There is no other term present in public life that has aroused such extreme emotions or heated the temperature of political discussions as the state. That we are in the state, that we belong to it in one form or another, is clear. What is less clear is that the state is within each of us. Whether unwanted or not, the state accompanies us from the cradle to the grave. 
 
The intellectual debate between Plato's “State” and Aristotle's “Politics”, i.e., the two initial philosophical constructs that still shape Western perceptions of the state today, necessarily diverts attention from other points of view. And, most importantly here, from other ways of realising human life in community. To put it simply, from a different approach to the individual's need to live in a collective. It must therefore be thought-provoking to note that in Chinese political thought, we do not find voluminous treatises on the origins and system of the state, nor deliberations about the threat to civil liberties posed by its existence. The state is as natural an entity as, say, the sun and the rain. What is the point, then, of wasting one's time, as Confucius seems to ask in the “Dialogues,” on an intellectual struggle with nature, over which we have no influence anyway? 
 
Keeping this premise in mind, it will be easier to formulate a thesis that a factor which significantly binds society together, or, in other words, makes it resilient to various historical infections, is the implantation in its phenotype of a system of values practised not vertically, but horizontally. Relying on each other from an inner conviction rather than relying on the (in)visible hand of the state. With all the (in)pronounced advantages of Confucianism, however, it is nevertheless difficult to close one's eyes to the fact that socialisation in its spirit is not a non plus ultra in the development of societies. If this were the case, we would not see the collectivist thinking so typical of the East. Although necessary for the smooth construction of the Great Wall, no support for the willingness of individuals to take risks that characterize the West and is in turn the flywheel of civilizational progress. However, the genius loci is more likely to hover over the land of individualists.