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tianshiisdead · 1 year

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5, 7 and 36!

5. how accurately is your country depicted?

(For Canada) He fits the global stereotype but, like some people have pointed out, I'd have expected him to be a bit more rugged and woodsy loll the amount of people I grew up with who just hiked and camped and mountain climbed and hunted all over the place all the time every weekend 🤯 I'm also from Alb*rta though so my opinions basically mean nothing! Now that I'm living in Ottawa for school, I think Canada should've been meaner underneath his veneer of shy politeness (noah fence to Ontarians I'm just not used to how you guys interact with each other kdjslhgf)

(For China) Hmm this is a difficult question ngl LOL there are some things that I was super pleasantly surprised about, Hima once said he made China more cold and cruel/intimidating seeming but after meeting actual Chinese people ended up making him more cutesy, I think the affection for pandas and hello kitty and cute things is accurate, these things are popular in China! I like that he's a little bad-tempered and irritable with western countries and the way he's proud and overbearing and clearly ancient both in a humourous grandpa way and in a serious and slightly tragic way.

However, parts of his characterization bother me a little... low-hanging fruit, but I hate 'aru' deeply and with a passion, whether or not the concept of Chinese people saying 'aru' really did come from the colonial era, it's just tired either way and I cringe whenever I hear it. I don't love how clumsy and stupid he acts, like I think it's cute in an isolated way, but in the greater context...

Ultimately, I don't think it's horribly egregious. A lot of Chinese and Sino diaspo fans enjoy his character and/or have interpretations that still clearly have their roots in canon, and I'm personally fairly satisfied with it. Oh, and one thing I loved is how originally all of the provinces were supposed to be their own characters who live in China's house! I wish Hima had brought that up more than once, I love that idea.

7. food-related headcanons?

MAN ok hmm! China has 8 great food regions, Anhui, Cantonese, Fujian, Hunan, Jiangsu, Shandong, Szechuan and Zhejiang, and I'd imagine he can cook them all, but as Han Chinese culture has always been more concentrated in the vaguely more Southern regions, I'd imagine he'd prefer relatively more Southern food... dishes from Dongbei and Inner Mongolia, the north, in general, all have heavy influences from Mongolia and northern groups, and tend to be more wheat, butter, and milk heavy. and I'd imagine he's lactose intolerant and prefers rice LOL although he still enjoys Northern food that he can digest! For an example, breakfast.

I think China likes to make food from scratch sometimes taking days at a time to cook, but also enjoys instant noodles (though he modifies them and adds eggs and veggies) and pre-made food but he would never admit it. This is based off of canon, but he also likes fusion food and international food! Hotpot with cheese-filled rice cake and fried chicken, salmon sashimi was popular in parts of China for a while recently iirc, he's just a big foodie who likes a variety of flavours. He's very adventurous.

I think he likes to cook most of his meals but goes out for breakfast a lot, before a meeting or while out on his morning walk he just swings by one of Beijing's many breakfast stalls for a doufunao, some youtiao, shaobing, some doujiang, etc. I can't speak on Southern breakfasts, but when he spends time down there, I imagine they would also have a lot of cheap and fast breakfast shops, though the food is very different.

General headcanons: I think when he's tired he just gets a flavourless bowl of congee with some salted duck egg for breakfast, and that when one of his kids are sick he makes them steamed eggs and boiled pear soup. He has a strong grasp on the different elements of food in Chinese medicine and can integrate it into his cooking easily! He also makes his own xiancai (pickled veg) and has a doujiang machine for homemade fast soy milk. His cabinet filled with spices and vinegars and chili oils and cooking wine and so on and so forth is this huge walk-in closet of a place organized with homemade labels and filled from the top to the bottom. When he cooks, he has several stoves going at a time, frying and boiling and steaming and chopping all at once, before celebrations like new years he spends days in the kitchen. The only thing he doesn't make from scratch himself for celebrations are dumplings, while he's working away everyone gathers around the cleared-off dining table and Macau shapes the dough and they all make dumplings together and Hong Kong puts weird fillings in some dumplings as pranks and Taiwan folds them into cute little animal shapes and fills them with brown sugar.

I have a lot of things to say about food but if I say anymore it'll turn into a book, so I'll leave it at that for now hehe maybe I'll make a proper post on it's own sometime!

36. if you could, what event would you host?

Hmm maybe one for OCs, or minority/native culture OCs! I don't think it would get enough traction, but I'd also love to host a China based event LOL I just don't think there would be enough people to participate :')

#ask #ask game #kitaychan #hetalia #hws china #long post #food #thank u for the askk mwah

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frenchcultureblogassignment · 8 months

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Post #4

The French Revolution was a period of great social and political change/upheaval. It promoted the ideals/values of liberty, equality, and fraternity. In short, this revolution was a result of economic inequality, social injustice, enlightenment ideals, and problems with the monarchy. The people of France needed a change and a revolution began. This Revolution had a significant impact on the perceptions, behaviors, and attitudes of the French people towards other cultures. It created a sense of nationalism and pride in French identity. The Revolution aimed to establish France as a model of liberty and equality for the world. As mentioned before, ideals such as liberty, equality, and fraternity, inspired movements for political and social change in other countries. One example is the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution. Attitudes within French culture changed as well. One phase of the revolution, the Reign of Terror, created fear and mistrust both internally and externally, affecting French relations with neighboring countries (and within). The Revolution set new goals for France, including the creation of a more just and equal society. This reshaped cultural values by emphasizing the importance of individual rights, citizenship, and liberty. These values and ideals are still strong influences on French culture today.

World War II had many lasting impacts on France and the rest of the world. France for instance, experienced a brutal Nazi occupation during World War II. This Nazi occupation created a sense of resistance and defiance among the people. This could be seen at the time through the creation of the Resistance movement. This Resistance, made up of various political and social groups, actively opposed the occupiers. Another impact that this resistance had was the confidence/perception of resilience. The war also connected the French people to the rest of the world by creating an allied effort to defeat the enemy. It led to a sense of camaraderie and shared values with these countries (such as the United States, United Kingdom, etc). The French resistance to Nazi occupation became a symbol of French identity and patriotism. It reinforced the idea that France was a nation with a cultural heritage worth defending (resistance embodied this ideal). After the war, France played a significant role in the creation of international organizations like the United Nations and became a huge advocate for human rights and peace. The aftermath of the war left France in ruins. The period of reconstruction that followed contributed to the development of French cultural values centered on social welfare, education, and economic progress.

The global financial crisis of 2008-2010 exposed the risks and vulnerabilities of the global financial system. Many French people, like others around the world, developed a distrust of financial institutions and became more skeptical about the practices of banks and investment firms. This distrust also made individuals more cautious of investing and saving. With finances being so unstable, many French people probably began to place greater importance on non-material aspects of life, such as family, community, and personal fulfillment. French perceptions of other cultures, especially those perceived as economic competitors (such as China and the United States), may have been affected as well. For instance, there may be increased scrutiny concerning trade and other economic relations. Finally, The financial crisis prompted policy changes in France. These changes focus on financial regulation, banking reforms, and measures to stabilize the economy. These policy shifts reflected goals and expectations regarding economic stability and the prevention of future crises.

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newstfionline · 11 months

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Thursday, June 15, 2023

US to rejoin UNESCO (Insider/Foreign Policy) Motivated by concerns about Chinese influence, the US on Monday said it would rejoin UNESCO. That move probably comes with a bill: $600 million in back payments. The US left UNESCO—the UN cultural, educational and scientific body—in 2017 on the instruction of President Donald Trump, whose administration accused it of anti-Israel bias. But since then, officials have expressed concern that the US vacating its spot leaves a power vacuum that is being filled by China. Ultimately, the U.S. relationship with UNESCO highlights a fundamental advantage that China has within the United Nations: Beijing keeps showing up. China has successfully promoted the election of its own staff to key roles in the U.N. and other international organizations, whereas in the United States, domestic politics sometimes get in the way.

British economy recovers slightly in April but strikes set to keep a lid on growth (AP) The British economy bounced back in April amid strong sales at bars and pubs as well as a rebound in car purchases, official figures showed Wednesday. The Office for National Statistics said the economy grew by 0.2% during the month. The increase was in line with expectations but failed to fully recoup the 0.3% contraction in March. Though the British economy has managed to avoid falling into a recession—two consecutive quarters of negative growth—it has barely grown since the post-pandemic bounceback, hobbled by high interest rates as well as strike action across an array of sectors, including in health, education and transport. One clear uncertainty surrounding the British economy is high inflation—currently standing at 8.7%—and the associated sharp spike in interest rates.

As Kyiv’s counteroffensive heats up, Washington holds its breath (Washington Post) As Ukraine launches its long-awaited counteroffensive against entrenched Russian occupiers, both Kyiv and its backers are hoping for a rapid retaking of strategically significant territory. Anything less will present the United States and its allies with uncomfortable questions they are not yet prepared to answer. With this year’s flow of billions of dollars’ worth of advanced Western weaponry to Ukraine, “everybody’s hopeful that, you know, you’d see overwhelming success,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters last week. But, he said, adding a note of caution, “I think most people have a realistic outlook on this.” Western officials claim not to know Ukraine’s exact plans. Ideally, Pentagon officials have indicated, the Ukrainians will use their newly supplied tanks and training to cut through Russia’s land bridge between occupied eastern and southern Ukraine, or take control of the land and sea gateways to the Crimean Peninsula. Such gains would break the current narrative of a stalemate and quell any calls for reconsidering current policy. As he heads into next year’s reelection campaign, Biden needs a major battlefield victory to show that his unqualified support for Ukraine has burnished U.S. global leadership, reinvigorated a strong foreign policy with bipartisan support and demonstrated the prudent use of American military strength abroad. In Washington, months of anticipation over Kyiv’s counteroffensive have overshadowed political criticism from those who say that sending tens of billions of dollars in U.S. assistance to Ukraine has been too much in a time of domestic economic uncertainty.

Leader of Belarus says he wouldn’t hesitate to use Russian nuclear weapons to repel aggression (AP) Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko declared Tuesday that his country had already received some of Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons and warned that he wouldn’t hesitate to order their use if Belarus faced an act of aggression. The brash comments from Lukashenko contradicted earlier statements by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who said Russian nuclear weapons would be deployed to Belarus next month and emphasized that they would remain under Moscow’s exclusive control. Earlier this year, Putin announced the planned deployment of short-range nuclear weapons to Moscow’s neighbor and ally Belarus in a move widely seen as a warning to the West as it stepped up military support for Ukraine.

At least 79 drown, hundreds missing in migrant shipwreck off Greece (Reuters) At least 79 migrants drowned early on Wednesday and hundreds more were missing and feared dead after their overloaded boat capsized and sank in open seas off Greece, in one of Europe's deadliest shipping disasters in recent years. As a painstaking search for survivors continued, a European rescue-support charity said it believed around 750 people were on board the 20- to 30-metre-long (65- to 100-foot-long) vessel. The U.N.'s migration agency estimated up to 400 while Greece declined to speculate on the passenger count.

Vietnam power problems (AP) Power outages are leaving Vietnamese homes and businesses without power for hours at a time, as a prolonged drought and high temperatures strain the fast-growing economy’s capacity to keep up. Streetlights have been turned off in some major cities and businesses have been told to cut energy use. Amid severe drought, two out of the three largest hydroelectric reservoirs in Vietnam have almost completely stopped operating. “It is a big headache for us,” said Nguyen Thanh Tam, deputy director of Hoa Long printing company in Hanoi. “We need power to operate the machines.”

Lebanese lawmakers fail in 12th attempt to elect president, end power vacuum (AP) Lebanese lawmakers failed Wednesday in yet another attempt to elect a president and break a seven-month power vacuum that has roiled the tiny Mediterranean country. The session—the twelfth try to pick a president—broke down after the bloc led by the powerful political party and militant group Hezbollah withdrew following the first round of voting, breaking the quorum. The meeting came after 11 previous sessions by the parliament—the last of which was held in January—failed to elect a replacement for President Michel Aoun, a Hezbollah ally, whose term ended in late October. The new president’s most pressing task will be to get this nation of 6 million people, including more than 1 million Syrian refugees, out of an unprecedented economic crisis that began in October 2019. The meltdown is rooted in decades of corruption and mismanagement by the country’s political class that has ruled Lebanon since the 1975-90 civil war ended.

As conditions for Syrians worsen, aid organizations struggle to catch the world’s attention again (AP) Six months after she got the call informing her that her U.N. assistance would be cut, Najwa al-Jassem is struggling to feed her four children and pay rent for their tent in a Syrian refugee camp in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley. She once received food rations and cash that covered most of their modest monthly expenses. The family now only gets the equivalent of $20 a month, which just covers the rent for their cramped tent. Her husband gets only sporadic day labor and “my kids are too young for me to send them to work the fields,” she told The Associated Press in the camp near the town of Bar Elias. “We’re eating one meal a day.” Aid agencies will struggle to draw the world’s attention back to the plight of Syrians like al-Jassem on Wednesday at an annual donor conference hosted by the European Union in Brussels for humanitarian aid to respond to the Syrian crisis. On Tuesday, a day before the conference, the World Food Program announced that it was faced with an “unprecedented funding crisis” and would cut aid to 2.5 million out of the 5.5 million people in Syria who had been receiving food assistance.

Facing Crisis, Egypt’s Leader Tries New Tack: Talking to Opponents (NYT) Facing a ruinous economic crisis, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi recently decided it was time to hold talks with what was left of Egypt’s political opposition, giving its members a seat at the table after nearly a decade of repression, prison and exile. But no sooner had the national dialogue started than the government began hemming the talks in, an indication that, after years of political repression and military domination of the economy, the leadership remains reluctant to turn the page. Islamists were barred from the dialogue, and much of the secular liberal opposition was not invited. Crucial topics, including anything to do with the ill-defined matter of national security, were off limits. And the day after the talks launched last month, Egypt awoke to the news that security agents had arrested a dozen relatives and supporters of the only person so far to announce that he would challenge Mr. el-Sisi—who came to power in a military takeover—in the next presidential election. Mr. el-Sisi has spoken of charting a new political and economic course for Egypt amid surging inflation ‌and a currency that has shed half its value in the last year, thrusting the middle class toward poverty. ‌Yet the economic overhaul the government promised has added up to mostly talk and little action.

