A Chinese friend got a call from his son, who had landed an engineering job with Huawei and was already thinking of quitting. "They make us work long hours and if we don't finish a task we have to stay until it's done. It's like being in hell, dad”.
To which my friend replied, "Huawei itself is under terrible pressure, son. Powerful forces want to destroy it because it's a Chinese tech champion. Make up your own mind, but I know what I'd do”. The spirit of ordinary self-sacrifice is alive there, too.
Although your friend is correct as far as it goes, this is not the only explanation. In general, what the son is reporting is common both in his industry and especially in Asia. I have nephews in Taiwan who report something similar about large Taiwanese tech firms like TSMC. You can also read the reports of many South Koreans working at tech companies like Samsung. These can be pretty brutal in their demands on the worker. It is driven primarily by a combination of extreme competitiveness and the short life cycle of their products (i.e., new stuff is coming on line all the time, hence the need to complete projects quickly).
There's been noticeable admiration of Putin for some time, which began from some on the right where they brag about his brilliance in countering the west, and a yearning for leadership that great, to which I respond, "don't get carried away - c'mon how smart does one need to be to outwit our team?". Putin has done well for Russia no doubt, but I credit his patience, as much as anything else for outmatching many of the moves of the collective west (spoiled child).
I want to commend you for your philosophical approach of a serious topic. ARETE is a concept that has completely disappeared from the world of academia as well as ordinary life. We have descended into a morass of mediocrity and shallowness. I have one objection and that is your charge that liberalism is the main culprit. Modern neoliberalism has nothing in common with classical liberalism as I understand it. Personally, I think it is the abandonment of the „old“ liberalism that is one of the core problems of the issues you raise so eloquently.
To be honest, I find it hard to imagine an alternate universe where "old" liberalism doesn't eventually evolve into neoliberalism. Seems to me be an obvious commonality and a very well-greased slippery slope from the "old" liberal political economist's promotion of the virtues of individual free enterprise to the neoliberal's "markets uber alles".
There are differences between heroes and saints, between being great and being flawless. Heroes are human and therefore, by definition, flawed individuals.
I think the sad truth is that you are reaching that age when nostalgia for an imagined better world of your youth sets in. What you describe at such length is the natural result of ageing. We all tend to look around and think "it's all going to hell in a handcart" and "things aren't like they used to be". Not everyone writes a many thousand word essay about it, but that's your gig. I feel much the same, but I am aware that my parents felt the same back when I thought the world was great, and had improved since their day. Feelings eh? You need to relax, watch some old films and listen to some 60s music on the wireless.
While judging the past can be pointless and unfair, nevertheless there are certain things that it seems to me we are well rid of, and others that I wish we still had. The world is very far from perfect, but it always has been. Too much introspection and nostalgia indulgence can be unhealthy. Some things are worse, some things are better. That's the case for every generation. There are bad times, and not so bad times too. We have been through a less bad period and are heading for, probably, a pretty awful one, but that too is how civilizations work. They arise, they flourish, they decline, they collapse. Clearly if you happen to be living through the collapse stage it's cause for a lot of looking back and sighing, but if things are really that bad you are unlikely to have the leisure to do so.
So cheer up. There are heroes around if you look carefully enough. Some may even count you as one.
Vietnam War protesters were just as much against the conflict for the theory behind waging it (the so-called domino effect) as they were realizing that the actual thinking (“We had to destroy the village in order to save it” of Gen. William Westmoreland and the fact that Viet Cong were fighting for their own freedom first from France and then from the US) was completely wrong.
You had to have lived during those times to get the full picture of what was going on. Young American men (roughly 60,000 of them) as well as South Vietnamese youth were being slaughtered with no end in sight and nothing to show for their sacrifice. Commanding officers would, rather than lead their troops into battle, sit back in Saigon and telegraph or phone in attack orders without actually witnessing the action. Lieutenants, fresh out of officer cadet school, would demand veteran soldiers maneuver in such ways that those who were seasoned in combat knew they were being told to march to their deaths.
World War II had been fought strategically and with the knowledge that after December 8, 1941 the US would have been stupid not to fight back. There was a clear goal.
There wasn’t one in Southeast Asia. It was a prelude to Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and now Ukraine in which US aims were purely neocolonial.
I was very bright but experienced a lot of adversity early in life, which liberalism turned out to be a lie to open any door. Especially if you question them. The economy has never let me in, never opened a single door. And I often note that if you are honest or slightly different, otherwise good. The system promotes identity rather than merit, they revere the ultra wealthy who inspire resentment, values are inverted, the shallowest analysis is always the most popular, and so on. Modern liberal society is a death culture. As a gay person, conservatism hasn't opened a single door either. Its a double negation.
