Pigeon
coo coo
No bio...
User ID: 237
Pigeon
coo coo
1d ago
If you mean that Koreans have nutters who claim Chinese things — and other things too, for that matter — are actually Korean, no, that's real. The Chinese do grossly exaggerate the extent of belief, of course.
The festivals thing I was thinking of was related to Lunar New Year. I'm going off this by memory, so couldn't find a source in time.
The Chinese character thing was something found originally here, where some Korean novelist and former(?)-professor expounds on the idea that actually proto-Koreans created Chinese civilisation before migrating to Korea (by equating proto-Koreans simultaneously with the Shang and the Dongyi). (Apparently the same person was also featured in a video here earlier this year where he more explicitly claims that Chinese characters are Korean. That video has been private'd, but some vengeful Chinese netizen has re-uploaded it)
(I also somehow found this looney tunes Korean guy claiming that English is descended from Korean?)
Again, these things aren't taken seriously by the (vast?) majority of Koreans, but they do exist (as do more mainstream but still silly nationalistic punchups). This is also not to elide that you see loony shit from the Chinese (and Japanese, and every ethnicity really) as well -- sometimes even from the state organs!
My conjecture is that some part of this historical revisionism has to do not only with modern nationalism and geopolitcal rivalry, but also a longer-rooted hostility that has fomented since the Qing conquest.
Pigeon
coo coo
3d ago
I'm sure you could find more, but even just a brief perusal gives me examples of this from the Atlantic in an otherwise unsympathetic piece. I feel like it's pretty well known even with only a relatively passing interest in Korea.
Two examples inside that article are that of an engagement getting broken off because a downturn in a business owned to-be-groom's parents spooked the to-be-bride and her family, and a late-50s university lecturer finding out that he wouldn't meet the salary demands outlined by Korean women now.
Pigeon
coo coo
4d ago
The preference for sons in China goes deeper, as in older tradition the sons of a family perform the sacrificial rites due for ancestor worship. But it is true that the pragmatic aspect of this was of significant concern as well, enough for (no longer extant) jokes to exist about families being "robbed" by having many daughters but no sons.
Then again, go back that far and often enough the newlyweds would just live in the (husband's) family compound...
I can't name sources in a hurry, and this might be a faulty explanation, but I think a partial reason of this is due to Korea turning super-neo-Confucian during the Joseon dynasty/period. This is most evident after the Qing conquest of the Ming, which the Koreans responded to by considering Qing China as not having political legitimacy*, and doubling down on their interpretations of neo-Confucianism; but strands of this are evident even earlier, when Korean scholars rejected Ming-dynasty innovations (e.g. the Lu-Wang school) in favour of elaborating on older models, most prominently from Zhu Xi. Even today you can see a much, much more obviously hierarchical system regarding personal relations present in Korea than in Japan or China, even counting pre-PRC China (edit: at least contemporaneously).
China, on the other hand, did have such reevaluations, and the Manchu conquest prompted significant soul-searching, resulting in things like the kaozheng school of thought. Japan's kangaku, likewise, did not hunker down in the same way Korea did.
I could easily see how a more hyper-Confucian society that's had a crash course in modern liberal democracy and capitalist markets would create sex-based resentment, especially if you introduce a dose of feminism into it.
*For further reading you could go look at how many Koreans at the time considered themselves to be sojonghwa and the real inheritors of Chinese political culture and civilisation, now that actual China was overrun by "barbarians". This was to the extent that, IIRC, Joseon Korea refused to use Qing dynasty regnal years as part of its calendar, and continued counting as if the last Ming emperor (?) was still in power. Also note that this was not entirely unique to Korea; there were politicians and thinkers in Japan and Vietnam who shared this opinion.
Some element of this after the "loss of China" in the 17th century likely contributes to Korean culture today. I've been told by native Koreans about how the older generations still sometimes say outright that "since the fall of the Ming there has been no worthy Chinese (persons)"; and there's always some loony Korean nationalist scholar, never taken very seriously, insisting on how this or that aspect of Sinosphere civilisation (from festivals to Chinese characters, so on and so forth) actually originates from Korea.
Pigeon
coo coo
3d ago
Hong Kong is lower by a little, but the others are higher. Macau actually has a TFR of above 1...!
Pigeon
coo coo
3d ago
Especially with the male oversupply (see: one-child policy and preference for sons), at least up till quite recently, owning a residence is considered the minimum requirement for getting a decent match in China, at least in the urban areas. It gets to the point where multiple generations might be investing in a property for a son so he can get ahead (admittedly not just in romance; also stuff like residency status and rights, but I am very far from an expert on this)
More anecdotally, I know of Chinese women who openly discuss/brag about what sort of make of car/house/whatever accessory they require before giving a man the light of day.
