Almost from the beginning of my teaching in China, I have reminded my students of our diverse cultural backgrounds at the start of each course by asking if they have a parent, grandparent, or great-grandparent who was born in a foreign country. The answer for each class has been a consistent ‘no’, ‘no’, and ‘no’. Then I pull out a map of the world with lines drawn on it (above), linking Toronto, Canada, where I was born, to the countries from which my ancestors came, starting with my parents, to represent the West, particularly settler societies like the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. For instance, to represent my mother (a first-generation immigrant), a line connects Toronto and New Zealand, where she was born. Since my family has been in New Zealand for eight generations, only one line represents my mother’s side of the family.
In contrast, for my father’s (first-generation immigrant) side, there is a line connecting Toronto with England, where he was born. Then there is another line connecting England with Ireland, where my grandmother (second generation back) is from. Then there is yet another line connecting Ireland with Germany, from which my great-grandfather (third generation back) originated. Over the course of teaching in two different provinces and three cities, the answer for every Chinese student I have taught over nine years has been the same. Consequently, there is a greater diversity of countries represented by the ancestors in my family than in the families of the more than 1,000 Chinese students I have taught.
Although this simple exercise consistently impresses all who hear it and makes the differences stark, like fish in water, we are unconscious of it, as one of the most fundamental cultural differences between Western and Chinese civilizations. I did not know it then, but it turns out that, unlike the West’s catastrophic misunderstandings of China over the past 700 years, detailed in my previous article, “China Isn’t What You Think It Is: The 700-Year-Old Western Failure (And The New Lens That Finally Fixes It)”, this simple exercise (with the assistance of DeepSeek) holds the key to understanding not just our classroom, but the clashes and silences that define our world.
The Planet through the Lens of Forests
Considering that my PhD focused on community forestry and involved a wide range of disciplines in both the social and natural sciences, I decided to use the biological frame of trees/forests as a metaphor to clarify the cultural differences between Western, especially Settler, hyper-individualistic, and Chinese hyper-collectivist civilizations. Using a biological frame makes it easier to navigate and discuss otherwise sensitive cultural issues, provides a common language to facilitate understanding of some of the arcane terms in Chinese civilization, and, most importantly, focuses on profoundly human biological needs as opposed to economics, which emphasizes utility. The topic of rootedness versus migration shapes the very biological and social context of a person’s life, which in turn influences their experience of institutions, such as the hospitals discussed in my previous article, and their vulnerability to different types of alienation.
In the Chinese context, think of a giant, ancient tree with a deep and vast root system intertwined with those of other ancient trees. It draws nutrients from soil its ancestors have conditioned for generations. Its existence is defined by its complex, stable, and interconnected relationship with a specific ecosystem. Now imagine a person born into a pre-existing, dense web of biological and social connections. Your family, your ancestors, your village or city, your “native place” (籍贯), are all part of your ecosystem. Your body, in a sense, is an extension of this deeply rooted system. Your health is not just an individual concern but a matter of continuity for the entire network. As a result, Chinese civilization, deeply rooted in a specific place, not only draws sustenance from a historical and familial past but has an identity inseparable from its ecosystem.
For the Western (Settler) context, think of a seedling that germinated from a seed carried by the wind across an ocean. It grows in soil that is new to its genetic line. It must adapt to different nutrients, different microbes, and different neighboring species. Its survival depends on its own resilience and its ability to form new, chosen connections in a novel environment. Now imagine a person as a discrete biological unit whose primary responsibility is to itself. Family lines have been severed and re-established in new lands. Your body is your own first and foremost – the primary project is individual survival and success in a system you must navigate independently. The strength of Western civilization, defined by its mobility and adaptability, lies in resilience and the ability to establish new roots in new soil, often at the cost of severing ties to the past.
The Planet through the Lens of Alienation
Breaking this down into a finer scale of analysis by applying Nisbet’s four alienations (alienation from the past, alienation from place/nature, alienation from property, and alienation from community) framework (see my earlier post “A Tea Cup, An Empty Room, and the Cure for the West’s Loneliness: What China Taught Me About Civilization”), yields the following:
Alienation from the Past
This is the sense of being disconnected from history, tradition, and ancestry.
In the Chinese context, the individual is like an ancient tree, with branches that extend back millennia. The low alienation from the past is maintained through annual rituals, such as the Qingming Festival holiday (also known as Tomb-Sweeping Day in English), the importance of genealogy (家谱, jiāpǔ), and the concept of 籍贯 (jíguàn) – one’s ancestral native place as recorded in the family’s official registration history, passed down from father to child like a surname. With gravesites scattered throughout the forested, path-filled hills bordering my university, I can confirm that honouring one’s ancestors during the Qingming Festival and other times remains a very active practice, at least annually. My students’ inability to name foreign-born ancestors is evidence of the past as a living resource, not a foreign country, unlike my experience.
