Two posts in one day? Madness!
I've been reading Bertrand Russel's "History of Western Philosophy," which is quite good, I can see why it is such a definitive introductory text. However, I came to the realization today that Russel falls prey to a fallacy that plagues, among others, Rousseau: he assumes that humans are naturally loners and that they group together out of self-interest.
I will address this by refering to a pop-psychology question that I nevertheless feel sheds some particularly interesting philosophical light on this question. Freshmen and kids at sleep-away camp and other groups of youngsters thrown together, when they are first meeting each other and trying to get to know each other's inner souls as quickly as possible, sometimes like to ask questions like "describe a waterfall to a blind man" and such that are supposed to shed light on various aspects of our psyches. My personal favorite, however, is the question "would you rather be happy or be correct?" I have at various times tried to convince myself that I would rather be the former, but I know that in fact this is not the case.
I have tried a variety of techniques to convince myself of this falsehood, but it ultimately does not ring true. For example, I had convinced myself that I don't care so much about being right because I have learned to accept and learn from instances in which I am wrong. The thing that I have come to realize is that the reason I accept being wrong is that once I have rectified my error, I am right again. It is not that I don't care about being correct, but that I am willing to accept the process nessisary to arrive at correctness. This, I believe, is what makes an intellectual, or a philosopher. And it is this preference for correctness and the road thereto that separates them (us) from the bulk of humanity and turns them (us) into loners.
As my writing group has mentioned in their essays on how "a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing," knowledge can lead to arrogance. This arroagance can be obvious or subtle, but it almost invariably leads to a sense of separation from people, except for such times as it is nessisary to submit to the crowd in order to convince them of things or get things done, but this invariably entails a certian level of condescention.
So I have thought, probably incorrectly, that when I feel lonely here in China, it is because I miss the intellectual stimulation I had back home. I am sure that this is part of it, but I think that what I really miss is pack. What I mean by pack is the easy and seemingly meaningless interactions with the people who form the everyday. Like dogs, humans naturally like to run around in big groups. They like to form their little alliances and rivalries and infatuations and intrigues that seem meaningless to the outside. I have trivially and cynically commented on numerous occasions that there always seem to be some friends who are more or less
"replacable" and others who seem to last. The thing is that it is hard to know who will be the ones to last. And this does not lessen the importance of any of the members of a pack.
So I think what I miss second-most in China, at least at the present, is intellectual stimulation. And what I miss most is pack. Sure, I have been taking iniative to try to find a group of students to do stuff with. The thing is, I value pack more at night than during the day. The day has always been when work and thinking gets done. The night has always been when I ate with family or with the "pack" friends: when we watched Scrubs on Alex's computer or Korean movies on Sanch's TV or Aqua Teen Hunger Force in Rich's room; when I gorged on mini-donuts with Ed, white pizza with Rob, cereal with dad; when Alex wanted to go to the Haven or Mike wanted to go to Wawa or Joe wanted to go to Wawa or we ran into Chris at...Wawa. So night is always when I want to relax with friends, but it is when the students get kicked out of the teachers' appartments. And I miss those last words of the night, the "don't stay up to late" or "wake me up before you go to class" or "I'm gonna hurt in the morning."
Sunday, October 30
You're not punk and I'm telling everyone
Appollogies for any and all extreme delays, my computer is still "huai de" as they say, I will take it to be looked at later this week.
A decent amount has happened since the last post, including a relatively sucessful first week and a half of English Table, which I started essentially through force of will and with no help from the English department; a trip to Kaifeng, one of the ancient capitals of China (I have now visited five of them, Beijing, Luoyang, Xi'an [then called Chang'an], Kaifeng and Zhengzhou [also previously known as something else], leaving only Nanjing to complete the tour); and a Halloween party for some of my students. I have also come to several interesting revelations that, although I had hints of before, had not fully formed as coherent ideas yet.
Rich, my sometime roomate and the primary reason I started listing to punk, has commented on several occasions that he would never want to live in a pre-hegemonic country. Post-imperial countries on the downward slope of their power supposedly have a better sense of irony, which makes them much more willing to laugh at themselves. Every aspect of their aesthetic is markedly changed, from their architecture and visual art to their music, performance art, humor and litterature. More importantly, these types of countries are much better able to support sub-cultures and counter-cultures.
