for their own material profit and are motivated by no further goals, their only interest will be self-interest. Our experience had shown overwhelmingly that a society based on self-interests alone was, as St Augustine pointed out long ago, a self-destructive society.  199

These (trivial) efforts reveal one common factor: the frantic attempt to escape from a pointless boredom, when what one does has no important or significant meaning, when one’s life is caught up in no great passion or concern.  200

(After the allies arrived) Now we had all of these delights in abundance; yet we continually had to remind ourselves of this fact in order to appreciate them. We were not really any happier. Our wants and desires had only become a little harder to satisfy.  Instead of freedom we now wanted “home”; instead of enough to eat, we now dreamed of cocktails and seafood.  Now that we had the necessities of life, we tended to take them for granted and look for the luxuries – such are the insatiable desires of the human animal. 213

Only when destiny gives us the great gift of an open future are we able fully to live, for intense life in the present is made up in large part of expectancy. Whenever we are alive and excited, it is the future and not the past that enlivens the present moment.  223

It is above all things difficult to be good, and in all of us – the wise, the idealistic, and the religious alike – lie deep forces beyond our  easy control which often push us seemingly in spite of ourselves into selfish acts.  230

The goodness of mankind and man’s consequent capacity to be moral, is refuted by any careful study of human nature.  230

Two things can be safely said about mankind. First, it seemed certain enough that man is immensely creative, ingenious, and courageous in the face of new problems.  but it was also equally apparent that under pressure he loves himself and his own more than he will ever admit.   230

Whenever the security of the object of man’s commitment is threatened, be it power, job or profession, or the status of their family or social group (class, nation, race) he is driven by an intense anxiety to reinforce that security. 231

The more educated and respectable people defended their self-concern with more elegant briefs.  We came indeed, to have a grudging respect for the open rascal.  He, at least, was forthright in admitting his selfishness.  232

It is what we can only call the religious worship of a finite creature –  that creature being one’s own life or that of his group – that causes the disruptions and conflicts of society.  When our ultimate concern is direct to some partial or limited interest, we can, as I found, scarcely avoid inhumanity toward those outside that interest.  232

Sin may be defined as an ultimate religious devotion to a finite interest; an overriding loyalty or concern for the self, its existence and its prestige, or for the existence and prestige of a group.  233

A man’s morality is his religion enacted in social existence.  The rare power of selflessness, what we call true “morality” or “virtue,” arises only when a life finds its ultimate devotion to lie beyond itself, thus allowing that person in times of crisis to forget his own concerns and to be free to love and help his neighbor.  233

The question is: To what sort of deity are we ultimately loyal, and what kind of god claims our deepest love and devotion? 233

The otherwise admirable trait of loyalty to one’s family, one’s group or nation which, when it becomes central, is the root of much of the injustice, pride, and selfishness we have described and with which we are surrounded.  234

The man of real faith is the man whose center of security and meaning lies not in his own life but in the power and love of God, a man who has surrendered an overriding concern for himself, so that the only really significant things in his life are the will of God and his neighbor’s welfare. 234

If a man is too sure that he has, through his religion, surrendered his concern for himself and achieved virtue, it is fairly safe to conclude that his security no longer rests in the love of God but in his own holiness. 234

Such a view of the vulnerability of life’s meanings was one of my deepest experiences in camp, and it helped to prepare me off the even deeper abyss into which the postwar Western world has been forced to stare.  The universal problem of selfishness,  I found, called for the grace and forgiveness of God – both in camp and in the affluent society of America.  Similarly the problem of fragmentariness of every human meaning seemed now to me to call for the answer of God’s Providence, for that unity of divine power and meaning in the course of events that is not threatened by the historical catastrophes that overwhelm us.  239

Fate is usually in part the consequence of sins in which we share communally if not personally, the effects of some former misuse of freedom. Fate is thus the mask God’s judgment in history wears to those who do not know Him 240

The creation and preservation of life so that it may be enjoyed by all, the development of community in the direction of justice, the satisfaction of the needs of all our fellows through some practical work well done, and finally  the creation of fellowship with others – these fundamental tasks, communal expression in each case of the love of one’s neighbor, are present in any historical situation.  In each circumstance they call for courage, integrity , self-sacrifice, energy, and intelligence; and on them depend the life of civilization.  241

Final paragraph of the book:   Men need God because their precarious and continengen lives can find final significance only in His almighty and eternal purposes, and because their fragmentary selves must find their ultimate center only in His transcendent love.  If the meaning of men’s lives is centered solely in their own achievements, these too are vulnerable to the twists and turns of history, and their lives will always teeter on the abyss of pointlessness and intertia.  And if men’s ultimate loyalty is centered in themselves, then the effect of their lives on others around them will be destructive of that community on which all depend. Only in God is there an ultimate loyalty that does not breed injustice and cruelty, and a meaning from which nothing in heaven or on earth can separate us.  242