Optimism moves east

[imomus]

The story so far: As Angrael turns into a paranoid alliance of embattled security states lashing out with ever-increasing violence against the very people who control their energy resources, dragging the West ever deeper into a vicious circle of hatred, reprisals against civilians, and the erosion of all legitimacy, any tender-minded and optimistic view of our future slips away into a bloody sunset.

Is it really just ten years ago that we were talking about long booms rather than mid-flight explosions? Our prosperity was going to continue and increase, and we were going to use our wealth to help the poor. Everybody was going to love us. Our children would grow up in a world that was getting better.



This diffuse, warm sense of well-being wasn't just a side-effect of the MDMA tablets everyone was taking back in the 90s. It was related to a sense that world trade talks (the same ones that have just collapsed at Doha) might bring global justice, that information technology was going to raise educational standards and democratize knowledge, that a new post-industrial economy was going to complement bricks and mortar business, and that the 21st century, just on the threshold, would be a wonderland where lifespan would increase and diseases be defeated thanks to gen-tech.



The images on this page show some short-lived kids' bookstore in groovy, optimistic 1990s London, Paris, Berlin, New York or Tokyo, don't they? It went out of business in 2001, didn't it, replaced by a store selling black, beige and cream clothes and fallout shelters? Actually, no. This "haven for little imaginations" is Kids Republic, a childrens' bookstore in Beijing, China. It's just opened.

The optimism, tender-mindedness and benign curiosity apparent in this store (something about its spirit and design reminds me of Oto Kinoko, the sound store in Kyoto I blogged about excitedly earlier this year, only to find it had already closed down) represent everything we in the West have lost in the last ten years; lost because of our clumsy response to 9/11 and Angraeli realpolitik. Who, in the West, would have children now? But it's nice to know that, somewhere, optimism about the future is still intact.

In 30 or 40 years, the Chinese kids in this photo will be running the world. It's hard to imagine them making a worse job of it than we've done.

Comments

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I also want to point to an interesting article (http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000039&refer=columnist_pesek&sid=aHG3GmK5ftp4) I read yesterday about how it's India and China, not the West, who are lifting Africa out of poverty.

No

[(Anonymous)]

You make an interesting interpretation of the facts. In fact, demand for materials such coltan has caused the genocide of around 4 million people in the Congo. This demand is driven by manufacturing of laptops, mobile phones, and other small electronic equipment in the far east. Perhaps 4 million dead Africans mean little to you though.

[(Anonymous)]

Is this the same China where you're only allowed one child? Or the youngsters hot-bunk in Guangzhou to make the world's toys? Or they bump off criminals for their internal organs?

You rightly criticise the West for looking to *external* things as a means of bringing happiness and contentment, but I suggest it is wrong to look to another external thing - the 'East' - as an alternative.

There are extremes of sickness and health, bad and good, sadness and happiness, in all parts of the world. What we need to know is what makes healthy peaople healthy in a society that is as sick as ours (West). Then we can emulate them and turn our society around from the inside.

[(Anonymous)]

- Eamonn

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I'd also like to say that it's worth following the Oto Kinoko link for the conversation about colours that develops. Because this entry is also very much about colour. Where did colour go in the West, and in Japan? That's one of my big questions, and I believe it's a political question. These photographs of Kids Republic were a sort of answer. The colours we used to see in the West and in Japan in the 90s -- and all the things they represent about worldview -- are alive and well and to be found in Beijing.

level it

[rroland.livejournal.com]

it's time to clarify your position, your east/west angrael polarizations are more about governments and those fanatics who support them then us common folk right? i mean that scares me. you're getting a lot of hits now. when you mention kids i get a creepy feeling. this is a hot topic and i think color, design have not much relevance, more a nice bridge hoping for a nice happy chorus to a fade.

[me-vs-gutenberg.livejournal.com]

Who, in the West, would have children now?

Interesting question: In the case of Israel, I'd say anyone who's still alive on account of not being eradicated.