Rich has also remarked that there is very little that he appreceates fully for itself, without any irony. This is a sentiment which I feel goes a bit far, but nevertheless describes much of the way I think and understand art and culture. This I think is also related to the state of American power. In my experiannce, older people, especially those who came of age before the mid-to-late seventies tend to have a much less developed sense of irony than younger people. And people who are optomistic about American power likewise have a more straightforward sense of humour. But I think that it is my generation that generally has the most developed sense of irony in America. We have gone from laughing at people falling down or at fart jokes to not laughing at them to laughing again, but in a self-consious way. These two things, the state of imperial or hegemonic power and a sense of irony I believe to be correlated very strongly with a punk movement, or something very like one.
In response to a large variety of cultural factors, but I believe largely to the Vietnam war, America had a series of cultural movements in the sixties and seventies running counter to the mainstream. Notable among these were the hippies and the punks. The hippies were the optomistic counter-culture, they represented a utopic view that they could reshape soceity or create a new one. Their music was syncretic and happy in a slightly meloncholy way. The punks came out of their falure; they are the pessimistic counter-culture, self-consious of their own failure. The music is defined short and energetic and simple songs and anger and represented a rejection of the concept of "good" music.
Ironically enough, the punk movement became huge. Anti-hero singers with obnoxious voices like Joey Ramone and Jonny Rotten became superstars. And now songs of rebellion are used to sell cars. The movement went underground and continually resurfaces to self-conciously sell out its ideals for commercial sucess. This is the atmosphere in which my generation grew up: with a counter-culture so counter-culture it is counter- its own independant status. This is the situation, to greater and lesser extents, I believe, in every country that has had a punk-type movement: a pessimistic counter-culture, but one that was powerful enough to become mainstream.
China has not had a punk movement. They have no sense of irony. This would appear to be because it is still a culture of mainstream optimism, it has not even progressed far enough to create a true optomistic counterculture, although it may be close. In America, among the most ardent pro-choicers you can find people who laugh and call themselves "baby-killers". Among the most sober passifists, you can find those who joke about "nuking the towel-heads". In China, it is impossible to find people who will laugh about Taiwan.
At the hazard of making overserious people angry, I will go further. Taiwan is China's abortion. It is China's gay marriage, school prayer . It is an important issue, just as all of these are important issues, but it is not nearly as important as the issues that it overshadows. It is also an issue with a fairly well-established status quo which is unlikely to be substantially changed in the near future.
Say what you will about the danger of Bush's Supreme Court Appointments to Roe v. Wade, I find it fairly unlikely that abortion will be completely criminalized. Which is not to say that we should stop paying attention to it or advocating the position that we support. I find it unlikely that gay marriage will be universally legalized in the near future, but I likewise think it unlikely that "defense of marriage" acts will stick in the long run. These are issues that politicians on both sides of the fence (and why are there only two sides to the issues, that's stupid) use to rally the troops and turn attention away from all the things they're not getting done with respect to education, health-care, social security and of course the war.
In China, with one party in power, they have found an even better issue, one that everyone agrees on rather than one that everyone disagrees on, that they can use to keep the party faithful faithful. But the diplomatic position with Taiwan is fairly stable. Despite some changes in the past few years, Taiwan is unlikely to join the mainland or to have their secession recognized at least until the current generation of politicians, on both sides of the straight, dies. It is also unlikely to be the cause of any sort of serious military confrontation. But it keeps people from talking as much about rural poverty and unemployment, a mounting health-care disaster that makes the US look solvent and increasing environmental destruction.
But China still needs a punk movement so it can laugh at these problems. And listen to some decent music while they're at it.
A decent amount has happened since the last post, including a relatively sucessful first week and a half of English Table, which I started essentially through force of will and with no help from the English department; a trip to Kaifeng, one of the ancient capitals of China (I have now visited five of them, Beijing, Luoyang, Xi'an [then called Chang'an], Kaifeng and Zhengzhou [also previously known as something else], leaving only Nanjing to complete the tour); and a Halloween party for some of my students. I have also come to several interesting revelations that, although I had hints of before, had not fully formed as coherent ideas yet.
