Current Affairs
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
The Only Thing We Have to Fear...
Probably the most noticeable change since the last time I lived in the U.S. is the heavily charged environment of public fear. The experience of 9/11 has so traumatized the country of my birth, that it leaves many Americans in the constant fear that something like this could happen again. Usually this fear rides at a low level of consciousness; it still allows us to go to work, make stupid jokes, and go to sleep at night, but it influences the world of public thinking and decision-making so much that hardly any topic is covered in the news which does not betray some kind of fear motivating its discussion.
In this election season, the fear seems to be projected less onto various terrorist organizations and more onto whichever presidential candidate one dislikes most. The sense is that if that politician you dislike is elected then the country is in real danger, and this feeling is stronger now than in any other election I can remember in my life.
If I didn’t know better, my tendency would be to become deeply afraid of the way the media corporations continually reinforce this fear in American society. I often look around me and notice varying ways in which some individuals and organizations bend this fear to their advantage. It would appear that they are inflaming this fear in order to achieve multiple ends, from improving their ratings to influencing the election.
But I do know better. Having been away for so long, I can sense that my own fear is likely a response to the public fear all around me rubbing off on me too. Whether the American media really is horribly corrupt or not, my being afraid of it doesn’t do anyone any good. I must work hard not to be afraid of that, or other negative possibilities. While each part of the American community seems more and more eager to blame a certain group or segment of society for all the horrible things that could happen to us in the future, I would like to work hard not to succumb to the need to blame others that fear inspires.
At times like this, each person has a choice to make: whether to be a force for unity and agreement between individuals and groups around you, or to be a force for disunity and attacking whichever group you direct your fear at most. To feel afraid is natural, but when we allow that fear to control our actions, we must take it as a sign that we all have a lot of growing up to do—both on our own and as a society.
Sunday, September 12, 2004
A Stranger in a Familiar Land
I've been back in the United States for a couple weeks now, and I'm surprised how much is the same, and how much is different. I had been reading, during my time in China, about how America has been changing during the four years that I've been away, but now that I'm planning to be here for a year or two, experiencing these changes for myself is quite different.
When I last lived in the U.S. four years ago, America seemed to enjoy unparalleled prosperity, while the whole world basked in its glow. Americans complained about many things of course, but generally we took for granted an overall optimism that things would only keep on getting better for us. I imagined the most upsetting element of American culture to be a widespread materialism, combined with overblown concern with celebrities and various petty issues of the day. I had a sense that our biggest problems in the future would continue to lie with the burdens and excesses of being the world's most well-to-do society
I had just graduated from college, and I wanted to explore a new life in the land on the other side of the world. I was also eager to get away from a country that understood little of the disheartening living conditions that many other people are living in. When I left, war seemed like a far away thing from history.
But the times have changed. I think in the coming weeks, it would be useful for me, and for you too, I hope, to try to process these changes that have taken place in my homeland, as well as changes in my own life that have taken place during the same period of time.
Saturday, December 13, 2003
How Long, How Dark, is the Road to Peace?
Japan is the only country whose constitution prohibits war (as far as I know). Now, however, Japan is planning to send some defensive troops to Iraq to engage in unwarlike activity. Such offshore movement of Japanese forces would have been unthinkable in the past, and many are afraid of what this will bring in the future.
But leaving that fear aside for the time being, I would like to consider the history of how things got to be this way, and show some of the implications it might have for the whole world’s progress toward peace.
Japan used to be the world’s most war-hungry nation, yet after the tragedy of its involvement in the second world war, it went to the opposite extreme. For nearly 50 years now, we have had at least one nation on earth for whom war itself was illegal, according to its own constitution—certainly this was a major breakthrough in the history of humanity.
It is not inconceivable then, that such a change could be brought about on an international scale. The real question is: what measure of horror will finally awaken the human race to the fact of war’s continual failure to bring us good in this world? Have recent wars been enough for us to realize that all nations must be forced by law to work together in peace? Do we require another wake-up call as bloody or worse than what has already happened, or can peace come as a result of the collective efforts of relatively small groups of people to educate the world about the best interests of humanity as a whole?
The last two years since that fateful September day have seen the apparent return of warmongering to the world. The relative international tranquility seems forever shattered, and all the nations are wondering who’s going to preemptively strike who next.
I admit that this may be the beginning of a century that will show us the horrors of war even more clearly than the last, but who can deny that this will give us even more obvious reasons to establish unassailable laws of peace—not only in one nation, but in many?
Eventually, there must come a turning point, at which humankind will have to chose either peace or extinction—and let’s admit it: that’s not such a hard decision to make. Already the choice is clear to some of us, and we would just as soon choose peace now rather than later. How much effort must we dedicate—and how many lives must be sacrificed—before the choice is apparent to the whole world community?
Whether peace is to be reached only after unimaginable horrors precipitated by humanity’s stubborn clinging to old patterns of behaviour, or is to be embraced now by an act of consultative will, is the choice before all who inhabit the earth. At this critical juncture when the intractable problems confronting nations have been fused into one common concern for the whole world, failure to stem the tide of conflict and disorder would be unconscionably irresponsible.(source)
Monday, October 27, 2003
China and the New World Wisdom
The Chinese are generally a proud people, and consider their culture to be a marvel thousands of years in the making. But China is as much a new civilization as an old one. Although the people have lived on this land since before recorded history can tell, their modern ways of thinking are not always informed by that history.
The modern flow of information all over the earth has meant that most Chinese are as much influenced by Hollywood as they are by Confucius. The twinkle of opportunity is brighter than the spark of wisdom in the eyes of a fast-developing nation – and perhaps rightly so. Since the world’s equilibrium is passing through cycles of upheaval and drastic change every day, many people wonder how much of the old wisdom still applies.
American leaders would just love to tell the Chinese all about the New World Wisdom, and to a great extent the Chinese are actually willing to listen. They are not, however, always so inclined to agree. To some, “new” means “Western,” but to those educated in the vastness of China’s past, it means something much more, something they wish to arise and define for themselves. They take what they like from the West, and they leave what they don’t.
Time will not tell us who was right or wrong. Historians of future ages will record how each nation on this earth was a strapping young adolescent at the turn of the millennium, full of ideas about how the world should be run, and equally full of confidence that their ideas would work. They will see an emerging world community struggling to piece itself together while at the same time keeping each part distinct.
For China, as for every nation, “new” increasingly means “together” with the rest of the world, while “old” means “apart.” A new wisdom for the world’s old countries, as well as the young, may very well be the fruit of that process of learning which joins these two identities into one functioning world system.
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