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Denis is kind enough to engage me on an earlier post. It took me days to write replies. Nevertheless, I am pretty happy I was able to wrap my arm around this issue.

I don’t have too many things I can call “labor of love”. This is certainly one of those. After writing the last one, I am so exhausted that I didn’t want to think about it any more.

Anyway, here it is:
Denis

After reading your last email and my previous one, I realized that I did not make myself clear why I brought up those country cases. What I wanted to say is that people are too accustomed to a stylized way to look at things (oppressors vs. liberators, right vs. wrong, etc.), but may have missed some of the obvious questions which, in fact, outline the dynamics of power politics in a way that scientists use to demonstrate invisible forces.

I recognize that I probably went out of my league when I tried to cover too many cases, e.g. Northern Ireland. What is more, although I had a common theme behind all those questions, I did not spell out the theme for you (as I mentioned earlier). Hence, the cases may have appeared as irrelevant or unrelated to each other.

But they are not. The common theme behind all those questions is that what is unfair may not be unjust. What is fair may not be righteous (e.g. European anger). It is a mistake to consider fairness or
righteousness in a vacuum. Once you factor in power relations the real picture is a lot different from a superficial, stylized impression.

To put it more bluntly, I do not believe there is a universal, INVIOLABLE code of conduct. If I am not mistaken, this thinking is what really abhorred you and led you to comment that “I transposed your logic to other contexts in an effort to reveal how frightening your thinking is if you follow it through”.

In fact, I am aware of the heaviness of my logic. I call myself a cynic not because I use it as a “hedge” to defuse the disappointment I feel when real life turns out much darker then I wished for. No. I do believe in my logic. I think that is the gist of our differences. I reject the promise of a Positivist world view. If such a view may be thought of as the legacy of a Continental tradition that began with Comte or Kant, I belong to a different camp—that of the Anglo-American Empiricist/Pragmatist school. I assumed that you are a liberal particularly because I detected the idealist element in your reasoning.

I should really take a pause here for we are now talking more about beliefs than reason. If I offended you by labeling you, I do apologize in advance. But you must believe me when I say I don’t mean “idealism” in a mocking way. When I use the word, I don’t use it in the vernacular sense (i.e. hot-headed hippy). Rather, it is the foundation of an alternative world view.

This being said, I just can’t find myself subscribe to this world view—it is not valid, nor is it operation-able. Not valid in the sense that it is not backed up by real world events. Not operation-able in
the sense that such a world view cannot be translated into substantial, course-altering action.

Let’s begin with the first point. In almost every case we discussed, there is a significant and enduring (if not permanent) gap between what it should/ought to be and what actually happened. This is the
same thing as the fairness-justice difference I mused about earlier. It is one thing if the discrepancies (between an envisioned world and the real one) appear occasionally and randomly. It is another if they
happen all the time. In other words, when the world always turns out dramatically different from what you think it should be, what should you think—”what is wrong with the world” or “what is wrong with my belief”? For example, after the British abolished slavery, some enlightened English wondered aloud why the Americans didn’t follow their example. After the Americans finally assimilated the Indians, they are now offended when Chinese started to compare the Tibetan issue to the Natives. The arguments were similar—we made the mistake, we know we were wrong. But you shouldn’t repeat our mistakes! You see, it is as if there is a Platonic world out there. However, again, when reality repeatedly violates the Ideal, should you still believe in the sanctity of the Ideal?

On the second point, that the idealist belief is not operation-able, I want to stress that I mean “course-altering” operations. In the case where the Taliban decided to blow up Buddhist statues, there was no lack of consensus on “right” or “wrong”. Yet was that consensus alone sufficient to alter the course of history? Then there is an even more extreme example in the cannibalistic Idi Amin, who, despite being nearly universally condemned, died in the hands of time not man. I raise those examples not to upset your senses or to distract from our discussion. Instead, what I am trying to say here is that the moral outrage (or the appeal of the righteousness) **alone** is rather powerless.

Not that I don’t believe one should hold any sort of standard. In fact, I can’t bring myself to say that “humanity” is an empty word. At the same time, however, I realize that such a standard (same as what you mean by “value system”) works only on those who also believe in such a standard and in a relatively limited sphere (geographical as well as cultural) that is also aligned with raw power (not in the sense of delivering physical violence, but the ability to change course of history). Actually, the raw power needs the standard as much as the other way around. Because people inherently seek transcendental meanings in their daily labor, the significance of symbol, ritual and language are often just as powerful. In short, they are symmetrically important and mutually enhancing (think of Weber’s Protestant ethics thesis and Said’s Orientalism. But there is a lot more to that per
sociologists like Dirkheim, Bourdieu and Geertz).

