I read somewhere the other day that the people in Taiwan consider eating to be almost a hobby, in addition to being a necessity. That would explain why one finds food everywhere, and why people talk about eating all the time...
30 August 2010
Greetings from Asia - 1 September 2010
We have been seeing many members of Charlotte’s family, and have been taken out to so many great dinners that today we finally had to take a break and just eat a sandwich for lunch! Charlotte’s father took us out for a lavish dinner, as did her second brother. There are certainly many great places to eat here: there seems to be a restaurant or cafe or food stand every hundred feet or so along the street — seriously. Chinese are, as a Chinese-Canadian friend once pointed out to me, very id-oriented, and part of that is having food available wherever they might go. For the Chinese, eating is good, and that's that. Here are some views of the meals we've been treated to...
I read somewhere the other day that the people in Taiwan consider eating to be almost a hobby, in addition to being a necessity. That would explain why one finds food everywhere, and why people talk about eating all the time...
I read somewhere the other day that the people in Taiwan consider eating to be almost a hobby, in addition to being a necessity. That would explain why one finds food everywhere, and why people talk about eating all the time...
Greetings from Asia - 30 August 2010
So far — and, of course, this is based only on a week’s experience here — we have had a very positive impression of life here, in the sense that Taiwan still embodies the best of the new and the old. There are modern transportation and other facilities, along with the great night markets, vendors selling food from outdoor stalls, and a general relaxed pace of life in many respects. The efficiency of the immigration office was amazing, too, and even when service is not particularly friendly, it is well-organized.
We have also noted that even as Taiwan has modernized even more since we left in 1996, and even as the new generation differs so much from the old, the youth have also turned back to tradition in some ways. For example, there are many more museums and archaeological exhibits now, books on old architecture, clothing, and so on, and there are even shops that sell updated versions of traditional Chinese clothing. Moreover, of course, even as one sees young people with weird hairstyles and modern garb, one also sees that they behave with a certain modesty still. On the train, for example, you don’t encounter anyone talking loudly on cell phones, or yapping with their friends. As my friend Don Denton noted when we were travelling in Turkey, people here have some sense of reserve still.
It is also great to still see the school uniforms, the children cleaning their own schools, the continued importance of family and education, and other Confucian values alive and well here.
Naturally, the traffic is still a nightmare, with everyone driving at top speed and ignoring all the rules of the road. I guess this is where the Chinese take their (naturally human) aggressions!
We had to go the office here that handles immigration, both for my working papers, and for other processing. The service was amazingly efficient, and we were in there and out of there within a half an hour. Readers might be interested in the following document that I noticed there. See below...
We have also noted that even as Taiwan has modernized even more since we left in 1996, and even as the new generation differs so much from the old, the youth have also turned back to tradition in some ways. For example, there are many more museums and archaeological exhibits now, books on old architecture, clothing, and so on, and there are even shops that sell updated versions of traditional Chinese clothing. Moreover, of course, even as one sees young people with weird hairstyles and modern garb, one also sees that they behave with a certain modesty still. On the train, for example, you don’t encounter anyone talking loudly on cell phones, or yapping with their friends. As my friend Don Denton noted when we were travelling in Turkey, people here have some sense of reserve still.
It is also great to still see the school uniforms, the children cleaning their own schools, the continued importance of family and education, and other Confucian values alive and well here.
Naturally, the traffic is still a nightmare, with everyone driving at top speed and ignoring all the rules of the road. I guess this is where the Chinese take their (naturally human) aggressions!
We had to go the office here that handles immigration, both for my working papers, and for other processing. The service was amazingly efficient, and we were in there and out of there within a half an hour. Readers might be interested in the following document that I noticed there. See below...
29 August 2010
Greetings from Asia - 28 August 2010
HinterNet is off to Asia... This album comprises photographs and notes from our journey to Asia, 2010-2011. The primary subject is Taiwan, our base, along with some excursions... Click here to read about Taiwan in the CIA World Factbook. Click here to read information about Taiwan from the Lonely Planet guidebook. Naturally, all information in external websites is beyond the responsibility of HinterNet. That information is just for background for you, the reader.Some initial images from Taiwan...