Heroism would unstuck the impasses, inspire, produce, or relinquish the relations in ways that would be naturally resumptive. To stop negating the ends, in goods, would mean to stop alienating people from those ends, as goods. Conservatives love to mock the weak, but they obstruct the weak from being able to even attempt to seek the ends, as goods, that are naturally good. It is a logic problem.
Thank you for another excellent essay, which explains so many things in Western liberal society. What psychological impact will there be, I wonder, if or more likely when, the Ukrainian forces finally collapse and the conflict ends almost entirely on Russia's terms?
Yes, our entire civilization in all its aspects has been transformed into a kabuki play with the goal of distracting the audience as the performers steal from them.
I think the word "hero" has become one of the most abused words in the English language. It used to have a much narrower definition. At best, "role model" and "exceptional" are better words for the vast majority of people nowadays labeled "hero", and some don't deserve any of these labels.
One reason true heroes might be disappearing is that in the Information Age it is much more evident when they inevitably turn out to have feet of clay after all.
Well, I just read a book about the Cold War (Brian Brown: Someone is out to get us), and can't really accept the view that moral disgusting behaviour is something newly invented.
The blokes that started it had no clue about their invented opposite's intentions, but they thought what they had to be, and for that reason was. To sell it to the taxpayres/voters, they lied intentionally. And they organized the most repulsive projects because "the others" did so too. And, of course, I here speak about both parties of the conflict.
And this happened in the 1940s. Then it just rolled on because both parties so distrusted the others that they couldn't stop. It had become a habit. And when the U2 found, in the late 50s, that there were pitifully few missiles in Russia this was hid under the carpet because it would have made the warmongerers seem like idiots. And the buildup of military destruction ability continued. And the presumption that authorities had some responsibility just died.
The analysis of present day Liberal decadence is right on the ball, but much of the rest is just reactionary moaning. Thanks for reminding me of Hans and Lotte Haas, though. They were fabulous, even in black and white.
A Chinese friend got a call from his son, who had landed an engineering job with Huawei and was already thinking of quitting. "They make us work long hours and if we don't finish a task we have to stay until it's done. It's like being in hell, dad”.
To which my friend replied, "Huawei itself is under terrible pressure, son. Powerful forces want to destroy it because it's a Chinese tech champion. Make up your own mind, but I know what I'd do”. The spirit of ordinary self-sacrifice is alive there, too.
Although your friend is correct as far as it goes, this is not the only explanation. In general, what the son is reporting is common both in his industry and especially in Asia. I have nephews in Taiwan who report something similar about large Taiwanese tech firms like TSMC. You can also read the reports of many South Koreans working at tech companies like Samsung. These can be pretty brutal in their demands on the worker. It is driven primarily by a combination of extreme competitiveness and the short life cycle of their products (i.e., new stuff is coming on line all the time, hence the need to complete projects quickly).
Extremely insightful. Your best yet.
~
There's been noticeable admiration of Putin for some time, which began from some on the right where they brag about his brilliance in countering the west, and a yearning for leadership that great, to which I respond, "don't get carried away - c'mon how smart does one need to be to outwit our team?". Putin has done well for Russia no doubt, but I credit his patience, as much as anything else for outmatching many of the moves of the collective west (spoiled child).
I want to commend you for your philosophical approach of a serious topic. ARETE is a concept that has completely disappeared from the world of academia as well as ordinary life. We have descended into a morass of mediocrity and shallowness. I have one objection and that is your charge that liberalism is the main culprit. Modern neoliberalism has nothing in common with classical liberalism as I understand it. Personally, I think it is the abandonment of the „old“ liberalism that is one of the core problems of the issues you raise so eloquently.
To be honest, I find it hard to imagine an alternate universe where "old" liberalism doesn't eventually evolve into neoliberalism. Seems to me be an obvious commonality and a very well-greased slippery slope from the "old" liberal political economist's promotion of the virtues of individual free enterprise to the neoliberal's "markets uber alles".
When I was a young cat, the following quote was attributed to one of the Sex Pistols: "Kill your heroes, before they get a chance to embarrass you."
I have never been able to find an attribution for that quote, but, regardless of prvenance, it seems good advice.
There are differences between heroes and saints, between being great and being flawless. Heroes are human and therefore, by definition, flawed individuals.
I think the sad truth is that you are reaching that age when nostalgia for an imagined better world of your youth sets in. What you describe at such length is the natural result of ageing. We all tend to look around and think "it's all going to hell in a handcart" and "things aren't like they used to be". Not everyone writes a many thousand word essay about it, but that's your gig. I feel much the same, but I am aware that my parents felt the same back when I thought the world was great, and had improved since their day. Feelings eh? You need to relax, watch some old films and listen to some 60s music on the wireless.