It is because this realization or, more precisely, because I am more sensitive to this power-discourse relationship than to the universality of human rights, that I claimed supporting Tibetan independence is the same as challenging China. When I said “every … is a racist”, I was following Said’s statement which, if I dare to speculate, is modeled after Nietzsche’s claim “God is dead”—it is not about whether God is really dead or not, but a cry to shock the ready (but still wandering) minds into attention.

I also take exception with your characterization of my argument on Tibet: I said the Chinese government is violently suppressive only when it comes to Dalai Lama. I am also disappointed that you, as a Tibetan specialist, didn’t give the Chinese government more credit for its respect of Tibetan culture.

To the first point, I would say that, first, I have read Dalai’s autobiography in Chinese. He is no Desmond Tutu or Nelson Mandela. His view of the world is not lack of ethnic discrimination. Secondly,
because Dalai is the head of a political party that openly advocates Tibetan independence, I consider the tension between Dalai and Beijing not a religious-secular confrontation as widely portrayed in the
Western news media, but a secular power struggle. It is not as if Dalai and Beijing disagree on what is the proper way to prostrate, it is who to prostrate to. I am not saying all power struggles are
equally dirty. But if the world recognizes Beijing’s sovereignty over Tibet, it is Beijing’s prerogative to consolidate political power across the land. If the debate comes down to that the Tibetans choose
theocracy but the Chinese government decide to untie politics and religion by marginalizing Dalai Lama, the West is really in no place to comment on that.

To the second point, I would say Beijing has done what is reasonable for Tibet. You should know that central transfer to Tibet far exceeds resource extraction from Tibet, at least since the 2000s. The notion that China proper is pillaging a resource-rich Tibet is just a slander. I have come across Barry Sautman’s several articles on Beijing’s dealings in Tibet. I don’t know what you think of him, but
he told me things I wasn’t aware before. As a Chinese native now living in the States, I do read China’s defense on its Tibet policy. What Sautman did was to collaborate some of the assertions made by the Chinese government and regular citizens.

If you are a Tibetan specialist, I don’t need to tell you how complicated Sino-Tibetan history has been. The mistrusts, hostilities and conflicts have been there for centuries and, more importantly,
gone both ways. Therefore, today’s ethnic tension and political struggle in Tibet is not unprecedented. It is not like China suddenly decide to invade an innocent Shangri-La where people eat nothing but
organic and practice nothing but yoga. Of course, I don’t believe the other nonsense that Tibetans were slaves to the Lamas prior to 1950. Even if it were true, Han Chinese really have no business to pass judgment, particularly when many contemporary Han Chinese lived no better.

What really happens in Tibet today must be somewhere in between. We don’t know the truth not because we don’t have access to the facts (even the Chinese news lockout cannot prevent cell phone pictures being leaked out on the Internet), but because our perception has been heavily colored by what we like to believe. You keep saying that you are not ardently pro-Tibet. But this is so relative that, as the recipient of this assurance, I still have no idea how far apart we are.

I was infuriated by some of the obvious media lies on Tibet during the height of the tension. You probably have heard (and I saw them myself) that Washington Post used pictures of Nepal police beating up Tibetan protestors as proof of Chinese brutality. CNN cropped a picture where
Tibetan protestors were the aggressors attacking a military truck to tell a complete different story. Many Chinese charged that the Western media conspired to make China look bad. I think that is too simplistic a reading of human nature and the media. Instead, the facts are doctored to tell a more believable story, to construct a more cohesive narrative. In other words, the interaction between the media and the Western public is not as much a “let me tell you”, but “I told you”. Compare the Tibetan story to that of Georgia—the media report on the conflict in that confusingly-named part of the world, at least initially, was a lot more tentative.

Without an opinionated media, the public would be at a loss of how to interpret events happened outside their sphere of senses. But equally true is that, without a readily receptive public, the media would not bother to invest in the effort to tell the story. This is another reason I do not think it is relevant to focus on who is or is not a racist.

I understand your criticism largely lay in my statement’s broad inclusion. I regret if it offended you. After this long contorted effort to explain myself, I hope you can see better where I came from,
or why I chose not to qualify my statement.

It has been exhaustive writing down my thoughts. But I find the experience very rewarding. For that, I want thank you for your participation in this dialogue, for your thoughtfulness and encouragement. I truly feel endebted.