Not sure how the owning a house thing is doing with the property market still in freefall.
Pigeon
coo coo
3d ago
I'm pretty sure this is referencing moral foundations theory.
I'll stress that that part is my own conjecture, and doubtless modern nationalism and fear/mistrust of the PRC plays into this phenomenon as well. But it seems unlikely to me that the historical background didn't contribute to this. And that the Chinese usually overhype whatever minor Korean nutter has to say for their own purposes as well, to the extent that the average Chinese is probably more misinformed about the actual state of understanding in Korea (where Koreans rightfully mostly relegate such hyper-nationalism as mostly batshit insane).
Then there are things that are just kinda...dumb, like the Chinese getting irate at the Korean dragon boat festival getting recognised internationally (honestly who gives a shit? It's like Italians getting upset about modern British celebrating a derivative of a Roman festival). That stupid thing about kimchi and paocai thing still confuses me to this day (not the background facts, but the sheer idiocy of it, as well as the initial irresponsibility of the Chinese press).
Pigeon
coo coo
2d ago
Pigeon
coo coo
4mo ago
Also "status" is absolutely a thing in masculine spaces, which is one reason why "I'm sorry, I was wrong" is never seen here.
I did get something quite close! It does happen!
Pigeon
coo coo
8mo ago
Granted that Mao was not a good person, he didn't set out to kill 100 million people. He made some bad decisions that inexorably led to a famine which killed 100 million people.
Absolutely nitpicking, but I don‘t think Mao killed a hundred million people in the Great Leap Forward. The commonly quoted numbers are anywhere from 18 million (CCP official estimates) to 60 million (some of the more loony estimates), with most reputable estimates going from 30 to 45 million. (The commonly quoted one I grew up with was 36 million.)
100 million sounds like something right out of the Black Book of Communism, which has very artistic ways of arriving at casuality figures.
Pigeon
coo coo
4mo ago
I recall recently listening to an interview with a philosopher lamenting the terrible influence that critical theory has had on the philosophy profession, and how it has all but taken over without seeming to have won any arguments.
Do you still have links to the interview?
I'm assuming that tabletop community would be a 'legitimate ethnic community.' But even that is fraught - if it's recognized as a 'legitimate white ethnic community' and a black person wants to join, what happens? If you just happen to have a board game group that happens to be all white I think progressives would ding you on not being inclusive enough but not call you a white nationalist, if you happen to have a white ethnic board game group that would actively exclude others based on race, then I think you deserve the label of either racist or white nationalist, no?
What if it was an exclusively black or Indian or Chinese, etc, etc. club? Which would be acceptable and why? What about subcategories of white, like Irish or British or French?
To lay my own cards on the table, I am not white, and I think forming exclusive clubs of this sort are in poor taste at best and would rather they not exist. But we do not live in that world.
Pigeon
coo coo
3mo ago
We silly materialists also “believe in” things like quantum theory which, to quote Feynman:
[…] it is often stated that of all the theories proposed in this century, the silliest is quantum theory. Some say that the only thing that quantum theory has going for it, in fact, is that it is unquestionably correct.
Pigeon
coo coo
9mo ago
I despair when Mulan is really properly thought of as trans representation
Pigeon
coo coo
9mo ago
Great show.
In terms of the writer’s political views, the show seems rather unusual. While seeking more women and less Oxford classicists in the bureaucracy, the writers also seem fairly keen on conscription and the build-up of Britain’s conventional forces, vaguely Euroskeptic. Meanwhile they seem to favour school choice, joke about the excesses of political correctness. The abiding theme is a distrust in the competence of politicians and the alignment of the bureaucracy with British interests.
That the show’s politics are a bit eclectic and ultimately converge on some vague anti-establishmentarianism shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, given that it was co-written by a right-winger and a left-winger.
Pigeon
coo coo
1yr ago
What on earth would be the scientific consensus around “animals are below humans” and “I eat meat, I don’t like eating lentils and kale” and “let’s find 8 earths to feed meat to humans”? Those are value judgements, not scientific theories and facts.
This is clearly using “scientific consensus” as intimidation and consensus-building, even if there’s a weak case for “if animals were on par with humans the original replier would consider otherwise”. A weak case that doesn’t even begin to approach your own rhetoric!
A relatively moderate trans medicalist perspective as you described would be just as vilified by either side.
