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The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014)

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Re: The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014)

#41

Post by DontBeADick »

CognitiveLens wrote: post #14

Suicide is a tragedy and people should always do what they can to prevent it. However, it is also something that will always occur in some portion of the population, typically as the result of depression. We should not ignore the fact that the suicide rate in, for example, the United States is an order of magnitude higher than it is at Foxconn. Foxconn employs over 1.2 million people, so the number of suicides will a…

You should try reading the article next time -- this post has absolutely nothing to do with suicide rates.

I guess your response is somewhat appropriate though. Like the company he worked for, you didn't even stop for a second to think of Xu as a human being, he was just a means to an end. In your case, that end being the collection free internet brownie points by posting a contrarian opinion.

Re: The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014)

#42

Post by api »

psygnisfive wrote: post #40
api wrote: post #34

Capitalism indeed seems to consign the masses to work that is drudgery and is intellectually beneath them, but so does socialism. Every socialist experiment I'm familiar with has almost instantly devolved into a form of a capitalism based on social pull with the bureaucracy rather than financial leverage. The final endpoint of this trajectory seems to be the mafia state -- pure social pull capitalism within criminal-…

Check out the anarchist socialist experiments like Catalonia during the Spanish civil war. They tended to collapse because of inability to fight external forces, not because of bureaucratic bloat, etc.

Interesting. But I still wonder how they'd fare in the long term. Would they maintain their cooperative state or devolve into mafia statism as most experiments in radical socialism seem to do.

Re: The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014)

#43

Post by wffurr »

api wrote: post #42
psygnisfive wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out the anarchist socialist experiments like Catalonia during the Spanish civil war. They tended to collapse because of inability to fight external forces, not because of bureaucratic bloat, etc.

Interesting. But I still wonder how they'd fare in the long term. Would they maintain their cooperative state or devolve into mafia statism as most experiments in radical socialism seem to do.

Unlikely because those types of workers' movements are anti-statist by their very nature. For a similar philosophy, see anarcho-syndicalism.

Re: The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014)

#45

Post by jmathai »

sroerick wrote: post #28
e40 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of those moments where I'm utterly distressed by the lack of a solution to curb all the frivolous consumerism of the world. I don't think frivolous consumerism is the cause, it's what humans will do to others to get ahead. In other words, greed. The people that run the factories don't view the people as human, otherwise they wouldn't be able to treat them like machines.

Do the people who consume the goods perceive the workers as human?

The more separated someone is from a situation the less they relate. People buying smartphones are removed enough from the working conditions at Foxconn that it's of little significance.

It applies in almost every corner of the world. If Ebola didn't start in a struggling, impoverished and black country there would be a lot more attention being paid to it as a crisis.

Re: The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014)

#46

Post by vegardx »

omgmaouz wrote: post #29

As much as I feel for this poor guy I can't help but feel that this article is glamorising suicide. Suicide is a selfish (IMO cowardly) act and I'm sure his family will suffer for the rest of their lives because of it.

People who take their lives do it because they feel like that is the only thing they still have control over. You can't even put yourself in that mindset even if you truly wanted, which makes it a little strange to make such a statement about suicide.

I'm not sure if we read the same article.

Re: The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014)

#47

Post by [deleted] »

CognitiveLens wrote: post #14

Suicide is a tragedy and people should always do what they can to prevent it. However, it is also something that will always occur in some portion of the population, typically as the result of depression. We should not ignore the fact that the suicide rate in, for example, the United States is an order of magnitude higher than it is at Foxconn. Foxconn employs over 1.2 million people, so the number of suicides will a…

[deleted]

Re: The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014)

#48

Post by squeaky-clean »

yourad_io wrote: post #4

The poems is heart breaking. Read them, even if they put a dent in your day.

Ouch, they really did put a dent in my day. They were beautiful, however, and reading them really humanized Xu Lizhi more than simply reading about him in the article.

Re: The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014)

#49

Post by mrottenkolber » 

   《冲突》
   "Conflict"

   他们都说
   They all say

   我是个话很少的孩子
   I'm a child of few words

   对此我并不否认
   This I don't deny

   实际上
   But actually

   我说与不说
   Whether I speak or not

   都会跟这个社会
   With this society I'll still

   发生冲突
   Conflict

   -- 7 June 2013

Re: The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014)

#50

Post by algorithmsRcool »

omgmaouz wrote: post #37
mb_72 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making such generalisations is dangerous; for example, suicide when one is terminally ill and in terrible pain could be seen by many as the sensible thing to do.

Yes I agree there may be times where suicide seems preferable to life in the cases you mentioned. My issue is with this article As far as I can tell this man wasn't definitely depressed. It seems he was just unhappy with his situation and chose to take the easy way out. There are others who have committed suicide at that factory but of course they aren't poets...

Since he took the rather bold step of actually ending his own life I would think that his outlook on life was sufficiently bleak to warrant at more empathy than that.

Regardless of if he was clinically depressed or just very unhappy, are both not tragic?

Please re-read his words and decide again if his plight was shallow-hearted.

"...Every time I open the window or the wicker gate

I seem like a dead man

Slowly pushing open the lid of a coffin."

--------

"...I want to stand up more than anyone else

But my legs won’t cooperate

My stomach won’t cooperate

All the bones of my body won’t cooperate

I can only lie flat

In this darkness, sending out

A silent distress signal, again and again

Only to hear, again and again

The echo of desperation."

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