Confucius’ teachings are, first and foremost, about the “relationship-defined obligations” or “ren lun (人伦)”.

What are relationshipship-defined obligations? Well, in traditional Chinese thought, what transpires between the parties in society's Five Cardinal Relationships or wu lun (五倫), is described by the term “ren lun (人倫)”, which I translate as “relationship-defined obligations”. So what needs to transpire between the parties in society's “Five Cardinal Relationships” are the obligations that the parties in each Relationship owe to each other and must fulfill.

As for the Five Cardinal Relationships, they are those between the ruler and the subject, i.e. today's government and citizens; between the father, i.e. the parents, and the son, i.e. the offspring; between the older and the younger brothers, i.e. siblings; between husband and wife, and between friend and friend. These comprise the most important relationships in society.

Today we have to add a Sixth Cardinal Relationship, that between the buyer and the seller. Most economic relations can be included in this relationship: for example, between the employer and the employee, the buyer is the employer since he's buying labor power, and the seller is the employee since he's selling his labor power. So the modern formulation of "The Five Cardinal Relationships" should be "The Six Cardinal Relationships".

Besides the most important traditional Five, or my Six, Cardinal Relationships, there are many other human relationships, too many to list. As long as there is a contact or a dealing among humans, even a very temporary or very occassional one, there is a human relationship, and all human relationships possess and are governed by relationship-defined obligations.

In traditional Chinese thinking therefore, what the parties in society's human relationships do or should do is to carry out obligations to each other.

How is this compatible with, nay, conducive to, a modern society? Well, modern society is based on exchange, indeed all human societies are based on exchange, and exchange is nothing but mutual help. And what is the essence of each of the Five, or Six (as proposed by me) Cardinal Relationships? That essence is mutual help.

Let’s go through each Cardinal Relationship one by one：

First, reflecting the fundamental property of human society, the Cardinal Relationship between government and citizens is but a relation of mutual help: the government is there to help its citizens by protecting them and keeping order, and in turn the citizens help the government by obeying the government’s laws so as to make order possible, and by paying taxes to sustain the government.

Second, the Cardinal Relationship between parents and offspring is a relationship of mutual help: the parents help the offspring survive, grow up, and receive teaching. When still immature the offspring help the parents by obeying and respecting them, cooperating with them, helping them with housework, following their guidance, and thus making teaching and raising of offspring easier. When grown up, the offspring help the parents by providing sustenance and care to them in their old age and infirmity.

Third, the Cardinal Relationship between older and younger siblings is a relation of mutual help: the older siblings look after the younger when they are still young and dependent, and the younger siblings help the older ones by obeying and respecting them, cooperating with them, following their guidance, and thus making it easier for the older siblings to help the parents look after the younger siblings; when grown the siblings help and cooperate with each other in career, conduct and daily living.

As for the Cardinal Relationship among spouses, the husband and wife help each other by building a life together.

As for the Cardinal Relationship between friends, mutual help is the real link underlying friendship. Friends encourage and advise each other, and can also help each other in career and daily living. Even when it comes to just mutually entertaining and amusing each other, that is also a form of mutual help.

Finally, there is the sixth Cardinal Relationship proposed by me, the Cardinal Relationship between buyer and seller – since the profit motive is involved here, is buying and selling also a relationship of mutual help? Yes, it is. The honest, non-cheating profit motive is not the same as dishonest, cheating "greed." The honest, non-cheating profit motive means striving to help one's customers with one’s profession, e.g. farmer, tailor, builder, etc. In turn, one’s cust mers help one by paying one money. With this money one can then obtain other’s help in the form of clothing, food, housing, etc. So the profit motive, pursued honorably, is nothing other than striving to conduct mutual help: I help you by giving me my services or products, you help me by giving me money, because when you have my money you can exchange it with others for services or products. Such laudable and honorable strivings are the only real ways to make profit honestly.

What about pursuing customers to collect payments from them; is that also mutual help? Yes, collecting on payments due is absolutely necessary to ensure that the provision of the valuable and useful good or service under consideration is sustainable. It is part of the honest profit motive. It is absolutely honorable, therefore, for a seller to demand and collect on payments due him, otherwise he will not be able to operate, he will become bankrupt and be unable to continue providing his product; the help he provides to others will become unsustainable. Soon no one else will be able to enjoy his product; soon no one will be helped by him. When a seller strives to collect on payments due him, he is only making the provision of his product sustainable, he is only being responsible to other consumers and would-be consumers of his product; he is trying to continue helping them.