Street scene in 台北市 (Taipei): the covered sidewalks are a feature one finds all over the Pacific, from Tahiti to Taiwan, as well as in other tropical and semi-tropical climes... even in New Orleans._____________________________________________________________
Another scene in Taipei... Note one of the many contrasts here between the old and the new: on the left, a traditional food stand next to an ultra-modern store selling Canon cameras. The contrast is highlighted by the fact that the vendor sells 豬血糕 (zhu xie gao), literally, "pig's blood cake". Although the term "cake is used", it's actually shaped like a popsicle (as it's served on a stick); it's sticky rice, cooked in blood, and then rolled in ground peanuts, with a touch of cilantro. For a further description, click here._____________________________________________________________
Another contrast of old and new... This is in the town of 鶯歌 (Yingge), not far from Taipei. In the foreground are the remains of a traditional Chinese house, while just behind are modern apartments. I have only encountered one case in Taiwan where the owner of a traditional house modernized the interior rather than just sold the property and moved into an apartment. The person I met did a lovely job of fixing the house, and then air-conditioning the interior, putting in good plumbing, etc. If I had the money..._____________________________________________________________
Street scene in Yingge, the hometown of my wife... This street has become a tourist destination (primarily for Taiwanese tourists), and each shop sells teapots, teacups, and other ceramic items, both low-end and high-end. Yingge used to be the main ceramics center in Taiwan, and while it still is important in some sense in its original identity, it has some aspects of a simulacrum... See Jean Baudrillard. Regardless, as tourist destinations go, Yingge did a good job of preserving itself..._____________________________________________________________
Astrid and I in front of the 布政司衙門 (Bu-Cheng-Shih-Szyamen / Bu Zheng Si Yamen), an old government building and now a museum in the Taipei Botanical Gardens._____________________________________________________________
Taiwan is still in many ways a very conservative place, in the real sense of that word. This sign is outside the girls' dormitory at the university where I work. Very clear..._____________________________________________________________
Some of the rooms in our apartment; it's actually a hotel, run by the university for their Travel & Tourism Program. So, we are living in a hotel suite... No complaints! Our kitchen and dining room..._____________________________________________________________
The view from our window, looking down on the campus and the town of 龜山 (Guishan), which means "Turtle Mountain". The entire area of northern Taiwan has these kinds of low mountains, which have some great hiking trails. Larger mountains are in the eastern portion of the island..._____________________________________________________________
A picture of myself (between Charlotte and Astrid, with arrow) with some of Charlotte's family members, at one of the several welcome banquets we were greeted with... From left to right: Charlotte's father and step-mother; Charlotte; me; Astrid; Charlotte's niece Juliet; Charlotte's second sister-in-law, and her two sons and her husband... All images and text are the property of Benjamin B. Olshin, and are protected under United States and International copyright law. They may not be copied, reproduced, stored, or manipulated without written permission of the artist.
22 February 2009
How Time (and Money) Flies...
Last time I wrote here we were all still back in 2008... I wrote a bit about the financial crisis, and gave my "cultural" take, since that's what this blog is all about: cultural insights. In particular, though, it's about cross-cultural ideas and insights, and I think that it's time for one more brief comment on the subject of the current financial crisis from this perspective.
We are in 2009 now, and the news is still bad. But one gets very different opinions depending on what one reads or whom one talks to. I've heard everything from "complete collapse of the current economic system" to "another Great Depression" to "just another 1970's-style recession". I am not an economist, and I couldn't tell you. Even the economists are telling us different things; it depends simply on which one you want to listen to.
What's this got to do with culture? Well, the different opinions on the nature of the current financial situation depend, it seems, on what I call "personal culture". Each person has their own unique culture depending on their upbringing, ethnicity, gender, and so on. But more importantly, their "personal culture" is shaped largely by what each person wants to see, or, if you want to get philosophical about it, what kind of reality they are projecting.
But economics, no matter how subject to interpretation, is going to have a hard, tangible manifestation. And I'd like to know what that manifestation is going to look like...