In contrast, in the Western Settler context, migration represents a break with the past, thereby increasing the potential for alienation from one’s heritage. This is often a story of leaving—escaping famine, poverty, or persecution. While families maintain traditions, the physical connection to ancestral graves, landscapes, and the continuous community is severed. The past becomes an object of study or sentimental nostalgia rather than a daily, lived reality. My personal map of ancestors across four countries exemplifies this; the connection is genealogical, but not necessarily rooted in a continuous, place-based tradition. For instance, I don’t even know where my great-grandparents on my mother’s side are buried in New Zealand, nor do I know where my great-grandfather on my father’s side is buried, let alone visit their grave sites. In contrast, my students not only see, but typically hike to and clean the grave-sites of their ancestors with their families, present offerings of food and “money”, and light firecrackers to ward off evil spirits to protect their ancestors at least once a year.
Alienation from Place / Nature
This is the disconnect between the individual and a specific, meaningful geographic environment.
In the Chinese context, the tree is a symbol of a place, so alienation from place is limited. This is embodied in the deep cultural connection to a specific homeland as defined by personal history and feelings (故乡, gùxiāng), one of the most emotionally resonant words in the Chinese language. The intense emotion associated with returning home for the Spring Festival (the most significant annual migration in history) is a direct antidote to alienation from place. The place where Chinese grew up is not just a location; it is the bedrock of one’s identity, especially in Shandong province, where I live, in the spiritual heartland of Chinese civilization (birthplace of Confucius). Gùxiāng explains a curious phenomenon (at least to someone from a Western Settler society) that I witnessed among the first-year students who had to move to the university where I teach in Yantai. Most of them were away from home for the first time. When discussing their difficulties adjusting, many mentioned struggling to adapt to the different climate in Yantai, even though their hometown is only a few hundred kilometres away. This is akin to an organism alienated from its niche, the opposite of fungible. This attachment to the weather in their hometown was a direct reflection of their attachment to the entire complex system of their gùxiāng – the food, the dialect, the family, the streets, including the very climate. My director shared with us, the foreign teachers, a story a week or so ago: when her parents travel from their home village in Shandong province to another place in China, they bring a small container of soil. Whenever they feel uncomfortable adapting, they take a pinch of soil, mix it with water, and drink it. According to my director, they claim it really works, at least psychologically, because it resolves their uncomfortable feelings of disconnection from their “homeland”. This longing for gùxiāng (xiāngchóu – “homesickness/nostalgia”) has been a central theme in Chinese art and literature for generations.
In contrast, in the Western Settler context, the seedling is defined by its ability to thrive in new ground, which creates a high potential for alienation from place. Place becomes fungible—a matter of opportunity, cost of living, and climate. The concept of “home” is portable, attached to a household rather than a lineage’s land. While people develop a love for places, it is a chosen connection, different from the inherited, fatalistic connection of the “ancient tree.”
Alienation from Property
Property is a tangible extension of the self and one’s labor, rooted in a context (e.g., a family farm).
In the Chinese context, property was traditionally familial, not merely individual. It was an asset to be passed down to maintain the family line. While this has changed dramatically with modern capitalism, the cultural residue remains: property is seen as a means of security and a legacy for the next generation, thereby tethering the family to a place. As it retains a social and familial function, there is a lower level of alienation from property.
In contrast, in the Western settler context, property is predominantly a commodity and an instrument of individual wealth and security. The classic image is of selling the family homestead to pursue opportunity elsewhere. Property is liquid, the ultimate expression of alienation from property—it is severed from its role as a stable anchor for a family across generations. It becomes a financial tool for individual mobility.
Alienation from Community
This is the loss of the dense web of intermediate associations (such as family, guild, church, and village) that mediate between the individual and the state.
In the Chinese context, an individual is born into a pre-woven community. The family unit is the fundamental cell of society, and guanxi (关系) represents the lifelong, obligatory relationships that bind people. While this has been constrained by modernity, the cultural template and expectation of embeddedness remain powerful. For example, I noticed that many first-year students who had to move away from their hometown for the first time often mentioned missing a younger sibling intensely, something I had never heard a first-year Canadian student discuss. As a result, there is a lower baseline alienation from the community; loneliness is perceived as a profound social failure.
In contrast, in the Western Settler context, an individual arrives first and must build a community. Associations are based on choice and shared interests (such as volunteer groups, clubs, and churches) rather than ascription. This makes the community vibrant but also more optional and fragile. The potential for alienation from the community is high, as the individual can easily fall through the cracks. The celebrated “individualism” of the West is the flip side of this potential alienation.
The profound differences between the two civilizations are annually demonstrated by the well-known difficulty most Chinese students face in making foreign friends when they attend a U.S. or other Western university. The differences also contribute to Chinese students perceptions of non-Chinese students as outsiders. From experience, it is not a lack of curiousity or friendliness, but a clash of fundamental social operating systems. In China, relationships are often ascribed, not chosen. You are born into a web of guanxi (关系) – with family, with people from your hometown, with classmates, with colleagues. The rules for interaction within these groups are well-understood. Trust is built through these pre-existing bonds or through formal introductions. There is also a firm distinction between the in-group, which includes family, close friends, and people with shared roots, and the out-group, which consists of strangers and foreigners. In contrast, in the West (especially the US), relationships are often achieved. You are expected to “put yourself out there,” make small talk with strangers, and build a network from scratch based on shared interests. The script is one of open, voluntary association, so Chinese students in the US arrive with a social rule book that does not apply to them. They do not know how to “achieve” a friendship from zero with a stranger or foreigner who has no shared hometown, school history, or formal introduction.