In sociology, reflexivity is an act of self-reference where examination or action ‘bends back on’, refers to, and affects the entity instigating the action or examination. In brief, reflexivity refers to circular relationships between cause and effect.  (Wiki entry)

Is this an answer to the criticism of Structualism? Found this through Soros’ investment theory/observation:

Soros argues that such transitions in the fundamentals of the economy are typically marked by disequilibrium rather than equilibrium, and that the conventional economic theory of the market (the ‘efficient market hypothesis‘) does not apply in these situations. Soros has popularized the concepts of dynamic disequilibrium, static disequilibrium, and near-equilibrium conditions.

Reflexivity is based on three main ideas:

1. Reflexivity is best observed under special conditions where investor bias grows and spreads throughout the investment arena. Examples of factors that may give rise to this bias include (a) equity leveraging or (b) the trend-following habits of speculators.
2. Reflexivity appears intermittently since it is most likely to be revealed under certain conditions; i.e., the equilibrium process’s character is best considered in terms of probabilities.
3. Investors’ observation of and participation in the capital markets may at times influence valuations AND fundamental conditions or outcomes.

The last point can be found in “A Demon of Our Own Design“. The first point may be explained by information asymmetry and/or the game theory.

I am a bit confused: if this is so obvious, how come I have never heard of it before?

Just re-read Edward Said’s Orientalism a couple of days ago. Wondered what would he say about what is going on in Tibet?

I am afraid his strong identification to the Palestinian cause would compell him to side with the Tibetans. But ironically, it is his argument in Orientalism that helps me to justify my identification with the Chinese cause.

Said’s work builds on Foucault’s discourse/power/knowledge concept, as Said himself acknowledges (I also flipped through some chapters in “The Archaeology of Knowledge” and “The Foucault Reader” and did see the connections). A discourse, according to Foucault, is a process of contention that solidifies a loosely developed narrative and transforms it into knowledge. Said applies this model in the Middle East study and claims that knowledge about the Orient (i.e. Orientalism) is the by-product of colonialism, as he illustrates through Belford’s speech in the Parliament. However, Said struggles to establish whether Orientalism is created out of subjective desire or objective necessity. In other words, he cannot just say Orientalism is NOT the result of a grand conspiracy of the colonialists.

This hermeneutical ambivalence makes me cringe. If anything, Foucault is very clear that the creation of prison (in Discipline and Punish), like the creation of morden military, is out of necessity rather than planning. It is precisely this author-less-ness of modern knowledge (particularly socio-political disciplines) that makes the knowledge so authoritative and so powerful. Social Darwinism was consider a true knowledge because it was NOT a creation out of the Colonial Office. Rather it was advanced by a hermit-like scholar (Hubert Spencer) who was known to be a nerdy and detached observer. Social Darwinism was de-scienced only after the collapse of the colonial system.

What really bothers me is not what actually happened in Tibet, but how it is interpreted by the West and the Chinese, and how profoundly different the interpretations are. If I apply the Said/Orientalism model in Tibet, it is apparent that each interpretation fills a need, just as Orientalism fills the need of the colonizing enterprise.

My hypothesis is that the Western interpretation is the by-product of an effort of “integrating China”. And the Chinese one fills the need of nation building, both internally and externally.

First of all, it is apparent that media on both sides tell the same story differently by selectively pick and choose facts. Once the narrative is tested on the market, so to speak, and is accepted, it becomes knowledge (e.g. as part of the education system).

Secondly, each narrative/knowledge is developed as a result of political power relations. The West is unconfortable with China’s rise to prominence and wants to co-opt China by forcing it to conform not only to the “international” economic and financial system, but also to the value system of the West by worshiping the same symbols and using the same lexicon. In other words, China can never be granted a world power status unless it speaks the same language of human rights. Yes, even the grand ideal of the liberals is in fact a means of domination: it is something “we” have but “you” don’t.

In fact, Western political science studies have shown that there are many ways to achieve political/economic order. In the short term, it is heavily path-dependent (a la Robert Putnam). Just as Foucault argues in “Archaeology”, before a dominant narrative emerges, there are many alternatives. In the West, the dominant narrative is that liberalism is a necessary condition for economic superpower status. A typical example is the myth that England modernized first because of Magna Carta. Or the U.S. becomes what she is today thanks to a priori liberalism.

However, this narrrative has failed to explain what happened in China. As a result, the Chinese rightfully question its knowledge-worthiness and seeks to establish their own “truth”, except China is not yet strong enough to transform it into knowledge. For example, the Chinese learned from their own experiences that it pays to tolerate an authoritarian government to lead economic development at all costs. It is a legitimate alternative, one may say that the history of Germany, Japan and S. Korea can back it up too. However, China is still too weak to declare it the “right way out of poverty” for other poor countries (i.e. a knowledge, see Said’s quote of Nietzsche on p203).

