Archive for the ‘Thoughts’ Category

Hurt feelings, the real discussion

If you are here looking for an English version of my post, sorry, it won't be here, I generally only talk about NZ related topics here.  The site that directed you here should did a much better job than me so I don't feel the need to translate the original post.

However, I do like to talk about it a bit. My original post was trying to make fun out of  this "hurt feelings" phenomena to make the topic looks less serious -  as I do in pretty much every political issue. I did express a bit of my opinion but it was quite blur and was largely undetected by translators.

By publishing that post, I hoped that  my fellow countrymen can have their own opinion on these four questions:

• Did those countries really hurt their feelings?
• Why more than 1/5 of the world are such "culprits"?
• Is there any country that has genuinely hurt their feelings not on the map?
• Or is there something wrong with that kind of diplomatic expression?

I don't mind how they would be positioned on the political spectrum, as long as they start to think themselves, not to just follow what's being said in People's Daily or Global Times, then I'm happy.

It wasn't just a pointless internet research to kill some time, I got many previously unknown facts to me out of it. The biggest "feeling hurter" of Chinese people's feelings for the last century, which is Russia in my opinion, despite the fact that it has accommodated the Dalai Lama's visits before, was not on the map. The phrase was never used on Russia even in the worst times between the two countries.

Instead, it's the countries like Nauru or St Lucia, which most ordinary Chinese would have great difficulty of finding them on a world map that have hurt the "Chinese people's feelings".

It was also discovered that meet the Dalai Lama does not necessarily "hurt Chinese People's feelings". It is highly circumstantial - Sarkozy suffered a storm of Chinese criticisms for having a conversation with the Dalai Lama; but the Polish president did that too, and hosted the Sarkozy - Dalai Lama meeting on Polish soil, and yet still got away with it.

Compare with that, Iceland and Jordan, hurt Chinese people's feeling by allowing the visit of former vice president of Republic of China Lien Chan in the late 90s. Needless to say, he later turned out to be an "old and great friend" of Hu's.

The reflections of my findings I gathered from China-related blogsphere were surprisingly diverse - as long as my fellow countrymen start to think themselves rather than just follow what's being said in the People's Daily or the Global Times, then I'm happy that my effort is worth something.

Most people seem to agree with me on the fact that the vast majority of the "hurt feelings" incidents happened after 1970s is as the result of China opening up itself to the world  - the famous economic reform（改革开放）started in 1978 by Deng Xiaoping.

However, some attributed that fact to Mao's death in 1976, suggesting that his departure left Chinese people's feelings unprotected and vulnerable to the outside world, and the economic reform has severely undermined the interests of ordinary Chinese people.

Some Chinese netizens were equally surprised as myself to discover that countries like Australia, South Korea or Russia were not the map. Equally, other people were surprised to find countries like Albania ("the only shining beckon of communism in the sea of Soviet revisionism/Capitalist Europe? [I'm not quite sure]") in the list. What do these facts mean is up to their own interpretation.

It also raised discussions about the phrase "hurt Chinese people's feelings" itself. I always regarded it as a very absurd and childish thing to say on the diplomatic stage.  Countries don't hurt each other's feelings - they speak with 'carrot and stick'(at least for now). You don't say somebody hurts your feelings when he attacked you
with a stick, you either fight back (... well, if you are powerful enough) or just get over with it.  Put yourself in a 'weak' position and make yourself sounds like the "justified" side does not do anything good but only fuels unhealthy hate and revenge thoughts among the general public as people discover that crying for "hurt feelings" won't solve anything.

And even worse, repeated use of the phrase diminishes the power of the "real" feelings of the Chinese people. The value of Chinese people's feelings deflates every time the phrase is being used - it looks less important in the foreign eyes as the feelings can be "hurt" repeatedly with no apparent consequences.

There are people who do feel that their feelings have been genuinely hurt by the countries I listed, and made a good use of my map by keeping it for future "revenge".