Indeed, due to Chinese students’ deep cultural connection to their homeland, Chinese universities are designed to limit mixing even among them by housing students from the same year and Major together and assigning dorm mates to the same classes. Mixing between international and Chinese students is prevented by housing each group in separate dorms on different parts of the campus, as well as by separating international and local programs.
The Planet through the Lens of Colonization
Suppose we zoom out and view the planet through the lens of alienation in an effort to address some of the world’s most vexing problems, such as climate change, environmental degradation, and establishing peace. According to Deep Seek, colonization is the key to understanding the distribution of alienation. Settler colonies were a release valve for the endogenous alienation that built up in Europe (from the Enclosure Acts, early industrialization, and religious persecution). Europe “exported” its potentially rebellious, uprooted populations to new lands by forcibly imposing a catastrophic, exogenous alienation upon Indigenous and other colonized societies, while, at the same time, alienating the settlers themselves, though far less than inflicted upon the colonized.
Colonization was a machine that deliberately manufactured alienation. It alienated populations by dismantling indigenous historical narratives and installing its own as the “universal” standard. It alienated people from place by transforming land from a sacred, communal resource into a taxable, commodified asset and from the community by breaking traditional hierarchies and social structures, often ruling through a strategy of “divide and rule.” Finally, colonization alienated much of global humanity from property by replacing diverse, customary landholding systems with Western private property law, disembodying the economy from society.
A global landscape of alienation results from differing experiences that fundamentally underpin the modern international order’s multipolarity. Understanding these different experiences helps us comprehend why different civilizations often fail to communicate effectively. It is not about Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” (1993), but rather speaking past each other due to fundamentally different experiences of belonging and dislocation. For instance, Deep Seek describes how what it calls “Ancient Forest” civilizations (such as China) view their main challenge as preserving their low-alienation civilizational model against the corrosive forces of globalized, high-alienation modernity. In contrast, “Transplanted Garden” civilizations (such as the U.S.) view their high-alienation, individualistic model as the universal template for progress and freedom while, “Clearcut Forest” civilizations (such as those in Africa) are engaged in a painful, ongoing struggle to heal from the trauma of imposed alienation, often by searching for a usable past and a stable community. A “Clearcut Forest” is not just empty land; it’s an ecosystem with immense regenerative potential, but one that requires careful tending and justice to heal. Finally, “Pruned Ancient Forest” civilizations (Europe), as the origin point of the modern virus of alienation, which they both suffered from internally and spread globally, now often seek to build social democracies (as in the Scandinavian countries) to manage the alienation unleashed by their own Industrial Revolution.
It is important to note that what I describe is a conceptual map, not a street-level survey – all maps simplify to reveal larger patterns. For instance, within the ‘Ancient Forests’ of China, there is immense regional diversity; within the ‘Clearcut Forests’ of Africa, there are countless unique cultures and trajectories. The purpose of this model is to identify the dominant, shaping forces of their modern political psychology, not to erase their rich internal variety.
The Search for Solutions
Many of today’s global conflicts—the rise of nationalism, identity politics, religious revivalism, and the backlash against globalization—can be understood as political responses to the pervasive, and unevenly distributed, condition of alienation. As a result, the framework doesn’t just classify civilizations, nor does it frame them as mere resource extraction, but as a “cosmological assault” and an “alienation transfer protocol” that provides a key to understanding the deepest psychological and social fractures of our time.
Practical global cooperation requires “alienation-aware diplomacy.” For ‘Ancient Forest’ civilizations like China, for instance, climate action is viewed through the lens of civilizational continuity and protecting the ancestral land for future generations, preventing alienation from place on a planetary scale. In contrast, climate action for ‘Transplanted Gardens’ civilizations like the U.S. is viewed as a frontier-technological challenge and a moral imperative for leadership as an extension of the “pioneer spirit” to a new domain. ‘Clear-cut Forest’ civilizations, like the Global South, on the other hand, see climate justice and green development funds not as charity, but as a necessary remedy for historical alienation from property and place, granting them the agency and resources to build their own sustainable future. Finally, for ‘Pruned Ancient Forest’ civilizations, like Europe, this aligns perfectly with their existing narrative of building post-national, institutional solutions to collective problems.
The lines of our family trees are more than just ancestry; they are blueprints for our civilizations. Recognizing the ‘Tree’ and the ‘Forest’ is the first step toward a future where neither is subsumed by the other, but where both can thrive in a delicate, necessary balance. As you leave this page, I challenge you to a dual task: first, to look inward and identify the roots of your own social ecology, and second, to look outward and question one system, one policy, or one professional norm that fails to account for this fundamental duality. The lesson from my classroom is now yours. The next step in the lesson is yours to create.