The West certainly doesn’t like being contested. The unorthodoxiness of the Chinese success story challenges not only the dominant narrative, but also the West’s image of itself (in Orientalism, Said points out that the Orient exists in opposition but symbiotically with a Occident). And the worst of it all is that the West can’t accept that it is the Chinese who are challenging it. Hence, I can see the spite, the outrage, and the schadenfreude from the reactions after Tibet.

Just as Said says in Orientalism, every Orientalist, consciously or not, is a racist. Every free-Tibetaner (except the Tibetans themselves) is one too for they consider the Chinese not qualified to rule peoples who don’t share the East Asian heritage. “The Tibetan culture is a world heritage and China has the responsibility to maintain it” sounds like a flawless statement until one questions why Tibetan or Uyghur is a “world heritage” but the Three-Gorge, now flooded by a giant dam, is not as deserving?

It is too late and I am too tired to continue. I know full well no one will have the appetite to read this posting. That is the position I am in and I am strangely comfortable with it. Whatelse can I do? Cling to guns and religion?

By the way, I tested this idea with Joel. He shut me down even before I could finish. “Stick with the coal.” He said succinctly.

Afterword
I just found out that Said was dismayed that Foucault was a pro-Zionist. How ironic: Said admires Foucault but has to live witht the fact that the originator of his reasoning actually doesn’t share the same belief with him. In that case, I should not feel bad that Said might have sided with the pro-Tibetan movement:)

This is not the first time I imagine a dialogue with Said. In fact, after 9.11, I wrote him an email asking how he would explain the tragedy. Little did I know he was already very ill then (he died soon after). I am sure my email, unopened and unread, may still reside somewhere on a lonely server in Columbia.

I feel mentally twisted. I think I am on to something, but can’t say it or describe it as a body of knowledge. I think I am talking to Foucault and Nietzsche, but can’t understand what they are saying. I am just not good enough. I am not worthy.

Ever since I realized, after taking Migdal’s class, the knowledge (or truth) is related to power/dominance (of course, a narrow sense of K/T, mostly social/political or unquantifiable ones), I have been bothered by the relationship. I am fascinated by it, can’t figure it all out and–the worst–can’t just let it go. Very annoying addiction-like.

It all started yesterday after reading the article in the NYKr: “True Crime” The story is about a young Polish guy, who’s fascinated by Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, wrote a book as a way to manifest his brand of “truth/knowledge/illusion/perception”. The book described crimes committed by a seemingly reputable guy. Prior to the book, there was a murder–a perfect crime–that had some similarities with what’s in the book. Later an equally dogged police detective convinced a court that the author of the book was the murderer in real life.

The story is very engaging, but very dark. Some quotes:
Bala often referred to Wittgenstein as “my master.” He also seized on Friedrich Nietzsche’s notorious contention that “there are no facts, only interpretations” and that “truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions.”

Bala wrote a thesis about Richard Rorty, the American philosopher, who famously declared, “The guise of convincing your peers is the very face of truth itself.”

When a former girlfriend testified that Bala once went out on her balcony drunk and acted as if he were on the verge of committing suicide, he asked her if her words might have multiple interpretations. “Could we just say that this is a matter of semantics-a misuse of the word ’suicide’?” he said.
—————–
Apparently, he is talented (e.g. “graduated with highest possible marks from school”). Yet he’s not good enough to be a philosopher to his own standard so he’s not really interested in an academic life just for the sake of having a job. He went into business instead.

It seems that his appreciation of the menacing nature of K/T, contrasted with his inability to translate such an appreciation into any secular advantage, really drew the worst out of him: he became sadistic and easily paranoid. He wrote his book partly to act out his fascination, partly, I think, to vent his frustration.

After reading his book and getting to know him better, the detective decided publishing a book wasn’t enough to satisfy either of his feelings. He had to live through the experience. With that conviction, he pursued him like Javert going after Jean Valjean, and succeeded.

Now Bala, the author/convicted murderer, is behind bars for 25 years and writing his next book.

NYT introduced a couple of recent books (“Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge”)on America’s anti-intellectual tradition.

Quotes:
Ms. Jacoby, whose book came out on Tuesday, doesn’t zero in on a particular technology or emotion, but rather on what she feels is a generalized hostility to knowledge.

