Monday, November 24, 2008
The dark side of savvy reflexivity
Have you ever wondered why communist nations still exist these days? The fall of Soviet Russia and East Europe has come to the truism that communism won’t work in this world. It is very likely that the people in the current communist nations are aware about this. So the question is how these people with such awareness make sense of their status quo under the illegitimate rules.
Before I talk about savvy reflexivity, please allow me to talk a little bit about some basic facts I know about the People’s Republic of China. As I had been living in China until just three and half years ago, my experience of the state propaganda before I left is still the way it is in today’s China. The state-owned televisions and newspapers are always vigorously promoting the positive image of the Chinese government. Back in the 1960s to 1970s, many Chinese truly believed in communism, so the government could implement a series of maniac campaigns, such as the Five Antis, the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Forward, and so on. Now Chinese people (I mean the majority of mainland Chinese people who are not the beneficiary of the dictatorship rule.) have long been disillusioned about communist party since 1980s. The explicit state propaganda (there are other implicit propaganda), used to be quite motivating, now become a mere formality both for those in power and the recipients. The Chinese people know very well that they are mostly lies. Almost no one would take it seriously of the headlines about the percentage of GDP growth, or individual stories of personal life benefited from government policies. They know quite well that governmental statistics are exaggerated; stories are fabricated so as to provide a false image of progression, so as to maintain social stability. Most importantly of all, they all know that they are being fooled in some way, although they may not quite sure about the reality.
However, despite of this awareness, the Chinese people are still doing what the governments want them to do. Many young people want to work for the government, although they verbally repudiated it a million times. Despite of their criticism of the unfair social system, they try to make the best out of it instead of changing it. People are very contradictory. I know this is a complicated matter and there are many reasons in play here, but I want to single out the savvy reflexivity as one of the reasons, here is how savvy reflexivity works:
Chinese people somehow believe that the alternatives for the current economic and political system can not work better than the current one. There are some concrete common beliefs to support such notion: 1) the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) has caused so many social problems that no democratic government can solve these problems, and any change of the society would cause the eruption of social crisis and everyone would be negatively affected. 2) large population, hard to manage, Western democracy might cause chaos; 3) the long feudal past have deep rooted influence in people’s mind which prevent them from collectively accepting democratic ideas; 4) Although their current lives are bad, they worry that any change would make life even worse: given the fact that Russia suffered economic turmoil because of the radical political change. All these reasoning are convincing some time (of course not for me), but not always. When very bad situations happen, for example the recent poisonous milk that has caused many children ill and even death, people began to question the system again. The Real sets in to repudiate the symbolic. People do not know what to believe. They know CCP cannot be trusted and things have to be changed, but they do not know how. They can not see any alternative that can guarantee a better future. (The majority do not get access to important modern humanity knowledge because of censorship) The ambivalence and disorientation have incapacitated their reasoning and as a result, they keep doing what they are doing without questioning it any more.
This can partly explain why Chinese people seem to be immune to Western democratic ideas, including those who get the chance to study or work in Western countries. The massive anti-Tibetan protest in Western countries before the Beijing Olympic Games is quite surprising to many Westerners. Why would these oversea Chinese irrationally embrace their government? Have any Western education exert any positive influence on them at all? I think savvy reflexivity plays a big part. These people knew quite well the Chinese government was bad and human right/democracy was good, but they embraced the Chinese government anyway.
That is what I mean for the dark side of savvy reflexivity.
One last thing I want to point out is that: we see capitalism as a system that we cannot see through and we are not sure if any alternative would work. This is quite similar to the system in China as I mentioned above. We know from the Western perspective that democracy is a common value for human kind. This is the alternative for today’s China. But Chinese people cannot see the alternative. They are not able to see clearly how democracy works. They doubt it, at least for the short term. So, I think savvy reflexivity work only when we cannot see alternatives. It does not mean that the alternatives are not there. Similarly, the fact that we cannot see the alternatives for capitalism does not mean there is no alternative.
Before I talk about savvy reflexivity, please allow me to talk a little bit about some basic facts I know about the People’s Republic of China. As I had been living in China until just three and half years ago, my experience of the state propaganda before I left is still the way it is in today’s China. The state-owned televisions and newspapers are always vigorously promoting the positive image of the Chinese government. Back in the 1960s to 1970s, many Chinese truly believed in communism, so the government could implement a series of maniac campaigns, such as the Five Antis, the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Forward, and so on. Now Chinese people (I mean the majority of mainland Chinese people who are not the beneficiary of the dictatorship rule.) have long been disillusioned about communist party since 1980s. The explicit state propaganda (there are other implicit propaganda), used to be quite motivating, now become a mere formality both for those in power and the recipients. The Chinese people know very well that they are mostly lies. Almost no one would take it seriously of the headlines about the percentage of GDP growth, or individual stories of personal life benefited from government policies. They know quite well that governmental statistics are exaggerated; stories are fabricated so as to provide a false image of progression, so as to maintain social stability. Most importantly of all, they all know that they are being fooled in some way, although they may not quite sure about the reality.
However, despite of this awareness, the Chinese people are still doing what the governments want them to do. Many young people want to work for the government, although they verbally repudiated it a million times. Despite of their criticism of the unfair social system, they try to make the best out of it instead of changing it. People are very contradictory. I know this is a complicated matter and there are many reasons in play here, but I want to single out the savvy reflexivity as one of the reasons, here is how savvy reflexivity works:
Chinese people somehow believe that the alternatives for the current economic and political system can not work better than the current one. There are some concrete common beliefs to support such notion: 1) the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) has caused so many social problems that no democratic government can solve these problems, and any change of the society would cause the eruption of social crisis and everyone would be negatively affected. 2) large population, hard to manage, Western democracy might cause chaos; 3) the long feudal past have deep rooted influence in people’s mind which prevent them from collectively accepting democratic ideas; 4) Although their current lives are bad, they worry that any change would make life even worse: given the fact that Russia suffered economic turmoil because of the radical political change. All these reasoning are convincing some time (of course not for me), but not always. When very bad situations happen, for example the recent poisonous milk that has caused many children ill and even death, people began to question the system again. The Real sets in to repudiate the symbolic. People do not know what to believe. They know CCP cannot be trusted and things have to be changed, but they do not know how. They can not see any alternative that can guarantee a better future. (The majority do not get access to important modern humanity knowledge because of censorship) The ambivalence and disorientation have incapacitated their reasoning and as a result, they keep doing what they are doing without questioning it any more.
This can partly explain why Chinese people seem to be immune to Western democratic ideas, including those who get the chance to study or work in Western countries. The massive anti-Tibetan protest in Western countries before the Beijing Olympic Games is quite surprising to many Westerners. Why would these oversea Chinese irrationally embrace their government? Have any Western education exert any positive influence on them at all? I think savvy reflexivity plays a big part. These people knew quite well the Chinese government was bad and human right/democracy was good, but they embraced the Chinese government anyway.
That is what I mean for the dark side of savvy reflexivity.
One last thing I want to point out is that: we see capitalism as a system that we cannot see through and we are not sure if any alternative would work. This is quite similar to the system in China as I mentioned above. We know from the Western perspective that democracy is a common value for human kind. This is the alternative for today’s China. But Chinese people cannot see the alternative. They are not able to see clearly how democracy works. They doubt it, at least for the short term. So, I think savvy reflexivity work only when we cannot see alternatives. It does not mean that the alternatives are not there. Similarly, the fact that we cannot see the alternatives for capitalism does not mean there is no alternative.
# posted by Dong Su @ 10:43 PM 
