Archive for August, 2008
China’s human rights situation is as unacceptable as it ever was
When I hear of human rights abuses in China, usually on the radio, it always seems to me as if this is something that should inspire public outrage, denial and flurried speech-making about how awful such things are. This, of course, is merely my personal emotional reaction based on the fact that I’m an extreme liberal who’s currently reading On Liberty and is thus fired up on such issues. But of late I’ve been thinking that in fact, maybe it would be better if we had more emotional, patriotic indignation surrounding the subject. It would be better than the downright apathy currently pervading so much of society on the issue of China’s abysmal record on and continuing ethos of human rights abuses by the state.
Among my peers, the pervading attitude is not even up to the rhetoric coming from our political leaders here in the West. While they may continue to trade with China, sell it arms and at the same time express their ‘deepest concern’ and other such clichés, the majority of those I know in my age group who have an opinion at all focus on the progress China has apparently made and how this outweighs any current suffering. They are blinded by the bright lights of the new skyscrapers and the profits to be hauled in by, or so it is portrayed, all and sundry who make an entrepreneurial attempt at business there. It’s the American Dream all over again. To them, the issues of human rights are entirely secondary to a country that is using its economy to improve the lives of ordinary people there and lift them out of poverty. But this is simply the usual excuses of those who stand to benefit materially from abuses and oppression.
It is a fallacy, I believe, to use progress in this way to justify an unacceptable situation and use this to treat China as if it were a country with a government that should be accepted as a peer on the world stage. It is as if closing half of the Nazi’s death camps means it is to be treated as a liberal democracy when the other half remain open. Sure, China now is better than China twenty years ago. But while the problems remain it is not something any other country should accept. Surely, it could be argued, trading with China encourages it to get even better. But instead this sends a message that things as they are now are okay, are being accepted. And this is not on. Even if China continues to make progress under the current accepting ethos of the West and improves steadily, think of all the abuses that will be inflicted in the meantime. It’s far away and out of mind for the businessmen reaping the rewards of such practices. And as is always the way it is the people of the country that suffer the most. I’m boycotting an olympics that has destroyed, without any sort of compensation, the homes of innocent Chinese people to build the facilities. My issue is with the Chinese government, not its brave people.
What, then, should be done? It would be extremely naive of me to call upon our governments to apply more pressure through the cessation of trade and the expansion of speeches attacking China’s record from those in positions of power. Governments are, it seems, always going to be useless at such things. But popular opinion remains a powerful force in global politics. The BBC and suchlike continue to provide damning evidence (see From Our Own Correspondent this morning for yet another example of police intimidation to foreign journalists followed by worse to their own people). The liberal press and the Internet continue to provide the arguments. We must push these values up people’s list of priorities. I’m not saying that this is achievable or something that all would agree on. I’m merely stating what I believe to be the only moral option.
It’s worth nothing too that I struggle to understand the motivation of China’s leaders. In the aforementioned BBC report this morning, the correspondent ended with similar confusion: what are China trying to hide? If they fear losing their position of power they should not, they control the army and various other appratus of state. Just look at the Tiananmen Square massacre. I can accept that democracy takes time for a country that hasn’t had it for so long, if ever. But why create a culture of fear where people are afraid to talk to foreign correspondents and students, historically the bravest of rebels, will only post their criticism of the government anonymously on their university message boards. The latter was an example given to me by a teacher of how China allows freedom of expression! Ha! Anonymity should never be a requirement, only an option. Otherwise, it indicates a state of fear.
Scanning back through this I sound even more like a railing loony liberal than I normally do, but maybe that’s a good thing; maybe it’s better than the apathy currently pervading those who will, in the future, influence the actions of the West. Or more likely, this little tirade will di sappear into the endless archives of the blogosphere, as insignificant as ever.
Results today
And I did it.
Straight As, 4th in year for my hardest subject (History), 100% in my pure maths modules and 100% in my Philosophy set text (Descartes’ Meditations).
