On regarding the pain of others

The title of this post is stolen from Susan Sontag’s book of the same name, which some might recognize as the “sequel” to the seminal On Photography. However, the topic is quite different.

The conventional wisdom is that when a person has become a source of pain in
another person’s life, that they ought to “cut themselves off,” go incommunicado, let the bereaved one mourn in private, since that is what is necessary to do.
This belief is almost axiomatic, there is hardly a person I know that doesn’t subscribe to this belief at least in part.

I want to argue the other side, if only to get things straight and perhaps resolve the debate, at least in my own mind.

Begin with the premise that there is the possibility that remaining in that person’s life can do them some good. When the bereaved feels that everything that has happened undercuts their very sense of self-worth and esteem, might there not be some wisdom in staying the course with that person? Surely, you don’t have to be involved. A Swiss emotional neutrality might be a viable option. Words of encouragement, or just acknowledgment are signs of empathy that might do that person some good. There are moments and periods where we flounder and flail, looking almost indiscriminately for something to anchor ourselves. Source of spiritual succor seem in short supply*, there is the kindly advice of others to do this or that, and that’s fine. That advice will be implemented, in its time. But first thing’s first–that sense of isolation and abandonment has to be whittled down to size first, because friendship, empathy, and concern give you the belief that you are not going it alone. It’s a crutch, if you like, but there are many people with broken legs that would imagine going without one.

As always, the devil is in the details. This is difficult balancing act, especially for the one locked outside the pain of the other–because we are told that making them quit cold turkey is the best for them in the long run, forcing them to more quickly accept the new reality–reality sans you. However, even a move as seemingly simple as this could come at the wrong time, and end up doing more damage than good. This is because the person under duress is going to conflate losing you with a general state of all-pervasive loss. The important thing, of course, is to find some way of hacking this erroneous way of thinking–that is, convince the person or restore them, rather, to some equilibrium where the acknowledgment of loss so inherent in human life can somehow be reconciled with everyday life.

Everyday life, of course, has its share of victories, but these are temporal victories. There is no victory over death. To borrow from Ernest Becker, culture is nothing but a succession of hero-systems, and we are all, insofar as we buy into these beliefs, somehow complicit in the “denial of death.” We strive, and we strive, and we strive in this life. To do things. Because things have to be done. A self-evident truth, or not? How many pathologies are covered up by this directive? How much happiness is compromised in this way. There is nothing wrong with doing things, nothing innately wrong with the vita activa–but it has become the heartbreaking default position for most us, and this, I fear, is to our detriment as both individuals and collectively.

I mention this because there is a constant war in the mind, a gulf between what we do everyday–our business deals, emotional transactions, the natural give and take between humans in even the most transitory of social interaction–there is a war between that and the fact of death. For most people, both facts are valid–we need to conduct our business deals, and we also must die–but there is no neurotic conflict between them, one accepts that business must be done so that there is money, so that there is food, so that there is enough of the material and spiritual sustenance we need for this engine to keep on keeping on until that one day where it starts puttering and eventually gives out.

In situations of duress, whatever fig leaf was covering these contradictions is dropped. You are naked, in the desert, wandering under the relentless sun. even as you go about your routine, outwardly normal, inside, at every moment, you are in this desert. There are mountains or the sea far off. So you have a rough compass, something to shoot for. But they are far and you don’t know if you can make it–at least not alone. You feel like an empty husk of a body carrying an
intestate soul that does very little other than occasionally cry out for this or that. And so, beholden to it, your lurch forward, in this direction or that. Your sense of time is distorted. Your clock is forever locked on the GST of this suffering of your own making.

Back to the topic.

There are ways, I think, for a person to somehow play this double role–as the person who both caused the pain and as a friend that can somehow alleviate it. Then the ball gets thrown back to the sufferer–because if you give them too much, they will start dreaming impossible things again. You have to perform some Orpheus like role of leading the person back from the underworld. Your hand is on theirs, leading them back. But you don’t want to look back. You don’t want to speak. I mean that figuratively, of course. However, it is important that you do this, and not others. Because you are intimately involved in the production of that pain. There is a certain responsibility in that that cannot and ought not be shirked.