We are in 2009 now, and the news is still bad. But one gets very different opinions depending on what one reads or whom one talks to. I've heard everything from "complete collapse of the current economic system" to "another Great Depression" to "just another 1970's-style recession". I am not an economist, and I couldn't tell you. Even the economists are telling us different things; it depends simply on which one you want to listen to.
What's this got to do with culture? Well, the different opinions on the nature of the current financial situation depend, it seems, on what I call "personal culture". Each person has their own unique culture depending on their upbringing, ethnicity, gender, and so on. But more importantly, their "personal culture" is shaped largely by what each person wants to see, or, if you want to get philosophical about it, what kind of reality they are projecting.
But economics, no matter how subject to interpretation, is going to have a hard, tangible manifestation. And I'd like to know what that manifestation is going to look like...
21 November 2008
Back Just in Time... For the Decline
It’s been a while since my last posting here at HinterNet... frankly, the pace of domestic (that is, U.S.) and world events have outpaced one’s ability to write intelligently about them. Of course, there has been intelligent writing about everything from the recent elections in the United States to the mess that has come to define the Democratic Republic of Congo. But things are happening too fast to make a lot of cogent predictions or analysis as a whole, perhaps.
But I hope that I’ve come back to this blog just in time... to witness the decline of the world as we know it.
The media tends to embrace if not promote the unsettled, the uncertain, the tragic. This shades one’s analysis and predictions towards the pessimistic. But it is also hard not to be have a very negative view these days, particularly if that view is from the U.S., where this blogger is currently based. Obama’s victory in the U.S. elections may not mean that much in the long perspective — he’s got a lot of problems to deal with right off the bat, and as he himself noted in his victory speech:
“The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term...”
In other words, don’t expect a miracle. Problems such as the current economic crisis are not “solvable” through the policies of one president, perhaps not even one government. The complexity of the economic crisis, in fact, may elude any “policy-driven” solutions at all.
Which brings us to our topic for today: the economic situation. There’s a lot of talk about “fixing” the economy. There’s also been talk about declines in “growth”. But a detached observer might note (as others have in the past) that constant growth in any system — economic or otherwise — is unrealistic.
But wait, you say — this blog is supposed to be about business and culture! Well, yes, and the current crisis is actually one of culture, not economics. Despite what you may have read in your economics textbook, the “dismal science” is not necessarily based on some kind of eternal “natural law”. Sure, the desire for profit may seem like a basic part of our human makeup. But as the social critic and commentator Alex Schein has noted, no other animal beside the human would amass more than it could sanely consume. That is, tigers eat deer and will hunt deer down for their next meal — but they won’t make a pile of deer carcasses that’s the bigger than their neighbors. Only humans seem to feel the need to have the biggest house on the block, the most cars, the largest collection of shoes. The economics of unbridled acquisitiveness is unnatural.
Again, we have been living in an age of unnatural accumulation of wealth — and there is virtually nothing like that kind of extreme accumulative activity in the natural world. The current economic crisis stems partly from this unnatural behavior we’ve been engaged in.
Again, this blog is about business and culture, and it’s important to understand that what we’re talking about is that the roots of economic decision-making in culture.
To continue with our discussion... Schein also notes that the kind of accumulative activity our culture has been based on is grounded in the artificial construct or assumption that “2 is somehow greater than 1, and 3 is even better, and so on”. This, too, is unnatural, since it leads to a kind of infinite regress, a world where even too much is still not enough. It’s the same culture construct that’s led to such peculiar ideas as “constant growth”.
Then there’s the problem of money. There’s nothing like money in the natural world; that is, in the real world, everything is tangible, readily usable, of clear utility. For animals, there is no money — there are things: things to eat, things for building nests, and so on.
Indeed, no living entity would spend time engaged in pursuing something that essentially, intrinsically has no real value. Of course, money was designed to facilitate exchange and has allowed humans to create a whole world of commerce, at a scale that could never have happened with a barter system.
But in our culture, money — the abstract value of a piece of paper — has taken on a grotesque life of its own. We have absurd ideas such as “net worth”; what does that really mean? Today, it’s not even about what all that accumulated money could purchase or do. In the old days, even in the worse days of the “Gilded Age” of excessive wealth, at least those rich folks did something with their money — they’ve left a legacy of magnificent buildings, for example, that grace the streets of cities like New York and Chicago. But today, being rich is often simply about having the lofty numerical statistics after one’s name. If “net worth” is the key element to modern identity, what happens if you lose your net worth? Do you become “worthless”?
