Wow. better hurry over to the Bank Of China [Walmart]. Participate! If you support Tibet, you support terrorism..... If you support Mandarin China, you support FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY and LIBERTY and JUSTICE! I often wonder at Dalai Lhama's strategy. The Mandarin Army seems happy to have passive resistance there. Seems no matter what Tibetens do, they wil lose this struggle. Anyone remember a people called Armenian? or Toltec? or Cornish? We aren't modern. We only have modern weapons, we are still as fucked as we have ever been. NOTHING changes except the excuses we make and the lethality of our weapons.
It's not "we", as in "us". It's "them". "We" are no Saints, but you got to grant it to "us" that we are not anymore like "that" either. We might become like that again, but as of now, we are not. People might accuse me of thinking "Black and White", but at the same time, they make it easy on themselves by instead saying "oh, fuck it (us) all". That's also a quite simple view of the world, and I think it ain't more accurate at all. No my friend, it's not all the same. And we are not the same as them. Shades of grey, YES. But, yes, SHADES OF GREY. And maybe some White. But this last part is often the virtue of individuals. And as such is up to everyone of us individually. This is also why forms of government putting emphazise on the individual are generally better and morally superior to collectivist ones. The state, the collective, is generally evil, a bureaucracy without a conscience. While the individual generally is good, because it has conscience. Quite simple really, and true, imho (keep the word "generally" in mind though, although this is of course what we deal with when talking about masses). People who believe that there needs to be an autocrat / collectivist form of state in order to further morality among men, are those who are most mislead - by the state.
Yes Heartc. I war against the Totalitarian state called China [People's Republic Of China]. I don't buy oods from there. It is one of the few ways I have of voicing my dissaproval of that regime. MY STATE won't boycott that state. My collective does NOT value freedom of the individual as much as the ideal. It is somewhere in between. Money counts for a lot in my state, there is a class system. There is a class system in China also. The Mandarins rule. The Land-owners in China are a wiped out class. There are no small-holders. They are dead. All of them. Who owns the lands now? Nobody? The People? The Rulers? The soldiers shooting at those pilgrims were not shooting tresspassers on their lands, they were shooting tresspassers on their Ruler's Lands. The ones who said "NO" are invisible, because they are dead [or Re-Educated]. Having a quarter of the world run by a state like that makes me want to scream. I am so frightened of China. Not Chinese, but the State Of China. Chinese have slid into a rut similar to the rut Germans were in in the late thirties. There seems to be no practical way to get rid of a regime that ANY Chinese with thoughts of his own KNOWS has to go. Will the Chinese EVER revolt and slaughter their Ruling Mandarins? They have before. But there are a lot of buts. Too many. The level of control over a person's thoughts is no more than it has been in times past. Young people all over China USED to read three books. Anyone with a brain and a future read those books. Now they read three books too, but they are not the same ones. A thing that has, until lately, kept the Inner Kingdome OUT OF MY FAMILY'S lands, is the fact the Middle Kingdom never looked out. It looked in. The Chinese Way was self secure, it wasn't for sale. There was no need to spread The Way. Now there is a new way. That way is not even defined. The government, the Powers there, change official paradigms, policies, as often as a man changes his socks. CHinese people are so cowed, they, as a class, The People, seldom voice their opinions in public or to people they cannot Absolutely Trust. Which means, they don't say. Germans didn't say either, in the late thirties, unless it was to people they could Absolutely Trust. Stalin's Millions, same same. Different forms of State. But there are still certain Key Types who rule. If a vacuum in government is opened, the "carpe Diem" types are the first to move. Always have been. They may be opportunist, they may be strong, they may be able. But what is gained by having men who do Not Serve Anyone as leaders? A better class of leader is one who serves the led. And this ethos is not something I invented. Many great statesmen have lived and worked under severe constrictions. We often call these constrictions, these constraints, a Constitution. The fucking communists in China have a mockery of a constitution. There is no rule of law which cannot be ignored on a whim. People have no right to lobby. People have no voice there. I saw a picture attached to some text not long ago, it was a Chinese Factory worker. He was poking fun at "western Consumers." He said he factory makes plastic junk, things like hair clips and things you put hand soap on. He said that NO chinese in his right mind would waste his wealth on crap like that. He said Westerners are not only crazy, but they are stupid. If you look hard at what the guy was saying, you can see the subtle, the On The Other Hand thing he was also saying. We are selling England By The Pound. Ask a Scott about the selling of a land, a people, a tenantry, and how an entire culture was destroyed [and it was never lifted from the ashes, the Gaels are now a remnant, a museum culture. Highland Culture dissappeared with the clearances - meaning, you don't own what you squat on, you never did. Now the landowners who cared for your needs are bought out and you have to go. GOOD BYE. Scotland is still pondering what the fuck happened to it's heart and soul and it's replacement by a loudly dressed, belicose fake] If things keep up the way they are going, Westerners could face clearances. Well it is happenning already. next to my place of work is a huge empty complex that USED to have four hundred men and women employed. Now there are ten employed there, they are dismantling the machines to put on a ship and send to Guangdong. Those are as much clearances as any tumult happenned to the Celts. And people shrug and talk about New Economies. I don't know what to do. I am as confused as any Crofter served an eviction notice by British Marines in the year of '48. I know my kith and ken. I read about others. But I don't know. I have to go learn how to oil a gear now. I must change my career for the sixth time - a modern worker must be prepared to shift his career 7 times in his working life. What does this mean if you are a tinkerer and now an apprentice logger? It means you must move. Scatter. Diaspora. Not many cultures are geared for survival during a scattering. Jews did it, but it took a long while for their fathers to collate Rules Of Survival In A Mean And Heartless NON kith and NON ken World. Some tribes from India are surviving and flourishing in other lands. Siekhs have a wonderful and colourful and MODERN culture that seems amazingly adaptive. Some of the Larger Tribes from what is now China have dispersed and can hang on to the pride in their cultures, can, indeed, remain CHinese. They live all over my country and are accepted. But And here is a BIG HORRIBLE BUT. Any 'culture' my country, my people claim, is BULLSHIT. We don't have one, never did. MY CULTURE is transient, a patchwork, a scarecrow. And I am faced with it's imminent fall. And I am as helpless as a crofter from Skye. [afterthought edit] And does tribe or people even matter beyond the generation of legend and myth? Is tribe or culture nessesary? Ask a banker. Then ask a bard. You might get very different different answers... Does it matter that The Poles who emmigrated here a hundred years ago and bred my Mother's grandparent who married and bred and made my mother whose children are married here... don't SPEAK A WORD of Polish? Don't know anything about the place or it's history except what they get from a library [same place we can read about kilts and sporans and Ossianic poetry [MacPhersianic??]] and Gungadin... Gung Ho Fat Choy!