Also, did you find this on boingboing or Neatorama or The Cool Hunter, or did someone else give you a link? Not like it's mandatory for a blogger to cite his sources, but in the case of fast-travelling memes, it's interesting to see who each one's "content aggregator" of choice is.

[me-vs-gutenberg.livejournal.com]

It is also interesting that you're quick to condemn "Angrael" (a word that rings of certain anti-semitic stereotypes if you're sensitive to that kind of thing) for being "a paranoid alliance of embattled security states", and then say, 'But behold, hope lies in the east' and point to China, the world's greatest censor and violator of human rights? I know, this is probably one of those things that are about "texture, not text", but this has to be too far a stretch even for you.

[dmlaenker.livejournal.com]

So it's Angrael vs. Eurabia, right?

Right? (How come one is reductionist and the other isn't? Why can't they both be reductionist?)

Which lends itself to another question: why are the questionable elements of Israeli democracy cruel and sickening to you, but you can go on about the hope engendered by one of the most autocratic powers on Earth?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I consider the Chinese one-child policy an absolutely visionary piece of social engineering, on a par with Kennedy declaring that within ten years a man would walk on the moon, or California stating that it wants to achieve zero emissions. There's also a very promising determination on the part of the PRC government to take firm steps on ecological issues, if we're to believe environmentalists like Jonathan Porritt.

The "rights" of Falun Gong to start some cranky new religion pale into insignificance beside the fact that a major world power is coming into being that, so far, doesn't seem to need a global empire or endless wars to sustain itself. That's what I call "hope". What I call fear is the idea that a US declining into "fascism lite" will feel the need to challenge China at some point.

Dark Times, But . . .

[(Anonymous)]

I know it is dark times and difficult to have hope, but I have a hard time understanding:
1. Deploying broad categories (West, East, Angraeli) vs. specific behaviors (killing civilians, detaining dissidents, invading a soverign nation, blowing up planes, etc.) The categories just don't seem productive and are more than cynical given the diverse ideas, actions, etc. that they are meant to swallow up.

2. Looking to a child's bookstore as an illustration of burgeoning hope. It's cute, but alas so are a lot of children's culture.

3. Looking to China. While no country has clean hands, I find it difficult to pin my hope on what are essentially market reforms. Regardless of your position on markets impacting any country's behavior toward their citizens, there has been very little that I have read at this point that seems hopeful in China.

-Joshua

Re: Dark Times, But . . .

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I come from a school of thinking that looks at actions and events from the perspective of the people participating. (It's called verstehen, and you could describe it as "seeing with".) Now, the interpretation of terrorists -- the people who planned to blow up a dozen planes this week, if we're to believe Scotland Yard -- is that they're involved in a struggle that's everything to do with race, religion and culture. And yet UK government figures like John Reid try at every opportunity to delink terrorism from a specific political struggle. He seems to forget Tony Blair's words "We must be tough on crime, and tough on the causes of crime." To do that, you have to see what causes the crime of terrorism from the participant's point of view. Branding terrorists "evil" is as big a cop-out as saying the situation is one of endless nuanced complexity, impossible to summarize. Only when you've linked things analytically can you start to work on ways to de-link them on the ground. Being "tough on the causes of crime", in this case, would involve solving the abuse of the Palestinians, for a start.

As for seeing children's culture and textural signals as something to base hope on, that's part of an ongoing exercise in my thinking -- an attempt to find cultural meanings in things like the use of colour, how people treat children, and so on. Call it "aesthetic paranoia". It may well make no sense to anybody else.

[sarmoung.livejournal.com]

It seems that in the future, all metropolitan centres will have one area designated as Soho, where this shop is located in Beijing. It was designed by Keiichiro Sako (http://framemag.com/article.php?id=397&mag_id=51&current=1) and the shop itself is owned by Poplar, which I think is a Japanese publisher. Poplar's Chinese website (http://www.poplar.com.cn/) might reveal more if you can navigate it.

