Environmental study and orientation study related to Feng Shui
Introduction
For more than 3000 years the art of Feng Shui has been popular as a means of selecting sites in parts of East Asia and at present is still used by many societies, particularly Chinese societies. For some people, Feng Shui was utilized but sort of taken for granted. Many people who use Feng Shui are not aware of its of its evolutionary and ecological values. For many people, Feng Shui is merely the art of arranging in such a way that could create balance and harmony.
People have collected evidence and experience of few thousand years from the elder and a theory was developed to utilize the energies of the environment and maximize the benefit to human beings. There are certain features of a landscape that indicate a suitable habitat that can offer the essentials of life with low risks. The evolutionary theory consists of information encouraging exploration in an ideal Feng Shui location. Feng Shui incorporates both cultural and natural considerations to pursue a harmony and balance between nature and people as well as among people. It therefore promotes a close understanding of, and interdependence between, the environment and people. Furthermore, it also enforces practical and sensible behavior in terms of utilization of resources and cultural values.
Because of its oversimplified documentation and a lack of understanding, as well as a lack of systematic research, both Westerners and even some Chinese have regarded Feng Shui as mere superstition. However, to view anything that is incompletely understood as superstition is essentially not in the scientific realm and is not an appropriate way to find truth and reality. Given that fact that Feng Shui has endured as an art for more than thousands of years and remains popular today even in the Western countries, it may have positive values for human well-being in a logical and realistic rather than a strictly superstitious way.
The validity and usefulness of Feng Shui can be better understood using objective examination. The folk wisdom which is not fully understood and inherent in Feng Shui may not be pure superstition. A close investigation of Feng Shui can shed new light on understanding human habitat selection. This paper provides an argument that Feng Shui has environmental or ecological values for the selection of the most favorable human habitations.
Background
Feng Shui (pronounced “fung shui”) means literally wind and water and is a type of geomancy or divination from nature. (, 1994). Feng Shui was developed 3,000 years ago and gradually improved until the Tang Dynasty (, 2001). It refers to the science of planning buildings, travelways, and graves such that they will get maximum benefits and minimum damage from the ch’i of the cosmos (, 1996). More specifically, Feng Shui addresses wind, water, and other natural forces. “Natural forces” in this case include good and bad luck.
Feng Shui emphasizes the harmonious, mediated, and balanced relationship among people as well as between human and natural surroundings. Only one strategy can achieve and maintain this ideal situation: acquiring and keeping in balance sufficient Ch’i. Ch’i is a unique Chinese concept, which can be explained as an energy that cannot be seen, touched, tasted, or smelled. Ancient Chinese believed that Ch’i pervades every element in the cosmos and is the beginning of all life. Therefore, human beings, animals, plants, and nature are all equal and should coexist together in harmony as oneness. Ch’i is blown away by wind and is accumulated by water. Thus, an ideal site would attract little wind and stand near the water. This is, in fact, where Feng Shui’s name came from literally. Since Ch’i is invisible, using wind and water to locate Ch’i is important.
Feng Shui deals with many characteristics, including physical, ecological, spatial, and temporal, as well as spiritual, psychological, religious, and sociological. The Chinese continue to believe that ultimate goal of Feng Shui which is to achieve harmonious and balanced lives will bring good luck. Therefore, as a vehicle of pursuing harmony, Feng Shui continues to be widely practiced in societies influenced by Chinese culture (, 2001).
Feng Shui has been continuously employed in recent times in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore and by Chinese settlers in other countries; it is now dramatically increasing in use in mainland China, despite earlier attempts at suppression following the Communist revolution. (1995) suggests that what prompts the use pf Feng Shui is that it is a public activity expressing collective adherence to a number of complementary belief systems. It also represents the commonly held view among Chinese people that if something has a grain of truth in it would be foolish to reject or fail to use it.
Feng Shui can be described as a popular and utilitarian view of the Chinese approach to nature and is a force for environmental conservation. Over time, it has become elaborated to accommodate the conditions of a more urbanized society; the principles, for example, are used to determine optimal office arrangements. The underlying relationships remain. For some Chinese people at least, particularly in southern China, they are a part of their covert belief system and direct how the environment is perceived (, 2000).
Feng Shui also has contemporary environmental value. The objective sought from the application of Feng Shui is not necessarily environmental health per se but rather ‘boundless, inexplicable luck-seen as high position, booming business, quick fortune, money pouring in, the family prospering, sons to continue the line’ (, 1995).
Con-argument
(1995) and other author’s viewpoints cannot, however, be seen as the last word on Asian attitudes to nature. Although they are a valuable corrective to superficial assumptions about the links between ancient traditions such as Feng Shui, and contemporary behavior, they fail to do justice to several aspects of Eastern traditions. First, it is widely agreed that traditional attitudes to nature in the East have placed a stronger emphasis on humanity as part of nature than those in the West. Second, all well established religious and philosophical traditions take many forms. Some, such as Feng Shui, in their popular versions may seem at some distance from their philosophic origins (, 2000). And thus merit to be called just mere superstitions.