Rich, my sometime roomate and the primary reason I started listing to punk, has commented on several occasions that he would never want to live in a pre-hegemonic country. Post-imperial countries on the downward slope of their power supposedly have a better sense of irony, which makes them much more willing to laugh at themselves. Every aspect of their aesthetic is markedly changed, from their architecture and visual art to their music, performance art, humor and litterature. More importantly, these types of countries are much better able to support sub-cultures and counter-cultures.
Rich has also remarked that there is very little that he appreceates fully for itself, without any irony. This is a sentiment which I feel goes a bit far, but nevertheless describes much of the way I think and understand art and culture. This I think is also related to the state of American power. In my experiannce, older people, especially those who came of age before the mid-to-late seventies tend to have a much less developed sense of irony than younger people. And people who are optomistic about American power likewise have a more straightforward sense of humour. But I think that it is my generation that generally has the most developed sense of irony in America. We have gone from laughing at people falling down or at fart jokes to not laughing at them to laughing again, but in a self-consious way. These two things, the state of imperial or hegemonic power and a sense of irony I believe to be correlated very strongly with a punk movement, or something very like one.
In response to a large variety of cultural factors, but I believe largely to the Vietnam war, America had a series of cultural movements in the sixties and seventies running counter to the mainstream. Notable among these were the hippies and the punks. The hippies were the optomistic counter-culture, they represented a utopic view that they could reshape soceity or create a new one. Their music was syncretic and happy in a slightly meloncholy way. The punks came out of their falure; they are the pessimistic counter-culture, self-consious of their own failure. The music is defined short and energetic and simple songs and anger and represented a rejection of the concept of "good" music.
Ironically enough, the punk movement became huge. Anti-hero singers with obnoxious voices like Joey Ramone and Jonny Rotten became superstars. And now songs of rebellion are used to sell cars. The movement went underground and continually resurfaces to self-conciously sell out its ideals for commercial sucess. This is the atmosphere in which my generation grew up: with a counter-culture so counter-culture it is counter- its own independant status. This is the situation, to greater and lesser extents, I believe, in every country that has had a punk-type movement: a pessimistic counter-culture, but one that was powerful enough to become mainstream.
China has not had a punk movement. They have no sense of irony. This would appear to be because it is still a culture of mainstream optimism, it has not even progressed far enough to create a true optomistic counterculture, although it may be close. In America, among the most ardent pro-choicers you can find people who laugh and call themselves "baby-killers". Among the most sober passifists, you can find those who joke about "nuking the towel-heads". In China, it is impossible to find people who will laugh about Taiwan.
At the hazard of making overserious people angry, I will go further. Taiwan is China's abortion. It is China's gay marriage, school prayer . It is an important issue, just as all of these are important issues, but it is not nearly as important as the issues that it overshadows. It is also an issue with a fairly well-established status quo which is unlikely to be substantially changed in the near future.
Say what you will about the danger of Bush's Supreme Court Appointments to Roe v. Wade, I find it fairly unlikely that abortion will be completely criminalized. Which is not to say that we should stop paying attention to it or advocating the position that we support. I find it unlikely that gay marriage will be universally legalized in the near future, but I likewise think it unlikely that "defense of marriage" acts will stick in the long run. These are issues that politicians on both sides of the fence (and why are there only two sides to the issues, that's stupid) use to rally the troops and turn attention away from all the things they're not getting done with respect to education, health-care, social security and of course the war.
In China, with one party in power, they have found an even better issue, one that everyone agrees on rather than one that everyone disagrees on, that they can use to keep the party faithful faithful. But the diplomatic position with Taiwan is fairly stable. Despite some changes in the past few years, Taiwan is unlikely to join the mainland or to have their secession recognized at least until the current generation of politicians, on both sides of the straight, dies. It is also unlikely to be the cause of any sort of serious military confrontation. But it keeps people from talking as much about rural poverty and unemployment, a mounting health-care disaster that makes the US look solvent and increasing environmental destruction.
But China still needs a punk movement so it can laugh at these problems. And listen to some decent music while they're at it.