Meaning must be reconfigured. Most of the work lies with the sufferer, who will learn, however circuitously, that this can be done. But they need reassurances with each step. There are things that you will say to them when this all blows over, things that you can feel safe saying after recovery. But sometimes its better to say some of it–”leak” it, if you will–before the recovery is complete. As a way of “jump starting” that recovery. As a way of letting the sufferer know that their suffering has not been ignored. That their suffering is as real as the sun and the shiver when you step outside in the late autumn without a jacket. Because the world cannot see it, and the world can therefore ignore it, and they must not allowed to think that the world is indifferent to it. The howl has to be heard. You–all of you–raise your head when it breaks the silence. If only, just only to acknowledge it. Let it course through your neurons. Afterwards it will be no more, but for that moment, at least, it is real, like the rain.

More on social unrest in China, 2008.

I was just reading an article about the social unrest that has plagued China in 2008, and it says, in the title that the problem lies with the government competing with the people’s interests, that is, the government has, if only through inaction, sided more with capital than labor, the companies more than regular people.

The latest incident to happen is the Long’an 11.17 incident in Gansu province. The article talks about the other mass incidents–the taxi cab strikes in Sanya, Hainan as well as in Chongqing, and then the Wen’an incident in Guizhou, where the proximate cause of the riots was the death of a teenage girl and what was perceived as a failure of the government to fully investigate the cause of her death and mete out justice, were that to be necessary, but which I have read and heard was merely just the tip of the iceberg. Yes, like many other places in China, there were plenty of grievances that added fuel to the fire. The article quotes the Lianhe Zaobao as to the reasons why this is happening:

这些群体性事件一经媒体披露，迅速在网上引起广泛讨论。“地方政府与民夺利”被中国网民认为是“罪魁祸首”。“部分地方政府片面维护企业与自身利益，漠视农民的权利要求与利益诉求，将损害群众利益当做增加企业与政府利益的前提。”中国一位资深评论员魏文彪说。《联合早报》评论说，一些地方政府片面强调经济发展，忽略了应有的服务职能。比如在公共事业范围内，修路要过路费，建校要集资费，拆迁要劳务费，对治下百姓敲膏吸髓，刮地三尺，所作所为有的甚至比黑帮有过之而无不及。

The government has been to involved in economic growth and creating capitalist wealth and forgotten its other mission, which is to serve the people and protect the little guy’s interest. They have done the former at the expense of the latter, squeezing the peasants and migrants and fueling the kind of resentment that results in mass dissatisfaction and unrest.

The last paragraph is also interesting

2008年究竟发生了多少群体性事件，官方尚未公布最新的数据。不过三年前的一组数据已经说明问题的严重性。根据2005年的《社会蓝皮书》披露，从1993年到2003年间，中国群体性事件数量已由1万起增加到6万起，参与人数也由约73万增加到约307万。“群体性事件发生的根本性原因在于个人无法找到协商机制和利益维护机制”，中国人民大学毛寿龙教授这样说道。

Here they talk about the rise of mass unrest in China…according to a 2005 blue book, the number of incidents rose from 10,000 to about 60,000 (assuming this means per year? or does that seem too high an estimate even by Chinese standards?) and and the number of people involved in such incidents rose from 730,000 to about 3.07 million. The explanation given in that blue book for the steep rise in such incidents is the lack of a systemic mechanism for dealing with social and political conflict.

The original article linked to quotes an expert as saying that despite 2008 being a banner year for protesters, that the government’s attitude towards such incidents has shown signs of improvements—there is, overall, more lenience, tolerance, and transparency. I think on the whole, that such a description is true. But prognosis for the future—well i don’t know, but if the global downturn is going to last a few more years, and if the stimulus packages don’t work that well to revivify demands for Chinese exports, then perhaps the party will have to either start working on that mechanism or see how much money they can dole out and see how much time and patience that buys them.

China, unemployment, unrest

The effects of the economic downturn are being felt in CHina. The Times of India reports that with export markets doing poorly, labor demand is down ad unemployment has spiked which leads to renewed fears, on the part of the Chinese government, of unrest and mass incidents (CNN). Unemployment threatens social stability, and the problem is that its hard to get a handle on how many people are unemployed in china since so many of them are migrant workers.

Now the Chinese government actually wants to subsidize enterprises that employ unemployed workers–for each unemployed person they give a job to, the enterprise will be given 10,000 rmb. The policy should be in effect for the next couple of years, which is how long some economists are saying this financial downturn is going to last.

