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

[akabe.livejournal.com]

i find the common comparisons between (economic rise of) post-war/pre-bubble japan and china now totaly inapropriate since japan was developing simultaneously in technological, esthetic and economic level while comparatively china seems to be building muscle. having world's top architects all build trophy pieces isn't quite the same as comming up with say metabolism, massive mass-manufacturing doesn't quite compare with revolutionizing the electronics and car/transport industries. or maybe it does, different era ofter all.

[bricology.livejournal.com]

It's also worth bearing in mind that China and Japan are totally different in a dramatic way: China killed off all of its aristocracy and intellectuals, whereas Japan maintained those lines unbroken for centuries. China's loss of those two groups for about the past 3 generations has had a profound impact on their culture and values. The only places that Chinese people can learn about those things are third-hand, and in censored form (if any of them even care to learn about them).

Imagine if Britain in 1950 had killed its gentry, aristocracy and intellectuals, isolated itself from the world and buried its history? Could they ever recover a free and healthy culture? No, it would've been just like Orwell described in "1984", which is little different from the situation in China for the past 50 years.

[kementari2.livejournal.com]

A very good point.