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The gradual extinction of softness

hippocampusmagazine.com

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Re: The gradual extinction of softness

#121

Post by zz865 »

anticodon wrote: post #67
thanhhaimai wrote: post #16

Pol Pot and his government was responsible for the death of 1/4 Cambodian population in a short amount of time, not counting deaths from neighboring countries. A lot of Cambodians migrated to Vietnam (including the author of this wonderful piece). The history about this period is interesting if you're looking for a good read. It's not being widely taught, even during Vietnamese K12 education. https://en.m.wikipedia.o…

Pol Pot came to power due to USA backed coup. USA spies tried to kill king of Cambodia multiple times but failed. So, they taught and financed guerillas to oust the king by means of military coup and install a pro-USA government. Pro-USA government didn't last long, and Pol Pot took its place. And, BTW, the most well hidden secret is that USA supported Pol Pot and even provided financial support to his government. US…

Pol Pot was classic Marxist and everything USA fought against in the Vietnam, Korean and other Cold wars.

Re: The gradual extinction of softness

#122

Post by SuoDuanDao »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #79
emodendroket wrote: post #62

> I’ve often wondered why, in a poor country where women work as hard as men to feed their children, feminine softness is so highly prized. As for me, I no longer consider it a valuable attribute. Isn't this its own answer? It's prized precisely because it is unattainable for most.

Because she's describing what is more accurately self-effacing stoicism, and subservience, not precisely "softness"? Endurance and self-sacrifice are not soft. e.g.: > A good Asian woman is supposed to shine dimly, like a moon, and reflect her husband’s sunlight. Not that she's completely sold on that model either.

>Endurance and self-sacrifice are not soft.

I'm probably reading too much into this, but there tends to be a tradeoff between 'hardness' and 'toughness'. 'Endurance' requires some flexibility and ability to absorb/disperse energy that may require some degree of 'softness'.

Re: The gradual extinction of softness

#123

Post by SuoDuanDao »

SiVal wrote: post #95
bencollier49 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you make of the current state of culture in the West?

Deeply disturbing. Some people in China have enjoyed a bit of schadenfreude. (This isn't a literal quote, just a merger of assorted accusations that in most cases were not meant in a friendly way--it was a matter of national pride--but which ironically I agreed with, and it answers your question.): "You Americans [sometimes directed at me] are so arrogant, talking about our violent Cultural Revolution and Red Guards…

Baizuo is such a great insult. Do you think your Chinese friends would mind if I appropriate it?

Re: The gradual extinction of softness

#124

Post by emodendroket »

fxtentacle wrote: post #86
emodendroket wrote: post #62

> I’ve often wondered why, in a poor country where women work as hard as men to feed their children, feminine softness is so highly prized. As for me, I no longer consider it a valuable attribute. Isn't this its own answer? It's prized precisely because it is unattainable for most.

That explanation doesn't work for me. Women in Germany at my age never had a shortage of anything. Yet most of them present themselves as strong and fiercely competitive. It's rare to see a German woman embrace her softer side or act playfully in public.

If it doesn’t, then think about foot binding in China. It was supposedly beautiful, but it also advertised something about your social status if you could afford to deliberately render your daughters useless for field work. Consider also the traditional Western reverence for fair skin being replaced with an appreciation for tans (first indicating that you could avoid field work, then later that you could afford vacations).

Re: The gradual extinction of softness

#125

Post by lazyeye »

prmph wrote: post #81
jokethrowaway wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't call deaths in the USSR "accidental". Starving and executing kulaks was no accident, they were punishing the rich. People worked to death in the gulags were not an accident. They may have killed less people per year compared to Nazis but that doesn't make them less deadly. In terms of sheer human loss for society, they were 4 times worse than the Nazis (according to your estimate). If you consider how much…

The difference is that the nazis were killing people based on who they were; the communists purged people based based on their belief that they had committed crimes against the state or were working against it. One can dispute this belief, and no doubt they were both brutal, but there is a difference between a genocidal policy with the aim of extermination, and the state exerting its power to punish those it thinks a…

In other words the Nazis had bad intentions but the Russians meant well...