By the way, here we should clarify that, on the other side of the coin, those customers who try to not pay their debts when due are carrying on dishonorable and shameful conduct, because they are violating their obligations, which in traditional Chinese thinking is called “forgetting kindness and shirking obligations (wang en fu yi)”, then a most derogatory epithet, and abandoning their promises to pay, promises whether explicit or implied, made when they purchased the good or service.

What about taking advantage of and cheating people as part of the profit motive? Taking advantage of one's customers, and this applies to the employer-employee situation as the employer is an employee's customer, in price, quantity, or quality is the surest path to ruin for a seller, because there is only a one-time, short-term profit; the customer will never come back. Worse, he’ll tell ten, twenty, one hundred people about it, and they will in turn tell others. Soon there will be no more customers as the cheater’s putrid reputation becomes known. So, pursuing the profit motive in a dishonest way is futile and foolish, while pursuing the profit motive in an honest way is effective and wise.

Actually, buying and selling is mutual help on the grandest scale:
"An extraterrestrial visitor will find the massive and intricate amount of mutual help in human society simply amazing. Millions upon millions of people go to their jobs at set hours and perform their tasks more or less to order, day after day, providing goods and services to help other people. These producers then go regularly to yet other people, like the grocer, the hairdresser, the doctor, and so forth, and receive help from them in the form of needed goods and services, just so much and no more, with little or no fighting, scrambling, or whining. Everything is very orderly, yet there is no one controlling or directing all this traffic!" (Excerpt from my blog entry "En- Yi` 恩義 or Kindness and Obligations, and the Modern World".)

Indeed, the level of wealth and modernization of a society can be seen as nothing other than the quantity and complexity of the mutual help in a society. A rich, advanced society is just one with a lot of new and complex goods and services that a poor, backward society doesn't have，and every new product or service is just another type of mutual help being brought into being. For example, whereas before we have no life-saving treatment for appendicitis, and appendicitis is a sure death sentence, with modernization and medical advance in a society a new type of mutual help is born, the persons called surgeon, surgical nurse, anesthesiologist, operating equipment designer, operating equipment manufacture worker, operating room architects, builders, maintainers, janitors, and so forth, who can come together to help people by providing them with the service called an appendectomy, come into being.

Since the level of wealth of a society is merely the quantity and complexity of mutual help, since buying and selling is mutual help on a grand scale, and since adherance to honesty and integrity helps the carrying out and the continuation of buying and selling, then should it be any wonder that, where there is prevalent recognition of buying and selling as being honorable and respectable, where sellers and buyers are usually honest and usually don't cheat, the society is relatively rich, and where the opposite is prevalent, the society is poor? This is not an accident; it is cause and effect.

In the old days, when China has been one of the richest if not the richest country in the world, the attitude prevalent in society has been that one must be honest, must not be greedy, and must not cheat. In the past, Chinese businessmen have had a sterling reputation for honesty, fairness, and being true to their word. In fact, an article in Readers' Digest that I've read during the sixties talks about how the secret to success of the overseas Chinese businessmen in Southeast Asia, besides an amazing work ethic, is their legendary honesty and integrity.

From the above one can see that human society is not an arena of darkness and deceit, where ruthless struggle among one and all, the law of the jungle, and the your-loss-is-my-gain rule reign. Although that kind of thinking is very common, it cannot be more wrong. That is where a lot of the evilest doctrines of the twentieth century has arisen, like Hitler's Nazism, which thinks that between nations there is only a you-must-die-for-me-to-live struggle. Completely to the contrary, human society is an arena of brightness and integrity, where large scale and the most thorough going exchange, i.e. large scale and the most thoroughgoing cooperation and mutual help, reign.

And Confucianism's relationship-defined obligations is a code of honor that governs this cooperation and mutual help. What is prescribed by the relationship-defined obligations is exactly the mutual help conduct to be carried out by the various parties in relationships among human beings.