The point, according to the government is to share the burden with the enterprises. (曹思源：“(政府)鼓励雇用失业工人，企业出一点，国家出一点。因为工人要是没有工作就会面临很大困难，人心就不稳。”)

And the government is making sure that enterprises aren’t just shedding as many workers as they want. Shandong and Hubei are not allowing companies to lay off more than 40 people. And in Qingdao (locate in Shandong province), you are not allowed to lay off more than 20 people or more than 10% of your workforce.

Hail to the king: or why men are incapable of being faithful.

OK, so you might be wondering why I am reading an essay from the women’s section at 163.com, because that is SO NOT MY GENRE. But i was drawn to the title: “how should i deal with my husband’s many lovers”. At first I thought this meant a hubbie that was into menage a trois or more (the mathematical possibilities are endless) but in fact, it seemed mostly to be about something more basic: why can’t men keep their dicks in their pants when they’re supposed to. Like on long, lonely business trips. Here is one passage that i found particularly interesting:

老公说，其实每个男人最幻想的人生角色，就是国王。男人觉得，权利能征服男人，征服世界。而占有更多的女性–女人的身体，就等于占有了女性这个类别。每个男人，大概都是这样。就占有女人而言，男人需要资本。中国古代的潘安、柳下惠靠的是美貌，武则天的情人靠的是美貌加性能力、秦始皇母亲赵姬的情人嫪毐除了色相，似乎还有点别的类似于政治的东西。这些是古代的，现在的男人，单靠色相很难靠近更多的女性，因为东方女性属于被动型的。那么，钱就是很好的东西，男人占有金钱，然后用金钱征服女人。

老公接着说，你固然是个非常好非常好的完美女人，我找其她女人不是否定你。举个例子，我花100万给你买个貂皮大衣，可以说够昂贵了吧。但是这一辈子我只让你穿这件衣服，你会不会烦？

Here the writer, the wife, meets her husband and he says to her, “what every man wants, or fantasizes about being, is a king. Kings believe that power can conquer men, and conquering more women–conquering their bodies–is part of that same quest. Every man must share this impulse. Some men (and here they go in to some historical examples) use their looks or sexual ability as the ‘capital’ needed for their conquest, while others rely on money. My husband then said to me “just because I am with other women doesn’t negate what you are: for example, say that I spend one million to get you a jaguar fur coat–you could say that was quite
expensive. But if i told you to wear that thing the rest of your life, wouldn’t you find that restrictive?

再说了，男人，如果戴了绿帽子，原谅老婆会被人笑话是懦夫。女人，如果原谅老公的出轨，往往被视为美德。

Here the author says “if a woman cheats on a man, he would be considered a fool to forgive her. However, if a man cheats, the wife is considered virtuous for forgiving her husband.

That’s a cliche but i think that it certainly has a bit of merit in modern Chinese life, at least from what i know anecdotally…and see on TV.

Anyway, nothing special there. Just your run of the mill battle of the sexes stuff…like the whole bit about the king though…I can’t imagine saying that to any girl i have dated or would marry without her slapping me so hard in the face that my teeth rattle.

What exactly caused the Hangzhou subway collapse

Well, no one knows, just yet. There are no official answers, but from what i’ve been able to cull from the internet, there were several factors. Some people have said that the tubes used to prop the tunnel up were of inferior quality. Others have said the collapsed site was near a heavily trafficked road, upon which there had appeared cracks and little pits weeks earlier. There was also, mentioned in some other article whose links i’ve lost now, the issue of how the route was changed, and how the project was hastened by a whole year, which perhaps lead people cutting corners or making less than sound decisions. If, as mentioned earlier on this blog and all over the internet, suspicious problems were discovered weeks before the collapse, then there is some huge problem with the way that problems are treated, reported, and dealt with. “Bureaucracy with Chinese characteristics was responsible for the deaths of these people” is how one commenter put it.

Now, every aspect of this subway is going to be examined. I have read some brief snippets on the web about bidding process for this contract…in any case, i hope that even if there is no courageous muckracking by any one individual or outlet that at least, collectively, people can arrive at something approximating the truth.

Shanghai Business School Fire: now comes the blame game

Should they have jumped, why did the jump? Were they hanging off the rails of the balconies until they had no strength and just let go? Why didn’t any brave men climb up the stairs to rescue them?