I see echoes of this kind of thinking everywhere in the present.

Re: The gradual extinction of softness

#126

Post by jamal-kumar »

idontwantthis wrote: post #55
jamal-kumar wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the visa situation look like there for digital nomads?

No visa on arrival currently, and you'll need an invitation from a company to get a business visa. Business visa can be extended if you have a friend who owns a real company pretend to employ you.

Wow cheers thanks for the advice, as chance has it this is in the possibility of arrangement

Re: The gradual extinction of softness

#127

Post by anticodon »

sien wrote: post #75
anticodon wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, one closely guarded secret nobody cares about: currently amount of people in prisons in USA is almost equal to the number of people sent to prisons and camps by Stalin. So, who's more evil?

The one who did this: "This contained official records of 799,455 executions (1921–1953),[7] around 1.7 million deaths in the Gulag,[8][9] some 390,000[10] deaths during the dekulakization forced resettlement, and up to 400,000 deaths of persons deported during the 1940s,[11] with a total of about 3.3 million officially recorded victims in these categories.[12] The deaths of at least 5.5 to 6.5 million[13] persons in…

Wikipedia is also a propaganda tool. Are [9][9][12][13][14] written based on historical documents? On the documents from the Soviet/Russia archives? I seriously doubt so. Pretty sure, they contain same bullshit as Solzhenitsyn books: "I saw 2 millions prisoners walking to the camp and it was only one of Stalin's forced labor camps"...

Re: The gradual extinction of softness

#128

Post by anticodon »

zz865 wrote: post #121
anticodon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pol Pot came to power due to USA backed coup. USA spies tried to kill king of Cambodia multiple times but failed. So, they taught and financed guerillas to oust the king by means of military coup and install a pro-USA government. Pro-USA government didn't last long, and Pol Pot took its place. And, BTW, the most well hidden secret is that USA supported Pol Pot and even provided financial support to his government. US…

Pol Pot was classic Marxist and everything USA fought against in the Vietnam, Korean and other Cold wars.

> Pol Pot was classic Marxist

It's not true. Pol Pot was a madman that created his own crazy theory that included parts of Marxism.

Where does Marx said that the city populations must be evacuated to the villages and teachers killed?

Anyway, the point is not in the details. My point is that USA meddling with politics in remote countries usually results in civil war, millions of dead people and economical decline that lasts for decades. It was true for Cambodia, it's true for Arab Spring countries, it's true for Ukraine which is the last known victim of USA backed revolution to this day. How many more victims this world needs?

Re: The gradual extinction of softness

#129

Post by mleonhard »

nickff wrote: post #76
anticodon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pol Pot came to power due to USA backed coup. USA spies tried to kill king of Cambodia multiple times but failed. So, they taught and financed guerillas to oust the king by means of military coup and install a pro-USA government. Pro-USA government didn't last long, and Pol Pot took its place. And, BTW, the most well hidden secret is that USA supported Pol Pot and even provided financial support to his government. US…

> ” And, BTW, the most well hidden secret is that USA supported Pol Pot and even provided financial support to his government.” According to Wikipedia, the USA did not materially support the Khmer Rouge, though they did vote in favor of certain UN resolutions which favored the regime. Do you have some evidence or support for your claims? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_United_States_s...

USA murdered many Cambodian civilians while bombing enemy soldiers in Cambodia [0]. This behavior gave a lot of political capital to revolutionaries who later did genocide.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Freedom_Deal

Re: The gradual extinction of softness

#130

Post by low_common »

bsanr wrote: post #18

It's frustrating to me that my potential enjoyment of this piece, lauded as it is by several of the comments that are already here, was poisoned by the introduction. I imagine that >I ran to visit my friend Yet, who lived in the village behind my parents’ house in Battambang, Cambodia. will come off as innocuous to many, but my immediate impression was, "Wait... like a plantation?". I'm not intimately familiar with C…

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