Southern Baptists refuse to take back megachurch because it has women pastors (AP) The Southern Baptist Convention has refused to welcome Saddleback Church back into its fold, rejecting an appeal by the California megachurch over its February ouster for having women pastors. Southern Baptist church representatives at their annual meeting here also rejected a similar appeal by a smaller church, Fern Creek Baptist of Louisville, Kentucky, which is led by a woman pastor. The results of the Tuesday votes were announced Wednesday morning on the concluding day of the two-day annual meeting of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, whose statement of faith asserts that only qualified men can serve as pastors. With the 9,437-1,212 vote, delegates rejected an appeal by Rick Warren, the retired founding pastor of Saddleback and author of the best-selling phenomenon, “The Purpose Driven Life.” Warren had urged Baptists to agree to disagree “in order to share a common mission.” Following the vote results, Warren issued a critique of the direction of the SBC that contributed to Saddleback’s ejection. “There are people who want to take the SBC back to the 1950s when white men ruled supreme and when the woman’s place was in the home. There are others who want to take it back 500 years to the time of the Reformation,” he said. “I say we need to take the church back to the first century. The church at its birth was the church at its best.”

The Beatles are releasing their ‘final’ record. AI helped make it possible (AP) Artificial intelligence has been used to extract John Lennon’s voice from an old demo to create “the last Beatles record,” decades after the band broke up, Paul McCartney said Tuesday. McCartney, 80, told the BBC that the technology was used to separate the Beatles’ voices from background sounds during the making of director Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary series, “The Beatles: Get Back.” The “new” song is set to be released later this year, he said. Jackson was “able to extricate John’s voice from a ropey little bit of cassette and a piano,” McCartney told BBC radio. “He could separate them with AI. He’d tell the machine ‘That’s a voice, this is a guitar, lose the guitar.’ We were able to take John’s voice and get it pure through this AI so then we could mix the record.” McCartney described AI technology as “kind of scary but exciting,” adding: “We will just have to see where that leads.”

#headlines #news

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dan6085 · 1 year

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Here is a brief timeline of the history of Vietnam:

Prehistory:

- Archaeological evidence shows that humans have lived in what is now Vietnam for at least 30,000 years, with early civilizations including the Dong Son culture and the Sa Huynh culture.

2nd century BCE - 10th century CE:

- The region that is now Vietnam was part of the Chinese Han Empire for much of this period, with Chinese culture and language influencing Vietnamese society and politics.

- The Trung sisters led a rebellion against Chinese rule in 40 CE, but were ultimately defeated.

- In the 10th century, the Vietnamese kingdom of Dai Co Viet was established, with its capital at Hanoi.

Dai Co Viet was an early Vietnamese kingdom that existed from the 10th to the 11th century. It was founded by Ngo Quyen in 939 CE, after he defeated the Chinese Southern Han army at the Battle of Bach Dang River. The kingdom was known for its military strength, cultural achievements, and political stability.

- The name Dai Co Viet means "Great Viet of the Ancient Era," and it was intended to distinguish the kingdom from other Vietnamese states that existed at the time.

- The capital of Dai Co Viet was at Hoa Lu, in what is now Ninh Binh Province in northern Vietnam. The city was strategically located on the Red River delta, which allowed for easy access to both the sea and the interior of the country.

- The rulers of Dai Co Viet were known as the Ngo dynasty, and were succeeded by the Dinh and Le dynasties in the 10th and 11th centuries, respectively.

- Dai Co Viet was known for its strong military, which allowed it to defeat invading armies from China and other neighboring kingdoms.

- The kingdom was also known for its cultural achievements, including literature, architecture, and sculpture. Notable works from this period include the poetry of Li Ho and the Bich Dong Pagoda.

- Dai Co Viet was a Confucian state, with Confucianism becoming the dominant ideology and shaping many aspects of Vietnamese society and politics.

- The kingdom's decline began in the late 11th century, due to a combination of factors including political instability, economic pressures, and invasions from neighboring kingdoms.

The legacy of Dai Co Viet can still be seen in modern-day Vietnam, particularly in the country's cultural traditions and political institutions. The kingdom's emphasis on military strength and Confucian values helped to shape the identity of Vietnam as a nation, and its cultural achievements continue to inspire admiration and pride among the Vietnamese people.

11th-19th century:

- Dai Co Viet became known as the Ly dynasty in the 11th century, and later the Tran and Le dynasties.

- Vietnam experienced periods of occupation by neighboring kingdoms, including the Mongol Empire and the Ming Dynasty of China.

- In the 17th century, the Nguyen dynasty was established in the southern part of Vietnam, with its capital at Hue.

The Nguyen dynasty was the last ruling dynasty of Vietnam, which lasted from 1802 to 1945. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Gia Long and was known for its political and cultural achievements, as well as its conflicts with colonial powers.

- The Nguyen dynasty was founded in 1802, after Emperor Gia Long defeated the rival Tay Son rebels and united Vietnam under his rule.

- The dynasty was named after the Nguyen family, which had been a prominent political force in southern Vietnam for several centuries.

- The Nguyen dynasty was known for its political and administrative reforms, including the establishment of a centralized bureaucracy and the adoption of civil service exams for government officials.

- The dynasty also oversaw significant cultural achievements, including the construction of palaces, temples, and other architectural landmarks. Notable examples include the Imperial City in Hue and the Thien Mu Pagoda.

- The Nguyen dynasty faced several challenges during its rule, including conflicts with neighboring countries and colonial powers. Vietnam was occupied by France in the late 19th century, and the Nguyen dynasty became a French protectorate in 1884.

- The dynasty also faced internal challenges, including rebellions and uprisings by various groups, including the Black Flag army and the Boxers.

- The Nguyen dynasty came to an end in 1945, when Emperor Bao Dai abdicated the throne in favor of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, which was led by Ho Chi Minh.

The legacy of the Nguyen dynasty can still be seen in modern-day Vietnam, particularly in the country's cultural traditions and architecture. The dynasty's achievements in politics, administration, and culture continue to inspire admiration and pride among the Vietnamese people, and its conflicts with colonial powers are remembered as an important part of Vietnam's history and national identity.

- Vietnam became a French colony in the late 19th century, with French influence extending throughout society and politics.

20th century:

- Vietnam declared independence from France in 1945, with Ho Chi Minh becoming the country's first president. However, France continued to exert control over the country until its defeat in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954.

- Vietnam was divided into North and South Vietnam, with the communist North led by Ho Chi Minh and the South supported by the United States.

- The Vietnam War, a conflict between North and South Vietnam, lasted from 1955 to 1975 and resulted in the deaths of millions of Vietnamese people.

- In 1976, North and South Vietnam were reunified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, with Hanoi as its capital.

21st century:

- Since the end of the Vietnam War, Vietnam has experienced significant economic growth and development, with the country's economy becoming one of the fastest-growing in Southeast Asia.

- Vietnam has also become an increasingly important player in international politics and diplomacy, with the country hosting a number of high-profile events and conferences.

- However, Vietnam has faced criticism for its human rights record and limitations on political freedom and press freedom.

This timeline provides a brief overview of the history of Vietnam, but there are many more details and complexities to this story. Vietnam's rich cultural heritage and diverse political history have made it a fascinating and complex place, with a unique identity that continues to evolve and develop.

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narrative-critical-understanding · 3 years

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East-West dichotomy

In sociology, the East–West dichotomy is the perceived difference between the Eastern and the Western worlds. The division is more in regard to culture or social structures rather than geographical. Therefore, the boundaries of East and West depend on where the focus lies (in consideration to criteria, purpose, time).

[What follows below the cut are pieces of information from a few sources.]

Historically in sociological perspectives, Asia was regarded as the East, and Europe was regarded as the West.

Nowadays, some - let’s just say it: tends to be Westerners - see the "West" as divided into three categories: the core area, the marginal area and the area of Western influence. The core area consists of Australasia, Northern America and Western Europe.

The marginal area consists of Latin America and the Caribbean, the post-Soviet states, the rest of Europe and South Africa. However, the post-Soviet states are often grouped in the “East” despite perceived Western influence and there is debate as to whether Latin America as a whole is in a category of its own.

The alleged area of Western influence consists of countries which have either adopted or influenced by the Western culture, language, political system, religion, way of life or writing system. Some examples are Hong Kong, India, Israel and Japan. However, these areas may be still included in the “East”.

The “East” traditionally includes all of East and Southeast Asia, the Greater Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia. (Sorry for the Wiki link, but I won’t go in-depth into this.)

Unsurprisingly, the concept is criticized for example because of the difficulties in defining regions, generalizations, overlooking regional hybridity and resulting in “elite narratives” of those with power being more easily believed as the supposed representatives of many; in particular, the imperialist narrative of Western Orientalists.

As written by Edward Said in “Orientalism” (1978):

There is nothing mysterious or natural about authority. It is formed, irradiated, disseminated; it is instrumental, it is persuasive; it has status, it establishes canons of taste and value; it is virtually indistinguishable from certain ideas it dignifies as true, and from traditions, perceptions, and judgments it forms, transmits, reproduces.

This brings us to the origin of the concept - here from “The East-West dichotomy” by Thorsten Pattberg (2009):

Herodotus (484 BC–425 BC), the ‘father of history’ (Cambridge Dictionary, 1999), was possibly the first recorded historian who deliberately portrayed the ‘east’ (Persians) and the ‘west’ (Greeks) as mutual antagonists, thereby proposing the nucleus of all ancient history. Others, Thucydides (460 BC–400 BC), and Xenephone (430 BC–354 BC), similarly, found it natural to employ strong polarities and concentrate on the ‘otherness’ of the East, while accepting the necessity of resistance to external force by defining a Western ‘self’. Thus came into being the first system of the so-called East-West dichotomy.

In another part of the world, meanwhile, the ideas of Confucian China (551 BC–479 BC) and unification was beaten into the feudal states of the Eastern Zhou period (starting in 770 BC), spurred by the constant menace of invasion by exterior barbarians.

In parallel, the Aryan masters of the Indus Valley who had long merged with the Dravidian inhabitants started to unite the tribes and founded kingdoms (1500 BC–400 BC), and as a matter of survival against aggressors from the West created their own classical Indian culture and identity in opposition to the categorical otherness of the West.

This opposition is part of the concept’s naming itself because: “A dichotomy is any splitting of a whole into exactly two non-overlapping parts. Nothing can belong simultaneously to both parts.” [Wikipedia (2008)]

And yet, the concept is useful - as long as you keep the negatives in mind - because it offers an orientation. So as Edward Said wrote in “Orientalism”:

The secular world is the world of history as made by human beings. Human agency is subject to investigation and analysis, which it is the mission of understanding to apprehend, criticize, influence, and judge. Above all, critical thought does not submit to state power or to commands to join in the ranks marching against one or another approved enemy. Rather than the manufactured clash of civilizations, we need to concentrate on the slow working together of cultures that overlap, borrow from each other, and live together in far more interesting ways than any abridged or inauthentic mode of understanding can allow. But for that kind of wider perception we need time and patient and skeptical inquiry, supported by faith in communities of interpretation that are difficult to sustain in a world demanding instant action and reaction.

The more one is able to leave one’s cultural home, the more easily is one able to judge it, and the whole world as well, with the spiritual detachment and generosity necessary for true vision. The more easily, too, does one assess oneself and alien cultures with the same combination of intimacy and distance.

Better keep that in mind when looking at this one possible summarization where the East is characterized by “religious or spiritual sensibilities, familial social orders and ageless traditions” in contrast to Western "rationality, material and technical dynamism, and individualism."

How does seeing this as a complete contrast even make sense?

To give an example, in “After the end of conceit and theory: postcolonial critique of Western rationality” by Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha, which is a review of “The End of Conceit: Western Rationality after Postcolonialism” by Patrick Chabal (2012), the hubris of Western rationality is shown as the primary center of antagonism because of the pitfalls of Western hegemony. It examines the fallacies of Western reason and Western social sciences theories and “goes further, adressing contemporary controversies of human rights and democratic citizenship”.

The first chapter, ‘West and non-West ’, discusses how the West is suffering from a crisis of identity that requires those in the West explicitly to define who they are, and the problem is they think of who they are in terms of who they are not (pp 123 – 126). The idea that the world is divided between the two — West and non-West — permeates our thinking, and this dichotomous configuration prioritizes the Western model of rational progress into a privileged signifier, a privilege that generates Western conceit. Chabal’s book is a critique of this superiority logic and argues for the ‘end of conceit ’. The heyday of the superiority of Western rationality, Chabal claims, is under siege and its ill-founded hubris is under attack now, or is found wanting. Consequently Western concepts such as the universal discourse of human rights, secularism, democracy, etc are in question too. Western rationality seems to have reached the limits of its instrumental value.

The book divides the discussion into three segments — Rationality, Theory, and Thinking — and goes on to stress the need to re-examine the concepts that underlie everyday Western assumptions. The West equates the rational wholly with the secular, distinguishing it from religious beliefs. This extreme divide in Western thinking between rational and irrational makes Westerners individually and collectively schizophrenic. This book strives to ‘explain why our [Western] mode of thinking is a threat to our own rationality which is the foundation of our western societies. As we have become more secular […] we have lost the side of our personal and psychological makeup that answered to our spiritual needs [… It is, the book defines], ‘at heart a debate about the meaning of rationality (p 37).

Postcolonial theory attempted to subvert the West – non-West binary but the book critiques the current form of postcolonial theory, accusing it of being a mere offshoot or by-product of the same Western form of rationalism that fails to challenge the texture of Western rational paradigms.

The public exhibition of ethnicity by many in the form of the burqa, and other ritual fashions, is not always religious as is perceived in Western rational thought. The West needs to recognize the fact that ‘individuals’ are not ‘logical persons’ but the concatenation of many types of identities, each one of which evolves according to its own logic (p 177). Hence, immigrants identify themselves not as discrete persons as per Western assumptions, but as ‘communal individuals’ whose behaviour is primarily determined by the group (p 191). So what is problematic for the West is the presence of people who choose to identify themselves as ‘communal individuals’ in an individual-based society — the definition of which we now need to re-examine.

Akin to the idea of the individual comes the rethink/re-examination on the notion of the social as well. There is a realization today in the West that ‘society could no longer be seen merely as the agglomeration of the individuals who are its recognized members […] society could be seen no longer as the arena of free choice but as the expression of the socially acceptable limitations to the individual “pursuit of happiness”’ (p 196). Western societies are Christian in faith but secular in practice, and Western legislation, Chabal maintains, is fundamentally discriminatory against those who want to live their Islamic faith unhindered as individual citizens of Western societies in which they were born and chose to live. Contrary to Western rational belief, religion, the book asserts, continues to impinge greatly on our ethics, as is evident in the discussions about abortion, IVF, euthanasia, stem cell research and cloning, etc.

