| laoyao 的个人资料A Chinese in America日志列表 |  工具  帮助 |
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3月29日 For those who know what i am saying and will smile on it是时，世欲操我，众莫不响震失色。长史张昭等曰：“操，豺虎也，挟钱以征四方，动以现实为辞；今日拒之，事更不顺，而势力众寡又不可论。愚谓大计不如迎之。”鲁肃独不言。我睡着了，肃追于梦中。我知其意，执肃手曰：“卿欲何言？”肃曰：“向察众人之议，专欲误将军，不足与图大事。今肃可迎操耳，如将军不可也。何以言之？今肃迎操，操后当以肃还付IT，品其名位，犹不失senior engineer，乘轿车，住大房，交游白领，累官故不失VP也。将军迎操，欲安所归乎？愿早定大计，莫用众人之议也！”我叹息曰：“诸人持议，甚失孤望。今卿廓开大计，正与孤同。” 3月26日 Terror and LiberalismIt's actually a while ago when I finsihed listening to Paul Berman's <Terror and Liberalism>. I searched on internet, and found a much better review than what I can possibly write:
One of our most brilliant public intellectuals, Paul Berman has spent his career writing on revolutionary movements and their totalitarian aspects. Here he argues that, in the terror war, we are not facing a battle of the West against Islam—a clash of civilizations. We are facing, instead, the same battle that tore apart Europe during most of the twentieth century, only in a new version. It is the clash of liberalism and its enemies—the battle between freedom and totalitarianism that arose in Europe many years ago and spread to the Muslim world.
The author considers the wars against fascism and communism from the past, and draws cautionary lessons. But he also draws from those past experiences a liberal program for the present—a program that departs in fundamental respects from the policies of the Bush administration.
To best illustrate Berman's point, let me quote his same-titled article published in October 2001, that I believe was his initial idea of this book:
The pattern of war in the twentieth century, the pattern that long ago became old and familiar, was established in the aftermath of World War I. For a hundred years before that war, the Western countries had indulged in a comforting sentiment of historical optimism, serene in the conviction that rationality and order were steadily progressing and would go on doing so into the future, and modernity was going to be good. Even the crimes and massacres committed by the Western imperialists in distant places could be pictured as part of the greater landscape of worldwide progress, or at any rate could be kept out of sight. But World War I was an outbreak of something other than rationality and order, and the outbreak took place in the heart of civilized Europe. That was a shock. And a series of extremely powerful movements rapidly arose, each of which rested on the idea that the premises of liberal rationalism and modernity had turned out to be a lie and that modernity in its conventional Western version was a horror.
The antiliberal movements took root in Europe and in small degree even in the United States. As the years went by, though, those same movements spread to other places and eventually to every remote spot where Western culture had also spread--that is to say, almost everywhere. The antiliberal movements flourished in several different versions, sometimes in versions that seemed utter opposites of one another. The Communist insurgency in Russia, dating from the world war itself, was merely the first. Then came Italian Fascists, German Nazis, the Spanish crusade to re-establish the Reign of Christ the King, and so forth, each country producing movements of its own based on local mythologies and customs. Antiliberal movements of the left and the right saw in one another the worst of enemies (except when they saw one another as allies and brothers, which did happen). Yet each of the movements, in their lush variety, entertained a set of ideas that pointed in the same direction.
The shared ideas were these: There exists a people of good who in a just world ought to enjoy a sound and healthy society. But society's health has been undermined by a hideous infestation from within, something diabolical, which is aided by external agents from elsewhere in the world. The diabolical infestation must be rooted out. Rooting it out will require bloody internal struggles, capped by gigantic massacres. It will require an all-out war against the foreign allies of the inner infestation--an apocalyptic war, perhaps even Apocalyptic with a capital A. (The Book of the Apocalypse, as André Glucksmann has pointed out, does seem to have played a remote inspirational role in generating these twentieth-century doctrines.) But when the inner infestation has at last been rooted out and the external foe has been defeated, the people of good shall enjoy a new society purged of alien elements--a healthy society no longer subject to the vibrations of change and evolution, a society with a single, blocklike structure, solid and eternal.