Monday, October 17
Cranes and Tables
This is over a week late, due to a number of problems:
-We had to work the weekend following break to make up some of the classes we missed during break (note that only Thursday and Friday classes were made up, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday classes remain a class short for the rest of the semester; another genius of the Chinese education system)
-I have broken a third computer. Well, either I did, or the power in my room did. Of the three broken computers, at least two had their power supplies burn out. Note that this is a relatively uncommon problem, and it means that there is likely something wrong with either the power at the wall or the power stip that is supposed to be protecting this expensive peice of equipment.
-The internet is down on campus, for almost a week, so I can't use the computers at the library or in my neighbor's appartments either.
So, I am once again writing from an internet cafe.
I had all kinds of poetic things to write when I came back from Xi'an, with pictures to help demonstrate my points. About how the rain kept away the worst of the tourists and created an irrigular ground-beat behind the performance at the drum tower (and an irregular wall of droplets in front of the line of drums). About the combination of garden-variety crazies and crazily garden-variety travelers at the hostel where I stayed (which was in the post office, and looked directly out onto the bell tower and the main intersection in town). About the delicious Northwestern Muslim food: yang rou pao mo (a kind of lamb stew), duck eggs (blue-green shells and salty yolks), yang rou xian tang (a kind of lamb stew), palmegranites, yang rou mian (a kind of lamb stew). About the way structural steel cranes now dominate the skies the way bone and feather cranes once did (at least in paintings; the name of my post was going to be "cranes"). About the beautiful serentiy of the Eight Immortals Temple. About the contrast between the seats on the train ride there and the sleeper compartment on the train ride back (and the equally contrasting prices thereof).
Instead, I'm writing about my second war with Secretary Wang. Oh, and the dean of the Foreign Language Department. See, we had a meeting on Thursday. The purpose of the meeting was basically for the dean to nitpick at the way we do our jobs: use the book, work in your office when you're not teaching, use the book, turn out the lights in the office when you're not working, use the book, hold English corner, oh and use the book. He then made the error of opening up for questions. Dennis mentioned that the books are generally bad, he asked if they could buy CD players to replace the out-of-date tape-decks, Janet mentioned that the books are generally bad, she said the movies that they want to teach are generally out-of-date, I said the books are out-of-date, Curtis asked how the books were chosen and could we help choose ones that are not out-of-date. The dean said teaching takes patience. I asked if we could arrange for English-only tables at lunch to help the kids practice, Dennis asked about showing English movies to help the kids practice. The dean said teaching takes patience. Then, the worst of the trouble-makers (myself and Janet) were selected for observation as "volunteers" (because we had asked questions about other things); Dennis barely avoided this same fate, and Bob was chosen as a third, seemingly because he was sitting next to Dennis.
When I mentioned the idea to some of the FAO workers, they thought it was a great plan. After the weekend, they talked to the head of the FAO, who thought it was a great plan and gave the go-ahead to arrange it. For now, the English table will be for 40 minutes at lunch; we will have two tables, which I will man myself five days a week, if need be. However, I feel that this was not the FAO's job. They are in place to deal with the foreign teachers, with respect to any out-of-class concerns. The English table is a teaching concern, and should concern the whole English department, not just the foreign teachers, and certainly not just me. With this in mind, I am looking to recruit more teachers, both foreign and Chinese, to work the tables, in the hope that we can run them more hours (for all of lunch? seven days a week? dinner and/or breakfast as well?) or that we can set up more tables. There are a lot of students, and they need to practice their spoken English more than just in class if they want it to improve. And if the duty is shared, each teacher need only do an hour a week, maybe only an hour a month! However, I think that this is the English department's responsability. If the FAO and I set this up ourselves, we are in effect doing the English Department's job, for which additional recognition is in order. Beyond recognition, the department should be doing what is nessisary to help the students learn English, not ignoring good ideas that cost them no money and a minimal amount of time. So I am going to confront the department about this, and let them know that I am not afraid to go above their heads.
And don't get me started on the state of English books in the library. For what these students are paying, they deserve better.
