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

Re: No

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Demand for raw materials produces genocide, does it? So if you ask me for sugar, I might kill someone, and that makes you a murderer, right?

Re: No

[(Anonymous)]

Are you a fucking idiot?

"Demand for raw materials produces genocide, does it?"
Of course. Often. Indeed, it happened before with rubber in the Congo. This led to the first modern human rights movement:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3516965.stm

I must say it's interesting and revealing that you take a pro-genocide position.

Re: No

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Wait, you've sent me to look at an episode from the history of colonialism in Africa. What African nations are currently Chinese colonies? Are you trying to tell me (with added swearing) that mere demand for raw materials causes massacres? And now the blame for the murder is not just not with the murderer, and not just with the Chinese, but with me too? You're nuts! (And watch out, people will kill for nuts, I hear!)

Re: No

[(Anonymous)]

You were the one who argued that China was "lifting Africa out of poverty" - presumably by helping to murder 4 million Congolese (the largest death toll since WW2, and a subject which you seem entirely fucking ignorant)

Not only in Congo, but China is trying to prop up Mugabe:
http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/5-7-26/30630.html

And yet willfully ignorant cunts like you say China is "lifting Africa out of poverty". As an apologist for genocide you're pretty entertaining. You reminds me of Bush:
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Ambassador_claims_shortly_before_invasion_Bush_0804.html

Re: No

[crucible.livejournal.com]

YOU are a fucking idiot for assuming one to one equivalency between genocide and demand for raw materials. "Interesting that he takes a pro-genocide position"? Grow the fuck up and stop trying to be clever.

Re: No

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, demand for raw materials caused a genocide. Are you too fucking stupid to see that? Read a book you witless cunt.

Re: No

[(Anonymous)]

Ah, the bravery of the anonymous cunt-caller... --2fs, anonymous only because I'm not an LJ user...