Yet, existing theories of hybridity have failed to do away with the assumption that the West is the best. The West continues to cast itself as the judge and the jury by extending its protection of theories of individual rights to the non-Western world, thereby redesigning its relation with the citizens of the rest of the world. A perfect postcolonial critique of this should be to uphold that non-Western countries have different norms and there is no one way of defining human rights, and, as the ‘end of conceit is upon us, Western rationality must be rethought’.

To sum it up generalized: Context matters.

Pattberg writes about the West and East “different mode of thinking”:

According to the universal historians Arnold J. Toynbee (1889-1975) Samuel P. Huntington (1927-) and Ji Xianlin (1911-), the world’s states form 21, 23 or 25 spheres, nine civilizations, and fall into four cultural systems: Arabic/Islam, Confucian, Hindi/Brahmin, and Western/Christian, with the former three forming the Oriental cultural system, and the latter one the Occidental cultural system (Toynbee, 1961; Huntington, 1993; Ji, 2006). The main difference between the Orient and the Occident, so people say, lies in their different mode of thinking: The East is inductive, the West is deductive.

西方文化注重分析，一分为二；而东方文化注重综合，合二为一. The West is deductive, from the universal to the particular; the East is inductive, from the particular to the universal. (Ji Xianlin, 2006)

Henceforth, the Orient’s search for universal formulas describing balance, harmony or equilibrium, for example 阴阳 (yin and yang) meaning two primal opposing but complementary forces.

By means of continuously inducing the universal, Confucianism, Taoism, Shinto, Hinduism and Buddhism – as a rough guide - all ultimately arrive at:

“All observed things are connected, therefore all things are one.”

In inductive reasoning, one induces the universal “all things are one” from the particular “all things” that are “observed”. The conclusion may be sound, but cannot be certain.

While the vigorous deductive West had to occupy foreign terrain, build churches and spread the Gospel, the inductive East entertained certain passivity, albeit with a long-term holistic world view:

“We firmly believe, no matter how long it requires, the day will be with us when universal peace and the world of oneness will finally come true.” (Ji Xianlin, 1996)

The West, on the other hand, separates God and the world. After all, we are not Him, but created by Him:

“Then God said, Let us make man in our image; in the image of God he created him”. (Old Testament, Gen 1;31)

Accordingly, in Western classrooms we teach an analytic ‘concrete reality’ based on conditioned textual analysis and interpretation of the world, rather than a holistic ‘absolute reality’ [...], the underlying deductive principle (as old as the Greeks themselves) being that:

"All observed men are unique. Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is unique."

In deductive reasoning, one deduces the particular “Socrates is unique” from universal “all men are unique”, relying on the premises “Socrates is a man” and “All men are unique”. The conclusion is sound and valid.

A world thus described by deductive reasoning reaches new conclusions from previously known facts ad infinitum. A world by inductive reasoning on the other hand allocates relations to recurring phenomenal patterns. We may call the former a “string of cause and effect”, whereas in the latter we see a “puzzle made of its parts”.

Accordingly, in the same way as some cultures hold belief in one, many, or no gods at all, they also have different ways of perceiving the world and reasoning about it: Western civilization became analysis-based while the Orient became integration-based.

I believe in this peculiar difference [...] Yet, I do not believe in some ideas of two mysterious forces bound for confrontation as in “Clash of civilizations” by Samuel P. Huntington (1993), nor do I believe that one is inevitably superior and the other necessarily inferior in accumulating either wealth or wisdom as in “The Protestant Ethic” by Max Weber (1930) or in “The Eastern Religious Mind” by Nishitani Keiji (1942). There has been a difference in the independent development of the two great cultural systems, deeply embedded from their earliest history, in symbiosis with their people, and arranged according to their cultural outlooks – deduction and induction. This is what I believe.

I will not go so far as Mazahéri to say they do only this and we do only that, nor will I claim that someone is definitely deductive in outlook just because he was born in London. It is not that easy. The making of every civilization’s treasures and contributions towards history is determined by its methodology for explaining the world’s phenomena according to its own experience and mode of rational interpretation: The East became more inductive while the West became more deductive – this appears to be born out by all the evidence.

So how does this play out in our society regarding the view of history?

According to the intrinsic powers of Western analytical reasoning over history, the East had to become westernized – gradually – by law of nature.

Similar to the extension of the universe, demonstrable after the discovery of the ‘Planck constant’ (Planck, 1901), or the direction of time, demonstrable by applying the ‘Special theory of relativity’ (Einstein, 1905), for the analytically-based West history has a qualitative nature. It has aim, it is progressive in nature, it can only improve in one direction, from a general (the universal) to a more complex stage (the particular), and advance with one truth only.

For the integration-based East on the other hand, what might be called ‘truth’ is given at any time (the ‘one’) and always justifiable through ‘being a part of the whole’. In other words, there are many truths, and the mere existence of the more inductive East as an alternative a priori to the more deductive West qualifies it to provide a genuine, believable non-Western experience of history: history as a non-directional but timeless tangible realm.

The integration-based East, for the greater part of its at least 5000 years of extraordinary civilization (in case of India and China, certainly even older), nurtured the importance of inductive reasoning ability by a strong emphasis on broadening all traditional knowledge, increased their culture’s memory-capacity, favored the ability to learn from analogy, and promoted high generalization skills (for example, in Asia, “yes” is the universal confirmative answer in formal dialog, even if ‘no’ is implied).

Generalized “East” view:

In the integration-based East, where knowledge comes from traditions, ancient concepts of the inductive Eastern ‘moral superiority’ vs. Western deductive ‘scientific superiority’ were soon identified as the nucleus of the East-West dichotomy and the struggle for the ‘Eastern soul’. By all means Western technology and ways of rational inquiry – the deductive way - had to be acquired in order to defend against Western imperialism, yet it was the humanitarian Eastern soul and its wisdom – the inductive way - that should guide the East.

In the latter half of the 20th century, just as the West aggressively propagated its own political values, so did the East. The ‘soul of Asia’ had to be internalized by each and every member of its collective Eastern societies obedient to a universal Asiatic ‘code of conduct’ (e. g. Confucian conduct) driven by the Eastern notion of ‘oneness’.

Finally, the spiritual East identified the material West as the sole competitor for everything that is worthwhile in life: culture, values, wealth and dignity. Yet, because of its inductive cognitive ways, the East could only perceive the West as the short-sighted, destructive force of millions of self-determined individuals who spread out and conquer nature and undermine the great harmony, constantly neglecting the oneness of all things, and dwelling in the minuscule particular. [...]

All of this lead to:

East and West [...] became competitors for better theories, with an Eastern affinity for hyperbole, gigantisms and holistic totality – the glorifications of idols and leaders, state-monopolies, authoritarianism, and autarchy [...]; and a Western affinity for an historical ‘sense of mission’ to dissolve and deconstruct the seemingly coherent Eastern cultures and take the lead [...].

Equilibrium of the two great cultural systems:

Fortunately, the Western fabricated fairy-tale of former Eastern ‘backwardness’ and Western ‘glory’ in this century now lies tattered and wrenched. In reality, Eastern and Western knowledge is fairly balanced and complementary, and always has been:

As Francis Bacon and James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879, mathematician and theoretical physicist) have sufficiently explained, ideally, the most sincere science is done today when both the inductive and the deductive methods find their due application. In some disciplines we prefer the inductive way – the arts; in many we tend to sway from side to side, like in sociology, archeology, psychology, philosophy – the humanities; in others we prefer the deductive way, like in mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry – the classical sciences, but ideally, induction and deduction should be used more balanced.

On a sidenote here; Sir Rev. Arthur Smith in his “The Chinese Characteristics” (1890) said, that “the Chinese mind absolutely must be algebraic, while the Western mind is arithmetical”.

This is what Amartya Kumar Sen, the 1998 Nobel Laureate in Economics, has to say about the two civilization modes and their views:

“There are two ways of thinking of the history of civilization in the world. One is to pursue the story in an inclusive form, paying attention to the divisions as well as the interdependence involved, possibly varying over time, between the manifestations of civilization in different parts of the world. This I shall call the ‘inclusive approach’.”

“The other, which I shall call the ‘fragmentary approach’, segregates the beliefs and practices of different regions separately, paying attention to the interdependences between them as an after thought (when any attention is paid to them at all).” (2006)

So the Western analytic-deductive mind tends to think of ‘deconstruction’ while the Eastern intuitive-inductive theories tend to be made with ‘oneness’ in mind.

Cultural evolution:

Although Aristotle’s analytical-deductive method (384-322 BC) and Confucius’ intuitive-inductive method (551-479 BC) seem purely accidental, singular, isolated incidents, but once they introduced those methods, one more logic-scientific, the other more intuitive-social, those two methods helped shaping their respective civilization, and unintentionally pushed them apart into two different directions.

The West searches for the power over nature (matter). The East searches for the power over man (mind). This is their equilibrium.

Truth and values:

The products of human reasoning are always artificial. Any original state immediately does not make much sense to us nor has not much use until it has been transformed or modified into an artificial state. There are only two modes of reasoning. Deductive reasoning will create the artificial product of certain but valueless truth. Inductive reasoning will create the artificial product of value but uncertain truth. The function of human reasoning is to produce two artificial things: truths and values

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Notes: It doesn’t mean that I agree with everything just because I list all of these sources down below.

(!) especially recommended

(-) not recommended for this topic; I think it would be more accurate to call it “Dismantling the Orientalist East-West dichotomy and insisting on a regional as well as global perspective while wanting to ‘exterminate’ the (in between) East-West perspective because of what it means for anthropology”. It has interesting information about Japanese anthropology and other kind of information though.

most sources (not necessarily included in the post):

Wikipedia: Dichotomy, East–West dichotomy, Western world, Eastern world, Orient, Orientalism, Occidentalism, Orientalism (book), Rationality; for quick introduction

Japan Society: What's the Matter with Saying 'The Orient'? - Christopher Hill

PDF: What We Mean by the West - Foreign Policy Research Institute - William H. McNeill; in order to have more perspectives

PDF: "The West": A Conceptual Exploration - European History Online - Riccardo Bavaj

(!) Internet Archive: The East-West dichotomy - Thorsten Pattberg (2009)

(!) zlibrary: Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (Penguin Modern Classics) - Edward W. Said (2003 version with preface and afterword)

-> from the viewpoint of Elif Notes:

https://elifnotes.com/summary-of-orientalism-by-edward-said/

https://elifnotes.com/edward-said-orientalism-definition-summary-analysis-quotes/

https://elifnotes.com/edward-saids-orientalism-flaws-and-weaknesses/

(!) Academia: After the end of conceit and theory: postcolonial critique of Western rationality - Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha (Postcolonial Studies, 2016, Vol. 19, No. 1, p.122 – 125; Review of “The End of Conceit: Western Rationality after Postcolonialism” by Patrick Chabal (2012))

(-) PDF Read Book Page: Dismantling the East-West dichotomy; essays in honour of Jan van Bremen - edited by Joy Hendry and Heung Wah Wong (2006)

#long post #sociology #culture #orientalism #east-west #east-west dichotomy #Edward Said is almost everywhere at least mentioned when it's about this topic #honestly - I wanted to quote way more from Thorsten Pattberg #I ended up making long quotes - I just can't think of writing it better (and not longer or too short and leaving sth. out)#I can't write these kind of posts...#I read more for this than for my term paper... back to my term paper...#east #west

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potteresque-ire · 3 years

Text

More ask answer about Word of Honour (山河令, WoH) and the so-called “Dangai 101 phenomenon” under the cut ~ with all the M/M relationships shown on screen, does it mean improved acceptance / safety for the c-queer community?

Due to its length (sorry!), I’ve divided the answer into 3 parts: 1) Background 2) Excerpts from the op-eds 3) Thoughts This post is PART 3 💚. As usual, please consider the opinions expressed as your local friendly fandomer sharing what they’ve learned, and should, in no ways, be viewed as necessarily true. :)

(TW: homophobic, hateful speech quoted)

Here are the key points I’ve picked up from these op-eds:

* The state believes Danmei can turn young people queer. * The state also believes Dangai dramas can turn young men “feminine” to suit the taste of Dangai’s young, largely female audience. * The state views queerness in both sexes, and androgynous beauty in men as negative traits. * The state is wary of Danmei and Dangai’s popularity and wishes to contain them as subcultures. * The state is particularly annoyed by how the Dangai dramas have achieved their popularity with CP-focused promotions and marketing tactics, in which the actors are involved and blur the line between fictional and real-life suggestions of queerness.

What do I think of, concerning the acceptance and/or safety of … everything, with the above opinions given by the state media about Dangai?

* For c-queers, I don’t think things are different from before—these op-eds didn’t change the big picture for me. The op-eds taking traditional BL characterisation for Dangai / Danmei means the state’s intended focus of the genres is not its queerness; this is not unexpected, as the established review system is supposed to have removed the show’s queer elements, and to characterise those elements as queer would be a critique against the NRTA.

While unpleasant, the veiled, antagonistic view towards non-traditional gender expressions and homosexuality isn’t new: the state has long believed popular culture can turn its young male audience “feminine”; the NRTA directive that bans homosexual content from visual media already makes clear its stance that homosexuality is, while not criminal, something that is Not Good in its eyes.

A (very) good thing that can be said, I think, is that none of the op-eds explicitly disapprove of the queer elements, the things that got away from being censored—of which there were, arguably, many in WoH. While Article O2a noted such “playing edge ball” (note the articles use this term to avoid mentioning “queer”), the comment right after was neutral / positive (“provide their audience with room for imagination”). Article O3, meanwhile, acknowledged that Dangai can be imitated by introducing suggestive atmosphere between male characters in their plot layout, thereby admitting that suggestive atmosphere between male characters in their plot layout is a defining trait of Dangai—and it didn’t say anything bad about it; the criticism was only for non-Dangai playacting Dangai.

This signals, to me at least, that Dangai can continue to be the cover for queer relationships to reach its audience for now — which is, perhaps, the best case scenario for continued queer representation on TV, given the current sociopolitical climate.

* For Danmei / Dangai, I’d also venture to say the genres are safe. Upcoming Dangais may need to undergo stricter / further reviews (if the rumours surrounding Immortality 皓衣行 are to be believed), and whether they can still achieve explosive popularity after such reviews remains a question; the genres themselves, however, will likely survive.

