An insightful TED talk on the rise of China by Martin Jacques, author of When China Rules the World. He is tailoring the message and examples to the audience of course, but two of the points he makes I have never encountered so well enunciated before. First – that virtually all Western analysis of China is predicated on a very artificial perspective of how the world can possibly develop (in the footsteps of the West); and second – that Western conceptions of China remain at best locked in a rationalized version of this paradigm, and at worst (much more common) in a state of total parochial ignorance of the entirety of Chinese civilization – ignorance which is not reciprocated on the other side. First-hand experience and conversations with ordinary Chinese across different provinces confirm both observations for me.
Category: flaneur
Finally settled in Wollongong, more or less, and as luck would have it the weather has been humid, gloomy and very un-summerlike compared to Perth. Surprisingly to me, even though the place is practically a suburb of Sydney, all business is done extremely s-l-o-w-l-y, and the paperwork required to achieve something is in direct geometric relationship with the time it takes to achieve it. The wonderful, almost circus-like ineptness of the property agents here deserves a special mention. On the other hand, and in the spirit of fairness, it must be mentioned that it has already taken three different gas companies (AGL, Energy Australia, Origin) more than ten days to decide which one of them owns the gas connection at the place we are staying, and there is still no eureka moment on the horizon. Of course all three consider it beneath them to keep us mere paying customers informed of their deliberations, and I haven’t called a fourth simply out of fear its presence will prolong the process according to some no doubt equally confused formula. Don’t even get me started on what it takes (and how much it costs) to register a car which was perfectly roadworthy, comprehensively insured, and fine for Perth. Alas, enough. Rant over. After all New South Wales is a bankrupt state and deserves our condolences and tender understanding. The long break is over, let a thousand musings bloom.
It’s Christmas around the corner, and to top it up we are moving across Australia – from Perth to Wollongong (just south of Sydney), so the posts here will be far and in between until we are settled, which should hopefully happen by mid January.
Happy holidays!
There is a theory that once the Universe is figured out, it will instantly transform into something even more bizarrely inexplicable. There is a second theory that this indeed has already happened!
Douglas Adams
Today, Julian Assange was arrested and then refused bail – even though an anonymous donor offered 60,000 pounds as surety – ostensibly for having committed the crime of using a condom which broke midway through coitus. To make this an even bigger show trial, his defense was not given access to the case documents. Whatever happens next, WikiLeaks have managed another scoop – this time exposing the total hypocrisy of the judicial system of Western democracies.
Way too much has been written on the motives and modus operandi of WikiLeaks, based solely on their image in the media. Arguably a better way to approach their actions and motives is through the two key theoretical essays of Julian Assange – State and Terrorist Conspiracies, and Conspiracy as Governance. I am attaching them below – my commentary to follow.
Plenty has been happening while I was immersed in the joys of fatherhood. WikiLeaks, and the whole theater of deception surrounding it, has been the most thought-provoking flow of events by far. Plenty to write about, but for now this quote from Raffi Khatchadourian’s excellent piece on Assange:
“He had come to understand the defining human struggle not as left versus right, or faith versus reason, but as individual versus institution. As a student of Kafka, Koestler, and Solzhenitsyn, he believed that truth, creativity, love, and compassion are corrupted by institutional hierarchies, and by “patronage networks”—one of his favorite expressions—that contort the human spirit. He sketched out a manifesto of sorts, titled “Conspiracy as Governance,” which sought to apply graph theory to politics. Assange wrote that illegitimate governance was by definition conspiratorial—the product of functionaries in “collaborative secrecy, working to the detriment of a population.” He argued that, when a regime’s lines of internal communication are disrupted, the information flow among conspirators must dwindle, and that, as the flow approaches zero, the conspiracy dissolves. Leaks were an instrument of information warfare. These ideas soon evolved into WikiLeaks.”
I am now the proud, relieved, worried, and very tired father of a baby boy! Little Baian was born on the 21st of October. My son,
Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito, quam tua te Fortuna sinet.
“There is no subtler, or surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debase the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which only one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
–John Maynard Keynes
Here’s the problem with ad hominem attacks during arguments: those who deserve them are not worth the time, and those who are worth the time do not deserve them.