Four women died after jumping off their dorm balcony, but now the debate rages on about what the problems are. Understandably, people are angry and the students are being quite vocal about the issue.

Talk of the electric heater, dubbed ‘热得快‘ has been the focus of many conversations online, as many students have said that the reason why they have to use such shoddy electronic appliances is because there is no heated water and electricity is turned off at night, so those students wanting a cup of tea, a bowl of instant noodles, or a hot shower at night have to use these appliances. There was also discussion of whether or not safety facilities, ie fire extinguishes and emergency exits, were up to par in Chinese university dorms, with many people arguing that they are not.

One post, from Aibang.com, explains these points:

最根本的问题是，学生从家里来上学，现在生活的一些设备离不开电，而学校仅仅是单纯的禁止个处罚有用么？为什么不改善宿舍的居住环境呢？如果学校有饮水机，或者将开水设备安排在每层宿舍楼，那么至少那种劣质的“热得快”那个学生还会买呢？你宿舍24小时供电，首先就会避免了因为停电而忘记关闭电源的事故发生，难道学校领导意识不到？

It’s true. Students born in the late 1980s and early 1990s–as all of the shanghai fire victims were–are used to having running, and yes, even hot water available to them at all hours of the day and night. They are used to having a bunch of appliances, be it computers or otherwise, always an arm’s width away. The poster of the above comment argues that simply banning and fining people for having such appliances doesn’t get at the root of the issue. What is being argued for, then, is an investment in safety education, facilities–that is, bringing student dorms into the modern era, equipping them so that these types of incidents won’t happen again.

Hangzhou subway tunnel collapse: problems discovered a month ago

This CNN article has the number of dead pegged at 4 but it seems that now the official number of dead has risen to five. What makes the whole thing much much worse is the fact that, according to one SIna report that we read, that problems were discovered a month ago. Check out what is said in this paragraph:

金德水责问地铁施工相关负责人：“是否在事故之前就曾发现过事故隐患？”该负责人表示确实存在隐患。

　　赵铁锤随即痛批，为什么不事先采取措施解除隐患？相关负责人表示，已经和上级部门汇报过，需要等待上级批示。

　　三位领导均表示，不可能有这种事，出现这么重大的安全隐患，施工单位应该及时采取措施补救，根本不需要等待审批。

The leaders–provincial and city officials–asked some of the construction company reps if there really had been problems discovered earlier–and the reps said yes, and then the officials asked why immediate measures were not taken to solve the problem, and the reps said that they needed to report the problem to their superiors and wait for approval. And the officials said that a problem of this seriousness did not have to go through that whole bureaucratic rigamarole.

If you’ve lived in China, and know Chinese people—this kind of tragedy is nothing new. The numbness follows and subdues the anger much more quickly now, because you almost expect this kind of thing to happen on a regular basis in China. They are notoriously bad on worker safety. They are known around the world for cutting corners at the cost of human life.

I’ve had enough of people dying needlessly of late, what with Tom passing away and then this shit. Every fucking day. Every fucking day. This shit and this shit world. How do you manage to go on, without your consciousness bludgeoned by fear? You know full well that people around are NOT trying their best to keep you alive and healthy. They aren’t wishing for your death, but this kind of laxity really just drives you insane because it implies that for someone, somewhere, decisions are being made that place something else above human life in value. And guess what, there are very few things in life that have greater value than a human being’s life, and the meaning in each person’s existence.

Gong Li became a Singaporean and some Chinese people are pissed

What, so this is news today? Well, news in China is always of the form “event+internet reaction,” which itself is some kind of recursive phenomenon, especially when there are naked or scantily clad people involved–with violence, corruption, repression following behind that.

So when Gong Li became a Singaporean, as they tell us she has (her husband is Singaporean, I believe), there was a bunch of internet hotheads that started the usual flame wars about her not loving her country, and these venal movie stars, know they nothing of loyalty, etc. One writer says it quite simply though: there are certain rights and freedoms that only a certain kind of passport can get you and those freedoms and rights are probably of some use to people of Gong Li’s profession and station in life.

I am not sure why they made such a hubbub about it this time, since as many articles point out Chinese movie stars, directors, and celebs have been doing this often and that doesn’t begin to mention all the Chinese students that end up emigrating and naturalizing in western countries.

