I used the word "resilient" to characterize Chinese and why they rose after falling when Greece, Egypt, and Rome stayed down. That suggests one of those knock-down, bounce-up inflatable toys kids (I guess mainly boys) have.
Yeah, like that. But that's an inanimate object. Chinese (being animate objects) have learned...somewhat, they've changed somewhat over millennia. Since I've termed the soul of China "survival," it's tempting to try out "Darwinian." But, evolution is unconscious change: species didn't consciously decide to grow more hair to adapt to a colder environment. Chinese consciously decided to be communist, then they consciously decided to be capitalist. I remember reading a funny anecdote. Deng Xiaoping met with some African leaders shortly after he assumed power. The African leaders earnestly asked Deng about the advantages of socialism in their countries since China had had, like, some experience with socialism. Deng said, "It doesn't work, socialism doesn't work." Deng had decided socialism didn't work and capitalism would and just about overnight China became capitalist. "It is glorious to be rich." Astonishing.
So the change from communism to capitalism wasn't an unconscious evolutionary adaptation to a changing environment, it was a conscious revolutionary change made by decision-makers. I thought of "agile" as an alternative to "resilient" and immediately dismissed it. China more resembles that blow-up punching bag in agility: it ain't got none. LeBron James is agile, China is not agile. Efficient? No: The Great Leap Forward.
China didn't change for so long a part of its history that you cannot sensibly use terms like efficient, agile, or resilient. There is a "dexterity" in those terms that China has not demonstrated.
I then thought of "momentum," in some ways the opposite of those other dexterous terms. Chinese get behind some idea and the ball starts rolling and it continues to roll and roll and roll. It doesn't seem to matter if the idea is bad, like communism, the GLF, and the Cultural Revolution, they get behind it and they get on a roll. Momentum is like evolution in the sense of being an unconscious process of nature or physical force, like a snowball rolling downhill and sometimes snowballs roll without being pushed but momentum is also commonly understood to apply to motion caused by conscious agency. A sports team gets momentum and is seemingly unstoppable. How is momentum in sports stopped? The opposing coach calls a time-out. There is a sense in which China changed under Deng because Deng called a time-out to stop the momentum that had built up behind communism. Deng looked at the score, concluded "socialism doesn't work," substituted a bunch of players, and sent them back on the court with a radically different game plan. "I don't care if the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice." Deng also said that (which got Deng purged by Mao). That's pragmatic.
Pragmatism is rational choice regardless of ideological label or color of cat. Chinese have not made rational, pragmatic, decisions. They chose communism. It didn't work. And within the bad communism decision were nested the bad GLF and CR decisions. Pragmatism implies "tinkering," constant, incremental change, "adjustment" within a fundamentally unchanged model, like what FDR did. Deng didn't tinker, he chose a different color cat, he made wholesale team substitutions, not just told the existing players to do a little more of this a little less of that. In this sense the change under Deng resembles change in science as Thomas Kuhn described it. There's an existing model, a "paradigm," momentum builds behind that paradigm--the paradigm is unquestioned--and then a problem develops. The problem threatens the paradigm; scientists sometimes resolve it, sometimes they ignore it, and sometimes a problem develops that can't be resolved or ignored and in a flash, the old scientific paradigm is discarded and a new one substituted. That is what Kuhn said happened with Newtonian physics. Einstein came up with a problem that couldn't be resolved under the Newtonian paradigm, or ignored, the old paradigm went into "crisis," and a "paradigm shift" occurred to Einsteinian physics. That is more like how the change under Deng occurred.
Chinese went centuries, millennia, in unthinking obedience to the imperial paradigm then floundered in civil war and foreign invasion for a half-century; then they gave unthinking obedience to communism for 27 years, now they've given unthinking obedience to fascism for 36 years. There's a common thread there.
Yeah, like that. But that's an inanimate object. Chinese (being animate objects) have learned...somewhat, they've changed somewhat over millennia. Since I've termed the soul of China "survival," it's tempting to try out "Darwinian." But, evolution is unconscious change: species didn't consciously decide to grow more hair to adapt to a colder environment. Chinese consciously decided to be communist, then they consciously decided to be capitalist. I remember reading a funny anecdote. Deng Xiaoping met with some African leaders shortly after he assumed power. The African leaders earnestly asked Deng about the advantages of socialism in their countries since China had had, like, some experience with socialism. Deng said, "It doesn't work, socialism doesn't work." Deng had decided socialism didn't work and capitalism would and just about overnight China became capitalist. "It is glorious to be rich." Astonishing.
So the change from communism to capitalism wasn't an unconscious evolutionary adaptation to a changing environment, it was a conscious revolutionary change made by decision-makers. I thought of "agile" as an alternative to "resilient" and immediately dismissed it. China more resembles that blow-up punching bag in agility: it ain't got none. LeBron James is agile, China is not agile. Efficient? No: The Great Leap Forward.
China didn't change for so long a part of its history that you cannot sensibly use terms like efficient, agile, or resilient. There is a "dexterity" in those terms that China has not demonstrated.
I then thought of "momentum," in some ways the opposite of those other dexterous terms. Chinese get behind some idea and the ball starts rolling and it continues to roll and roll and roll. It doesn't seem to matter if the idea is bad, like communism, the GLF, and the Cultural Revolution, they get behind it and they get on a roll. Momentum is like evolution in the sense of being an unconscious process of nature or physical force, like a snowball rolling downhill and sometimes snowballs roll without being pushed but momentum is also commonly understood to apply to motion caused by conscious agency. A sports team gets momentum and is seemingly unstoppable. How is momentum in sports stopped? The opposing coach calls a time-out. There is a sense in which China changed under Deng because Deng called a time-out to stop the momentum that had built up behind communism. Deng looked at the score, concluded "socialism doesn't work," substituted a bunch of players, and sent them back on the court with a radically different game plan. "I don't care if the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice." Deng also said that (which got Deng purged by Mao). That's pragmatic.
Pragmatism is rational choice regardless of ideological label or color of cat. Chinese have not made rational, pragmatic, decisions. They chose communism. It didn't work. And within the bad communism decision were nested the bad GLF and CR decisions. Pragmatism implies "tinkering," constant, incremental change, "adjustment" within a fundamentally unchanged model, like what FDR did. Deng didn't tinker, he chose a different color cat, he made wholesale team substitutions, not just told the existing players to do a little more of this a little less of that. In this sense the change under Deng resembles change in science as Thomas Kuhn described it. There's an existing model, a "paradigm," momentum builds behind that paradigm--the paradigm is unquestioned--and then a problem develops. The problem threatens the paradigm; scientists sometimes resolve it, sometimes they ignore it, and sometimes a problem develops that can't be resolved or ignored and in a flash, the old scientific paradigm is discarded and a new one substituted. That is what Kuhn said happened with Newtonian physics. Einstein came up with a problem that couldn't be resolved under the Newtonian paradigm, or ignored, the old paradigm went into "crisis," and a "paradigm shift" occurred to Einsteinian physics. That is more like how the change under Deng occurred.
Chinese went centuries, millennia, in unthinking obedience to the imperial paradigm then floundered in civil war and foreign invasion for a half-century; then they gave unthinking obedience to communism for 27 years, now they've given unthinking obedience to fascism for 36 years. There's a common thread there.