I am a transmedicalist. Unfortunately, if you ask me to choose between the virulent insane pro-trans group and the virulent insane anti-trans group, I’m going to pick the virulent insane anti-trans group, because that at least returns us to a more coherent system of social organisation. Anything to avoid the mangling of language, and generating the group of acquaintances I have with neopronouns and genders listed as anything from “genderfluid” to “centipede”. (I also happen to really hate the weird contracted cutesy names people of this persuasion tend to pick for themselves. It sounds extraordinarily fake and performative.)
Which is really unfortunate, because I think the actual medical condition extreme-distress-with-birth-body people do exist, and we should be sympathetic and accommodative towards them (within reasonable limits, and assuming that they are also reasonable and accommodative towards society).
Pigeon
coo coo
5mo ago
https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/maajid-nawaz/maajid-the-left-is-no-longer-liberal/
It’s been around since at least 2016. I swear I’ve heard it earlier than that but not sure from where…
Pigeon
coo coo
10mo ago
I can think of no better term to encapsulate this phenomenon than the paradox of tolerance. Anyone who knows even a little bit about Islam can tell you that moslems aren't exactly friendly with gays, i.e. they are intolerant of the LGBT crowd. So what happens when you tolerate people who are intolerant of gays? You end up with the intolerance of gays, exactly as predicted.
Not this interpretation of the paradox of tolerance again!
For reference, the original Popperian paradox is more limited and much less explicitly progressively coded, and describes tolerance of people and ideas that refuse to be discussed.
The issue with the common misinterpretation is that it’s not much of a paradox at all.
Pigeon
coo coo
9mo ago
＞You take that back!
I can understand pixie cuts, but I will admit to finding the haphazardly-shaven or buzz-cut-esque haircuts common in queer circles to be bizarre and unattractive.
Also the…jewelry. Why nose rings?
“Are Chinese actually lizardmen” is certainly a take, given the sheer amount of moralising and, well, empathy you can read out of the ample historical annals of imperial China, even just from the court records.
Do we have any reason to believe that this is true? People living with the shame of being part of an inescapably horrible society are not exactly going to be immune to fabricating the idea of a brighter past.
This is to a significant degree true, and is quite well known by most who also know about the bystander problem in Chinese affairs. Makes me curious about what source you’re getting this information from, that they take away such context.
Consider this quote from, Ralph Townsend a US Consular official writing before the war and before the Communist takeover.
"Almost any veteran foreigner who has traveled up and down the rivers of China will be able to recount one or more cases where he has personally observed a mandrown without efforts to save him by other Chinese a few feet away on shore or in a boat. "
His experiences disgusted him so much that he published a book called "ways that are dark, the truth about China", and went around the U.S claiming that the Japanese were actually the good guys (getting arrested and charged with the Manafort offense - acting as an unregistered agent). That, or he was on their payroll from the start and made shit up, I guess we can never know for sure.
If we are to be trading polemics, allow me to quote Bertrand Russell who has a much more mainstream take:
A friend in Peking showed me a number of pictures, among which I specially remember various birds: a hawk swooping on a sparrow, an eagle clasping a big bough of a tree in his claws, water-fowl standing on one leg disconsolate in the snow. All these pictures showed that kind of sympathetic understanding which one feels also in their dealings with human beings—something which I can perhaps best describe as the antithesis of Nietzsche. This quality, unfortunately, is useless in warfare, and foreign nations are doing their best to stamp it out. But it is an infinitely valuable quality, of which our Western world has far too little. Together with their exquisite sense of beauty, it makes the Chinese nation quite extraordinarily lovable. The injury that we are doing to China is wanton and cruel, the destruction of something delicate and lovely for the sake of the gross pleasures of barbarous millionaires.
…
Of course China helped little, if at all, towards the winning of [WWI], but that was not what the Allies expected of her. The objects of the European Allies are disclosed in the French Note quoted above. We wished to confiscate German property in China, to expel Germans living in China, and to prevent, as far as possible, the revival of German trade in China after the war. The confiscation of German property was duly carried out—not only public property, but private property also, so that the Germans in China were suddenly reduced to beggary. Owing to the claims on shipping, the expulsion of the Germans had to wait till after the Armistice. They were sent home through the Tropics in overcrowded ships, sometimes with only 24 hours' notice; no degree of hardship was sufficient to secure exemption. The British authorities insisted on expelling delicate pregnant women, whom they officially knew to be very likely to die on the voyage. All this was done after the Armistice, for the sake of British trade. The kindly Chinese often took upon themselves to hide Germans, in hard cases, from the merciless persecution of the Allies; otherwise, the miseries inflicted would have been much greater.