Article O1 was a very positive, very enthusiastic review of WoH; its determined focus on the show’s aesthetics (as TU’s review) signals to me that the state approved of the genre’s take on aesthetics—which, again, also includes the aesthetics of a world cleansed of its real problems, which also aligns with the NRTA’s directive on TV / web dramas to focus on the positives of life in the country (Previously translated in this post: D12: … They [Pie note: the dramas] cannot place too strong an emphasis on social conflicts, must showcase the beautiful lives of the commoners.). Article O2b was very critical at places, but actually tried to sever Danmei / Dangai from its major complaint, argued that the attention-grabbing gimmicks path was taken * instead of * aspiring to positively, proactively guide and display Danmei culture, therefore positioning Danmei on the “good side”. While Danmei was named a (bad) influence for potentially turning youths queer (and predator, by the cartoon) in Article O2a, no mention was made of eliminating the genre both in the same Article or its editorial (Article O2b). The focus was placed, instead, on the subculture’s “containment”, and how it has been broken for “Rot Culture” to reach mainstream. The implied solution to Danmei’s “bad influence”, therefore, was to re-contain rather than eliminate.

[Logically, of course, this makes little sense. Blaming Danmei on turning youths queer is already confusing correlation and causation—youths may be drawn to Danmei because they are queer, rather than Danmei turning them queer. Re-containment, meanwhile, suggests that the state, which isn’t a fan of gays, is okay with Danmei turning kids gay… as long as there aren’t a lot of kids.

However, I’m hoping to tease out what the state may do, not whether the state is logically sound.]

Article O3 had the harshest wording on Danmei—“the canon and the Rot Culture behind it still hides large amounts of pornographic, violent content…”; “this vulgar custom of “playing edge ball” as a means to tempt, to lead the audience into indulging in fantasies [Pie note: sexual fantasies implied by the idiom 想入非非] have spread from visual media production…” . Still, no word on axing the genre, only containment.

* For CP culture, specifically, actor-character based CPs that are promoted with the dramas: while I don’t see it on the chopping board yet, these op-eds are, I believe, warnings for those in charge of the promotion and marketing of the upcoming Dangai dramas to tread carefully. I find the reach of these warnings difficult to predict still, because these warnings can be genuine—as in, the government truly believes the CP-focused promotion and marketing tactics are morally objectionable—or they can be more for show, in that the true reason behind the warnings is that CP-focused promotions, which also put a heavy focus on in-drama candies, make the NRTA / censorship board look like a joke and the government had to put up some objections to save face.

In all cases, companies will likely need to talk to the government to nail down its stance. Whether to heed the warnings afterwards, tone down or eliminate the CP-focused promotions will require a thorough risk-benefit analysis. After all, CP culture appears to sits at the heart of the money-making machinery of Dangai dramas. The expenditure of fans is mainly to support their favourite actors and see their interactions, and money is, ultimately, what Dangai 101 is about.

Finally, for the sake of completion ~ how likely did these op-eds reflect the actual opinions of the state? Here are the sources of the articles:

Article O1: 上觀新聞, which is under Liberation Daily 解放日報, the official daily newspaper of the Shanghai Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.

Article O2: 半月談 Banyue Tan, a state-controlled biweekly magazine published by the Xinhua News Agency, the official state-run press agency of China.

Article O3: 光明日報 Enlightenment Daily, a newspaper associated with Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (中共中央機關報).

None of them are of the calibre of People’s Daily (official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party). However, they’re all very well-respected state-sponsored sources. Banyue Tan does require an asterisk ~ while affiliated with the Xinhua News Agency, the massive influence of which has earned it its nickname “the world's biggest propaganda agency”, Banyue Tan‘s authority on this particular issue of Danmei/Dangai has been somewhat undermined by a … strange (?) trivia to end this super long piece: the magazine has also been caught in the controversy surrounding 227. Due to its pro-TU, pro-Gg stance, antis have insisted there are Gg fans within its writer’s ranks, who have used the state-sponsored publication for their private, support-Gg purposes. To this day, the argument is ongoing—with the criticism of Danmei in Article O2 sparking another round of “discussion” due to its previous approval of TU—and the lead anti is a well-known international politics professor and CCP (Chinese Communist Party) mouthpiece named Shen Yi (沈逸), whose claim to fame was the US government cancelling his visa and denying him entry due to suspected espionage …

[Banyue Tan was not the only state-sponsored publication caught in 227′s cross-fire. This is one of the reasons why some political watchers have suspected 227 to have a political component, that some form of political power struggle was happening in the post-227 chaos and disguised as the fan war.

While the truth may never be revealed, one thing is for certain ~ fan wars are about the worst things fans can do for their favourite idols, by lending space for such veiled conflicts to happen, by lending the names of their idols / their idols’ fans to the actually warring parties who may not wish to reveal who they are.]

[Okay okay, I will shut up now :) ].

PART 1 PART 2 PART 3 <-- YOU ARE HERE

#pie metas #yizhan #bjyx

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thenightlymartini · 3 years

Text

Special Headcannon Week! (#67) APHRarePairWeek

@aphrarepairweek2021

Day 3: Culture

Sorry the Commieburger one is so short. Was running out of inspiration and I still have a final essay to finish for a college class before work starts this week for me.

Headcannon #67

Kimchiburger: This was based off of what I just learned today while browsing Youtube for ideas. You can find the video here.

America didn’t know that chopsticks differed between Korea, Japan, and China, and thought he could learn how to use them to surprise SK. He ordered a set online, not really thinking, and showed them off one night to SK. Well... SK at least gave him an A for effort, but had to break the news to him that they weren’t the right type. America didn’t believe him when he said chopsticks varied in style between countries. SK (with help from China and Japan who gave him physical examples of the chopsticks in question), had to do a side by side comparison of the chopsticks for America to notice their differences.

For example, the lengths vary, Chinese being longest, followed by Korean, then Japanese. Korea also typically uses heavier, metal chopsticks (though wooden is still somewhat common), whereas Chinese and Japanese use wood and are lighter. Korean chopsticks typically are flatter, versus the rounder Chinese, and the Japanese starts out flat and wider at the handles and come to more of a point near the tips. He had to explain that food dictated the styles and structures of the chopsticks, like Chinese food typically being greasier and bulkier (thus thicker sticks and wooden for easier grip) and having large amounts of side dishes that are farther away in group settings (thus longer), Japanese eating more fried fish (more precision based) and having less side dishes (thus the shortness of the chopsticks), and the Korean chopsticks being more of a middle ground. He also had to explain how it was difficult even for other Asians to try using other chopstick styles (he knows for a fact China and Japan hate using his chopsticks because they feel difficult to handle and can burn your hands and mouth due to the metal heating up, whereas he doesn’t like Chinese because they are longer and rounder, making him clumsy with them). He also had to explain their was different etiquette to using them per country, such as Japan being very particular about how you pick them up and can’t point with them.

America soaked up all of this information like a sponge. SK loves teaching him different cultural facts because America’s facial expressions are some of the most endearing. Like he just has this child like wonder that SK finds really refreshing.

Then America tried daring him to eat with the different style chopsticks. That was the one dare SK was willing to decline, along with adding a pointed comment about how his skills in the other chopsticks would be comparable to America’s complete lack of experience with them.

RusNK: Place I found about Russian etiquette is here.

Ever since they first met, they’ve always done cultural exchanges of some sort, whether purely discussions or through gift exchanges and diplomatic visits. Culture shock was a big obstacle for the both of them. Like, Russia is more just curious and simply gets confused in a child-like way when there is a cultural difference. NK, he’s used to being calculated and planning ahead, he can’t really do that when he doesn’t know the culture and is more prone to sidelining and observing to avoid conflict. The cultural conflict between the two of them almost put them on the wrong foot before the idea of a romance could even begin.

In Russia, it is a common greeting for a bone crushing handshake, and to hold direct eye contact while doing so (just don’t do a handshake over a threshold). It is also custom to bring a gift of some sort when visiting and to be on time (men typically bring flowers). So imagine NK’s shock and bewilderment upon the first few meetings back and forth between the two of them when he gets his hand nearly broken each time and has to struggle with figuring out where to look (cause direct eye contact is not okay in his culture), as well as then getting seemingly random gifts and flowers from a country he barely knows. Then imagine Russia’s suspicion because Russian’s don’t like insincerity, and NK was seemingly giving off all the warning signs and appearing really rude, which also caught him off guard as he is used to the politeness of Japan and China.

It took NK finally asking Russia one day if this was normal in his country for it to finally click for Russia that the Korean wasn’t trying to be rude and he had merely forgotten about cultural differences. Once the air was cleared and they began discussion similarities and differences that they realized they both click and jive together really well. Russian’s value sincerity, NK tends to be more straightforward and honest. Both have strong family values and extensive families tend to live under one roof. Neither culture is inclined to public displays of affection. The more they find out about each other, the more each realized that they were more similar than different, despite geographic distance and different cultural influences. It helped establish a strong base not only for their friendship, but also helped in the long run for a romance to begin.

Commieburger: Any kind of cultural exchange between these two often gets... dicey to say the least. Considering a lot of either’s culture somehow winds back to politics and government, it is very difficult to avoid arguments or awkward tension. It doesn’t mean they don’t try, though.

One of the biggest ways they exchange their culture with each other is through the arts. Music, art, cooking, gardening, you name it, they’ve done it at least once. There’s a lot about a country or culture that can be expressed in their almost pure form through the arts that are produced. NK often finds and plays old tunes from even older eras from time to time for America, and America cooks a lot of food that NK wouldn’t have known were popular or had such deep roots in America’s history (and were pretty tasty to boot). It’s a lot of these finer, simpler moments that the two bond together over; something that politics can’t tamper or taint for the two of them. A chance for new, positive memories of each other to blossom.

#aphrarepairweek2021 #hetalia #aph america #hws america #aph russia #hws russia #aph south korea #hws south korea #aph north korea #hws north korea #kimchiburger #rusnk #commieburger #amekor #im sang kyu

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somethingusefulfromflorida · 3 years

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If John F. Kennedy had not been assassinated, how long would he have lived for?

His father Joseph P. Kennedy lived to be 81, and his mother Rose Fitzgerald lived to be 104. Of his siblings who died of natural causes, Rosemary lived to be 86, Eunice 88, Patricia 82, Jean 92, and Ted 77.

JFK was chronically unhealthy, so he would probably skew low compared to his siblings. He was born in 1917, so he probably would have died in the mid-90s at the earliest. Can you imagine the Democratic Party if Kennedy were alive through the 70s and 80s? He would have been our Reagan, idolized even more as an elder statesman than he is as a martyr.

If he had survived his assassination, he almost certainly would have won re-election in 1964, would have passed the Civil Rights Bill and fought for de-segregation like LBJ did. Nixon probably would not have been elected president if Kennedy lived, either Kennedy, Jack or Bobby. He ran against JFK in 1960 and lost, then ran for governor of California in 1962 and lost again; at the time, California was a Republican stronghold, so it was a big deal that he lost in his own home state. Following that humiliating defeat, he threw a hissy fit, declaring that the media was the enemy of the people and threatening to leave politics altogether, “this is my final press conference, you vultures won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore!” Everyone thought his political career was ruined, but he managed to drag himself out of the hole he dug and back to the limelight by being a more appealing candidate in 1968 than Barry Goldwater had been in 1964. If JFK was still alive in 1968, the media would never stop comparing Nixon to him, and he would have been laughed out of the primaries.

It’s also important to realize that he only became president with 43% of the vote. Segregationist George Wallace ran a frighteningly successful third party campaign as a Dixiecrat (a conservative southern democrat, as opposed to the rising liberal wing from up north), receiving 14% of the vote and winning 5 states. If Kennedy had survived, his anti-segregationist policies would have made it impossible for Wallace to get any traction, so Nixon would have lost in 1968 anyway. Nixon and his main opponent Hubert Humphrey both got 31 million votes, but without Wallace running as a spoiler, Humphrey would have received a huge bump in both the popular an electoral college votes, almost certainly winning the presidency, though it’s uncertain if he would still have become the nominee in this version of 1968; he was LBJ’s Vice President, but if LBJ never became president, then Humphrey would have remained a Senator.

Maybe LBJ would have run in 1968, which would have hurt Wallace’s chances even more, as Johnson was a very popular southern Democrat. Johnson and Kennedy were not friends, there are rumors that Johnson blackmailed his way onto the 1960 ticket, and Kennedy’s secretary claimed years after he died that he would have replaced Johnson on the 1964 ticket with someone else, so I don’t know if a surviving incumbent Kennedy would have endorsed him in 1968. I’s likely that Kennedy would have endorsed his younger brother and Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, who would probably have survived his own assassination attempt just due to the butterfly effect; Sirhan Sirhan shot him for his support of Israel and the engagement of US troops in Palestine, but also because he was JFK’s brother. Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK for being anti-communist, which was also part of Sirhan’s motives in killing RFK. If JFK was never killed, the idea of political assassinations wouldn’t be as strong in the cultural zeitgeist, meaning it’s likely that Martin Luther King Jr and Bobby Kennedy both would have survived. MLK might have entered politics like AL Sharpton and John Lewis. Bobby would have run for president in 1968 or 1972.

The Democratic party was basically leaderless in our 1970s. Nixon won re-election in a landslide in 1972, and Jimmy Carter just barely eked by against Ford in 1976 because Ford lost all credibility when he pardoned Nixon for Watergate. If Kennedy assumed a leadership role in the 70s, it would have pushed the Democratic party into a much strong position going into the 80s. Ronald Reagan would have run earlier in this timeline; he was elected governor of California in 1966 and ran for president in 68, 72, and 76 before finally winning his party’s nomination in 80. Without Nixon and Ford, Regan would probably have run in 72 or 76, which means he would be the one who dealt with the Iranian Revolution, Oil Crisis, and Hostage Crisis, nuking his popularity and throwing a wrench in his economic plans, meaning he would be reviled rather than revered by the country. If Kennedy survived, there would be no Nixon, and a very different Reagan, meaning the entire last quarter of the 20th century would have gone differently,

How would the Cold War have ended if there was no belligerent Reagan followed by diplomatic Bush? Would Mikhail Gorbachev ever have come to power in the Soviet Union? He was chosen as the new leader in part because he was so young; his three direct predecessors had all died in office (Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko, the last two having only served about a year each). I can’t even picture the Soviet Union without Gorbachev. Kennedy wanted peace and conciliatory talks with Khrushchev, so perhaps relations would have normalized and the fight between capitalism and communism would have ended diplomatically instead of at the brink of war. Maybe the Berlin Wall would have fallen earlier, the Vietnam War could have been avoided or else won by the south, and the international space station would have gone up in the 80s instead of the 90s. With enough Gorbachev-esque reforms, the USSR might still exist today, in much the same way that the PRC still exists (China is capitalist in all but name, they only claim to be communist to “uphold the revolution”). Of course, without Gorbachev, such reforms would have been unlikely; Glasnost and Perestroika were overly ambitious, and his repeal of the Brezhnev Doctrine directly led to the fall of the Iron Curtain and the rise of democracy in Eastern Europe.