According to that link "A mere 60 per cent of the clientele at Kid's Republic is Chinese, with foreign residents making up the remainder."

An expat Japanese mother visits here (http://keiya.cocolog-nifty.com/beijingbluesky/2006/04/post_24be.html)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ah, interesting, I was wondering who designed it; a Chinese, a Westerner, or a Japanese. Maybe I'm just responding to a Japanese aesthetic. The tender-mindedness is certainly something I associate more with Japan than China. But this bookshop also points to the development of a certain bien pensant bourgeois class in China, and that's important. If this class comes to power, many of China's other problems will be better handled.

[whip-lash.livejournal.com]

In 30 or 40 years, the Chinese kids in this photo will be running the world.

Or tanks will be running over them. Or they'll be fighting the kind of aggressive war that usually results from having an artificial surplus of young males.

Call me back when Tibet is free and the Great Firewall of China is down. I understand you dislike the West and that's fine, it doesn't affect my enjoyment of your writing in the slightest. But let's not be absurd and hold up China, of all places, as the great hope for a happy future.

[whip-lash.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, funny you post this on the same day another member of my LJ Friends list posts this (http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2006/08/swaddling_cloth.html#003189):

As a blogosphere inhabitant you learn things. One that has come as a surprise to me is that many people don't understand how kiddie-centric America has become. To me, this is one of the central givens of contempo American life. It seems so blazingly evident to me that I tend to assert it as established fact, and am amazed to encounter people who dispute it.

What's my proof? Not a lot, I'm afraid. Mere impressions, really. I'm hardly a world traveler -- I've lived overseas for a total of a little more than a year, and I haven't visited any more foreign countries than most standard-issue, middle-class Americans. Nonetheless, what has jumped out at me most during my times abroad is the way that other cultures don't organize themselves around children to the same extent that the U.S. does.

I spent a school year in Rennes, Brittany in the early 1970s. Here are a few examples of how their attitudes towards kids differed from ours.

* They never took vacations for the kids -- to visit landmarks for the sake of the kids' educations, or just because the kids were clamoring to go someplace. Theme parks were nonexistent, and the idea of devoting a few weeks of one's treasured time-off to a kiddie destination would have been found laughable. Vacations were to be spent where the parents could enjoy their well-earned leisure.

* Days and weeks weren't organized around the kiddies' obligations and plans: playdates, music lessons, soccer games, SAT-coaching appointments, etc. Life was organized around the parents' rhythms.

* Grownups didn't choose neighborhoods to live in strictly for the sake of the kids. They might (or might not) move someplace because they knew the schools there to be better. But that was rare. And, in any case, parents certainly wouldn't sacrifice anything in the way of their own dignity and pleasure for the sake of, say, a big backyard.

I saw two assumptions being lived-out in France: One was that adult life has worth in its own right. The other was that the kids would make do.

A self-centered American teen during this year abroad, I was often most struck by the way the French viewed adolescence. The teen years weren't viewed as Americans often see them -- as a sexy high and a big deal, however agony-riddled and pimple-filled. Adolescence was viewed instead as a fairly unfortunate 3-5 year stretch during which youngsters had to be cut a little more slack than usual. And then it was over. Come 20 or 21, you were expected to leave the silliness and the acting-out behind. Incidentally, one reason why French pop culture is so laughable compared to American pop culture is that the French simply don't take adolescence as seriously as we do. So their pop culture has nothing like the ringing conviction to it that ours sometimes does.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Good lord, where to start with that?

Theme parks were nonexistent, and the idea of devoting a few weeks of one's treasured time-off to a kiddie destination would have been found laughable. Vacations were to be spent where the parents could enjoy their well-earned leisure.

Living in Brittany puts you within an easy drive of all sorts of theme parks, from Eurodisney to the Asterix Park. Also, Europeans have something like twice the paid holiday time that Americans do, including the whole month of August.