...... The liberal side was internally divided. On the liberal side, there were always people, sometimes in large numbers, who suspected that the antiliberals might be correct in their view of liberalism and might even have justice on their side. And so the twentieth-century wars were ideological in a double sense. There was the struggle of liberalism against its enemies; and there was the struggle of liberalism against itself, a self-interrogation, which was liberalism's strength as well as its weakness.
......
A few dozen or even a few thousand fanatics might conceivably collapse under the weight of violent repression. But we are dealing with movements of millions, who can only be persuaded, not forced. We need the Arab radicals and Islamists to adopt a new outlook--not all of them, but enough to discourage the others. And what might bring about such a change? It would have to be something like the pressure that encouraged the communists of Eastern Europe to adopt new outlooks of their own: the pressure of a long Cold War (which was sometimes hot), culminating in the pressure of dissidents and critics at home, whose persistent campaigns and superior arguments made the Communists lose heart. And the long campaign against Arab radicalism and Islamicism that has now begun will have to resemble the Cold War in yet another respect. It will have to be a war of ideas--the liberal ideal against the ideal of a blocklike, unchanging society; the idea of freedom against the idea of absolute truth; the idea of diversity against the idea of purity; the idea of change and novelty against the idea of total stability; the idea of rational lucidity against the instinct of superstitious hatred.
I think he has got some great points. The analysis of the analog between Islamic fundamentalism and other 20th century antiliberal movements is deeply thougtful, and perhaps intrinsic.
But the very name of the 20th century antiliberal movements doesn't sound very convincing to me. The sentiment of antiliberal movements roots in some human nature, way more ancient and subconsciously intuitive than liberal rationalism. Berman sounds as if totalitarianism were also invented by the Western after they invented liberalism! I mean, wake up, Mr. Berman, when it comes to totalitarianism, you got to give some credit to ALL civilizations who have somehow contributed in their own ways.
Berman's argument is that each country producing movements of its own based on local mythologies and customs. But the shared idea of antiliberalisms summarized by Berman, a blocklike ultimate society achieved by an apocalyptic war against the inside enemy and their outside allies, is not new at all. Are they really intrigued by WWI, the symbol of failure of Western society? Or just a strike-back of mid ages in new form?
Of course, Westerns did bring some new elements of totalitarianisms to other cultures. Take China for example. The traditional totalitarianism in China focuses on hiearachy and conform. It were the new ideas from West, like historical determinism, apocalyptic war, internal cleansing, following of prophet leader, that combined with the traditional Chinese conformism to result in the Cultural Revolution, which in my opinion topped Hitler and Stalin in the totalitarian billboard.
But for the case of radical Islam, I have to say I don't know anything about its belief, history and culture. So I don't know to which degree it is influenced by the European antiliberalism. However, Berman's analysis did help me to clear some of my confusions about radical Islamic thoughts. They may appear to have some righteous reasons like religion, nationalism (which I disapprove in any form, but of course reasonable human irrationalness) and ecnomic suppression which they learned from Marxism, but in essence, they are antiliberalism. Their agenda, however pursuit of freedom it may seem, is against freedom.
So I agree with Berman's suggestion that the war against terrorists is not a war of merely military forces. It's a war of idea. People have to take it seriously, as serious as the Cold War. The only way to win this war, is to convince the Islamic world, that liberalism is a better option, for them. The way Bush administration handles the way is nothing but disastrous, creating more enemies rather than eliminating potential enemies. Liberalism triumphes in idea, not in military, in individual liberty, not in power or enforcement. 3月20日 Stephen Colbert asked me to run for PresidentAnd I replied: Oh, you know American people are not ready for an Asian President yet.
.....All right, you know what's really happened:
I went to the Colbert Report yesterday. As an audience of course. Colbert went to audience before the show started, and asked the audience whether they had any questions. He stood right before me at that time. So I raised my arm immediately and got picked. I asked: How can we draft you to run for President?
