Comrade Pim is a good man
Jan. 27th, 2010 12:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomus1. Outside, ice glazed the dark jagged rocks, but in the small mining hut lit by fluorescent tubes, decorated with old newspaper pages and heated by three blue kerosene stoves, a dozen of us clinked soju glasses. We ate spiced cabbage and ginger pork, drank the fierce, raw rice liquor, and shouted, sang and laughed until the windows were beaded with condensation.
2. I'm interested in the aesthetics of empathy. I find it easier to project empathically on Eastern people than Western, on poor people than rich, on people from other cultures rather than people from my own, and on people from the past rather than people from the present.
3. The images punctuating this page come from the wonderful NHK documentary The Silk Road (1980), in which a Japanese team -- helped by Chinese soldiers and officials -- travels to inaccessible sites along the Silk Road. Music is by Kitaro, a sort of one-man Japanese Tangerine Dream.
4. I've been watching hour-long segments from The Silk Road all week. Some of the commentary sounds like propaganda -- this was a Japanese-Chinese co-production made in a time when China was still very much communist. The script has clearly been vetted to eradicate any reference to tensions between the Chinese and Japanese, and to make Chinese achievements (like the "Happiness Railway" simulated in film 9, and actually activated before its completion by the Chinese government specifically for the NHK documentary) look good.
5. I don't mind that something is propaganda, in other words is an obvious lie. It can still serve my purposes, for instance embody a kind of plot in which cynicism and negativity has been completely, consciously excluded. It matters less whether something is true or false than whether it takes me somewhere.
6. "A toast to Comrade Pim!" called a colleague dressed in blue jacket and grey cap. "Without him, we could never have discovered the magnificent copper seam!" "To Pim, the model worker!" came the cry from a dozen throats.
7. During last year's Asian Women's Film Festival, the North Korean films fascinated me. I was very interested in how the machinery of plot works when you remove all negativity. I was particularly interested in plots which worked to establish the self-effacing goodness of a character, then showed this character passing due respect on to someone even more benign, diligent, indigent and self-sacrificing. Insofar as conflict drove these plots, it was the conflict of two people insisting on each other's greater worthiness.
8. I demurred, smiling, and held up a hand for silence. "It is our collective diligence that has achieved this breakthrough," I said. "Who built the tunnels that I crawled along to make my lucky discovery?" Comrade Jun smiled and looked at the floor. "Who operated the lift that brought us to the place where fresh copper was just waiting to be discovered?" Comrade Bu grinned bashfully. "And who toiled at ground level in always-difficult circumstances, maintaining the camp in this inhospitable place?" Here Comrade Pi ruffled his own hair, as if in confusion.
9. In a way, altruistic virtue is our society's final taboo. I was interested to read an entry on my Friends List today entitled I am not the weirdo here. Lucy, who wrote this blog, reports that a friend criticized her recently, saying: "You're just too nice. You think people are essentially good and decent." Lucy went on to say she made no apology for being nice, or believing the best of people.
10. "Nevertheless," cried out the foreman, "this great achievement, which came at enormous physical cost to yourself, Comrade Pim, and in the face of great risk, will be reported to the chairman of the mining committee, and he will report it to the local party chief, who will in turn send an electric dispatch to Victory City, where word of this will surely reach the Dear Leader himself!"
11. I assembled a counter-argument in my mind, something I might tell Lucy. What if we weren't simply looking at the dimension of Good - Evil, but also of Boring - Interesting? Might goodness fall on the wrong side of that sometimes, the boring side? Had Lucy read Blake's hellish proverbs ("Energy is eternal delight!")? Had she read Sade's Justine? Or even seen Brecht's plays, with their message that niceness is a luxury most people cannot afford yet? What about TS Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, with its very Christian awareness of the temptations of martyrdom and sainthood, its caution about spiritual pride?
12. It's not nice to hate, but what if the nice hate the interesting for not being nice enough, and the interesting hate the nice for being boring?
