Chapter 234

I dreamt that I lived in Japan. I had an office job and was riding cramped public transportation for long periods of time. It was one of those very immersive dreams that felt real.

I did 45 minutes of yoga, then watched the UFC main card. It was pretty good, culminating in a close middleweight fight between Jared Cannonier and Kelvin Gastelum. I ate the last piece of the khachapuri and watched Clown World news. In the wake of the Afghanistan fiasco, a Ukrainian adviser mentioned that the USA failed to export its political model as well as the idea of forcing “diversity” in cultures that are not receptive to all that LGBT imagery, feminism and black characters shoved in Netflix shows. So instead of working around Afghanistan’s culture and political landscape (I use the term “Afghanistan” loosely here; the very fact that it’s treated like a nation-state in the Westphalian sense rather than a collection of tribal lands is in fact one of the roots of the problem) they tried to just make them become like the USA, and of course it was doomed to failure.

That got me thinking about cultural solipsism, and how indeed there are many things that might work well in Culture A but don’t work in Culture B, and vice versa. China would be one clear example, very relevant to current events and also one I obviously have a perspective of, having had my feet on the ground and my eyes and ears open for close to twelve years now. A lot of the macro- and micro- cultural aspects of China seem totally incompatible with the western liberal framework, and get labeled as “authoritarian” and “inflexible”. A limp-wristed democracy here would lead to absolute chaos and the collapse of the country, and people hold some kind of collectivist views that initially struck me as a bit weird, coming from an individualistic, atomized culture. And yeah, of course, it’s nuanced and complex, when taking into account generational changes, technology, inevitable globalism, regional variations, outcasts who don’t fit in the stereotypes of their country’s culture, and paradoxes arising, like how a so-called collectivist society like China can still lead to some of the most fucken blatant displays of selfishness. But overall, yeah, one of the great failures of foreign policy is to just see the whole world as a USA 2.0 just because Canada and Australia and parts of Western Europe fit the bill, and that the only differences are that some of them foreigners wear funny hats or dress according to their climates or eat with sticks instead of forks.

The one trap we have to be wary of falling in, though, is the one of cultural relativism. Some cultures are better than others, and if you reject the idea, you haven’t traveled. Some behaviors and cultural norms are objectively despicable, and that’s why I don’t feel bad for calling out cunts for littering, and shit on the idea that “it’s just their culture” rather than what an uncivilized fucknugget does. So telling Afghans to stop raping boys is fine, imperative even, while trying to push the idea of gender equality and 50% representation in government is maybe a bit too much. And there are zillions of examples obviously, some between cultures that are overall not that different but have points that are not compatible, like the wokels who try to import and force-feed American critical race theory into Quebec and look at the nation through an American black-vs-white lens rather than the struggle of French Canadians against their anglo overlords.

Anyway, I’m just some guy rambling, but this stuff is on my mind quite a bit, seeing how some of the destructive Clown World ideas peddled by the western media and academia don’t apply to the rest of the world and that attempts at forcing them down the throats of reticent cultures either fails epically or leads to backlash.

And I guess we could look at this from the opposite direction, with “vaccine passports” being the talk of the town. Obviously Quebecers and Americans generally oppose the idea, citing individual freedom and privacy, while the Chinese just go along. I have this tracking app on my phone that gives me either a green, yellow or red code based on regions I’d been to in the past 14 days, in case one of them has an eclosion of covid cases. And... I’m fine with that. I don’t really care if Xi Jinping can track my movements to the nearest ± 10 meters, what I do care about is the microbrewery and the grocery store and the BJJ gym staying open. So yeah, in short, I care more about convenience than privacy, and you have the right to disagree, but don’t call me names, I can also play that game, and probably more virulently than you do.

But net positive results to all that tracking has to be part of the equation. I was talking about that with an Australian friend who also used to be a long time resident of China and now holds nuanced schizophrenic political views like I do, mixing libertarianism with a rational realization that some of the collectivist measures in place in a country like China actually work. He said that as a result of that tracking and surveilance of its citizens, China has low crime and efficiency, in the way that you wouldn’t have it even if Australia implemented such measures. That’s why I’m so opposed to partial, conditional lockdowns, they just bring the worst of both worlds.

When darkness fell, the girlfriend, the dog and I took a long walk, first stopping at a florist shop and then at the Italian restaurant. A lot of booze and food was consumed. A good time was had by all.