However, for most of the Chinese who remain apolitical for most of the their life, the expression is just something demonstrating the total
disconnect between the State's affairs and real people's life. What's the point to care who's been hurting me lately? I don't run the country, and I never had a say on anything even regarding of my own feelings.

What do you think? Any different thoughts? I would love to hear it from you.

right hand give way rule

I don't know much about rest of the world, but as many reported, in western countries, especially countries where people drive on the left, only New Zealand got this special rule, and 2/3 of the Herald readers think it should be scrapped.

Here's how I take this issue - just consider the following questions:

1. Which one is more dangerous for driver and other road users -  hanging in the middle of the road waiting to turn right, or turn left?
2. Which one is expected to take more time to complete? Or let's put it in another way, which one is likely to hold up the traffic?

I think the whole debate is a no brainer. I just don't understand why so many people out there find this rule "confusing" - what part of the "give way to your right" is too hard for them to understand? If they don't understand traffic codes, who let them pass the tests?

Or those people just want to take less attention while driving?  As I understand, this right hand give way rule does  require extra caution from drivers - check whether there is any cars there waiting to turn right, and check mirrors to see if there's any traffic on inner lanes.

But paying your full attention to the road isn't what you are suppose to do while driving?

I think this rule is a classic case of kiwi ingenuity - solve right turn problem with one simple rule.  The real problem is not the rule, is the drivers we have on the road.

Fallacies

I have to confess that I learnt nothing about logic during my school and university years because there's no education on this topic (well unless you do philosophy in University). You can sort of argue "critical thinking" encouraged in universities share some similarities with logical thinking, but I think they are still two different subject.

However, thanks to Wikipedia and university library, people like me can get a chance to browse through the subject.

I personally think logic is an extremely useful subject as it can be applied to nearly every aspect of real life. If you can keep yourself as a rational and clear thinker, which means to know at least the most common type of fallacies,  the world is suddenly a totally different place through your eyes - you realise that fallacies that are designed to trick you to buy products or vote for a party are just everywhere. Now you sort of understand the lack of education on logic among the general public, otherwise nobody can sell anything.

I was discussing about common logic fallacies with my friend. We were discussing fallacies in the last election, below is just a summary of our ideas in the conversations, they are quite interesting, but may not be necessarily right - and I just sort of copy and pasted from the chat, changed a bit, but this entry my not look like a blog, I apologise for that.

Appeal to fear is the most common type of fallacy politicians like to use. Fear, for us mankind, is a very natural instinct, any fear card played by politicians are usually quite useful, especially for the minor parties.

A classic example of this is Winston Peters - fear of immigration, particularly appealing to mid-aged and senior voters. Proven to be successful in last few elections - not so well to neutralise the bad publicity as the result of his corruption scandals in the last election.

Another not so well known fear card player is Rodney Hide - I'm not sure whether I judged him right or not, but he has a tendency of manipulate public's fear of crime.

But Helen Clark is the worst player of fear I've ever seen - her attack on the credibility of John Key has proven to be disastrous. She just got no skills on how to logically trick the general public - still remember the "two national party guy" ad? It basically means, "John Key is untrustworthy, so Helen Clark must be trustworthy" - a classic example of play on a combination of fear and false dilemma.

So how about National Party? They just didn't need to do anything as they were already on the road to victory. However, you can still trace some of their plays ...

• "a change for a brighter future" - does a change really necessarily mean a "brighter future"? This statement looked more real after Obama's victory, apart from people like to follow the majority in America for a "change" , why?
• "communism by stealth" - not a election slogan, but good a mention as it is a classic example of name calling -  how much you know about communism, apart from USSR? Is it necessarily bad?

Green party is quite clever compare to others. Instead of manipulate your fear, they appeal to your emotion. Still remember their ad? A cute kid looks like she's about to cry, because you didn't vote for Green.

"Good for our children" is a fairly common type fallacy used widely by politicians,even the Wikipedia got an article on it. If you are a The Simpsons fan, Remember Helen Lovejoy's gag? "Won't somebody please think of the children!"