13. Adam Curtis, in his Century of the Self, showed how Cold War games played at the Rand Corporation fed into a Cold War mindset (you can see it in James Bond, The Man from UNCLE, and a thousand other places) of slick mistrust based on the calculability of mutually-assured destruction. He showed that the most dangerous thing, in the eyes of the architects of post-war paranoia, was the altruistic public servant, someone motivated by something other than self-interest. Altruism actually fucks up the economic self-interest and gamesmanship models by making individuals act on the behalf of others.
14. And all glasses were raised to the framed, faded photograph of the Dear Leader, whose eyes seemed to twinkle, now orange, now blue, in the light of the kerosene stove.
15. I'm interested in the challenge of writing (of me writing!) about "old-fashioned" values like altruism, diligence, honour, responsibility, virtue, trustworthiness and empathy. But a devil on my shoulder whispers: "And what if virtue is simply the behaviour -- a sort of non-behaviour -- of those who lack the imagination or the courage to get into trouble? What if nice people are simply too wishy-washy, cautious and conformist to be assholes?"
2. I'm interested in the aesthetics of empathy. I find it easier to project empathically on Eastern people than Western, on poor people than rich, on people from other cultures rather than people from my own, and on people from the past rather than people from the present.
3. The images punctuating this page come from the wonderful NHK documentary The Silk Road (1980), in which a Japanese team -- helped by Chinese soldiers and officials -- travels to inaccessible sites along the Silk Road. Music is by Kitaro, a sort of one-man Japanese Tangerine Dream.
4. I've been watching hour-long segments from The Silk Road all week. Some of the commentary sounds like propaganda -- this was a Japanese-Chinese co-production made in a time when China was still very much communist. The script has clearly been vetted to eradicate any reference to tensions between the Chinese and Japanese, and to make Chinese achievements (like the "Happiness Railway" simulated in film 9, and actually activated before its completion by the Chinese government specifically for the NHK documentary) look good.
5. I don't mind that something is propaganda, in other words is an obvious lie. It can still serve my purposes, for instance embody a kind of plot in which cynicism and negativity has been completely, consciously excluded. It matters less whether something is true or false than whether it takes me somewhere.
6. "A toast to Comrade Pim!" called a colleague dressed in blue jacket and grey cap. "Without him, we could never have discovered the magnificent copper seam!" "To Pim, the model worker!" came the cry from a dozen throats.
7. During last year's Asian Women's Film Festival, the North Korean films fascinated me. I was very interested in how the machinery of plot works when you remove all negativity. I was particularly interested in plots which worked to establish the self-effacing goodness of a character, then showed this character passing due respect on to someone even more benign, diligent, indigent and self-sacrificing. Insofar as conflict drove these plots, it was the conflict of two people insisting on each other's greater worthiness.
8. I demurred, smiling, and held up a hand for silence. "It is our collective diligence that has achieved this breakthrough," I said. "Who built the tunnels that I crawled along to make my lucky discovery?" Comrade Jun smiled and looked at the floor. "Who operated the lift that brought us to the place where fresh copper was just waiting to be discovered?" Comrade Bu grinned bashfully. "And who toiled at ground level in always-difficult circumstances, maintaining the camp in this inhospitable place?" Here Comrade Pi ruffled his own hair, as if in confusion.
9. In a way, altruistic virtue is our society's final taboo. I was interested to read an entry on my Friends List today entitled I am not the weirdo here. Lucy, who wrote this blog, reports that a friend criticized her recently, saying: "You're just too nice. You think people are essentially good and decent." Lucy went on to say she made no apology for being nice, or believing the best of people.
10. "Nevertheless," cried out the foreman, "this great achievement, which came at enormous physical cost to yourself, Comrade Pim, and in the face of great risk, will be reported to the chairman of the mining committee, and he will report it to the local party chief, who will in turn send an electric dispatch to Victory City, where word of this will surely reach the Dear Leader himself!"
11. I assembled a counter-argument in my mind, something I might tell Lucy. What if we weren't simply looking at the dimension of Good - Evil, but also of Boring - Interesting? Might goodness fall on the wrong side of that sometimes, the boring side? Had Lucy read Blake's hellish proverbs ("Energy is eternal delight!")? Had she read Sade's Justine? Or even seen Brecht's plays, with their message that niceness is a luxury most people cannot afford yet? What about TS Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, with its very Christian awareness of the temptations of martyrdom and sainthood, its caution about spiritual pride?