…
There is one traditional Chinese belief which dies very hard, and that is the belief that correct ethical sentiments are more important then detailed scientific knowledge.
…
I must confess that I am unable to appreciate the merits of Confucius. His writings are largely occupied with trivial points of etiquette, and his main concern is to teach people how to behave correctly on various occasions. When one compares him, however, with the traditional religious teachers of some other ages and races, one must admit that he has great merits, even if they are mainly negative. His system, as developed by his followers, is one of pure ethics, without religious dogma; it has not given rise to a powerful priesthood, and it has not led to persecution. It certainly has succeeded in producing a whole nation possessed of exquisite manners and perfect courtesy. Nor is Chinese courtesy merely conventional; it is quite as reliable in situations for which no precedent has been provided. And it is not confined to one class; it exists even in the humblest coolie. It is humiliating to watch the brutal insolence of white men received by the Chinese with a quiet dignity which cannot demean itself to answer rudeness with rudeness.
It must also be noted that Townsend was very high on the Japanese, who are quite closely related to the Chinese genetically; and sometimes in ways that age extremely poorly, as apparently he commended the Japanese invasion of China for how “humane” its armed forces behaved.
Interestingly, here is what Russell has to say about the Japanese, at least vis a vis the Chinese, also from The Problem of China:
The Japanese are earnest, passionate, strong-willed, amazingly hard working, and capable of boundless sacrifice to an ideal. Most of them have the correlative defects: lack of humour, cruelty, intolerance, and incapacity for free thought. But these defects are by no means universal; one meets among them a certain number of men and women of quite extraordinary excellence. And there is in their civilization as a whole a degree of vigour and determination which commands the highest respect.
…
It is very remarkable, as distinguishing the Chinese from the Japanese, that the things they wish to learn from us are not those that bring wealth or military strength, but rather those that have either an ethical and social value, or a purely intellectual interest.
…
One of the most remarkable things about the Chinese is their power of securing the affection of foreigners. Almost all Europeans like China, both those who come only as tourists and those who live there for many years. In spite of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, I can recall hardly a single Englishman in the Far East who liked the Japanese as well as the Chinese. Those who have lived long among them tend to acquire their outlook and their standards.
Interesting how a century changes things.
Anyway.
Having read it, I can say that the Wikipedia summary in no way understates the allegations he makes:
Through a large number of personal and second-hand anecdotes, Townsend argues that the Chinese may be the only people in the world who are completely unable to comprehend the basic human impulses of sympathy or gratitude toward other people. Because the Chinese feel no empathy toward others, they behave in an unbelievably sadistic and cruel fashion toward one another, and they view altruistic foreigners as targets to be mercilessly taken advantage of.
Forget careful societal analysis, we can dismiss this out of hand through a cursory glance at Chinese literature and philosophy. Would Dreams of the Red Chamber be written by a lizardman without empathy, and would a race of sociopaths keep record of poetry in the Book of Odes for three thousand years? Would a race wholly incapable of any tenderness found philosophies like Confucianism, where the first two of the five virtues are benevolence and righteousness, and Mohism (a warring-states philosophical school that was a major school of thought at the time), which has universal love essentially as its central tenet?
————————
Let me end with quoting Russell again:
China has an ancient civilization which is now undergoing a very rapid process of change. The traditional civilization of China had developed in almost complete independence of Europe, and had merits and demerits quite different from those of the West. It would be futile to attempt to strike a balance; whether our present culture is better or worse, on the whole, than that which seventeenth-century missionaries found in the Celestial Empire is a question as to which no prudent person would venture to pronounce. But it is easy to point to certain respects in which we are better than old China, and to other respects in which we are worse. If intercourse between Western nations and China is to be fruitful, we must cease to regard ourselves as missionaries of a superior civilization, or, worse still, as men who have a right to exploit, oppress, and swindle the Chinese because they are an "inferior" race. I do not see any reason to believe that the Chinese are inferior to ourselves; and I think most Europeans, who have any intimate knowledge of China, would take the same view.
Pigeon
coo coo
10mo ago
Is "straight" a slur? "Able-bodied"? "Neurotypical"? Those, like "cis", are all neutral valance ways of describing a person as normal along some axis.
Honestly, in certain contexts I would consider those slurs. Able-bodied aside (and that probably because I don’t know that many disabled progressives), I’ve certainly heard straight and neurotypical used in the same way slurs are.
If we can fry ice cream…
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