T. J. Jackson Lears, a cultural historian who edits the quarterly review Raritan, said, “The tendency to this sort of lamentation is perennial in American history,” adding that in periods “when political problems seem intractable or somehow frozen, there is a turn toward cultural issues.”

The article also cited Ms. Jacoby (started as a Washington Post reporter) as saying the problem was with the flawed educational system and religious foundamentalism.

I disagree. This is just another manifestation of the knowledge-power relationship. Or the ontology of knowledge: if people already feeling empowered, why do they still need knowledge?

This may seem obvious, but my contention is: this is NOT an abnormly, nor a unique phenomenon.

I am always fascinated by the process how the image of a public figure is shaped up in people’s minds.

It seems like there is this “caricaturization” process: a caricature is apparently an distortion of a character’s real appearance. Yet such a distortion is so sticky, once it enters in one’s mind, it is almost impossible to get rid of.

Is there a similar effect/process in media’s portray of a public figure? Given that most audiences may have never met/interacted with a public figure, how can such an effect/process generate traction in people’s minds? In other words, there has to be a balance between “what people are willing to hear/believe” and “whether the figure is actually more eccentric in certain ways”. But then to what degree can one (i.e. media actors) blur and distort each of the two in the process of creating a public persona?

The following triggered the above thought:
Source: “Anti-Obama Film On the Way”
“Obama is a completely clean slate,” said David Bossie, president of the group. “We will develop the image that we want the people to see. We’re doing the hard work of the research right now. The American people don’t know much about Obama, except that they like his speaking style.”

A day after I wrote about Steven Bach’s book on Leni Riefenstahl, here comes another documentory film maker controversy: Ken Burns was critisized by Latino groups for failing to include the stories of their soldiers in his WWII documentary. The story went to extra inning when Burns refused to alter his story at first but gave in after Hispanic politicians threatened to cut PBS funding because of this.

The cacophony from the left and the right ridiculed the strong-arm tactic by the Hispanic lawmakers, yet their colleagues in the Congress largely remain silent. As much as I dislike anyone taking political shortcuts, I am grudgingly agreeing with the agitators: everything they have done so far is by the book (i.e. the Huntington’s book, that is): they stayed within the political system, participated in it and claimed their stake through legislative venue.

This is particularly important because of Latino citizens’ relative marginal status in our society. More specifically, they are politically under-represented because of their immigrant stigma. They filled the cities, the factories, the schools, and the churches of this land, yet their political status is forever in precarious state because of a piece of paper issued by the only institute of the land they do not fill. Therefore, the “justification” of their political exclusion is even more ridiculous than that against the Blacks during the segregation era. In this regard, we should be appreciative that they stayed in the current political regime and exercised their influence the way we are accustomed to.

I got side-tracked a little because what I meant to say was how Latino activists justified their tactic. Recently, one such lady on Jim Lehrer’s News Hour put in one sentence why Burns must change his movie: because of the sacrifice of the Latino soldiers and the large Latino population we have in America today. The congruence of the two arguments struck me as odd at first but moments later, it makes so much sense! As a matter of fact, I myself have written on it: what is history? Or does history belong to the people in the past or people in the present? My thought was triggered by a story on dying WWI veterans: even if there is a time machine that we can travel back with them to their time, we would not come back with the same “history”. It is so fascinating that I found some supporting argument but didn’t recognize it. Apparently, as I have learned from Marketing, there is a substantial difference between thinking and feeling.

It is getting too late … but want to keep the following thoughts:
I was listening to Diane Rhem while hiking up Mailbox Peak, heard couple stories that triggered the following thoughts:
1. What’s the difference between a documentary film maker and a propagandist? The story was about Leni Riefenstahl. NYKr also had a profilt/book review on her recently. Some people are still very upset and called her a criminal. But really, what was she? A propagandist or a film maker? Did she make up anything in Triumph of Will that did NOT happen in the summer of 1934 Nuremberg? As far as I can recall, it is a silent movie so there can’t be any misleading statement. Isn’t this all about interpretation (i.e. presentation of “reality”)? Knowledge is never only a collection of factual truth, but how they are related and organized. No documentary film maker is not a story-teller. The same can be said about a propagandist.
2. Turkey: the secular and the religous conflicts. I was just wondering: how can a paternalistic and authoritative institution as the military safeguarding secular democracy? Kemal Ataturk apparently didn’t trust either the efficacy of democracy or the nature of Turkish people, so he decided to use state violence as the final guarantee. This is kind of unique and strange, I suddenly realized. Nevertheless, living in an increasingly religious and moralistic America, the Turk’s faith in secularism is both refreshing and admirable.