12. It's not nice to hate, but what if the nice hate the interesting for not being nice enough, and the interesting hate the nice for being boring?
13. Adam Curtis, in his Century of the Self, showed how Cold War games played at the Rand Corporation fed into a Cold War mindset (you can see it in James Bond, The Man from UNCLE, and a thousand other places) of slick mistrust based on the calculability of mutually-assured destruction. He showed that the most dangerous thing, in the eyes of the architects of post-war paranoia, was the altruistic public servant, someone motivated by something other than self-interest. Altruism actually fucks up the economic self-interest and gamesmanship models by making individuals act on the behalf of others.
14. And all glasses were raised to the framed, faded photograph of the Dear Leader, whose eyes seemed to twinkle, now orange, now blue, in the light of the kerosene stove.
15. I'm interested in the challenge of writing (of me writing!) about "old-fashioned" values like altruism, diligence, honour, responsibility, virtue, trustworthiness and empathy. But a devil on my shoulder whispers: "And what if virtue is simply the behaviour -- a sort of non-behaviour -- of those who lack the imagination or the courage to get into trouble? What if nice people are simply too wishy-washy, cautious and conformist to be assholes?"
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(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-27 12:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-27 12:29 pm (UTC)[...] putting down the present is a back-handed way of putting down one's rivals: "Competition of praise inclineth to a reverence of antiquity. For men contend with the living, not with the dead."
Perhaps it could be that you find it hard to empathise with yourself; or, the self that you deny, run from.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-27 12:29 pm (UTC)On the other hand, isn't *purposefully*, *intellectually* deciding to bring hurt to another human being one of the lowest of all evils? Not when blind passion or inept selfishness makes us hurt each other, but when humans decide to hurt another, and research and devise methods to cause pain, to manufacture a torture device, to set another living being on fire, to drop a bomb?
The greatest failure of empathy seems to me to be when humans use our great intellect and ingenuity to devise and create pain. Luckily, there is art.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-27 02:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-27 10:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-27 02:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-01 09:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-27 12:39 pm (UTC)The boy in The Road is the one who can seem to afford to imagine, despite the fact that he is in the same situation as everyone else. But maybe he will come to see his imagination, and the act that it urges upon him, as costly, and abandon it in time.
In this analogy, virtue is never a non-behaviour. It is the birth of behaviour, of the imagination. And when we lack imagination is when we revert to the default, when we slip towards the non-imagination of animals.
Perhaps the world - the eco-system - needs wishy-washy as part of its balance. In this case when we're in the "asshole" mode we would do well to remember the balance, and respect the necessity of those in the wishy-washy mode.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-28 01:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-01 09:07 pm (UTC)(im)propriety
Date: 2010-01-27 01:33 pm (UTC)I saw Kitaro when he came to my hometown (Eugene, Oregon, USA) about a decade ago – he was quite a lively performer… long black hair trailing him as he ran around the stage.
Re: (im)propriety
Date: 2010-01-27 01:37 pm (UTC)Well, you needed to add that bracket, didn't you? "All's fair in love and war". I know I've been at my absolute worst, ethically speaking, when in love. It doesn't exactly make us clear-headed, disinterested, calm or judicious!
Re: (im)propriety
Date: 2010-01-27 01:56 pm (UTC)Heidegger talks about “care”—but this can be double edged: anxiety or compassion?
Re: (im)propriety
Date: 2010-01-27 03:46 pm (UTC)I think one needs a bit of empathy for one’s self too, sometimes.
Re: “Naïvety”: I don’t think you need to be intelligent/knowledgeable to be good… why would being intelligently/knowledgeably good be any better? (I hope I’ve provided enough context to even make sense here.)
Re: (im)propriety
Date: 2010-01-27 10:18 pm (UTC)Now, that's a compliment!
I liked this entry, too. There are some eminently quotable lines.
Momus: "In a way, altruistic virtue is our society's final taboo."