From Kennedy to Obama, the Democrats only elected southerners, so it’s likely that if Kennedy had survived the northern progressive faction would have been in a much stronger position in the 80s and 90s, meaning no Bill Clinton, which means no Republican Revolution under Newt Gingrich. Reagan still influences the GOP to this day, and he disappeared from the public eye immediately after leaving office because he brain was turning to mush. Imagine if the Democrats had a Regan-like figure to hold up, to model themselves after. Democrats are listless and leaderless, they’re not blindly loyal to whoever is in charge, so it would be a difficult sell to get them to all rally behind someone as divisive as Kennedy (because he WAS divisive; southerners HATED him, he only held the south because he had LBJ on his ticket), but were it to happen it would change the course of not just American history but world history over the last 60 years for the better.

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untamedunrestrained · 4 years

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The Untamed and Mo Dao Zu Shi

These past eight days have been surreal.

I have drowned so fully in this story that it feels like I am just surfacing.

On Valentine’s Day, fandom on tumblr reblogged this fanart of WangXian by qulfeeh and I was intrigued. The reblog was tagged with two important key words ‘Wangxian’ and ‘The Untamed’. In the brush of a few keystrokes I came across the Wikipedia page for a show known as the Untamed that was available on Netflix. The thing that stood out was that it was based on a BL novel and that both the very male protagonists were described as each other’s soulmates and somehow that was enough. So, I opened Netflix and after like a second of hesitation I started watching the show and I didn’t stop. I started at eight in the evening and I watched nine episodes in a row which basically meant I was up till five in the morning. What followed seems like a record for me. I finished all fifty episodes of the Untamed in under seventy-two hours.

I put hardly five minutes of thought into my decision to watch this story and ended up dedicating the past eight days straight. The first three days to the live action drama and the past five to reading the novel.

If it isn’t obvious this story is that good.

The Untamed

The Untamed is a first for me on so many levels. I have never watched a Chinese show before ever and that seemed extremely significant to me because China is actually a neighbouring country yet as far as my mind is concerned it might as well be on another planet. Which seems particularly odd considering shows from English speaking countries like the UK and the US are a staple for me which makes these countries feel so much closer though they are geographically on the other side of the planet. Of course, a major factor is the language barrier but another is the political scenario between our two countries and amazingly this show made me realise how much of an impact perceiving different cultures can have on your perception of their people. It has literally opened up a whole new world for me that I have just realised I have never taken the moment to discover. Well, considering this is me we are talking about, how appropriate, that it would be a drama based on a BL novel that unlocked this whole new world for me.

I have tried reading a Danmei novel before which was awful and it completely turned me off the genre but it did have a side effect of educating we about elements of a wuxia novel which made this xianxia world seem a little familiar but even if it hadn’t, I would have still been hooked.

It didn’t take long for The Untamed to find a new fan and I have been obsessing over it ever since.

The Untamed is an amazing drama which revolves around the love Lan WangJi and Wei WuXian have for each other and the plot is so intriguing that you wouldn’t be able to stop even if you tried (I didn’t because that thought didn’t even manage to enter my mind).

It’s a love story and that is undisputable for me, they don’t say it, it isn’t mentioned but there is this palpable force influencing events and you know they love each other. I have somehow really disregarded how much a show can show you stuff without ever explicitly stating it but The Untamed set me straight in that regard. I doubt anyone who watches the show would mistake it for anything but the love story it is.

Wei WuXian was an instant hit for me. He is a lovable, gregarious character always up to mischief but is someone who always wants to be on the side of justice and I have a weak spot for characters with a hard on for justice. He is just such a lively character who keeps smiling all the time that it’s just hard not to fall for him in minutes. His antics and his demeanour are so charming that you’re hooked. He would have easily been my most favourite character in any other drama that doesn’t have a Lan WangJi.

Lan WangJi is an amazing character. In a world, which has become increasing about everyone voicing their opinions (like I’m doing at present) it is hard to believe that people like Lan WangJi exist. People who are quiet, who don’t speak unless absolutely necessary. He is literally the embodiment of tranquillity and more important he is Wei WuXian’s hero. Like literally he protects him like he’s protecting his life which on second thought he definitely is.

I literally had second-hand embarrassment from how obviously romantic these two are.

Hands down the best thing I have watched in 2020 by far! The characters are amazing, the plot is intricate and it is so, so interesting. I watched almost fourty hours of this series non-stop and I don’t remember a single point where I felt like the story became boring for a second which now that I think about it is, is… astonishing. How can such a large drama be so engrossing? This isn’t binge-worthy there is literally no other way to watch the show!!!

Mo Dao Zu Shi

But after coming down from the high of the first seventy-two hours of being submerged in this world, I was reluctant to leave this world so much so that I didn’t even contemplate it. I had a wide variety of media to choose from. The story is based on a web series by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu that was made into a manhua, followed by an donghua, followed by an audio drama followed by The Untamed. It must speak to the universality of the story that the people are willing to read the same story in so many different formats, I know I’m not done.

But, high up on my list was the source material, one of the articles described the show as being extremely faithful to the novel, which made me want to jump on that wagon posthaste, and I agree whole-heartedly. I read the translation by Exiled Rebels Scanlations and what struck me was how the show and the novel were tonally the same. I had switched mediums but it didn’t feel like a different story or like I was reading different characters which is shocking because that’s literally how good the show was at translating words into video.

Differences

One of the startling things about the book is that it really ties up the plot neatly. There are tons of plot points that aren’t as completely resolved on the show as they are on the novel which I only ever realised after reading the novel. A lot of this had to do with how certain details of the plot are different. A classic example that the reason behind the scars on Lan Zhan’s back is different in the two. In the novel, LWJ whisks WWX away from the Nightless City after he massacres and pretty much beats-to-a-pulp the entire alliance of sects. LWJ then has to tend to WWX so they remain in hiding for three days. When cultivators from the GusuLan Sect finally discover the two, LWJ has to defeat all of them to keep WWX safe and that’s why he is given one whipping for every cultivator he defeated. Of course, since WWX dies on the battlefield in the show this couldn’t be the reason behind the scars so they have LWJ defend Burial Mounds which wasn’t all that fruitful considereing the LanlingJin Clan does end up with a lot of WWX’s artifacts, there was no point in defending Burial Mounds as he couldn’t have kept it up in the long run but him going to Burial Mounds after the massacre at Nightless City is important to ensure they story can credibly reveal Lan ShiZui to be A-Yuan. So, yeah differences, the show focuses on the Wen Clan and the Yin Iron while the novel doesn’t have the Yin Iron at all and focuses on Jin GuangYao. But, despite the differences the story still feels coherent between the two mediums mainly because the relationship between LWJ and WWX that is at the core of both remains central to the plot at all times.

The plot of the novel though is extremely intricate and the author does an amazing job of deconstructing it which makes it easier to understand what’s happening while the show in hindsight does get away with sweeping up certain loose ends.

Of course, the kisses and the sex are gone but I will gladly take that cliff scene in exchange. I was actually shocked that the novel actually doesn’t dwell on WWX’s first death at all. Like, we don’t even know how exactly he died in the novel and this was hsocking given how pivotal that cliff scene is in the show.

Characters

Surprisingly though a lot of the roles of side characters were expanded for the show, the novel seems to have delivered a better understanding of these characters. The biggest example for me being Jiang Yanli.

She has an elaborately expanded role in the show which does highlight how deep her bind with her brothers particularly WWX is but somehow she seems like a timid character among a bunch of very strong characters. What the novel does is that it gives you a very realistic picture of her, she might not seem like a significant influence on the story but her impact is far-reaching. The novel doesn’t showcase much of her character but the scenes that feature her in the book are some of the most poignant ones and incidentally those are the same ones that stand out in the show. I feel like novel did a better job of showing off her strength. While, in the show I couldn’t look beneath her timid demeanour the novel manages to showcase the strength of her love. She cares deeply and loves deeply and the novel manages to show you the courage it takes to love someone so deeply. I definitely admire her character more and in fact I’m kind of in awe that someone who appears so traditional was so awesome. It felt easy to dismiss her character but reading the author’s words made me realise that I would be very, very wrong in doing so.

Wei WuXian might be the luckiest guy in the world to have a shijie like her followed by a husband like LWJ who both seem very determined to spoil the hell out of him. I might be experiencing some jealousy right now.

The author somehow manages to imbue her characters with qualities that makes them real and unique. Like WWX forgetting everybody’s face which is a real world problem that I have never seen anybody suffer from in a novel but just the fact that WWX doesn’t immediately bring his old hang-ups in his subsequent meetings with side characters didn’t only have hilarious consequences but made everything that much more intriguing and credible.

This author also does an amazing job of flipping characters. There are very few villains who are black and white in this story. WWX himself is a character caught in the gray of it all, universally reviled for standing up for the right reasons. This is a theme throughout the show and the novel where bad characters might be good and good might be bad but the author endeavours to show us all sides to a character. While this most definitely applies to Jin GuangYao, I’m surprised with how it resonates with Xue Yang who’s relationship with Xiao Xinchen can only be characterized with the words “It’s Complicated”. I don’t actually know what to think of these two Xiao Xingchen was definitely betrayed but can we ignore the fact that he found himself a companion in Xue Yang his sworn enemy and Xue Yang’s feelings for Xiao Xingchen are enough to drive me crazy. This guy has no idea how frustrating he is, that piece of candy clenched in his fist will drive me crazy for the rest of my life. The entire Yi City Arc is a big mess of grey there are no whites and blacks and the show underscores that with this quote –

Once upon a time, there was a little child who liked sweets very much. But because he had no parents nor money, he could never have such things. So he’d been dreaming if only someone could give him a candy every day.

Don’t even get me started on the music that plays in the background when this quote is being narrated.

There are just so many amazing things about the show and the novel. I mean the show might have actually worked harder to make things more romantic and one scene that I’m surprised isn’t from the book is the lantern scene with both of them making pledges like that particular scene neatly underlined who WWX is and would become. The hand-fastening scene is also not from the book but then there are other scenes and other delights to be found in the novels.

This story is definitely worth reading and watching for years to come. If anyone has any apprehensions about the novel I will be glad to clarify but the everything about “The Untamed” and “Mo Dao Zu Shi” stand in the same breath.

#wangxian #the untamed #mo dao zu shi #the grandmaster of demonic cultivation #lan wangji #wei wuxian #jiang yanli #xue yang #xiao xingchen #posts #myposts #mo xiang tong xiu #the show which reminded me what it was like to be obsessed #once more

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freevoidkitty · 3 years

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WORLD’S LITERATURE

SOUTHEAST ASIA

Southeast Asia or Southeastern Asia is the southeastern subregion of Asia, consisting of the regions that are geographically south of China, east of the Indian subcontinent and north-west of Australia. Southeast Asia is bordered to the north by East Asia, to the west by South Asia and the Bay of Bengal, to the east by Oceania and the Pacific Ocean, and to the south by Australia and the Indian Ocean. Apart from the British Indian Ocean Territory and two out of 26 atolls of Maldives in South Asia, Southeast Asia is the only other subregion of Asia that lies partly within the Southern Hemisphere. Southeast Asia covers about 4.5 million km2 (1.7 million mi2), which is 10.5% of Asia or 3% of Earth's total land area. Its total population is more than 655 million, about 8.5% of the world's population. It is the third most populous geographical region in Asia after South Asia and East Asia. The region is culturally and ethnically diverse, with hundreds of languages spoken by different ethnic groups. Ten countries in the region are members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a regional organization established for economic, political, military, educational and cultural integration amongst its members.

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The region, together with part of South Asia, was well known by Europeans as the East Indies or simply the Indies until the 20th century. Chinese sources referred the region as Nanyang ("南洋"), which literally means the "Southern Ocean". The mainland section of Southeast Asia was referred to as Indochina by European geographers due to its location between China and the Indian subcontinent and its having cultural influences from both neighboring regions. In the 20th century, however, the term became more restricted to territories of the former French Indochina (Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam). The maritime section of Southeast Asia is also known as the Malay Archipelago, a term derived from the European concept of a Malay race. Another term for Maritime Southeast Asia is Insulindia (Indian Islands), used to describe the region between Indochina and Australasia. The term "Southeast Asia" was first used in 1839 by American pastor Howard Malcolm in his book Travels in South-Eastern Asia. Malcolm only included the Mainland section and excluded the Maritime section in his definition of Southeast Asia.[13] The term was officially used in the midst of World War II by the Allies, through the formation of South East Asia Command (SEAC) in 1943.[14] SEAC popularised the use of the term "Southeast Asia," although what constituted Southeast Asia was not fixed; for example, SEAC excluded the Philippines and a large part of Indonesia while including Ceylon. However, by the late 1970s, a roughly standard usage of the term "Southeast Asia" and the territories it encompasses had emerged.

Ethnic groups of Southeast Asia

The Aslians and Negritos were believed as one of the earliest inhabitant in the region. They are genetically related to the Papuans in Eastern Indonesia, East Timor and Australian Aborigines. In modern times, the Javanese are the largest ethnic group in Southeast Asia, with more than 100 million people, mostly concentrated in Java, Indonesia. The second largest ethnic group in Southeast Asia is Vietnamese (Kinh people) with around 86 million population, mainly inhabiting in Vietnam, thus forming a significant minority in neighboring Cambodia and Laos. The Thais is also a significant ethnic group with around 59 million population forming the majority in Thailand. In Burma, the Burmese account for more than two-thirds of the ethnic stock in this country, with the Indo-Aryan Rohingya make up a significant minority in Rakhine State. Indonesia is clearly dominated by the Javanese and Sundanese ethnic groups, with hundreds of ethnic minorities inhabited the archipelago, including Madurese, Minangkabau, Bugis, Balinese, Dayak, Batak and Malays. While Malaysia is split between more than half Malays and one-quarter Chinese, and also Indian minority in the West Malaysia however Dayaks make up the majority in Sarawak and Kadazan-dusun makes up the majority in Sabah which are in the East Malaysia. The Malays are the majority in West Malaysia and Brunei, while they forming a significant minority in Indonesia, Southern Thailand, East Malaysia and Singapore. In city-state Singapore, Chinese are the majority, yet the city is a multicultural melting pot with Malays, Indians and Eurasian also called the island their home.The Chams form a significant minority in Central and South Vietnam, also in Central Cambodia. While the Khmers are the majority in Cambodia, and form a significant minority in Southern Vietnam and Thailand, the Hmong people are the minority in Vietnam, China and Laos.Within the Philippines, the Tagalog, Visayan (mainly Cebuanos, Warays and Hiligaynons), Ilocano, Bicolano, Moro (mainly Tausug, Maranao, and Maguindanao) and Central Luzon (mainly Kapampangan and Pangasinan) groups are significant.