Therefore, making relationship-defined obligations supreme, treating them as the supreme value, as the Confucian-Chinese tradition has done for over two thousand years, is not only most suitable for the Chinese society back in history, but is also most suitable for modern Chinese society. Furthermore, that is not only suitable for China, but is suitable for any society, because the relationship-defined obligations thinking is most conducive to the operation of the fundamental nature of all human society whether past or present, whether Chinese or non-Chinese: mutual help, exchange.

The Confucian thinking of the supremacy of relationship-defined obligations is not only suitable for modern society, but is also conducive to the development of an even freer society than what we have now. Why? It is because, except for the relationship between the government and its citizens, the obligations are voluntary, of one's own free will, and it is not necessary for government to take part, and government is coercion, i.e. forcing people to do things. Try not doing what is required of you by government and force will be used against you, first in the form of a lawsuit, then in the form of a judgment specifying fine or jail, then in the form of government personnel to forcibly impose that judgment. Even though government follows due process, perhaps even follows democracy where it is the will of the majority that is done, and has recognition from most members of society as being legitimate, government is still coercion and the opposite of free will. When people widely choose to follow the Confucian thinking of relationship-defined obligations, the coercive actions carried out by government will markedly decrease and will occupy a secondary role in society, while people's actions that spring from their free will will come to occupy the main role in society.

Since the relationship-defined obligations are all based on mutual benefit, one violates them at one's own peril. One gets punished by natural means; if one violates one's obligations then one loses the reciprocal obligations the other party owes oneself. Thus, if a son is not xiao (good to parents) he risks his parents becoming unkind, as the reciprocal of the offspring's xiao is the parents' kindness; and if a husband is not respectful and cooperative he risks his wife becoming disrespectful and uncooperative, as spouses' respect for and cooperation with each other are reciprocal.

Furthermore, other people who are in a relationship with the obligation violator, seeing that he does not carry out his Cardinal Obligations, may also cease carrying out their obligations to him. Thus the son who is not xiao to his parents risks having his own son being not xiao, and the seller who cheats his buyers risks having people who sell to him cheating him.

Not only that, but also other people who do not now have a relationship with the obligation violator will refrain from having any relationships with him, will not have any dealing or contact with him. Thus, a seller who violates his obligations to his buyers will find fewer and fewer customers, a husband who violates his obligations to his wife will have fewer and fewer friends, and so forth.

The supremacy of relationship-defined obligations is the supremacy of mutual help, nothing more. The supremacy of relationship-defined obligations is the honor code for mutual help, and codifies honorable conduct for relations of mutual help in human society, relations that can be life long, relations that no human can live without. Adopting this honor code is entirely voluntary, but extremely beneficial. It is most conducive to success and happiness. Having such weighty incentives, once people understand the idea, they will conduct themselves according to this honor code, and there is no need for external coercion in the form of legal authority and government.

People are free to adhere to the honor code or not. If they do, they get rewarded, automatically, without getting the authorities involved. If people don't adhere to the honor code, they get punished, again automatically, without getting the authorities involved. Of course, government authorities must get involved with conduct that violates the law, but even if such conduct evades the net cast by the law, such conduct cannot evade the natural punishment that results from society's framework of the supremacy of relationship-defined obligations.

When society widely treats relationship-defined obligations as supreme, the carrying out of nongovernmental relationship-defined obligations and the function of the nongovernmental market, will all follow honesty, integrity and the carrying out of obligations. Then government will no longer need to participate in various aspects of people's lives with its coercive measures, as it does now. Through methods based on the voluntary free will of participants, that is, through the operation of the relationships of family, clan and friends, and through the operation of the market, people can solve the problems in the various aspects of their daily lives such as housing, retirement, education, health care, and so forth. Government, which represents coercion, will then only need to maintain law and order and prevent foreign invasion.

Therefore government, which represents coercion, can be as minimal as possible, intrude into the lives of citizens as little as possible, and yet society runs harmoniously and justly, with everyone looked after. The weak, the aged and the disabled will be cared for by those who have relationship-defined obligations to them, that is, by those who know them and are close to them, rather than by some anonymous big brother government agency. Society will then realize the "Great Together" envisioned by Confucius, and will be much freer from government intrusion and government coercion than is the case now. Freedom can then truly reign.

As more and more people adopt the Confucian idea of the supremacy of relationship-defined obligations, it will usher in a new era of truly free societies.