-We had to work the weekend following break to make up some of the classes we missed during break (note that only Thursday and Friday classes were made up, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday classes remain a class short for the rest of the semester; another genius of the Chinese education system)
-I have broken a third computer. Well, either I did, or the power in my room did. Of the three broken computers, at least two had their power supplies burn out. Note that this is a relatively uncommon problem, and it means that there is likely something wrong with either the power at the wall or the power stip that is supposed to be protecting this expensive peice of equipment.
-The internet is down on campus, for almost a week, so I can't use the computers at the library or in my neighbor's appartments either.
So, I am once again writing from an internet cafe.
I had all kinds of poetic things to write when I came back from Xi'an, with pictures to help demonstrate my points. About how the rain kept away the worst of the tourists and created an irrigular ground-beat behind the performance at the drum tower (and an irregular wall of droplets in front of the line of drums). About the combination of garden-variety crazies and crazily garden-variety travelers at the hostel where I stayed (which was in the post office, and looked directly out onto the bell tower and the main intersection in town). About the delicious Northwestern Muslim food: yang rou pao mo (a kind of lamb stew), duck eggs (blue-green shells and salty yolks), yang rou xian tang (a kind of lamb stew), palmegranites, yang rou mian (a kind of lamb stew). About the way structural steel cranes now dominate the skies the way bone and feather cranes once did (at least in paintings; the name of my post was going to be "cranes"). About the beautiful serentiy of the Eight Immortals Temple. About the contrast between the seats on the train ride there and the sleeper compartment on the train ride back (and the equally contrasting prices thereof).
Instead, I'm writing about my second war with Secretary Wang. Oh, and the dean of the Foreign Language Department. See, we had a meeting on Thursday. The purpose of the meeting was basically for the dean to nitpick at the way we do our jobs: use the book, work in your office when you're not teaching, use the book, turn out the lights in the office when you're not working, use the book, hold English corner, oh and use the book. He then made the error of opening up for questions. Dennis mentioned that the books are generally bad, he asked if they could buy CD players to replace the out-of-date tape-decks, Janet mentioned that the books are generally bad, she said the movies that they want to teach are generally out-of-date, I said the books are out-of-date, Curtis asked how the books were chosen and could we help choose ones that are not out-of-date. The dean said teaching takes patience. I asked if we could arrange for English-only tables at lunch to help the kids practice, Dennis asked about showing English movies to help the kids practice. The dean said teaching takes patience. Then, the worst of the trouble-makers (myself and Janet) were selected for observation as "volunteers" (because we had asked questions about other things); Dennis barely avoided this same fate, and Bob was chosen as a third, seemingly because he was sitting next to Dennis.
When I mentioned the idea to some of the FAO workers, they thought it was a great plan. After the weekend, they talked to the head of the FAO, who thought it was a great plan and gave the go-ahead to arrange it. For now, the English table will be for 40 minutes at lunch; we will have two tables, which I will man myself five days a week, if need be. However, I feel that this was not the FAO's job. They are in place to deal with the foreign teachers, with respect to any out-of-class concerns. The English table is a teaching concern, and should concern the whole English department, not just the foreign teachers, and certainly not just me. With this in mind, I am looking to recruit more teachers, both foreign and Chinese, to work the tables, in the hope that we can run them more hours (for all of lunch? seven days a week? dinner and/or breakfast as well?) or that we can set up more tables. There are a lot of students, and they need to practice their spoken English more than just in class if they want it to improve. And if the duty is shared, each teacher need only do an hour a week, maybe only an hour a month! However, I think that this is the English department's responsability. If the FAO and I set this up ourselves, we are in effect doing the English Department's job, for which additional recognition is in order. Beyond recognition, the department should be doing what is nessisary to help the students learn English, not ignoring good ideas that cost them no money and a minimal amount of time. So I am going to confront the department about this, and let them know that I am not afraid to go above their heads.
And don't get me started on the state of English books in the library. For what these students are paying, they deserve better.
Saturday, October 1
Xi'an
As the result of my inability to plan ahead and get a ticket to the South, I am instead going to be spending this week in Xi'an (pronounced "shee-an"), the capital of Shaanxi ("shan-shee") province, formerly the capital of the Han Dynasty (although under a different name), close to the site of the Qin (pronounced "chin") Dynasty capital (many people consider the Qin to have been the first dynasty to rule a unified China; note that we took our name for China from Qin, the Chinese people took their name for themselves from the Han Dynasty, which followed the Qin). Within striking distance are the tomb of the first emperor of China and the third-most-famous site in China, the terracotta army. Given this, I expect Xi'an, or at least the major sites there to be almost as crowded as Tian'anmen was during national day two years ago when I was in Beijing; that is to say that I expect that to see the terracotta army of the Qin, I will have to force my way through a flesh and blood army of Han.