The usual arguments are hashed and rehashed so there’s no need for me to repeat them here. However, I do think that this specious patriotism is not just some internet malcontents spewing off: this kind of danger is built into the so-called “healthy” type of patriotic education, perhaps in a way, i dont know, that Enlightenment Reason produced the Holocaust (cf. Horkheimer/Adorno). OK, that’s a bit half-baked, but when I am trying to get at is that they are flip sides of the same coin, and that by drilling into students and impressionable young people that you have to, by necessity, love your motherland, and give it your undying and unflinching loyalty and never renege on it, even when another passport could get your lower taxes and better shopping conditions, you create this kind of reflex, this kind of automatic association that occurs before life, experience, books, and a generally tolerant and cosmopolitan attitude can generally install something better in its place. And when you have that kind of intellectual–or shall we say, more accurately, *non-intellectual* reflex in place–you are going to savage anything that is critical or worse yet may even vitiate those tenets and sacred cows.

But then again my attitude towards sacred cows has always been: massacre the fuckers.

One of the writers linked above mentions “freedoms and rights” and all the social elites–the top students–that go abroad each year and effectively, don’t come back (at least in terms of nationality). Brain drain is something i first encountered as a topic in high school debate practice, but of course i, and most other azn-amerikkkans, have an intimate knowlege of brain drain because some of those brains are the ones that begat us. My father, as a scientist, never regrets moving to the US–where else would you want to go, what with all those jobs, the money, and that academic freedom tripe that everyone’s been telling me about?

Reading another unrelated blog post on Chinese internet censorship, i came across a point that most people who have lived here and talked to Chinese people know–they don’t give a shit about not reading the “truth” on TAM square in 89, because they are too busy having fun on the internet wacking off, buying stuff, and dissing people anonymously to care. However, I do think that people who decide to leave China–and who work in these generally intellectual-type professions–must, to some degree, care about this kind of freedom. Sure, their research might not be ideological in nature, which means that in some sense you could do it in China as well, but still, there is so much bureaucracy and other stuff from Chinese society that seeps into academe, and that is why the intellectual cultures of different countries are so different. That’s why the US, UK, Canada, Australia all sport different intellectual and academic cultures as well. And of course, not many CHinese writers are going to state this point, when talking about Gong Li who is, as we know, inconsequential to the fate of the Chinese people and the Republic for which they stand–and that point is that there are people that prize the kind of intellectual freedom that they can get in the West–to do the kind of research they want, to fulfill themselves as human beings–and they can’t get that in China. And there are reasons that they cannot get it. And to figure out what those reasons are, and to see what the Chinese ought to do about them, is, by far, much more pressing than the passport of middle-aged Loreal representative.

Shenzhen night club fire: some gruesome accounts

I’m usually not a fan of the 骇人听闻 type of news but this just caught my attention: the title of the article claims that Shenzhen nightclub fire that killed 43 people might have claimed this many people b/c some people thought it was a performance and thus did not evacuate the building while they still had the chance. The other horrible thing pointed out by one eye-witness account is the number of people that died after being stampeded in the narrow tunnel leading out of the club: people were trampled and one guy said that one of his friends who made it out hit his head on the ceiling while fleeing, meaning that he was pretty high up — because he was stepping on many people … I’m a bit skeptical about that, but without a doubt what happened there must have been gruesome, no two ways about that.

Fuck.

Google in China: logos, software packs, etc.

google china software pack

I just noticed that on the Google China page you can find this bunch of Chinese Google or Google-related software for download in one pack. It’s got spyware removers, virus removers, toolbars for explorer or firefox, the Google Chinese input (yeah, the plagiarized one), some other Chinese/English language tools, etc. Might not be bad if you were doing a fresh install or had a fresh install of Windows you wanted to begin pimping out without putting too much effort in to scrounge around…one stop shops are always appreciated like that.

Another thing I noticed is that yesterday, Sept 10, was Teacher’s Day in China, and so the Google China homepage had that chalkboard picture…but the rest of the world had the Hadron Collider picture, which you see here:

google hadron collider picture logo

Today–Sept 11 in China–the Google China page has returned to normal, while the other Googles (including France, US, Japan) are still using the hadron collider picture. I guess what this means is that they are really operating on the Two Googles one system tip. Or something like that. I guess the Hadron Collider is not as big a deal to Chinese people as it is to everyone else on the planet.
I can understand that, really—it is such an acquired taste.