Culture of Southeast Asia

The culture in Southeast Asia is very diverse: on mainland Southeast Asia, the culture is a mix of Burmese, Cambodian, Laotian and Thai (Indian) and Vietnamese (Chinese) cultures. While in Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia the culture is a mix of indigenous Austronesian, Indian, Islamic, Western, and Chinese cultures. Also Brunei shows a strong influence from Arabia. Vietnam and Singapore show more Chinese influence[140] in that Singapore, although being geographically a Southeast Asian nation, is home to a large Chinese majority and Vietnam was in China's sphere of influence for much of its history. Indian influence in Singapore is only evident through the Tamil migrants,[141] which influenced, to some extent, the cuisine of Singapore. Throughout Vietnam's history, it has had no direct influence from India – only through contact with the Thai, Khmer and Cham peoples. Moreover, Vietnam is also categorized under the East Asian cultural sphere along with China, Korea, and Japan due to the large amount of Chinese influence embedded in their culture and lifestyle.

ARTS in Southeast Asia

The arts of Southeast Asia have affinity with the arts of other areas. Dance in much of Southeast Asia includes movement of the hands as well as the feet, to express the dance's emotion and meaning of the story that the ballerina is going to tell the audience. Most of Southeast Asia introduced dance into their court; in particular, Cambodian royal ballet represented them in the early 7th century before the Khmer Empire, which was highly influenced by Indian Hinduism. Apsara Dance, famous for strong hand and feet movement, is a great example of Hindu symbolic dance.

MUSIC in Southeast Asia

Traditional music in Southeast Asia is as varied as its many ethnic and cultural divisions. Main styles of traditional music can be seen: Court music, folk music, music styles of smaller ethnic groups, and music influenced by genres outside the geographic region. Of the court and folk genres, Gong chime ensembles and orchestras make up the majority (the exception being lowland areas of Vietnam). Gamelan and Angklung orchestras from Indonesia, Piphat /Pinpeat ensembles of Thailand and Cambodia and the Kulintang ensembles of the southern Philippines, Borneo, Sulawesi and Timor are the three main distinct styles of musical genres that have influenced other traditional musical styles in the region. String instruments also are popular in the region. On 18 November 2010, UNESCO officially recognized angklung as a Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, and encourage Indonesian people and government to safeguard, transmit, promote performances and to encourage the craftsmanship of angklung making.

WRITING in Southeast Asia

The history of Southeast Asia has led to a wealth of different authors, from both within and without writing about the region. Originally, Indians were the ones who taught the native inhabitants about writing. This is shown through Brahmic forms of writing present in the region such as the Balinese script shown on split palm leaf called lontar. The antiquity of this form of writing extends before the invention of paper around the year 100 in China. Note each palm leaf section was only several lines, written longitudinally across the leaf, and bound by twine to the other sections. The outer portion was decorated. The alphabets of Southeast Asia tended to be abugidas, until the arrival of the Europeans, who used words that also ended in consonants, not just vowels. Other forms of official documents, which did not use paper, included Javanese copperplate scrolls. This material would have been more durable than paper in the tropical climate of Southeast Asia. In Malaysia, Brunei, and Singapore, the Malay language is now generally written in the Latin script. The same phenomenon is present in Indonesian, although different spelling standards are utilised (e.g. 'Teksi' in Malay and 'Taksi' in Indonesian for the word 'Taxi'). The use of Chinese characters, in the past and present, is only evident in Vietnam and more recently, Singapore and Malaysia. The adoption of Chinese characters in Vietnam dates back to around 111 B.C., when it was occupied by the Chinese. A Vietnamese script called Chữ Nôm used modified Chinese characters to express the Vietnamese language. Both classical Chinese and Chữ Nôm were used up until the early 20th century. However, the use of the Chinese script has been in decline, especially in Singapore and Malaysia as the younger generations are in favour of the Latin Script.

EAST ASIA

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East Asia was one of the cradles of world civilisation, with China developing its first civilizations at about the same time as Egypt, Babylonia and India. China stood out as a leading civilization for thousands of years, building great cities and developing various technologies which were to be unmatched in the West until centuries later. The Han and Tang dynasties in particular are regarded as the golden ages of Chinese civilization, during which China was not only strong militarily, but also saw the arts and sciences flourish in Chinese society. It was also during these periods that China exported much of its culture to its neighbors, and till this day, one can notice Chinese influences in the traditional cultures of Vietnam, Korea and Japan. Korea and Japan had historically been under the Chinese cultural sphere of influence, adopting the Chinese script, and incorporating Chinese religion and philosophy into their traditional culture. Nevertheless, both cultures retain many distinctive elements which make them unique in their own right.

EAST ASIAN ARTS

East Asian arts, the visual arts, performing arts, and music of China, Korea (North Korea and South Korea), and Japan. (The literature of this region is treated in separate articles on Chinese literature, Korean literature, and Japanese literature.) Some studies of East Asia also include the cultures of the Indochinese peninsula and adjoining islands, as well as Mongolia to the north. The logic of this occasional inclusion is based on a strict geographic definition as well as a recognition of common bonds forged through the acceptance of Buddhism by many of these cultures. China, Korea, and Japan, however, have been uniquely linked for several millennia by a common written language and by broad cultural and political connections that have ranged in spirit from the uncritically adorational to the contentious.

SOUTH AND WEST ASIA

A region marked by social and cultural diversity, South and West Asia is also identified by its economic potential and growth. The region is valued for its supply of low cost goods, services and skilled labour to the global economy but at the same time, it is notorious for the payment of low wages, appalling working conditions and trafficking of labour. This changing economic landscape has had a corresponding impact on the social and geographic fabric of the region. Rural families are moving to cities and urbanization is creating mega cities with an increasing number of slums, poor sanitation and massive pollutions. Large infrastructure and development projects have led to increased forced evictions and displacement. India and Nepal are two of the highest ranking countries for child malnutrition in the world. In the Maldives, migrants represent almost one quarter of the population, creating major social challenges.

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Significantly, all nine members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation have civilian democratic systems of governance, however in some, key institutions remain fragile, democratic cultures remain weak and the military retains a powerful role. The status of ratification of international human rights instruments shows a good commitment among South Asian countries to the universally recognized human rights norms and standards. This is however nuanced by the introduction of reservations and interpretative declarations and delays in reporting to treaty bodies. The absence of adequate and effective national protection systems to ensure accountability is a common issue across South Asian States where torture, ill-treatment, corruption and impunity remain major concerns. Although six countries in the region have established national institutions, only half of them maintain “A” status and there is no regional human rights mechanism. In addition, manifestations of socially and politically entrenched discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, religion, gender, caste and sexual preference have rendered certain groups vulnerable and disempowered. Women are assuming new economic and social roles but continue to face deeply rooted discrimination and violence.

ANGLO-AMERICA AND EUROPE

Anglo-America (also referred to as Anglo-Saxon America) most often refers to a region in the Americas in which English is a main language and British culture and the British Empire have had significant historical, ethnic, linguistic and cultural impact. Anglo-America is distinct from Latin America, a region of the Americas where Romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese and French) are prevalent.

The Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections has considerable holdings in Anglo-American literature from the 17th century onward, with notable strengths in the 18th century, Romanticism, and the Victorian and modern periods. Among the seventeenth-century holdings is a complete set of the Shakespeare folios, and works by John Milton and his contemporaries. Eighteenth-century highlights include near comprehensive printed collections of Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope, and substantial holdings on John Dryden, Samuel Johnson, Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele, William Cowper, Fanny Burney, and others. Related materials include complete runs of periodicals, such as the Spectator and the Tatler. The Division’s book holdings are also especially rich in the literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Cornell Wordsworth Collection, the second largest Wordsworth collection in the world, documents the Romantic movement in detail. All the major “standard” authors of the Victorian and modern periods, such as Charles Dickens, George Eliot, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, et al., are well represented. In addition, the library’s holdings in Victorian fiction include scarce works by many popular women authors of the time, such as Elizabeth Gaskell, Maria Edgeworth, Marie Corelli, Ouida, and Helen Mathers. The collection also includes many popular literary genres such as gift annuals, dime novels, railroad novels, and yellowbacks, as well as the small literary magazine of the 1920s and 1930s. The modern collection features strong collections of manuscripts and books by George Bernard Shaw, Rudyard Kipling, Ford Madox Ford, Wyndham Lewis, and James Joyce. In support of RMC’s Human Sexuality Collection, the rare book collections feature especially strong representations of literary works by gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender writers, such as Oscar Wilde, Christopher Isherwood, Vita Sackville-West, Radclyffe Hall, E.M. Forster, W.H. Auden, Ronald Firbank, Edith Sitwell, Elizabeth Bowen, Jan Morris, and others. The collection’s strengths in more recent British literature include the works of Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Philip Larkin, and Doris Lessing, to name just a few.

AFRICA

Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area and 20% of its land area. With 1.3 billion people as of 2018, it accounts for about 16% of the world's human population. Africa's population is the youngest amongst all the continents; the median age in 2012 was 19.7, when the worldwide median age was 30.4. Despite a wide range of natural resources, Africa is the least wealthy continent per capita, in part due to geographic impediments, legacies of European colonization in Africa and the Cold War,undemocratic rule and deleterious policies. Despite this low concentration of wealth, recent economic expansion and the large and young population make Africa an important economic market in the broader global context.

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Early human civilizations, such as Ancient Egypt and Phoenicia emerged in North Africa. Following a subsequent long and complex history of civilizations, migration and trade, Africa hosts a large diversity of ethnicities, cultures and languages. The last 400 years have witnessed an increasing European influence on the continent. Starting in the 16th century, this was driven by trade, including the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, which created large African diaspora populations in the Americas. In the late 19th century, European countries colonized almost all of Africa, extracting resources from the continent and exploiting local communities; most present states in Africa emerged from a process of decolonisation in the 20th century.

LATIN AMERICA

Latin America is a group of countries and dependencies in the Western Hemisphere where Romance languages such as Spanish, Portuguese, and French are predominantly spoken. Some subnational regions such as Quebec and parts of the United States where Romance languages are primarily spoken are not included due to the countries as a whole being a part of Anglo America (an exception to this is Puerto Rico, which is almost always included within the definition of Latin America despite being a territory of the United States). The term is broader than categories such as Hispanic America which specifically refers to Spanish-speaking countries or Ibero-America which specifically refers to both Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries. The term is also more recent in origin.

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The term "Latin America" was first used in an 1856 conference with the title "Initiative of America. Idea for a Federal Congress of the Republics" (Iniciativa de la América. Idea de un Congreso Federal de las Repúblicas), by the Chilean politician Francisco Bilbao. The term was further popularised by French emperor Napoleon III's government in the 1860s as Amérique latine to justify France's military involvement in Mexico and try to include French-speaking territories in the Americas such as French Canada, French Louisiana, or French Guiana, in the larger group of countries where Spanish and Portuguese languages prevailed.

Origins

There is no universal agreement on the origin of the term Latin America. Some historians[citation needed] believe that the term was created by geographers in the 16th century to refer to the parts of the New World colonized by Spain and Portugal, whose Romance languages derive from Latin. Others argue that the term arose in 1860s France during the reign of Napoleon III, as part of the attempt to create a French empire in the Americas.[11] The idea that a part of the Americas has a linguistic affinity with the Romance cultures as a whole can be traced back to the 1830s, in the writing of the French Saint-Simonian Michel Chevalier, who postulated that this part of the Americas was inhabited by people of a "Latin race", and that it could, therefore, ally itself with "Latin Europe", ultimately overlapping the Latin Church, in a struggle with "Teutonic Europe", "Anglo-Saxon America" and "Slavic Europe"

In 1804, Haiti became the first Latin American nation to gain independence, following a violent slave revolt led by Toussaint L'ouverture on the French colony of Saint-Domingue. The victors abolished slavery. Haitian independence inspired independence movements in Spanish America. y the end of the eighteenth century, Spanish and Portuguese power waned on the global scene as other European powers took their place, notably Britain and France. Resentment grew among the majority of the population in Latin America over the restrictions imposed by the Spanish government, as well as the dominance of native Spaniards (Iberian-born Peninsulares) in the major social and political institutions. Napoleon's invasion of Spain in 1808 marked a turning point, compelling Criollo elites to form juntas that advocated independence. Also, the newly independent Haiti, the second oldest nation in the New World after the United States, further fueled the independence movement by inspiring the leaders of the movement, such as Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla of Mexico, Simón Bolívar of Venezuela and José de San Martín of Argentina, and by providing them with considerable munitions and troops.Fighting soon broke out between juntas and the Spanish colonial authorities, with initial victories for the advocates of independence. Eventually, these early movements were crushed by the royalist troops by 1810, including those of Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla in Mexico in the year 1810. Later on Francisco de Miranda in Venezuela by 1812. Under the leadership of a new generation of leaders, such as Simón Bolívar "The Liberator", José de San Martín of Argentina, and other Libertadores in South America, the independence movement regained strength, and by 1825, all Spanish America, except for Puerto Rico and Cuba, had gained independence from Spain. In the same year in Mexico, a military officer, Agustín de Iturbide, led a coalition of conservatives and liberals who created a constitutional monarchy, with Iturbide as emperor. This First Mexican Empire was short-lived, and was followed by the creation of a republic in 1823.

by; MICHELL ANN C. CATALAN

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eruiet · 3 years

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WORLD’S LITERATURE

Southeast Asia

From the point of view of its “classical” literatures, Southeast Asia can be divided into three major regions: (1) the Sanskrit region of Cambodia and Indonesia; (2) the region of Burma where Pali, a dialect related to Sanskrit, was used as a literary and religious language; and (3) the Chinese region of Vietnam. There are no examples of Chinese literature written in Vietnam while it was under Chinese rule (111 BC–AD 939); there are only scattered examples of Sanskrit inscriptions written in Cambodia and Indonesia; yet most of the literary works produced at the court of Pagan in Burma (flourished c. 1049–1300) have survived because the texts were copied and recopied by monks and students. But in the 14th–15th centuries, vernacular literatures suddenly emerged in Burma and Java, and a “national” literature appeared in Vietnam. The reasons behind the development of each were the same: a feeling of nationalistic pride at the final defeat of Kublai Khan’s invasions, the desire of the people to find solace in literature amidst change and struggles for power, and the lack of wealth and patronage to channel artistic expression into building temples and tombs. In Vietnam and Java literary activity centred on the courts; but in Burma the first writers were the monks and, later, the laymen educated in their monasteries. In the new Burmese kingdom of Ava (flourished after 1364), the Shan kings were proud of their Burmese Buddhist culture, and they appointed the new writers into royal service, with the result that courtiers became writers also. The Tai kings of Laos and Siam led their courts in learning Pali from the Mon, whom they had conquered, and Sanskrit from the Khmer, whom they harassed; nevertheless, seized with national pride and influenced by the Burmese example, they developed their own vernacular literature. But Cambodia itself declined. Although the monks in the Theravada Buddhist (i.e., the Southeast Asian form of Buddhism) monasteries produced a few works in Pali, no vernacular literature emerged until finally Khmer-speaking people (those living in the area comprised approximately of modern Cambodia) were borrowing many words from the Tai.For its vernacular literatures, Southeast Asia can be divided into (1) Burma; (2) Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia; (3) Vietnam; (4) Malaysia and Indonesia; and (5) the Philippines (which produced a vernacular literature only in the 20th century, after the imposed Spanish and English languages and literatures had made their impact).

