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  • Here They Come!

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                                 Valentine Moon

    Here’s a link to a new service by the Atlantic, a China channel.  If you follow this link and read the very sensible and wise assessment of the US/China situation by Lee Kuan Yew, the former president of Singapore, you will have a greater grasp of the politics than, apparently, do most of the members of our Congress.  Yew points out certain inevitables like:  China is already a world power and eventually will out pace the US in most if not all indices.  Our relative power in the world will decline.  This has all happened before.

    (picture from the Atlantic China channel)

    No, not the rise of China and the relative decline of the US, but world powers rise and fall over the course of history.  No big story there.  This gradual change just happens to be underway in our lifetime.

    He says, and I agree, that China is no Soviet Union.  That is, they are not set on world domination.  What they want is their place in the world, one in accord with their size, economy and long history.  And, they will get it.

    This is a key point.  With or without a sensible US policy China’s rise is certain.  What we can do is manage our reaction to it and help to guide both China and the world as a whole toward amicable relations in trade and political discourse.  Yew makes these points much better than I can.

    What I want to add is this.  Even in a state of relative decline the US will still be formidable from a military, economic, innovation and educational perspective.  None of these are trivial.  And we have come to this position of prominence with a history of barely 400 years, much less if you count from our war of independence.  After less than 300 years as a nation we can stand face to face with a civilization with 4,000 years of history.  That is no mean achievement and its reality will not fade as time goes on.

    We have been privileged by geography, natural resources, immigrant vigor and by a culture developed on Enlightenment principles of equality and personal freedom.  As Yew also accurately points out though, these Enlightenment principles are time and culture bound.  They are not universal.  It is no more appropriate to think that democracy and individualism should be adopted by other countries than it is to think that Christianity should be accepted as a universal religion.

    Perhaps the biggest barrier to understanding between our two cultures can by symbolized by our financial systems emphasis on share holder value rated by corporate performance in quarterly increments versus China’s willingness to build their military over several decades.  We are a sound byte people, addicted to the moment and often ahistorical.  To thrive in a cultural clash with a competitor that has decades and centuries in its vision we must adopt longer term time horizons and realize that ethnocentrism, which was never appropriate as a guide for national policy, may become downright dangerous.

    Should we become culturally different?  No.  Should we recognize that others, like the Chinese, might feel the same way?  Yes.

     

     

     

     


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Asia 📎and tagged

  • Not With A Bang, But A Fever

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain                                 Moon of the Winter Solstice

    Durban.  On the somewhat binding, sort of advanced, might be effective at some point result of this latest climate summit.

    On this point a very interesting column by a philosopher wondering how to make his discipline matter.  On climate science he suggested analyzing the thought and logic of so-called climate skeptics.  Given the weight and quantity of high quality data documenting climate change, climate skepticism is not skepticism, rather it’s the height of credulity.  That is, true skeptics, given the science, would doubt the doubters who somehow swallow, accept as credulous, the patent propaganda of those whose self-interest (as they short-sightedly see it) turns them against facts.

    “The last-minute successful agreement at Durban puts pressure on what has been the world’s biggest obstacle to a climate agreement – the US Republican party.

    For ten years or more, they have walked out of hearings on renewable energy or climate policy with “We won’t act on climate because China won’t!” – a petulant mirror image of the parental favorite: “Would you jump off a bridge, just cause your friend does?””

    But now – China will. 

    In terms of sheer global impact, there is nothing else within human control that matters more than reducing carbon emissions.  We insist on running our present in a way that commits our grandchildren to a difficult, if not downright dangerous, world.

    Because this is global politics and because the big emitters, China #1 and US #2, have internal political problems on this issue, as does India, and because the world is in the midst of a very unsettled global economic mess, the odds of something substantive happening seems faraway, distant.