I smiled while after reading this:
"Insofar as conflict drove these plots, it was the conflict of two people insisting on each other's greater worthiness."
FrF
Re: (im)propriety
Date: 2010-01-28 01:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-27 02:11 pm (UTC)bass ackwards
Date: 2010-01-29 07:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-27 02:37 pm (UTC)Worldy virtue is more difficult and more brilliant, naivety can perhaps be beautiful like a fresh flower with uncreased petals. Transgression and aggression are healthy if they lead to a certain of flourishing. 'Anger is an energy' , but giving -due- respect to others requires energy too.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-27 02:59 pm (UTC)This issue requires a context or it becomes so much hot air ;if good - evil and even boring - interesting are not absolute then the context must surely have a determining role if finding the meaning.
There must be some fluidity in the idea of 'good' that can save it from conformism whilst simultaneously saving it from a purely egoistic self gratification (Max Stirner- Maggy Thatcher, fuck you buddy).
Transgression as emanicpation from conformism
VS
Transgression as oppressive violation of others
negotiated dynamically via psycho-social homeostasis
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-27 03:17 pm (UTC)[Error: unknown template video]
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-27 07:22 pm (UTC)http://www.freewillastrology.com/horoscopes/
Margaret Hone’s “Modern Text-Book of Astrology” is my favorite book on the subject:
http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Text-Book-Astrology-Margaret-Hone/dp/084644948X/
(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-01 09:24 pm (UTC)http://www.freewillastrology.com/beauty/
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-27 04:22 pm (UTC)http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jan/17/are-your-friends-making-you-fat
In a nutshell it describes the way in which attitudes can resonate and propogate across a social network. Hopefully Lucy's inherent 'niceness' will do the same (isn't the name 'Lucy' from the same root as the word 'Light' btw?)...
Comrade Pim!" as metaphor
Date: 2010-01-27 05:38 pm (UTC)Golly Gee I wonder what they thought of the guy that discovered oil in the North Sea?
The grimy factor of humanoids that like to role in their own shit for fun would make a better model for the wishy-washy or asshole. All things start in the home unfortunately.
Comrade Pim!" as metaphor
Date: 2010-01-27 05:39 pm (UTC)Golly Gee I wonder what they thought of the guy that discovered oil in the North Sea?
The grimy factor of humanoids that like to role in their own shit for fun would make a better model for the wishy-washy or asshole. All things start in the home unfortunately.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-27 10:08 pm (UTC)'nice' is kinda a chanllenging word,
I forget the other saying but, "good intentions path the road to hell" is one of them.
Or we all know "I was just trying to be nice"
Or anytime someone is really really trying to fuck you over, usually its done with the claim of 'helping you out'.
My dad loves sugar sweet good old fashioned morals type movies... I find them boring. I prefer, complex, blurred stories that do not use 'mainstream' morals or culture as a reference point.
if you were to write 'about "old-fashioned" values like altruism, diligence, honour, responsibility, virtue, trustworthiness and empathy' story... it would be from a very different context... so it wouldnt be actually about that, it would be about you exploring that whole 'thing' ... so to speak... some times these stories are the most horrific... for some reason. you should do it.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-27 10:43 pm (UTC)probably they just need some better models. There's probably some game theory experts reading this..
Did you ever read "The selfish gene"? I guess its quoted from others to a degree (wilson??) but there are some parts about competing stragegies altruism prisoners dilemmas and so on..
(chapter about "memes" is clearly bloocks tho!)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-27 11:33 pm (UTC)Scenery of Ozu: Posters and Signs (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4h1s8cLcLA&feature=related)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-27 11:34 pm (UTC)The book of Pim
Date: 2010-01-28 01:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-28 05:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-01 09:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-30 01:14 am (UTC)Kitaro used to be the guitarist in the Far East Family band. Krautrock pioneer and their hired producer Klaus Schulze turned him on to synths apparently. At least 3 of the 4 members after the breakup went on to release multiple new age albums by the early 80s. Original keyboardist Fumio Miyashita coined the Healing Music genre in Japan and went on to release a hundred and counting albums of relaxing music. Kitaro has lived in the U.S. for quite some time