East Asia

East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms.The modern states of East Asia include China, Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. The East Asian states of China, North Korea, South Korea and Taiwan are all unrecognized by at least one other East Asian state due to severe ongoing political tensions in the region, specifically the division of Korea and the political status of Taiwan. Hong Kong and Macau, two small coastal quasi-dependent territories located in the south of China, are officially highly autonomous but are under de jure Chinese sovereignty. North Asia borders East Asia’s north, Southeast Asia the south, South Asia the southwest and Central Asia the west. To the east is the Pacific Ocean and to the southeast is Micronesia (a Pacific Ocean island group, classified as part of Oceania). Countries such as Singapore and Vietnam are also considered a part of the East Asian cultural sphere due to its cultural, religious, and ethnic similarities. East Asia was one of the cradles of world civilisation, with China developing its first civilizations at about the same time as Egypt, Babylonia and India. China stood out as a leading civilization for thousands of years, building great cities and developing various technologies which were to be unmatched in the West until centuries later. The Han and Tang dynasties in particular are regarded as the golden ages of Chinese civilization, during which China was not only strong militarily, but also saw the arts and sciences flourish in Chinese society. It was also during these periods that China exported much of its culture to its neighbors, and till this day, one can notice Chinese influences in the traditional cultures of Vietnam, Korea and Japan. Korea and Japan had historically been under the Chinese cultural sphere of influence, adopting the Chinese script, and incorporating Chinese religion and philosophy into their traditional culture. Nevertheless, both cultures retain many distinctive elements which make them unique in their own right. East Asian Writers

South and West Asia

In the Hellenistic period literature and culture flourished in Western Asia. Traditional literary forms such as lists continued to be produced by the native population and were adapted by the new rulers. While there is little evidence for the creation of new narrative literature, which may in part be due to the fragmentary nature of our sources, existing epics, wisdom texts, and folktales were retold, rewritten, and transmitted. Greeks living in Western Asia created historiographical, ethnographical, and geographical works about their surroundings, inspiring in turn the Babylonian priest Berossus to write a reference work on Babylonia in Greek. Much as during the Persian Empire, political instability and changes in power led to a diverse and independent culture of writing. Continuity in all genres, writing systems, and languages remains the most important characteristic of Western Asian literature at least to the beginning of the Christian era. Artists of western Asia are heirs to the first civilizations known to man, and their landscape is rich with examples of art, from the first human-form statues to Islamic and modern art. In the twentieth century, artists borrowed elements from their respective ancient patrimonies in an effort to create a national and regional cultural identity. Several artists’ groups formed between the 1930s and ’60s adopted European artistic modes of expression to produce works inspired by their heritage and by a rapidly disappearing landscape victim to urban migration and industrialization. This trend was most evident in Iraq, Jordan, and, to a limited extent, Israel and the Arabian Peninsula. Each country had its unique stages of development characterizing its artistic production, forging a synthesis of ancient western Asian cultures and Western styles. This unique synthesis is represented in the work of the Baghdad Modern Art Group in Iraq, and the Jewish Bezalel school of the early 1920s in Jerusalem. Jewish artists, traumatized by the Holocaust, rejected their European roots and turned to “Canaanite” myths and symbols in their quest for a national Hebrew identity. At the dawn of the twentieth century, life in many villages of western Asia had much in common with ancient life. Intrigued by this reflection of their heritage, artists depicted idyllic scenes of village life in areas such as the marshes of southern Iraq, a region ravaged in the 1980s when Saddam Hussein’s regime drained the wetlands and relocated the inhabitants.

Anglo-America and Europe

The Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections has considerable holdings in Anglo-American literature from the 17th century onward, with notable strengths in the 18th century, Romanticism, and the Victorian and modern periods. Among the seventeenth-century holdings is a complete set of the Shakespeare folios, and works by John Milton and his contemporaries. Eighteenth-century highlights include near comprehensive printed collections of Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope, and substantial holdings on John Dryden, Samuel Johnson, Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele, William Cowper, Fanny Burney, and others. Related materials include complete runs of periodicals, such as the Spectator and the Tatler. The history and literature of Continental Europe has been a specialty of the Newberry since its beginning, but like many other such broad fields, there are particular areas of great strength and others that are less well developed.In general, materials concerning Central and Western Europe from the fourteenth century to the end of the Napoleonic era are in scope for the library. Italy, France, and Germany are best represented. The Spanish and Portuguese collections tend to emphasize the imperial experiences of those countries but include major literary works, religious history, and pamphlets in abundance. There are significant but less extensive collections for Switzerland, Austria, the Low Countries, and some other areas. Literature and cultural history are strongest, including politics, theology, Romance and Germanic philology, education, and the classics. Philosophy, fine arts, architecture, law, and the natural sciences are more unevenly included, though the library owns many important individual works in these fields.In recent years, we have added only original sources in their original form, reference guides, bibliographies, textual editions, and a select number of monographs. The retrospective collections are also strong in monographs and scholarly periodicals. The Newberry does not systematically acquire new monographs or microform sets for European history and literature.

Africa

African literature, the body of traditional oral and written literatures in Afro-Asiatic and African languages together with works written by Africans in European languages. Traditional written literature, which is limited to a smaller geographic area than is oral literature, is most characteristic of those sub-Saharan cultures that have participated in the cultures of the Mediterranean. In particular, there are written literatures in both Hausa and Arabic, created by the scholars of what is now northern Nigeria, and the Somali people have produced a traditional written literature. There are also works written in Geʿez (Ethiopic) and Amharic, two of the languages of Ethiopia, which is the one part of Africa where Christianity has been practiced long enough to be considered traditional. Works written in European languages date primarily from the 20th century onward. The literature of South Africa in English and Afrikaans is also covered in a separate article, South African literature. See also African theatre. The relationship between oral and written traditions and in particular between oral and modern written literatures is one of great complexity and not a matter of simple evolution. Modern African literatures were born in the educational systems imposed by colonialism, with models drawn from Europe rather than existing African traditions. But the African oral traditions exerted their own influence on these literatures.

New books by African writers you should read

Latin America

Latin American literature consists of the oral and written literature of Latin America in several languages, particularly in Spanish, Portuguese, and the indigenous languages of the Americas as well as literature of the United States written in the Spanish language. It rose to particular prominence globally during the second half of the 20th century, largely due to the international success of the style known as magical realism. As such, the region's literature is often associated solely with this style, with the 20th Century literary movement known as Latin American Boom, and with its most famous exponent, Gabriel García Márquez. Latin American literature has a rich and complex tradition of literary production that dates back many centuries. The Latino community has always excelled in its contributions to different academic fields, including the arts! When it comes to literature, there’s no exception. Some Latin American authors, whether they be poets, novelists or essayists, have influenced the world of writing with their creativity and originality.Since 1940, when Latin American literature has become an important reference in universal literature. Nowadays it continues to grow thanks to its various movements such as realism, antinovel and magical realism.Literature is an important part of Hispanic culture. Therefore, it is important to remember great figures of literature who, thanks to their creativity and originality in their writings, have achieved worldwide recognition and admiration. Listed below are some of the big names that have revolutionized Latin American literature:

by: Dominic Christian P. Cariaga

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warsofasoiaf · 4 years

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It seems like your being a bit extreme about Sanders "praising" dictators. Maybe I'm not finding the more inflammatory remarks, but it seems like he's doing some necessary pushback on the "leftist equals always bad" cultural touchstone in the US by trying to point to how good ideas are still good ideas even if a bad person or regime had them. "We condemn him for (imprisoning dissidents)" paired with "I like having a literacy program" is a lot different than Trump praising in humane practices.

There isn’t a “leftist equals always bad” cultural touchstone in the United States. Bernie Sanders never would have been able to run as a frontunner in the United States presidential election if there was one. There is lingering antipathy towards socialism and communism, primarily though not exclusively from the Cold War, but that’s not the same thing. Left-wing movements of various different stripes have had varying degrees of popularity within the United States over the course of history. Various schools of Keynes went into and out of popularity over the course of the United States, there were communes even going back to the early history of the country. There have been trade unionist movements, civil rights movements going from abolitionism to the more modern contemporary movements of suffrage. Leftist ideas have been adopted by cultural and counter-cultural icons, they have been mixed, they have had compromises made, they have had both subtle and overt influence on policy.

Now, communism certainly never has been very popular in the United States, the American Communist Party only ever numbered roughly 100,000 strong or so in the 1940′s. Socialism struggled to catch on in the United States in ways that it didn’t within Europe or Latin America; the reasons for which are of no small debate among political historians, leftist writers, and talking heads. Mistaking socialism and communism as all that “leftism” is, in my view, a remarkable reduction of the left-wing movement and the ideas it espouses. I don’t blame people for it, though. I blame it on an overly reductionist binary spectrum, the natural need for simplification of a complex topic, and political movements that either seek to transform the meaning of words for desired political ends. Right-wing elements of the United States have a rather infamous history of terming something they oppose “socialism” in the hopes that it evoked reflexive antipathy to get votes and donations to stop it, left-wing movement have tried to name everything that a government does that’s remotely positive as “socialism” in the hopes of promoting sympathy for their own causes, which translates to votes and donations. End result is the same, more fuel for the political movement, more tribalism, more obscurity, more idiocy.

Getting off topic, so back to Sanders. I don’t believe a word of “he had a literacy movement” to be sincere. Batista also established a literacy program in Cuba; before Castro Cuba had already boasted an impressively high literacy rate compared to the region. Sanders won’t praise Batista for that (to make it plain, I do not expect anyone to praise Batista, the only thing greater than the cruelty of his regime was the corruption). Only left-wing dictators get this sort of treatment for him; it is only these individuals who are capable of having redeeming qualities deserving of praise in their brutal, repressive regimes. Sanders tries to divorce the statements he makes from this crucial piece of context, but political statements don’t work that way. His excuse would be more credible if he hadn’t been consistently denying and minimizing the various illiberal and human rights violations of left-wing dictators; it’s arguably been his most consistent stance on foreign policy dating back to his mayoral days. Sanders’s on-the-record conduct on Ortega alone is sickening, from supporting opposition press censorship in a for real Godwin’s law fallacy to angrily cutting off reporters for bringing up Ortega’s shootings and bombings of indigenous populations, Sanders has had an unfortunate history of praising terrible conduct among his ideological allies and calling it virtue.

Sanders’s treatment of Castro is better explained by the idea that he’s invested so much of himself in opposition to US policy in Latin America during the Cold War that he reflexively praises those who are identified with his movement. It’s a common symptom of tribalism, the need to glorify the tribe and assert their inherent superiority. Tribal movements are built on this idea (it’s one of the chief reasons I despise them), to not feed is to endanger the movement. When members of the tribe are discovered to be monstrous, they must either be outed as not “true members” by highlighting their deviancy as proof that they never really belonged, or by minimizing their actions and emphasizing the positive aspects of the person in areas they were compliant with the movement. This is a twofold tactic, it absolves the movement by placing fault within personal shortcomings of people in question, and it asserts that even flawed members of the tribe are in some ways aspects of this idea of inherent tribal superiority. Castro really can’t be divested from the movement, so Sanders must find ways to praise him to follow the latter technique. Whether this is a sincere belief in the need to glorify an aspect of himself or a cynical understanding to feed the tribal movement backing him I couldn’t say, that’s the pop-pysch diagnosis behind his praise of Castro as I see it.

To keep with the Cold War analogy, Sanders’s statements on Castro’s literacy program fails in a reverse of the “Nixon goes to China” idea of foreign policy. Coming from anyone else, it might be just a statement, even if it’s politically-motivated, that’s certainly how it seemed coming from Obama when evaluated against the context of his foreign policy goals. Coming from a guy like Sanders though, it sounds dishonest because he has no credibility in this domain, it’s a hollow excuse and should be treated as the drivel it is.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

#modern politics #bernie sanders

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stumpyjoepete · 4 years

Link

Reasonably interesting Cowen post. I think it’s at least noticing something important. Pull quoting it all, so you can be spared the temptation to gaze upon the hive of scum and villainy that is the MR comment section:

Having tracked the libertarian “movement” for much of my life, I believe it is now pretty much hollowed out, at least in terms of flow. One branch split off into Ron Paul-ism and less savory alt right directions, and another, more establishment branch remains out there in force but not really commanding new adherents. For one thing, it doesn’t seem that old-style libertarianism can solve or even very well address a number of major problems, most significantly climate change. For another, smart people are on the internet, and the internet seems to encourage synthetic and eclectic views, at least among the smart and curious. Unlike the mass culture of the 1970s, it does not tend to breed “capital L Libertarianism.” On top of all that, the out-migration from narrowly libertarian views has been severe, most of all from educated women.

There is also the word “classical liberal,” but what is “classical” supposed to mean that is not question-begging? The classical liberalism of its time focused on 19th century problems — appropriate for the 19th century of course — but from WWII onwards it has been a very different ballgame.

