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The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

americanaffairsjournal.org

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Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

#201

Post by freeflight »

icebraining wrote: post #83
jraines wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good point, but there's an awful lot of post-hoc Just World fallacy wrapped up in those same statements of faith. The really spurious ones - like 9/11 or Katrina being divine punishment - get media coverage but there're more bland ones that are actually more harmful; like disease or disaster being all part of God's plan. It's all good for living a life where you have to cope with what you can't directly con…

How does that tie with the statistics showing US citizens - and in particular more religious people - as good donors for charities and disaster victims? Seems contradictory.

How to measure the "religiosity" of people?

While I haven't looked at the statistics, I can easily imagine that's the result of religious communities/institutions having better infrastructure/peer structure in place to motivate donations, at least vs "unorganized unreligious" people which rarely organize on a similar scale.

Pretty much all religious institutions are dependent on regular donations coming in, they are organizations build to motivate people to donate and keep those donations coming.

In that regard, it shouldn't really be that surprising that they end up being overrepresented when they use these "powers" to collect donations for a non-religious cause. Could just as well be interpreted as the temporary redirection of a revenue stream that'd otherwise just go to said religious institutions, in the form of the regular donations of their members.

Depending on the methodology of the statistics this could actually be checked for: Do "more religious" people actually donate "more" during times of non-religious crisis? Or do they merely have a bigger overall "donation budget", which they can use for these times, due to their religious donation obligation?

Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

#202

Post by daltonlp »

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #133
bespoke_engnr wrote: post #19

> Her life, up to that point, was very similar to the life that I have been living. And I am sure that, at the time, she was as optimistic about her life as we are today about ours. But she went to the UK in 1935, and she went back to China around the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Her education abroad, in a capitalist country, and her belief in individual rights and freedom often placed her on the wrong…

> (Someone once said that it is necessary to know English in order to learn about China. Important perspectives on China are only available in English and are generally not accessible on the mainland.) I wonder what other books fall into this category?

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/775647.The_Private_Life_...

Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

#203

Post by wolfgke »

grot wrote: post #189
mlinksva wrote: post #115

> One class was about strategy. It focused on how corporate mottos and logos could inspire employees. Probably not intended as such, but I'll take it as a hilarious send up of "strategy" and will recall it whenever I witness "strategy" being used vacuously.

I think he meant it. His English is very fluent throughout the article.

As a non-native speaker I say that there is a huge difference between speaking/writing fluent English and doing this in a way that satisfies "unwritten cultural conventions".

For my English, for example, native speakers tend to say that it is actually quite correct, but I have a tendency to use words in a specific way in which few native speaker would use them.

Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

#204

Post by alexasmyths »

Gravityloss wrote: post #170
alexasmyths wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not 'Science v Religion' ... it's 'Materialism v Spirituality' - this is the fundamental Metaphysical debate of our era, really.

People don't like it if you tell them they can not feel love.

Materialism would posit that not only can you not 'feel' love, but there is definitely no such thing as it in the first place.

Tell me were is 'love' among a bunch of completely random particles, bouncing through the Universe?

There isn't.

Ergo, while Materialism is an extremely useful tool for understanding much of the universe around us - we have to remember that this is all it is - a tool. Science is a Framework, not a Truth.

Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

#205

Post by Exo_Tartarus »

theonething wrote: post #132
Exo_Tartarus wrote: post #49

I'm not exactly sure what the point of the article is or what the author is trying to say. It's pretty much an abbreviated biography bookended by some attempts at philosophizing. It is interesting to hear how much easier the author found his British curriculum than his Chinese. I was also amused by how he mocked his Stanford MBA curriculum, and how the career office people were dismissive of his passion to make money…

To be born with the genetics to be smart and hardworking is out of our control. So smart and hardworking can be considered circumstances we are born into as well.

Agreed. And I'll go one further: there is no free will. But the point holds

Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

#206

Post by Exo_Tartarus »

vilmosi wrote: post #96
Exo_Tartarus wrote: post #49

I'm not exactly sure what the point of the article is or what the author is trying to say. It's pretty much an abbreviated biography bookended by some attempts at philosophizing. It is interesting to hear how much easier the author found his British curriculum than his Chinese. I was also amused by how he mocked his Stanford MBA curriculum, and how the career office people were dismissive of his passion to make money…

>>> Smart hard working people succeed much more often than they don't It sounds to me you're classifying people as smart/hard working only if they're successful.

That's not what I'm saying at all

Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

#207

Post by dgut »

ismail-khan wrote: post #150
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #13

"... randomness is not merely the noise but the dominant factor. And those reasons we assign to historical events are often just ex post rationalizations. As rising generations are taught the rationalizations, they conclude that things always happen for a reason. " I didn't realize it until contemplating this statement, but this applies to interpersonal relationships as well as nations. It is the root of tolerance an…

Leo Tolstoy took about 1400 pages to make exactly this point in War and Peace :)

Hmm, I didn't get that impression. Could you elaborate?

Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

#208

Post by grot »

roberthluo wrote: post #2

Reading about the west from a Chinese perspective is a breath of fresh air. Similar in background to the author, I have come to the same conclusion; that everything in life is based on a bit of luck and achievement. He also absorbed, which is somewhat unusual in my opinion the differences between U.S. and the U.K. I think he has a much more nuanced view of all three societies that he has written.

I also come from a similar background, and his points also seem poignant to me -- the first, in my reading, is about the lottery of birth; would he or I or you have been successful (with presumably our predisposition to succeed in academia) in China merely 70 years ago? Perhaps not. The second, related, is that we should be grateful for the achievements which might naturally appear as the product of our own labor, and (I think) also to forgive others for the achievements that appear to be the product of their labor.

Though implicit, I think this article actually makes an interesting implication about jealousy. What exactly is there to be jealous of in another person if luck, and randomness plays so much in our fortunes?

This article is also a warning against self-help. So much determines our fortunes besides the advice we can take or the effort we make. The best is what -- rolling with the punches --

Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

#209

Post by grot »

wolfgke wrote: post #203
grot wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he meant it. His English is very fluent throughout the article.

As a non-native speaker I say that there is a huge difference between speaking/writing fluent English and doing this in a way that satisfies "unwritten cultural conventions". For my English, for example, native speakers tend to say that it is actually quite correct, but I have a tendency to use words in a specific way in which few native speaker would use them.

I am a non-native english speaker too; I guess I bristle at the the reading that this man isn't in control of his english when he writes with obvious proficiency, a reading I suspect, would not at all be in question were his name John Foster Edwards, or Henry Wickham or whatever Anglo-Saxon name you wish to replace his name with.

I see your point though. I think he does use words in ways that native speakers do not use, but in his anecdotes -- I think he's actually playing up his Chineseness for the comic effect, and he's very much aware of what's happening.

Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

#210

Post by [deleted] »

PoliteTwig wrote: post #50

I find it interesting that the author only considers America from the top down - from the perspectives of institutions (Stanford, Goldman Sachs, Costco) and slogans (American Dream, All people deserve to live healthy lives). Part of me wonders if that’s due to America's own marketing, or due to his upbringing in a more totalitarian government, but for most Americans these perspectives are just as foreign. At dinner t…

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