As for French pop culture being "laughable" compared with US pop culture, obviously an artist who's been massively influenced by Lio, Dutronc, Brel, Gainsbourg (not to mention all the stuff currently going on in Paris, some of which I detailed yesterday) etc wouldn't agree with that at all.

[constructionism.livejournal.com]

Momus, thank you for the link. I'm interested in this sort of humanistic architecture, that invites children to embrace reading while absorbing some design intelligence. Wish we had something like this here in the U.S., where children are often ashamed to be seen reading a book. I attribute my ability to get into college to my mother's endless excursions to the library when I was a kid.

[(Anonymous)]

>>here in the U.S., where children are often ashamed to be seen reading a book

really? where do you see this? not to be reactionary but this seems like one of those baseless generalizations that are a pet-peeve of mine. it's like when my aunt tells me of all the ms-13 gang violence we should fear in the washington suburbs, though i've yet to see any trace of evidence save for the news' hysteria.

not an attack on you, mind, rather an honest inquiry...

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

i had a dream last night that you were arrested and your punishment was to perform corny children's songs for some emperor's stuck-up spawn and you were told to "keep it clean...forever" else you would be beheaded.
you were wearing a neon pink patch.

[glad to provide you with blog fodder, btw....i really want to visit that bookstore. and incidentally, since someone was asking for source, i originally found the link through boingboing, then neatorama, then coolhunter.]

[(Anonymous)]

funny, i had a dream a few nights ago that you and hisae had a son. scotch always gives me vivid, obscure dreams like this

Superheroes and Pirates

[fascicle.livejournal.com]

OTOH, the West is equally capable of subversion and fun in
educating its young. I like Dave Eggers' projects: Superhero
Supplies and Pirate Hangouts to fund the core educational
project:

http://www.gothamgazette.com/community/39/news/563

(What Gotham Gazette doesn't mention is that it's stupid
Americalandian zoning rules that mean the site of the
superhero centre *has* to be used for a commercial purpose).

And that's what we non-breeding liberals do. We educate and
subvert the products of the breeders. I apply the Japanese
Kumon-English program to a good many Sikh and Muslim children,
indoctrinating them in extremely utile English forms that they
may go on and raise Cain with Angrael. Apart from one girl,
who not only won't read the words "pig" or "bacon", but also
can't manage "cock" for a male barnyard bird, and will just
sit silent if she's not sure of an answer. oh, well.

Re: Superheroes and Pirates

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

[i live a few blocks from, and sometimes volunteer at, 826 Valencia [the pirate store] and it is one of my favorite places in the world. there's a little theater for watching fish, secret compartments everywhere, and the place really does look like a pirate ship! you can also buy eyepatches there, one of which made its way into the hands of momus at some point.]

[(Anonymous)]

I don't believe in all this crap about bombs at airports.

I think they were probably put there by the CIA or Mossad to divert attention from current Israeli atrocities - thereby maintaining the fake legitimacy of the "war on terror" in people's imaginations.

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

<< I don't believe in all this crap about bombs at airports. >>

I don't believe it either. Almost all the new sources I've seen are Anglo. The whole story is somehow too tidy. I believe it was manufactured. Though there are some weird things happening in West Oakland today. Lots of helicopters; probably checking out the Port.

[uberdionysus.livejournal.com]

Jeez, everyone jumped all over you on this one, and I agree with them, but I think you're right: China seems optimistic and seems poised to take over the world in the next century. Hopefully a loosening and liberalization will come with their ascension, because right now... yikes.

On Color
I completely agree. Color is fundamentally about corporeality and irreducible to the textual. Color has traditionally been dismissed as superficial and decorative, but it speaks of the world and a direct dealing with the multifarious nature of the world. Earth colors and all-black are a denial of the world, and an attempt to restrict the world to the abstractions created by text.

Jacqueline Lichtenstein's The Eloquence of Color (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520069072/104-4017514-1357569?v=glance&n=283155) is the best book I've ever read on the subject, but David Batchelor's Chromophobia (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1861890745/ref=sr_11_1/104-4017514-1357569?ie=UTF8) is shorter and almost as good.