But as usual I now really don’t care: results only matter to me when I don’t get what I want. I’ve put in so much effort this year and it’s paid off but I don’t feel like celebrating, I’m just maybe a bit happier than usual. And I’d much rather be like this than some of the alternatives.
Results tomorrow
I’ve been following a strict routine of not thinking about this year’s exams between sitting them and getting the results, which will be tomorrow morning for the latter. It’s been successful – until the past twenty-four hours or so, I’ve managed to not worry about something I can’t affect, and I haven’t been concerned in the way friends have. This seems to indicate that I haven’t had any reason to worry, because I haven’t been entirely blanking the thoughts out of my mind (I wouldn’t be capable of that).
However, last night I had a dream about getting my results. I had the envelope, but – presumably because my brain didn’t know what to expect in the envelope and thus was avoiding showing me – I wasn’t opening it. Instead, I was behind the library desk at school and appeared to be organising envelopes for other people. How odd that my subconcious would have me doing this, and in the library of all places. Also, a friend was nearby, and they had just got a B in Philosophy, the subject I am most concerned about, which I presume was a bad omen for me as the friend is of similar ability and did similar amounts of revision to me, and we were all at a disadvantage because of doing the subject in so few hours. I woke up from this in the dark with a sickly, fearful tummy ache feeling rather scared. This isn’t usual Sean-like behaviour surrounding exam results.
The fact is that at present, whatever else I claim, exam results and the accompanying university that I want to go to are very much my ultimate goal in life at the moment, as they are the first hurdle to pass to get there. I’ve been struggling to feel purposeful with anything not related to this over this summer holiday, e.g. Wikipedia activities. This focus is somewhat ridiculous. It is not true that I have failed entirely if I don’t succeed in these areas – but while I like to tell myself that I fail to convince myself of it. I blab on that I am content to search for meaning through thought and debate and writings like this blog but really, if I don’t get what I want tomorrow or I don’t get into the university I want to go to or both (results tomorrow can be made up over the next year if they are not too bad so the two are not totally dependent on each other), I will feel like I’ve completely failed and it was all a waste of time. I won’t be able to convince myself that what I have gained this year in terms of expanding my mind is more important than the grades. I know this because of what it felt like after I got my GCSE results and got an A in History where I wanted an A*. And that’s really sad.
So I’m going to try and stop thinking now (wow) because it’s unlikely to go very far, and I’m going to wish friends good luck for tomorrow and go and watch some TV, and go to bed. We’ll see what happens with that brown envelope tomorrow.
A commonly misunderstood aspect of my philosophy
Some time ago (like, three or four years) I developed an idea that I didn’t want to have much to do with what I referred to as negative emotions. I still hold this view but I’ve refined the language to the idea that I refuse to allow myself to be crippled by such emotions, I will not allow myself to partake in things that aren’t useful, such as depression, and unrealistic hope. I won’t let it stop me. This sounds very grand, and I’m not saying I always (or ever entirely) succeed. All I’m saying is that I have this as something that I aim for. To me, this seems to make a lot of sense. Why not try and stop such things from causing problems if you can? However, my parents have always told me that this theory is wrong, I’m wrong, and I should stop holding the view. This is mainly because, I think, I’ve often misrepresented the idea by appearing to be attempting to entirely rid myself of emotions. Obviously without physically editing myself that’s not going to happen and in any case I never set out to do this, because as I say I don’t want useless/counter-productive emotions, I’m quite happy with the helpful ones (e.g. realistic hope, determination) and obviously I ‘like’ happiness and the like. I’m not going to question whether or not there is any reason to live if you don’t have emotions, that’s for another post.
And yet still I’m told that the basic view outlined above is incorrect, even when I try to spell it out as simply as possible as I’ve done here. My parents say that all they want is for me to be happy and that my ‘quest’ described above is somehow going to compromise this. I don’t get this. Whatever I may say about aiming for things other than happiness, how does the above compromise this? It’s supposed to leave more space for it by clearing out silly things like depression. If anyone else understands their perspective and would like to explain it to me, I’d very much appreciate it.