Looks like the author also arrived at a similar conclusion:
“It's not about the cards you're dealt, but how you play the hand.”
The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
31–40 of 232 posts
Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
#32Probably better titled “Life is a random walk”. I completely agree with his premise - ‘success’ in life, however defined, seems largely a function largely of luck. Those who see the world for what it is - rather than what received dogma teaches - understand this truth.
Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
#33Could someone explain the point of this article? All I'm getting are: * Everything is random. * A generic Chinese man, who did really well on one test is smarter than most people in Britain. * Americans, who are capitalists, don't seem to want to focus their lives on the supposed end goal of capitalism. * MBA programs are nuts, especially if you are on the spectrum. I'm probably wrong about most of those, but like th…
* luck has more to do with results than we think
* "focus on the process, which we can control, rather than the result"
This is also well explained by Scott Adams: "Goals are for losers... try systems that improve your odds of success."
Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought it was brilliant. He "innocently" exposed the whole class as a hoax.
Are you really so sure? It’s not an easy thing to maintain awareness of the workings of one’s emotions, especially for someone raised in a repressive, collectivist culture that doesn’t value the internal life of the individual, and especially if that individual is on the spectrum, in which case the emotions are “buried” even deeper.
If an emotion is neither experienced nor physiologically detected, does it really exist?
Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
#35> So I bought a heart rate monitor and checked my resting heart rate. Right around 78. And when the professor said to me in class “Puzhong, I can see that story brought up some emotions in you,” I rolled up my sleeve and checked my heart rate. It was about 77. And so I said, “nope, no emotion.” The experiment seemed to confirm my prior belief: my heart rate hardly moved, even when I was criticized, though it did jump when I became excited or laughed.
Yikes.
> In Communist China, I was taught that hard work would bring success. In the land of the American dream, I learned that success comes through good luck, the right slogans, and monitoring your own—and others’—emotions.
I don't understand the value of this analogy. In Communist China, I was taught (something that is done to you) something false, but in the U.S. I learned (note: not taught, learned) something X.
Is it true or false? Because it matters whether or not something is true or false. I'm sure the author thinks what he is writing is true, otherwise, why write it? But he just directly compared something he decided on his own to something he was taught to be true that was actually false. This is really murky, and I don't care enough about his feelings about Cambridge or Stanford or Costco to try to make any more sense of it.
Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also relevant is that fact that the article contains that statement, "I am the child of modest workers".
> Yet I had to do it every day. At the end-of-year exam, I scored second from the bottom of the class—the same place where I began in first grade. But this time it was much harder to accept, after the glory I had enjoyed just one year earlier and the huge amount of effort I had put into studying this year. Finally, I threw in the towel, and asked my parents to send me abroad. Anywhere else on this earth would surely…
He doesn't say his parents were poor or blue-collar workers, he compares himself to a child of aristocrat.
Context is everything.
> He was a child of aristocrats; I am the child of modest workers.
When a one-digit millionaire compares himself to a billionaire like Bill Gates, using "modest" to describe one's wealth would be appropriate in this context.
Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you really so sure? It’s not an easy thing to maintain awareness of the workings of one’s emotions, especially for someone raised in a repressive, collectivist culture that doesn’t value the internal life of the individual, and especially if that individual is on the spectrum, in which case the emotions are “buried” even deeper.
If an emotion is neither experienced nor physiologically detected, does it really exist?
Emotions come from the unconscious. Of course they can be difficult to detect. Nonetheless they can shape our thinking and behavior dramatically. Read Carl Jung, “The Undiscovered Self.”
Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
#38Could someone explain the point of this article? All I'm getting are: * Everything is random. * A generic Chinese man, who did really well on one test is smarter than most people in Britain. * Americans, who are capitalists, don't seem to want to focus their lives on the supposed end goal of capitalism. * MBA programs are nuts, especially if you are on the spectrum. I'm probably wrong about most of those, but like th…
* luck has more to do with results than we think * "focus on the process, which we can control, rather than the result" This is also well explained by Scott Adams: "Goals are for losers... try systems that improve your odds of success."
He more so explained his story, which was essentially: “I studied hard, got into a good school, and got a great job,” rather than explaining how he focuses on the process. The only example of “process” was his discovery during his internship that he _should_ focus on process.
Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought it was brilliant. He "innocently" exposed the whole class as a hoax.
Are you really so sure? It’s not an easy thing to maintain awareness of the workings of one’s emotions, especially for someone raised in a repressive, collectivist culture that doesn’t value the internal life of the individual, and especially if that individual is on the spectrum, in which case the emotions are “buried” even deeper.
If his emotions are buried so deep, that there no way to see real world consequences of them, than maybe it is better to say, that there are no emotions?
I think, that mottos in Western culture are just pathetic ones. Western culture knows nothing about how to raise steady emotions in people. I was born in USSR, and I saw how it should be done. But there is one consequence: with experience comes tolerance to external attempts to raise my emotions by some lovely motto. Now it is really hard to. "All people deserve to live healthy lives" -- what is it? I was grown on ideas of Worldwide Communist Revolution and bringing freedom from damned capitalists to all people? I read books, I watched films, discussed this in a classes, I learnt world history in terms of societies struggling to make one more step toward communism. And after that I hear motto for preschool kids. The topic for boring school essay about role of Communism in bringing healthy life to everyone. I had eaten tons of this shit before I came to a school. I have eaten even more in school. Why I should have any emotions now?
Really, I can hardly believe that any adult can be touched by such a motto. I'm unable to understand it, even when I try to imagine how it could be, if I was not born under ideologic pressure.
The Black Swan can be a good motto, because it is a symbol of some non-trivial idea, because it reminds me something that I can forget to think through one more time. It reminds me about ideas which I want to think through again and again. But "healty lives for everyone" is something like communism, it will not be like that in the overseeable future. It is just one more ideologic lie, which is must be spoken due to some social protocol. Pointless tradition.
Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you really so sure? It’s not an easy thing to maintain awareness of the workings of one’s emotions, especially for someone raised in a repressive, collectivist culture that doesn’t value the internal life of the individual, and especially if that individual is on the spectrum, in which case the emotions are “buried” even deeper.
If his emotions are buried so deep, that there no way to see real world consequences of them, than maybe it is better to say, that there are no emotions? I think, that mottos in Western culture are just pathetic ones. Western culture knows nothing about how to raise steady emotions in people. I was born in USSR, and I saw how it should be done. But there is one consequence: with experience comes tolerance to external…
This topic seems to make you rather emotional.