Why Racism is Good and Why We Will All Come to Destroy Each Other

September 3, 2010

A good friend of mine once said that to me that westerners “respect Chinese culture, but will never come to accept it”. I believe that her statement is true and can in fact be broadened to assert that “people of one culture can come to respect, but may in fact never come to accept the culture of different people”. Just because us westerners are easy targets (in that we act directly and directness can be inferred as arrogance), doesn’t mean that we are always deserving of the vilification our white skins earn us (of course, there are many exploitative western bastards in China, may God piss on their graves). After all, we are just as guilty a party as any other race.

This may come to some surprise, however, I don’t find that westerners who believe that Chinese people are weird, complicated and have strange mannerisms are all that terribly racist, because, after all, the Chinese are saying the same things about us, just as anyone else would. It’s only natural that a bunch of people going to a new and foreign place, no matter what cultural orientation they may well be, would find the foreign land to be strange and exotic, because, in relation to their lived experiences, it is. Sure, we’re talking about racism, but it’s not serious, deep-seeded racism. Mild racism, the racism that dictates that foreign things are strange, is an unavoidable byproduct of human nature. The human brain simply cannot comprehend ethnical and cultural gradients, it must break our existence into pre-package archetypes like Asian, Caucasian, African and so forth, and then assign these classes attributes (read: stereotypes) based on shallow inferences.

For the brain to operate it needs to continue to break the world and all of its constituents (that includes people) into digestible chunks, understanding foreign culture therefore works against the brain’s natural process. The brain seeks to typecast and simplify, cross-cultural communication seeks to add depth and complexity. In the end, we were born to destroy each other.

The Past (2 years)

September 1, 2010

I feel that the past two years have been a pivotal time of personal development in my life. I feel content in that I know within myself that I have developed into the person I’d always hoped to be. But 2 years ago, I hadn’t found that identity quite yet, and it’s through my experiences both at home and abroad that I have hastily matured into adulthood.

It’s strange saying that, because rarely before have I considered myself as an adult, and even now I am still hesitant of the once grand moniker. I don’t know what qualifies a person as an “adult” besides the obvious legal requisite of being above 18 years old, but I reckon that maybe I have hit that nebulous mark of maturation.

I guess China has played a big part in my maturation in that it has provided a mirror in which reflects the differences between life abroad and life at home. Being an active participant in Chinese culture has, I think, allowed me to better understand my own identity and everything that had previously come to define it in Australia and why. In which case, I have realised that I don’t necessarily have to accept what is good, fine and acceptable anywhere as being good, fine and acceptable. When you’re given a point of comparison it’s easier to see more clearly through the social and cultural fabric of the world. That is, you can see things for what they really may well be. From this, I think that the past 2 years have genuinely been an experience of letting go of the constraints which have become apparent and through that finding and nurturing a newer self.

In Shanghai, one night a year and a half ago, it all came back to me. I was vividly reminded of how taking the bus, playing video games, having longer hair, wearing glasses, not binge drinking, wanting to actually make something of my life (as opposed to adopting a devil-may-care attitude) and trying to act intelligently and speak with articulation would all result in a sort of social scorn. These were items of leverage, tools to demean me as an individual. Living in China made me realise that I can in fact refuse these things, that I can go to a different place, a place where these variables do not make logical sense within the social concious, and in such a place I can flourish and evolve. Right there and then, I made an agreement with myself to refuse the constraints of the commodified world which push us towards blind slavery.

To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure about my convictions. Perhaps I was just fraught with anxiety in a rather turbulent time, making me think so foolishly and all. However, it did seem to me that this moment of spiritual enlightenment did hold some weight, so going back to Australia was great in that I could see if my convictions held any credence. And to my surprise they did.

It took me a while, but after a few months into Australian life, everything that had come to the forefront of my mind in Shanghai were evidently apparent. And so, based on my agreement, I refused them. Everyone in my life who had previously held back my potential I cut contact with. When confronted with people who judged me on some assumed social make-up, I tried to spin their critique the other way and make their comments transparent. Did I lose a lot of friends? Yes I did. But something within me had changed, I was fast becoming intelligent. I had found something which made me totally content and for no one else would I ever let this go. There was the person I had wanted to be and I was walking towards it.

The byproduct of all this is my writing, namely the writing on my games blog. My blog has been an outlet for me to creatively pursue my ambitions and this makes it a cornerstone in this new found self. I would also attribute my then and current girlfriend whom also acted as an avenue into Chinese culture.

So now I’m back in China, I’ve made the realisation, made the comparison and can firmly say that I feel spiritually free here. I want to stay here for some time since the things I have attributed to my change survive better in this habitat. More than ever, I feel detached from this previous social nonsense. Actually I am only reminded of the fact when I occasionally peer into the world of Facebook once a month or so, as I did before I wrote this piece. I’m quite pleased with where I’ve come, which I guess can be considered some form of adulthood.

Savages

August 30, 2010

I had a real Lord of the Flies moment the other day. I was walking home from work and saw a mob of people gather around the adjacent bicycle lane, spilling onto the road and courting passers-by stopping to enjoy the spectacle. There had seemingly been a traffic accident between a lady in a car and a lady in on a bicycle, not that it was of much interest to the people. One of the ladies, the lady on the bicycle; the poorer of the two as noted by her wrangled hair and lack of front teeth, was hurling obscenities at the other, launching for her arms and clawing at her silk dress. The other lady, tried vigorously to defend herself, but was visibly beaten down by the summer’s heat. Supposedly the poorer lady had stolen money from the lady in the dress, yet the latter lacked the aggressiveness at hand to wrestle it back. Chaos had erupted and the mob had swarmed in to observe the festivities of man’s primal tendencies.

This scene is not uncommon in China. Every time a road accident occurs or people find themselves in physical confrontations, the surrounding patrons simply become immobile in the their walk and flock to watch—not to aid, but to watch.

The crowd surrounding this debarkle had obscured much of the traffic on the narrow pavement and bicycle lane by now, only contributing to the growing number of observers. As the people grew, the tension mounted, the women became visibly more distressed and eventually the lady in the car had to flee for the cotton strap on her dress had been torn, leaving only the plastic support. The poorer lady walked slowly in the opposite direction, breathing deeply through her chest as if to offset a potential anxiety attack. On this confirmation, the crowd dissipated and returned to their regular commute.

I would like to say that such a common event is a symbol of the primitive state of the Chinese mindset, but doing so would be both unfair and incorrect, since I don’t think that such acts are absent or less common in other places of the world either. Perhaps in other countries, like Australia, they are less of a public display, but still prevalent in places, particularly those of squalor. In any case, what sickens me is the silent mob of passers-by who come to observe, lacking basic humanity and accountability in their inaction. Their presence alone asserts that such confrontations are normal and thereby acceptable. It worries me, but I guess such instinctive behaviour is an urge we sometimes can’t resist, after all, it’s not like to tried to break the fight, is it?

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