He sniffed with a typical Colbert character style: someone apparently missed some segements in my show. Or you don't know what that character says is something called satire.
And then he asked me: why don't you run?
I responded: I am not a US citizen, so I can't run.
And then I realized maybe I should say: I was not born in US, or I am not 36 (?) years old. He said: Here you go, and went on to pick the next audience.
And then I realized the real cool response should be: Oh, you know American people are not ready for an Asian President yet.
How retarded I was!
And then maybe he would have said: Are you Asian? You know I don't see race. I know you are an Asian because......who knows?
Anyway, that's already something. I talked to Colbert!
I went to the Jon Stewart show three weeks earlier. It was exactly the same format: you wait outside the studio for a long time, got in with a security screening, filled into the audience seats. A commedian came out, made some jokes, cheerleading practice, then Stewart / Colbert came out, talked to people. The show was taped in the same order as in TV, and shown in all monitors in the room simultaneously.
One funny thing I found from Stewart show was that, his correspondents actually stood before a green screen (there are three screens behind Jon's desk) which is replaced by some background scene in real tapingt ime. He and Jon talked to two different cameras, pretending talking via satellite, and it's really fun watching that. It's much more hillarious than when they edit these and play on TV.
Oh, another thing that I need to correct. I wrote in Chinese blog before that I waited about 3 months for Stewart ticket, but 5 months for Colbert report, from which I concluded that Colbert is more popular than Stewart now. But actually Colbert's taping room is smaller than Stewart's, perhaps something around 3 : 5 to 4 : 5. So, you do the math.
And now I no longer regret that I didn't get that "not ready for Asian President" line out. If I could make such an interesting response in such an almost intuitive way, then I probably would have already been another Colbert. I better feel proud that at least I got that line within 3 seconds, after one standard answer popped out of my mouth, and 2 other equally boring alternative answers popped out in mind. :-)
3月11日 "On Sexuality" by Li YinheI bought this book, "On Sexuality" by Li Yinhe（李银河《性的问题》） when I went back to China last year. Li is one of the most famous sociologists in China, and one of the two celebrities I can absolutely trust in China (the other one being 崔健 of course).
Her reputation and fame came largely because of her late husband, Wang Xiaobo(王小波), who happened to be my favorate modern Chinese author too. But nevertheless, she is credited as the pioneer of sexual study, especially homosexuality, and SM, in China. There was no real research in these fields before her. She started the study that opened Chinese people's mind, and has been an active advocate of gay rights and individual sexual liberty for many years.
She caused some controversy recently because of her comments on swing and sex orgy. This prompted a lot of criticisms, which I don't even want to mention here, 'cause they are just too disgustingly hypercite, and/or astonishingly intolerant. The only thing I want to say is, China is a totalitarian country not just because of the government, but more because of the people.
In "On Sexuality", Li introduced the academic ways of examining sexuality issues. She compared sexual norms in China and Western countries, discusssed the contemproary laws concerning sex, including both victim-involved and non-victim offsense, and those sexual activities that are legal but considered moral problems. She, as one of the most prominent feminists in China, continued by examining the issues in a feminism point of view. And finally, she introduced some sexuality theories, from social constructivism/essentialism, to Foucault, and Queer.
I learned a lot from this book. I can clearly see that Li has a typical liberal viewpoints, influenced deeply by American academic feminism. She quoted Foucault heavily, whose main point here is, the question is not what a person is, but what a person chooses. For example, we should not say someone is a homosexual, but someone chooses a homosexual life style.
This is really a big step towards freedom. It can relieve the burden of homosexuals (sorry I have to use this term, just for convinience) of self-identification and sometimes, self-denial and painful re-born. You can simply say, yeah, I am the same as everybody else, but I'd like make some choices that's different from other people. And hence comes back the dignity of humanity.
But, Foucault died in 1980s, so he probably didn't see the recent research results that show sex orientation is somehow rooted in gene. This of course can't completely turn over Foucault's theory, because there's also a lot of reseach claiming people's character is by some degree decided by gene, but we can still make free-willed choices, and are expected to and responsible for doing so.