Last comments

Although I did not give my party vote to Labour yesterday, I still consider the party the lesser of two evils- in last years New Zealand enjoyed a continuous stability and economic growth. And most importantly, the growth was enjoyed by all New Zealanders regardless of their gender, ethnicity or social statues, it was a sustainable growth, not the kind of growth achieved at the expense of part of our society.

It's also because I can never forget and forgive the massive incompetence of the last National Government and how that was ended nearly in tragedy.

Helen Clark and the Labour Party have done a good job in last nine years. There were downsides and unpopular movements, but if you look back, most of them were from Green politics.

I personally admired Helen Clark's strong leadership, a courage to do what's best to the country, not what electorates want. History will prove this.

She was also a great ambassador of New Zealand, she won respect for herself and New Zealand when she said no to invasion in Iraq. In China, many of my friends admired New Zealand's dignity, impartiality and selflessness as Clark first tipped the milk scandal in China.

And I'm glad to have her as my local MP for the last 27 years. She fought tirelessly for the benefit of the local community, and helped me during my hard time.

There was no doubt that National is on the road to form next government, but as I marked in my twitter, no matter who wins, it will sure be a sad turning point of New Zealand politics. As New Zealand First gradually fades away, New Zealand departed from centrist route, becoming vulnerable to irresponsible acts done by either extreme right wing like ACT or extreme left represented by Greens.

I consider myself pretty centred so it was a hard choice for me.  But when I looked at the current economic crisis, I had to come to the conclusion that John Key might be a better choice - there's no doubt that bankers and capitalists like John Key are responsible for the current world economic crisis, so he should know how to manage New Zealand through it. Why? Arsonists are usually the best fire-fighters, because only they know where the fire started.

It must be warned that John Key needs to be strong enough to resist temptations from old guards inside the National Party. I don't know much about John Key, but most of us know fairly well about old faces like Bill English, a guy like him should never be left in charge of anything alone.

John Key was also given a mandate to keep National as a centrist party and not influenced by 5 ACT MPs especially Roger Douglas otherwise he risks to become a one term PM.

Finally, just a condolence to Labour party and last nine years, it has been good nine years. Brooke Fraser, arithmetics(although it is actually a Christian song):

A note to myself

Note - I didn't win that 30 millions jackpot so I still need to go to work tomorrow.

Nah that's just joking, the real note is ...

While most of the contents in this blog are about politics, I actually prefer to remain as apolitical as possible in my real life. That's one of the reasons why I did not promote my blogs to my friends.

The reason's quite simple. I've always found very difficult to have any real discussion or debate on political issues with some people, especially my fellow countrymen. If you oppose their views, the trend is, they will try to win the debate by putting all sorts of labels on you. In that way they would feel like they are on the moral high ground, or what we Chinese call Ah Q - well in fact, I feel quite sorry for them.

But the even sadder thing is, some searches have found that personal ideology to overrules facts is more like a fact of life, and we may just have to live with them.

So I'll still remain as apolitical as possible in my life.

Just one quick point

Environment is an important issue to me. After seeing the debate tonight, I just got one question: "if we don't have an environment that is able to sustain our life, will we still be there to enjoy the economic development?"

New Zealanders are always proud of their progressive, sometimes radical social values. They are part of our nation's identity. We cannot compete in economy with countries like USA, but we can lead the world in social issues.

We did not seek a balance between rugby matches and our value, we also shouldn't do like what Mr Key said, "a balance between environment and economic development". Mr Key also should not be hesitate to answer the question on the 1981 Springboks tour, I agree the past has no value in order to help us solve our current issues, but Mr Key's personal values are  important though, for me, to assess whether he's the right man. His hesitation to answer that question, shows me that he got no social value at all - that was the defining moment of our country and yet you have no opinion on that?

For that reason, National is definitely off my list for now - if we lose our identity, New Zealand will no longer be New Zealand.

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In terms of the debate itself, both did fine. But clearly John Key is more energic and won the debate. After 9 years of Helen Clark, you can even tell what she's going to say before she actually says it.

And it's quite weird that John Key didn't mention the phrase "national party" a lot in the debate ...probably only once or twice.