When Feng Shui is applied following a geomancer’s advice, the consequences of following through can sometimes cause some interesting but expensive features. For example, Hong Kong′s Hopewell Centre is a well-known round multi-storey building. On the roof of this landmark building there is a round swimming pool, which was recently featured at the end of the 1993-94 British Airways “Up on the roof” advertising campaign. However, as the Hopewell property director noted, “It is just a pool of water. No one swims there…We know the pool was part of the overall construction of the Hopewell Centre and that it was quite costly to build”.
The real reason the pool was put there was because the geomancer believed the round building looked too much like a candle, and would be doomed to catch fire. From the Feng Shui perspective, placing a pool on top would prevent “the wick” from catching fire and the building burning (, 1994). It turned out that in this case, the application of Feng Shui does not seem to have any effect on the building except for the costs it generated.
Many societies have lived in balance with their environments without devoting their lives to Feng Shui and ecology and without invoking elaborate laws. It is not only easier, but apparently more productive, to persuade people to live by a few simple principles of caring for, and enjoying, the world (, 1996).
Pro-argument
Since Feng Shui is such a complex and integrated approach and is documented in such a holistic way, it is no wonder that it is so difficult to understand. As a result, people are confused by the simplicity of Feng Shui and therefore regard it as superstition. Nonetheless, the long history of the wide application of Feng Shui has proved its usefulness and validity at least to some degree. It has been proposed that using Feng Shui to find a steady and sustainable location for settlement contributed significantly to the successful survival of the ancient Chinese and long-lasting Chinese agricultural civilization (, 2001).
According to the evolutionary theory of human habitat selection, people have evolved a biological predisposition for certain specific landscape features that are crucial to survival and reproductive success. This genetically innate predisposition, reflecting behavioral mechanisms of habitat selection, may imply that there is a prototype of an ideal setting that crosses cultures. Thus, certain environments might be considered as a prototype of ideal habitat in the era of hunting and gathering (, 2001).
Finding a suitable habitat, which can offer resources for different activities over time, is difficult for any organism. Specifically, both the current and the future states of the habitat need to be considered in order to guarantee prolonged survival and reproductive success. As a result, organisms evolve to use features, which include indicators of current states and predictors of future states. It has been found that some animals often use features that do not directly affect immediate success. Likewise, this phenomenon might be found in human behavior.
In ancient China finding appropriate locations for settlement was the main function of Feng Shui. For resolving such complex challenges, it was probably the simplest, safest, and most convenient method available at that time. It is reasonable to assume that Feng Shui takes both current and future conditions into account (, 2001).
Feng Shui is a technique for interpreting the hidden forces of the earth to bring good fortune or to avoid hazard from human settings and constructions. Human action may interfere with the balanced forces of nature and when it does there is an immediate consequence for human well-being. Thus when the land is healthy and productive humans prosper; when it deteriorates they suffer. Feng Shui is thus an ancient Chinese concept for ensuring benign human relationship to the land. The study of contemporary applications of Feng Shui should, therefore, provide illuminating evidence of the way traditional environmentalist beliefs bear upon present-day environmental problems (, 2000).
To the degree that this holds true, the world environmental problem is not an environmental problem. It is a problem with human emotions. On the one hand, stressed, frightened people often react by attacking scapegoats rather than by working soberly to deal with the actual problem. On the other hand, good environmental management depends on harnessing the more prosocial emotions for the common good. Institutions such as Northwest Coast religion and Chinese Feng Shui accomplish this (, 1996).
Today in Hong Kong, a modern Asian city, every public housing development will first of all consult a geomancer to discuss the site location and design aspects of the development. Failure to consult one, or the belief that some new development will upset the present Feng Shui, can cause uproar (, 1994).
Conclusion
Feng Shui has evolved from being a rural superstition into a powerful urban force. It originated in China, and relates to nature and the position of man and of buildings within it. Given the fact that it has been persistently used throughout thousands of years, there is definitely an explanation of its use and is not solely relying on superstition. The use of Feng Shui is based on how environments develop and change over time. It is safe to conclude that Feng Shui and evolution theories bear many similarities. The Evolutionary theory argues that a certain environment which can offer necessities of life, low risks, and information encouraging exploration will be more preferred by humans, because this specific setting has the capacity to facilitate human survival, functioning, and well-being. Evolutionary researchers have identified certain landscape features which indicate a suitable habitat. These features can also be easily identified in an ideal Feng Shui location. Furthermore, the primary criteria of an ideal Feng Shui location manifest their values and importance in terms of ecology and adaptive evolution.
Reference
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