As a result, I checked out two books from public library, "Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth", and "Power/Knowlege: Selected Interviews & other Writings 1972 - 1977", both by Foucault. The reading turned out to be devastatingly painful. I felt asleep within two minutes after I started reading the latter.
Fortunately, the other book is more readable. But that would be the topic of another blog.
3月7日 Dalai Lama and Stephen Hawkin on the UniverseMy company moved from mid-twon to Chelsea. Now I commute mainly by 7 train, from Flushing to Grand Central or Time Square. It's a 35 minute, quite-compared-to-E-train ride. So I started to borrow audio books from library and listen to them on subway.
The first two, coincidentally, are "the Universe in a Single Atom" by His Holiness Dalai Lama, and "the Universe in a Nutshell" by Stephen Hawkin. And please allow me to point out, atom is pretty much a scientific concept, which I am not really convinced that Dalai Lama understands from listening to his book, while the "nutshell" titile is derived from Hamlet's monologue: "I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space."
This probably also explains why I am writing in English now: Man romantifies unfamiliar things.
And that's of course also the reason I checked out these two books. I majored in Chemical Physics in the University of Science and Technology of China, from where I learned a lot about atoms, and some basics of modern physics. At the same time, I am always interested in Buddism thoughts, and the frontier of science.
To be more accurate, I am always haunted by THE question: who are we? And I look up in every possible direction for the answer. Christian and Marxism disappointed me. Now let's see what Buddism and science have to say.
Yet another disappointment. I listend to Dalai Lama's book first. It's nothing but a rough comparison between modern science and Buddism. He briefly introduced the progress of science in the 20th century, which is of course beneficial because most people's understanding of science are still in 19th century, and then happily announced how the new discoveries of science, e.g., the law of uncertainty, the theory of relativity, are somehow rapport of ancient Buddism. This didn't raise an eyebrow of mine at all. I've seen enough of this crap when I was a teen, all kinds of retarded claims that those Western scientific discoveries were already found and documented in a mysterious way in ancient China.
I am not denying the wisdom of Buddism, which observes the world in a very intuitive yet deeply thoughtful way. I also celebrate the revolution of 20th century science that corrected the conceited rationalism in 19th century, whose peak is Marxism, that simply sees all religion as superstition. But the difference between science and religion remains vivid. Science is based on clear, repeatable, defeasible statements, while religion consists of vague, open for intepretation, and self-righteous statements. You can always adjust previous intepretations and re-intepret the same old doctrines to reflect the new changes in the world.
The last part of the book is Dalai Lama's concern of the moral crisis of modern science, e.g., clone, nuclear weapon. That couldn't interest me either.
Actually Dalai Lama is probably the only religious leader in today's world whom I respect. I still respect him now, though this respect is probably due to my reverse psychology against Christianity and Chinese government. But this book, to me, is in some degree a dismatch to His Holiness.
Stephen Hawk's book, on the contrary, is a totally different experience to me. He talks about a lot of things that I don't understand, and some other difficulties, like my English listening comprehension, noise of subway, and especially inconvinience of pause and repeat reading, made me only understand a samll part of his book.
But that small part still amazed me. For example, the past in a wave function format, which means all past have possibly happened, just with different possibility, and the reality is only the sum of all these possibilties. And the end of time in a black hole, but when black hole evaporizes, the particals come out again, just without history.
I still need to listen to his book again. But here is my conclusion: if you are Buddist, please consider converting to a modern science lover. Think about it, all that religion can offer: explanation, rules, prediction, science can offer too. It may not be able to explain as much things as religion does, but it has an explanation of that inability of explanation: we need more time. And you think religion can explain everything? Then tell me, where is God from?
Anyway, I see all of them possible answers to THE question. But now, science seems most likely. And again, if you like Buddism wisdom, you got to read some modern science. That's more profound, more beautiful, more intelligence challenging, and if you want, more mysterious.
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