While judging the past can be pointless and unfair, nevertheless there are certain things that it seems to me we are well rid of, and others that I wish we still had. The world is very far from perfect, but it always has been. Too much introspection and nostalgia indulgence can be unhealthy. Some things are worse, some things are better. That's the case for every generation. There are bad times, and not so bad times too. We have been through a less bad period and are heading for, probably, a pretty awful one, but that too is how civilizations work. They arise, they flourish, they decline, they collapse. Clearly if you happen to be living through the collapse stage it's cause for a lot of looking back and sighing, but if things are really that bad you are unlikely to have the leisure to do so.
So cheer up. There are heroes around if you look carefully enough. Some may even count you as one.
Vietnam War protesters were just as much against the conflict for the theory behind waging it (the so-called domino effect) as they were realizing that the actual thinking (“We had to destroy the village in order to save it” of Gen. William Westmoreland and the fact that Viet Cong were fighting for their own freedom first from France and then from the US) was completely wrong.
You had to have lived during those times to get the full picture of what was going on. Young American men (roughly 60,000 of them) as well as South Vietnamese youth were being slaughtered with no end in sight and nothing to show for their sacrifice. Commanding officers would, rather than lead their troops into battle, sit back in Saigon and telegraph or phone in attack orders without actually witnessing the action. Lieutenants, fresh out of officer cadet school, would demand veteran soldiers maneuver in such ways that those who were seasoned in combat knew they were being told to march to their deaths.
World War II had been fought strategically and with the knowledge that after December 8, 1941 the US would have been stupid not to fight back. There was a clear goal.
There wasn’t one in Southeast Asia. It was a prelude to Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and now Ukraine in which US aims were purely neocolonial.
The Stranglers knew.
I was very bright but experienced a lot of adversity early in life, which liberalism turned out to be a lie to open any door. Especially if you question them. The economy has never let me in, never opened a single door. And I often note that if you are honest or slightly different, otherwise good. The system promotes identity rather than merit, they revere the ultra wealthy who inspire resentment, values are inverted, the shallowest analysis is always the most popular, and so on. Modern liberal society is a death culture. As a gay person, conservatism hasn't opened a single door either. Its a double negation.
Heroism would unstuck the impasses, inspire, produce, or relinquish the relations in ways that would be naturally resumptive. To stop negating the ends, in goods, would mean to stop alienating people from those ends, as goods. Conservatives love to mock the weak, but they obstruct the weak from being able to even attempt to seek the ends, as goods, that are naturally good. It is a logic problem.
Thank you for another excellent essay, which explains so many things in Western liberal society. What psychological impact will there be, I wonder, if or more likely when, the Ukrainian forces finally collapse and the conflict ends almost entirely on Russia's terms?
Yes, our entire civilization in all its aspects has been transformed into a kabuki play with the goal of distracting the audience as the performers steal from them.
I think the word "hero" has become one of the most abused words in the English language. It used to have a much narrower definition. At best, "role model" and "exceptional" are better words for the vast majority of people nowadays labeled "hero", and some don't deserve any of these labels.
One reason true heroes might be disappearing is that in the Information Age it is much more evident when they inevitably turn out to have feet of clay after all.
i wonder if drugging any kid who shows any kind of diverse initiative isn't drugged up by the time they graduate from their schooling...
thus, we are robbed of individuals who can lead us out of this nightmare
Well, I just read a book about the Cold War (Brian Brown: Someone is out to get us), and can't really accept the view that moral disgusting behaviour is something newly invented.
The blokes that started it had no clue about their invented opposite's intentions, but they thought what they had to be, and for that reason was. To sell it to the taxpayres/voters, they lied intentionally. And they organized the most repulsive projects because "the others" did so too. And, of course, I here speak about both parties of the conflict.
And this happened in the 1940s. Then it just rolled on because both parties so distrusted the others that they couldn't stop. It had become a habit. And when the U2 found, in the late 50s, that there were pitifully few missiles in Russia this was hid under the carpet because it would have made the warmongerers seem like idiots. And the buildup of military destruction ability continued. And the presumption that authorities had some responsibility just died.
The analysis of present day Liberal decadence is right on the ball, but much of the rest is just reactionary moaning. Thanks for reminding me of Hans and Lotte Haas, though. They were fabulous, even in black and white.
The italian translation, as usual:
"Niente più eroi.
Peccato che la nazione abbia bisogno di quella di qualcun altro."
https://trying2understandw.blogspot.com/2024/11/niente-piu-eroi-peccato-che-la-nazione.html
The wonder of what emerges from our social commonality is inspiring as you say.