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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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I had the pleasure last night of watching the 2011 documentary Empire of Dust, a Belgian film that explores interactions between a Chinese construction group and local Congolese in rural Congo. I'm sure many of you have seen it - you've certainly seen this meme - but I wanted to bring it up anyway for discussion, as it was a brilliant piece of film-making and very thought-provoking. The whole thing is available free here on Youtube.

The main theme of the documentary is probably cultural differences between Chinese and Congolese workers. The Chinese complain about how the Congolese are lazy, dishonest, and disorganised and are only interested in beer, dancing, and football. We see lots of glimpses of this, with many scenes of Congolese workers just standing around doing nothing, and seriously dysfunctional industry and construction.

On the other hand, the Chinese foreman, Lao Yang, often comes across as grumpy, abrupt, and occasionally inhumane. He rarely smiles, doesn't engage in any playful or friendly conversation that we see, berates locals for their ignorance, and argues with local Congolese about price constantly. His Congolese translator actually addresses this, saying "he may seem like he's grumpy about something, but that's just how he is all the time." The Congolese by contrast seem generally relaxed, amiable, and friendly (though admittedly difficult to work with).

Lao Yang is at his most engaging and humane, it seemed to me, when he was marveling at the old Belgian infrastructure and talking about how devastating it was to see it completely neglected - "Do you have any idea how hard it must have been to build that railway?" On the one hand, he's still scolding his Congolese contact Eddy, but he comes across as a genuine engineer, sad to see great works in decline.

Also striking to me were the physical differences; despite the poverty and (one assumes) malnutrition, the Congolese men were mostly tall and muscular and generally physically impressive, whereas most of the Chinese we see looked comparatively weedy. Again, Lao Yang addresses this, saying something to the effect that "this is a harsh land where only the strongest survive, which is why everyone here is so well built".

I don't have any grand culture wars lessons here, other than the obvious one that culture matters - China and Congo are very different societies, and what works in one may not work in another. It also made me somewhat more pessimistic about West Africa's potential for economic development, though perversely, made me more positively disposed towards its culture. The movie also has some odd coverage of colonialism; there's no real criticism of the Belgians demonstrated (when discussing the Congolese motivations for seeking independence in 1960, Eddy says simply "we wanted to rule ourselves"), and a general sense of missed opportunities at failing to preserve the infrastructure and development left by the Belgians.

In any case, it's a wonderful film, and now I'm on a documentary kick, I'd love to get some more recommendations. Most of the documentaries on Amazon seem to either be fairly introductory science that I already know (e.g., Cosmos stuff) or else have a focus on individual personalities - true crime, famous sportsmen, outrageous personalities, etc.. I enjoy a good tale of real survival, but in general, I'm more interested in films that help expand my knowledge of the world, especially stuff like geopolitics, history, or culture. Would love to hear some suggestions!

Once you take the wide view on culture, you can start to see that stereotypical behaviors of cultures are the result of the pressures of that society. Congolese, Italians and Mexicans are not "lazy", they are optimized for their local culture, which does not reward work nor punish the lack of it. How this interfaces with global sort-of-capitalist economics is uneven at best.

Black culture in the US is likewise poorly suited to producing steady blue collar workers, but really good at producing various entertainers (at lottery-level rates), and extremely vibrant in cultural production/innovation. Black americans have better mental health and general happiness than many other groups, so the question of culture is also a question of what we value.

This is cultural relativism to a point. Cultures are not good nor bad, but they are good/bad for specific things. Jewish/north european/east-asian culture generally produces people well suited to modern mechanized capitalism, so they do well in modern mechanized capitalistic societies. Native american, Hmong, Somali etc. cultures by and large do not. Much of what gets called "structural racism" is in fact merely cultural mismatch to the political and economic realities of the world.

Every culture must follow their own path in responding to modernism/globalism, but some paths lead to better places than others.

One can admire the Chinese/Japanese work ethic, but I'd rather live as an Italian.

I’ll be thinking about this one for a while. Especially every time a top-level gets made about Jewish representation.

How much of culture do you think is constrained by relative tech level? If modern venture capitalists were given unfettered access to 18th-century English cottage-industry peasants, I suspect they’d see a similar response. Maybe the previous years of an English state were enough to condition efficient workers...but my guess would be not.

For obvious reasons, I can’t remember seeing any scholarship on the topic.

What was the reaction to 18th century English poor going to the mills?

I don’t think it was...great.

Obviously it worked out for England, as the state parlayed that technological advantage into a ludicrous economic one. Did the peasants get “pulled” into vast economic opportunity, or “pushed” out of a non competitive textile market? Whig history prefers the latter explanation. It’s really not my area of expertise.