Freize used to be all about color, but now it's followed the mainstream art world and Tema Celeste into a color-antagonism. Nest was the most beautiful magazine in the world, but it's disbanded. K48 is still a force in the art world, but they are not as strong as they used to be. Cinders Gallery in my neighborhood is all about color, and hope and optimism is not lost for us color-friendly folk in the West.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The David Batchelor book is central to my thoughts on this subject. Haven't seen the Lichtenstein one.

Brainstorming

[(Anonymous)]

Was this the hotel you wrote about in your excellent March essay on masks and brainstorming?

http://www.virtualaloft.com/

I thought it was amazing when I read about it and was reminded of what seemed like an outlandish suggestion at the time: to build a virtual hotel that guests could experience, even if they were in the Bronx.

Re: Brainstorming

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It was just an idea off the top of my head, I didn't have any concrete -- well, pixel -- examples in mind! Interesting...

And try this book for color outfits from around the world:

[uberdionysus.livejournal.com]

Uwe Ommer's 1000 Families: The Family Album of Planet Earth (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3822862134/sr=1-2/qid=1155231433/ref=pd_bbs_2/104-4017514-1357569?ie=UTF8&s=books) is a book that shames all of the Western countries. The every-day colorful costumes that the rest of the world wears is wonderful and kaleidoscopic in their outrageous color.

Absolutely beautiful. (You can check out a few pages of photos at Amazon.)

[dayofthelocust.livejournal.com]

I will keep it short and say that this totally uplifted me this morning. Thank you.

[(Anonymous)]

If you think China doesn't have an empire, perhaps you should consider the following occupied territories:

Xinjiang
Tibet
Manchuria
Inner Mongolia

Xinjiang, for example, is about five times the size of Germany. Tibet and Inner Mongolia about four times.

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry, Eamonn again.

[(Anonymous)]

PS You're either on the wind up - yet again - or just easily taken in by some pretty pictures.

[chuckm.livejournal.com]

Maybe it'll be a nice place to take your child to help him/her forget the image of their pet dog hanging from a tree (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/world/asia/10china.html).

[bricology.livejournal.com]

Amen.

I love this blog!

[(Anonymous)]

I really do! It's hopeful even when passions are aroused.

momus you say some of the sweetest, most thoughtful, most clever (fun!), most interesting, most profound and also most stupid (or maybe just "pollyana-ish?" my pov anyway... ) things!

But you're so willing to hang your ass(isthatallowed?) out on the line. I admire that so much. It requires fortitude, and optimism, and I thank you for that.

And the caliber of your commenters and content keeps me interested and coming back.

I continue to wonder, though, how we (humanity) can problem-solve and move forward in positive, constructive, life-affirming ways. I'll be grateful when China is our lord and master NOT because I think they'll do a better job of it (they're human, after all) but because at least the "heat" will be off "the west" for a while and we can have a new bogey-man. A reprieve from this particular brand of monotony in favor of another is as hopeful as I'm able to be in that regard. If they do a bang-up job huzzah. Hell I'd even be happy if GWB turns out to be "right" and peace will prevail in the middle east as a result of his (*ahem*) "policies." I'll happily roll over like an obedient dog for any overlord who is able to divert our resources from the cause of human and ecological destruction, to that of human progress (in the sense of meeting human physical, emotional and intellectual need and allowing spiritual expression in its myriad of forms). But I'm not holding my breath. Kofi Anan is no more benevolent than any other politician. And he'd probably be incompetent if he were. China, while developing in interesting and sometimes hopeful ways, is no beacon of hope.

Horror manifests in all cultures, as does transcendence. These are human phenomena, not restricted to specific cultures, races, or religions (more dominant in some circumstances, to be sure). My concerns don't lie with "left vs right" or "east vs west" or even "right vs wrong." My concern is with our seeming universal inclination to develop pat personal or community ideologies that support a delusion of moral certitude or superiority primarily through attributing "blame" to a single or few or collective "culprits," to assert that "we" know "the one true way," (FUNDAMENTALISM WHETHER RELIGIOUS OR POLITICAL WHETHER RIGHT OR LEFT) and to justify subversion, repression, and atrocities (as in it's okay to kill "terrorists," "toxic xtians," or "tibetans") in order to perpetuate our "evolved and superior vision."