    It may be that this is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a fever.  But, maybe not.*

    “So does the outcome in Durban truly represent a “remarkable new phase,”  as U.N. Climate Chief Christina Figueres put it? Does the Durban Platform really “set a new course for the global fight against climate change”  (the phrase from an Associated Press wire story that many media outlets have picked up)? Maybe, but it will require a whole lot of work by the likes of the United States and China to keep the world on that course. At the very least, perhaps one could say, in that regard, that in the Durban Platform two of the world’s biggest emitters have agreed to stop squabbling and have shaken hands.”


    📂This entry was posted in Great Work Politics Sierra Club US History World History 📎and tagged

  • One or Many?

    Posted on by Charles 1 Comment

    Beltane                           Full Planting Moon

    Finally.  A morning with no other responsibilities so I can go out and plant the remaining veggies.  After that, it’s time to get to work on all the things I’ve neglected, the flower beds.  We have more flower beds than we do vegetable garden, so I’m talking a lot of stuff to do.

    I’m not yet feeling great, but I feel better.  Sluggish, tired, but not wasted.  The sun will feel good.

    Here’s a weird idea.  It may have no basis, but it flitted through my head the other day.  I’ve been reading the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, one of the most popular books of Chinese classical literature.  The Dream of the Red Chamber and Journey to the West are two others, both on my list and in my house.  This is a long book, really long and its narrative style takes some getting used to, not to mention the Russian like propensity for having way more names than this guy can recall easily.  But. It does show a clear thread of Chinese culture, that is, obedience to the state is the norm, the heroic “side” in a conflict.  If you’re a rebel in the Three Kingdoms, you’re a bad guy.  If you convert from being a rebel to being a loyal follower of the Emperor (the last of the Hans in this case), then you’ve taken a step toward redemption.

    I’m reading this literature to get a sense of the Chinese geist, the recurring themes that define and shape their sense of themselves.  Chineseness, I guess you could call it.  This has been a long project, lasting many years for me, and engaged in a very unsystematic way, but I have covered a lot of history, film, art, literature including poetry and even a tiny bit of language.

    OK.  Let’s juxtapose this rebel bad, obedient good theme to a consistent thread in American film and literature, that is, rebel good, obedient bad.  Our founding story after all is one of rebellion, foisting off the cloying grip of mother Britain.  Think of Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter where Dimsdale pales morally when compared to Hester Prinn.  An anthropology professor of mine, David Scruton, said Americans are infracaninophiles, lovers of the under dog.  Unions against big business.  Slaves against masters.  Women against men.  Incumbents versus challengers.  Rebel Without a Cause.  Twelve Angry Men.  The American individualist.

    This seems to be a fundamental polarity between the Chinese, submit to family and state (a Confucian ideal), and Americans, the rugged Individualist, Self-Reliant, Don’t Tread on Me types.  Right?  I’ve always heard it put something like this.  Admittedly these are sweeping generalizations, but that’s what I’m after here, the broad stroke that has some anchors in culture and history.

    Here’s the weird idea.  What if the broad strokes mean exactly the opposite of what we take them to mean?  In other words, the Chinese emphasize in literature, film, Confucian thought and political rhetoric obedience to the state and family because the Chinese are, in fact, a nation of rebels, individualists.  I know this seems like an odd position, but it comes from a surprising encounter I had with MingJen Chen about a year ago.  Jackie Chan had just said that he thought the Chinese people needed to be controlled.  I asked Mingjen about this and she surprised me by agreeing with Jackie Chan.

    What if American’s emphasize individualism in literature, art, film, novels and political rhetoric because we are, in fact, a nation of conformists who use the veneer of rugged individualism to cover a submissive spirit, one that will not struggle with what Emerson called the establishment.  Or, at least, won’t struggle so hard with it that it fears its foundations in jeopardy?

    A weird idea, I know, but perhaps a useful one nonetheless.

    This idea comes in part from the Jungian notion that we often emphasize in our reading, our writing, our attempts to interpret the world those things that are missing in our life, the thing we would like to live towards or into.  It also comes in part from the realization that, like most things, the notions of individualism and collectivity are not unrelated, isolated realities, but ones that bump up against each other in everyday life.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Humanities Literature Myth and Story 📎and tagged