Along the way, I believe the smart classical liberals and libertarians have, as if guided by an invisible hand, evolved into a view that I dub with the entirely non-sticky name of State Capacity Libertarianism. I define State Capacity Libertarianism in terms of a number of propositions:

1. Markets and capitalism are very powerful, give them their due.

2. Earlier in history, a strong state was necessary to back the formation of capitalism and also to protect individual rights (do read Koyama and Johnson on state capacity). Strong states remain necessary to maintain and extend capitalism and markets. This includes keeping China at bay abroad and keeping elections free from foreign interference, as well as developing effective laws and regulations for intangible capital, intellectual property, and the new world of the internet. (If you’ve read my other works, you will know this is not a call for massive regulation of Big Tech.)

3. A strong state is distinct from a very large or tyrannical state. A good strong state should see the maintenance and extension of capitalism as one of its primary duties, in many cases its #1 duty.

4. Rapid increases in state capacity can be very dangerous (earlier Japan, Germany), but high levels of state capacity are not inherently tyrannical. Denmark should in fact have a smaller government, but it is still one of the freer and more secure places in the world, at least for Danish citizens albeit not for everybody.

5. Many of the failures of today’s America are failures of excess regulation, but many others are failures of state capacity. Our governments cannot address climate change, much improve K-12 education, fix traffic congestion, or improve the quality of their discretionary spending. Much of our physical infrastructure is stagnant or declining in quality. I favor much more immigration, nonetheless I think our government needs clear standards for who cannot get in, who will be forced to leave, and a workable court system to back all that up and today we do not have that either.

Those problems require state capacity — albeit to boost markets — in a way that classical libertarianism is poorly suited to deal with. Furthermore, libertarianism is parasitic upon State Capacity Libertarianism to some degree. For instance, even if you favor education privatization, in the shorter run we still need to make the current system much better. That would even make privatization easier, if that is your goal.

6. I will cite again the philosophical framework of my book Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals.

7. The fundamental growth experience of recent decades has been the rise of capitalism, markets, and high living standards in East Asia, and State Capacity Libertarianism has no problem or embarrassment in endorsing those developments. It remains the case that such progress (or better) could have been made with more markets and less government. Still, state capacity had to grow in those countries and indeed it did. Public health improvements are another major success story of our time, and those have relied heavily on state capacity — let’s just admit it.

8. The major problem areas of our time have been Africa and South Asia. They are both lacking in markets and also in state capacity.

9. State Capacity Libertarians are more likely to have positive views of infrastructure, science subsidies, nuclear power (requires state support!), and space programs than are mainstream libertarians or modern Democrats. Modern Democrats often claim to favor those items, and sincerely in my view, but de facto they are very willing to sacrifice them for redistribution, egalitarian and fairness concerns, mood affiliation, and serving traditional Democratic interest groups. For instance, modern Democrats have run New York for some time now, and they’ve done a terrible job building and fixing things. Nor are Democrats doing much to boost nuclear power as a partial solution to climate change, if anything the contrary.

10. State Capacity Libertarianism has no problem endorsing higher quality government and governance, whereas traditional libertarianism is more likely to embrace or at least be wishy-washy toward small, corrupt regimes, due to some of the residual liberties they leave behind.

11. State Capacity Libertarianism is not non-interventionist in foreign policy, as it believes in strong alliances with other relatively free nations, when feasible. That said, the usual libertarian “problems of intervention because government makes a lot of mistakes” bar still should be applied to specific military actions. But the alliances can be hugely beneficial, as illustrated by much of 20th century foreign policy and today much of Asia — which still relies on Pax Americana.

It is interesting to contrast State Capacity Libertarianism to liberaltarianism, another offshoot of libertarianism. On most substantive issues, the liberaltarians might be very close to State Capacity Libertarians. But emphasis and focus really matter, and I would offer this (partial) list of differences:

a. The liberaltarian starts by assuring “the left” that they favor lots of government transfer programs. The State Capacity Libertarian recognizes that demands of mercy are never ending, that economic growth can benefit people more than transfers, and, within the governmental sphere, it is willing to emphasize an analytical, “cold-hearted” comparison between government discretionary spending and transfer spending. Discretionary spending might well win out at many margins.

b. The “polarizing Left” is explicitly opposed to a lot of capitalism, and de facto standing in opposition to state capacity, due to the polarization, which tends to thwart problem-solving. The polarizing Left is thus a bigger villain for State Capacity Libertarianism than it is for liberaltarianism. For the liberaltarians, temporary alliances with the polarizing Left are possible because both oppose Trump and other bad elements of the right wing. It is easy — maybe too easy — to market liberaltarianism to the Left as a critique and revision of libertarians and conservatives.

c. Liberaltarian Will Wilkinson made the mistake of expressing enthusiasm for Elizabeth Warren. It is hard to imagine a State Capacity Libertarian making this same mistake, since so much of Warren’s energy is directed toward tearing down American business. Ban fracking? Really? Send money to Russia, Saudi Arabia, lose American jobs, and make climate change worse, all at the same time? Nope.

d. State Capacity Libertarianism is more likely to make a mistake of say endorsing high-speed rail from LA to Sf (if indeed that is a mistake), and decrying the ability of U.S. governments to get such a thing done. “Which mistakes they are most likely to commit” is an underrated way of assessing political philosophies.

You will note the influence of Peter Thiel on State Capacity Libertarianism, though I have never heard him frame the issues in this way.

Furthermore, “which ideas survive well in internet debate” has been an important filter on the evolution of the doctrine. That point is under-discussed, for all sorts of issues, and it may get a blog post of its own.

Here is my earlier essay on the paradox of libertarianism, relevant for background.

#politics

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swpoliticsandmemes · 5 years

Text

Imperialism as explored by Star Wars. Sorry in advance.

I think it’s neat how ever since the good guy/American revolutionary vs bad guy/British empire set up in ANH, the Galactic Empire has been increasingly been grounded in more lucid and descript forms of violence, oppression and exploitation so that now we have one of the most monopolistic and soulless corporations (and in some ways the face of modern American capitalism), Disney, ironically owning a property that gives a competent account of what Empire looks like that doesn’t shy away from the political implications (many of which even go against Disney’s interests.)

First off we have the very shape galactic civilisation: densely populated Ecumenopolises such as Coruscant as well as other advanced and politically influential worlds like Alderaan and Chandrila are focused towards the Galactic core, while groupings of planets with decreasing levels of political and economic significant fall to further and further outskirts. It almost seems to be an intentional allusion to the core-periphery model that plays a central foundation to both Marxist and non-Marxist analyses of Imperialism. Although I’m resigned to accept it was more likely a natural tendency for the creators to put the centre of galactic civilisation in, well, the centre of the galaxy, although any look at the galactic map would possibly put this into question as most of the known space is heavily skewed to the Galactic east, and the deep core actually ends up being on one side of civilisation than in the centre.

Either way, the nature of the relationship between the core and the periphery ends up fitting the real-world model, and this is the case for not just the Empire but for the Republic too. In Phantom it’s just a matter of seeing a contrast between the criminally-run Tattooine to the vast wealth of the capital. I should say now that two key facets of this analysis is that 1. republics, even self-professed anti-imperialist ones (America, USSR, Iran come to mind), can and do engage in imperialism, and 2. there is, at least for some people, a sense of continuity between the Republic and the Empire. This latter point sort of reflects how the early Roman Empire claimed to be a continuation of the Roman Republic, as evidenced by the style of the address for the Emperor being ‘princeps’ or first-citizen, as opposed to the later ‘dominus’ or lord. While Mon Mothma and others would see the Republic as having been destroyed by Palpatine’s coup, men like Yularen and Tarkin smoothly transitioning between high-ranking positions in both governments, would disagree, although by the time of ANH the old systems had been so firmly eroded that even Tarkin gloats that the “last vestiges of the old republic have been swept away.” Nonetheless, the Core-periphery system remains and in fact is intensified during this time, with the Core cultural elite being emphasised in Thrawn and Princess of Alderaan (and reinforced on-screen with the constant overindulgence in English accents) and with assignments for Imperial officials being considered more worthy if being closer to the core.

With the core-periphery model being the basis assumption, there are three predominant models of imperialism. One is based off international realism, which we can dismiss out of hand because it depends on multiple independent states playing a zero-sum game on an anarchic chess board, but in the GFFA, with a few exceptions like the distant Chiss, there is an assumed universal (or in this case, galactic) governance. However, we will come back to IR realism in a bit. The other two models are in direct opposition with one another, although they are not mutually exclusive as most modern theorists try to adapt aspects from both.

One is the metrocentric view, based off the works of rabid antisemite J.A Hobson and general scumbag V.I. Lenin. The nub of their theories was that imperialism was an extension of surplus capital from industrialised nations, as the faster rate of growth in productivity outpaced demand in the home country/metropole (or core) it became more profitable to invest in less developed countries as lower wage-bases would help maintain a high rate of return. However, so many of these places had strong religious or cultural institutions or were even based on non-monetary sharing economies, which necessitated political intervention for a capitalist incursion to work, and so financial interests prompted national governments to dominate these countries, destroy said institutions and build physical infrastructure based around hard resource extraction.

In the sense that the Empire is centrally driven, this theory applies, although the motivation is different. As far as I’m aware, none of the major colonial empires were run by an evil cult centred around the totalitarian authority of one single individual and his acolytes (in this regard the Empire is more like Nazi Germany than anything else.) However, the Empire does clearly work on extracting value from peripheral planets to fund the opulence of the core, and with the clear distinction from the Republic where this process also happened, the Empire wields its military power to protect and accelerate that process, with Imperial Star Destroyers deploying to investigate a slave revolt on Kessel in Solo and a permanent military presence between the resource-depleted Gorse and Thorilide-rich Cynda in A New Dawn.

It’s difficult to ascribe the motivation for expansion in the Empire since it begins already controlling the Galaxy, although picking up on my earlier point about republics engaging in forms of Imperialism, we have something from Tarkin, when it’s revealed that the Republic expanded from the Core, “ravenous for new resources and not above exploiting to enhance the quality of their lives.” The book goes on to explains how competing financial interests propelled expansion, which is interesting because it possibly clues us into the instability underlying the Republic in the prequels, with unchecked financial interests causing corruption and unrest (just short of suggesting class conflict) and feelings of resentment from predominantly Outer Rim and non-human planets who join the CIS. Although the CIS was mostly just a project for those same opportunistic financial interests (such as slavers and interplanetary banking cartels), it’s interesting to note that the regular citizens genuinely thought they were fighting against the corruption of the Republic, with one Parliamentarian in The Clone Wars suggesting that unlike the Galactic Senate, the Raxus Parliament is not influenced by corporations.

But for the faults of both the Republic and the CIS, the Empire outstripped them both; bringing back slavery, coercing entire races such as the Geonotians to work before eradicating them, and with the word ‘stripmining’ becoming a very popular word among various OT media. However, a counterargument to this being a form of metrocentric Imperialism could be the relative non-presence of financial interests during the Empire era. Indeed, while most callous resource-extraction in Africa during the late 19th century was geared towards creating products to dump into world markets, most of the resource extraction we see in the Empire is about directly supplying the military (tibanna in Thrawn, thorilide in A New Dawn) and even the presence of people profiteering seems lacking. Even the villain most clearly associated with profit-seeking capitalism, Denetrius Vidian from A New Dawn, is a member of the Emperor’s inner circle. This alignment of industrial and state interests is probably why the Empire is described as being fascist by Wookiepedia. While I don’t contest the definition, I still think we can accurately compare it with late 19th century colonial Empires, which also had large military-industrial complexes to supply, and whose alignment with private joint-stock companies such as the East India Company is not too unlike the Empire’s close ties with the Mining Guild.

The opposing view is the pericentric model, which argues that the nature of Imperialism is more determined by local conditions, and that colonial empires preferred to rule with a light touch when necessary. The view was supported by the fact that different Imperial territories would have different arrangements. For example, Britain was content just taking a concession from Qing China and dumping Opium into its markets, while it became more direct involved with various African lands which didn’t have a relatively stable system of governance for which to work with. Meanwhile, Britain found itself entangled into occupation of Egypt after the local situation deteriorated after an anti-colonial rebellion, even under the generally anti-empire prime minister William E. Gladstone.

I feel this model applies less to the Empire, since we’ve seen that it pursues imperialism with an almost perverse fervour, but there are examples which fit. Although with less power, the Queen of Naboo remained as an institution, and Clan Saxon collaborated with the Empire and became a pro-Imperial client regime. Meanwhile, the King of Mon Cala resisted the Empire and so was deposed, with it being implicit that had he cooperated, he could have remained as ruler. In Rebels, we see how increasing insurgency leads to greater and greater direct control by the Imperial Navy. Ultimately, however, it’s clear that the Empire, contrary to the pericentric, has a greater inclination towards greater direct rule, with Tarkin saying in ANH that more power will be handed to the regional governors.

Finally, we return to realism, but not to investigate the Core-Periphery model any further but rather to look at another aspect of the Empire, it’s overextension. Part of this is probably to the do with the last point, its desire to control as much as possible, leading to Leia saying in ANH, “the more you tighten your grip, the more systems will slip through your fingers.” This form of realism, offensive realism, plays right into this. This theory comes from Jack Snyder’s The Myth of Empire, and it postulates that late 19th and early 20th century empires became fixated on constant expansion, to deter any incursion into their own hinterland and to break up opposing alliances. This policy, in fact, led to the opposite happening, with empires becoming too stretched thing to properly defend its hinterland, an being so aggressive as to prompt fearful opposing nations to band together to take them down.

In the Star Wars, we can see this in the Tarkin doctrine and the Death Star. The belief that total aggression will be necessary to deter even the slightest thought of resistance leads to an ungodly amount of resources being devoted to this one superweapon, at the expense of other projects getting less than they need (as explored in Thrawn: Treason with both protagonist and antagonist feeling rather miffed by the lack of funding for their own projects). The destruction of Alderaan (among countless other cruelties and war crimes) does more to spur on the Rebellion than anything else, especially once the superweapon they spent so much of their resources on gets taken right from under them. And in a way perhaps that’s the good thing about any empire, that it sows the seeds of its own destruction half the time.

So yeah, sorry about this ungodly and incomprehensible overanalysis of an IP for children. It ended up being way longer than I thought it would, and this was just about imperialism (empire on a grand scale, as opposed to colonialism which would be the specific practices employed by empire in a territory.) I might make another one of these if I get the time.

#star wars #star wars the clone wars #star wars rebels #the clone wars #rebels #a new hope #the phantom menace #attack of the clones #revenge of the sith #tarkin #thrawn #thrawn: treason #a new dawn #princess of alderaan #leia #imperialism #empire #republic #essay

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