I don't have answers, but neither did Plato, so at least I'm in good company. I wish we had fewer pat answers and more good questions that led somewhere, anywhere, other than to a position of intransigent defensiveness. I wish we could accept our fallibility and work with it, instead of denying it, or attributing all fallability onto "the others."

Maybe we'll figure out a way. Maybe we'll achieve that collective shift in consciousness that will allow us to break free of this collective cycle of violence.

In any case I appreciate the initiative, earnestness and thoughtfulness I see on this board (a lot!!!). I haven't found "answers" here, but I do find hope that people care enough to maybe find a way.

It's odd to feel so tentatively hopeful, and so reluctantly demoralized all at the same time. Sometimes I wish I had a "one true belief." But cognitive dissonance is no justification for a fundamentalist perspective.


trixie

Re: I love this blog!

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

I hope I'm not writing too much again

<< Horror manifests in all cultures, as does transcendence. These are human phenomena, not restricted to specific cultures, races, or religions (more dominant in some circumstances, to be sure). My concerns don't lie with "left vs right" or "east vs west" or even "right vs wrong." My concern is with our seeming universal inclination to develop pat per >>

Yes, horror is a human phenomenon. We are beginning to evolve beyond humanity. Technology and humanism, ironically, are leading to the next step, which will be an enlightened, machine-enabled humanoid that understands the virtues of non-violence.

I'M READY

[pixelmist.livejournal.com]

Captain, for a guy with a picture of Marx hanging in his kitchen, I've seen precious little materialist analysis here, especially re: "Angrael" and this whole China situation! What's happenin'?!

But see, I'm sort of with you on the hope expressed in these pictures. The greatest disservice Westerners are doing to the future, besides the obvious, is raising succeeding generations of hip little cynics, creatively-underdeveloped and culturally inept. "Optimism, tender-mindedness and benign curiosity" are integral to the development of strong, morally healthy societies (I'd quote Huizinga again, but I'll quote you instead: "All new games prefigure new societies"!).

I do think, as many have expressed here, that the horrible comparison of children signing bombs in Israel to children playing in a modernist dreambook has led to (perhaps) an unmeasured praise of (currently) fascist China. Even the Spartacists (ooh, I hates 'em!) call it a "deformed worker's state." Does that sound pleasant?

[thetemplekeeper.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Your analysis of a Chinese future seems somewhat over-optimistic; however, apart from the fact that the Chinese government's one-child policy seems to have had a sinister effect on the ratio of boys to girls, most of the important other stuff - the suppression of Tibetan Buddhism (though not the suppression of the Mongolians), Falung Gong organ "donations," the pollution and the propping up of foul politics in the Sudan - have been raised by other bloggers.
s
There is an interesting video piece by Stephen Hawking, however, that suggests there may not be that much of a future for humanity in any case - and, judging by most of the effects we have on our environments, this may on the whole be no bad thing: http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=178f89d3d9987efabcf31c6fb8364fd6.654968&vback=Profile&vdone=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.yahoo.com%2Fvideo%2Fprofile%3Fei%3DUTF-8%26yid%3Dy_answrs_team
Damn! That link is huge! Apologies if it makes my reply enormous!

[cerulicante.livejournal.com]

This post seemed more like babbling than coherent reasoning.


I can't wait for China's role in the world to be supplanted by India. I want some cheap curry.

India has Bangalore

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

hey cerulicante, I agree, India may dominate China, if s/he plays her cards right. The tech explosion in India right now is super exciting. But they don't have stem cells. QED

[(Anonymous)]

"Und I'm learning Chinese!" says Wernher von Braun.