I am somewhat more interested in other things to be seen in Xi'an, and potentially in other parts of Shaanxi, however. In particular, the Muslim quarter of the city is supposed to be quite interesting and home to some tasty snacks. Xi'an is also the city where General Zhang from the Dongbei (the Northeast, Manchuria), a sometime ally of the Nationalists under Jiang Kaishek, took the Generallisimo (Jiang that is) captive and ultimately forced the Second United Front between the Nationalists and the Communists, which was probably nessisary in enabling the Reds to force out the Japanese. Actually, this entire period of Chinese history reads like an adventure novel, especially the Long March and the capture of Jiang, and I highly recommend Red Star Over China to anyone who has not read it.
I have no fully formulated intellectualizing for this post. I have only to say that I have been reading a fair amount of Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Soul of Man, bits and peices of various plays), which has served to reaffirm my belief in socialism and individualism and my schepticism about compromise and democracy. Furthermore, I am even more convinced than ever that the appearance of paradox is a good indication that you are actually thinking.
I will end with an incomplete meditation. There is a passage in the Dao De Jing which I think is both one of the most easily understood and one of the deepest. It talks about how utility is brought by what is not there even if value is brought by what is there. For example, a bowl is only useful because it has space in the middle to put things in. At the same time, it is only a bowl because of what is around that space. This seems to me to be both a powerful statement about value and about aesthetics which requires far more thought than I have here to fully unravel. But consider this thought from Oscar Wilde (paraphrased as well): when people are poor, all they worry about is money (because they need to get by); when people are rich, all they worry about is money (because they have so much to keep track of). In both cases, money, or property, is the problem. If you have no clay, you can't make a bowl, if you have a ton of clay, then there is no space in the bowl to fill with stuff, but if you have some clay, then you can make a pretty nice bowl. So I ask, wouldn't it be better to give everyone some clay, and see what kind of neat stuff they can make?
I am somewhat more interested in other things to be seen in Xi'an, and potentially in other parts of Shaanxi, however. In particular, the Muslim quarter of the city is supposed to be quite interesting and home to some tasty snacks. Xi'an is also the city where General Zhang from the Dongbei (the Northeast, Manchuria), a sometime ally of the Nationalists under Jiang Kaishek, took the Generallisimo (Jiang that is) captive and ultimately forced the Second United Front between the Nationalists and the Communists, which was probably nessisary in enabling the Reds to force out the Japanese. Actually, this entire period of Chinese history reads like an adventure novel, especially the Long March and the capture of Jiang, and I highly recommend Red Star Over China to anyone who has not read it.
I have no fully formulated intellectualizing for this post. I have only to say that I have been reading a fair amount of Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Soul of Man, bits and peices of various plays), which has served to reaffirm my belief in socialism and individualism and my schepticism about compromise and democracy. Furthermore, I am even more convinced than ever that the appearance of paradox is a good indication that you are actually thinking.
I will end with an incomplete meditation. There is a passage in the Dao De Jing which I think is both one of the most easily understood and one of the deepest. It talks about how utility is brought by what is not there even if value is brought by what is there. For example, a bowl is only useful because it has space in the middle to put things in. At the same time, it is only a bowl because of what is around that space. This seems to me to be both a powerful statement about value and about aesthetics which requires far more thought than I have here to fully unravel. But consider this thought from Oscar Wilde (paraphrased as well): when people are poor, all they worry about is money (because they need to get by); when people are rich, all they worry about is money (because they have so much to keep track of). In both cases, money, or property, is the problem. If you have no clay, you can't make a bowl, if you have a ton of clay, then there is no space in the bowl to fill with stuff, but if you have some clay, then you can make a pretty nice bowl. So I ask, wouldn't it be better to give everyone some clay, and see what kind of neat stuff they can make?
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