The current crisis in part stems from the problems related to the purchase of houses. When the housing bubble was in its expansion phase, houses quickly and dramatically rose in price and monetary value. But what happened was the commodification of houses: as they rose in monetary value, they became commodities we kept our stuff in, not our homes. Indeed, we knew that this was happening because of the perverted emphasis in the real estate business on the phrase “buying a home” the overuse of that word “home” indicated, in fact, just how much the actual concept of a home had been lost.
Culture, commodification, crisis. Stay tuned...
But I hope that I’ve come back to this blog just in time... to witness the decline of the world as we know it.
The media tends to embrace if not promote the unsettled, the uncertain, the tragic. This shades one’s analysis and predictions towards the pessimistic. But it is also hard not to be have a very negative view these days, particularly if that view is from the U.S., where this blogger is currently based. Obama’s victory in the U.S. elections may not mean that much in the long perspective — he’s got a lot of problems to deal with right off the bat, and as he himself noted in his victory speech:
“The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term...”
In other words, don’t expect a miracle. Problems such as the current economic crisis are not “solvable” through the policies of one president, perhaps not even one government. The complexity of the economic crisis, in fact, may elude any “policy-driven” solutions at all.
Which brings us to our topic for today: the economic situation. There’s a lot of talk about “fixing” the economy. There’s also been talk about declines in “growth”. But a detached observer might note (as others have in the past) that constant growth in any system — economic or otherwise — is unrealistic.
But wait, you say — this blog is supposed to be about business and culture! Well, yes, and the current crisis is actually one of culture, not economics. Despite what you may have read in your economics textbook, the “dismal science” is not necessarily based on some kind of eternal “natural law”. Sure, the desire for profit may seem like a basic part of our human makeup. But as the social critic and commentator Alex Schein has noted, no other animal beside the human would amass more than it could sanely consume. That is, tigers eat deer and will hunt deer down for their next meal — but they won’t make a pile of deer carcasses that’s the bigger than their neighbors. Only humans seem to feel the need to have the biggest house on the block, the most cars, the largest collection of shoes. The economics of unbridled acquisitiveness is unnatural.
Again, we have been living in an age of unnatural accumulation of wealth — and there is virtually nothing like that kind of extreme accumulative activity in the natural world. The current economic crisis stems partly from this unnatural behavior we’ve been engaged in.
Again, this blog is about business and culture, and it’s important to understand that what we’re talking about is that the roots of economic decision-making in culture.
To continue with our discussion... Schein also notes that the kind of accumulative activity our culture has been based on is grounded in the artificial construct or assumption that “2 is somehow greater than 1, and 3 is even better, and so on”. This, too, is unnatural, since it leads to a kind of infinite regress, a world where even too much is still not enough. It’s the same culture construct that’s led to such peculiar ideas as “constant growth”.
Then there’s the problem of money. There’s nothing like money in the natural world; that is, in the real world, everything is tangible, readily usable, of clear utility. For animals, there is no money — there are things: things to eat, things for building nests, and so on.
Indeed, no living entity would spend time engaged in pursuing something that essentially, intrinsically has no real value. Of course, money was designed to facilitate exchange and has allowed humans to create a whole world of commerce, at a scale that could never have happened with a barter system.
But in our culture, money — the abstract value of a piece of paper — has taken on a grotesque life of its own. We have absurd ideas such as “net worth”; what does that really mean? Today, it’s not even about what all that accumulated money could purchase or do. In the old days, even in the worse days of the “Gilded Age” of excessive wealth, at least those rich folks did something with their money — they’ve left a legacy of magnificent buildings, for example, that grace the streets of cities like New York and Chicago. But today, being rich is often simply about having the lofty numerical statistics after one’s name. If “net worth” is the key element to modern identity, what happens if you lose your net worth? Do you become “worthless”?
The current crisis in part stems from the problems related to the purchase of houses. When the housing bubble was in its expansion phase, houses quickly and dramatically rose in price and monetary value. But what happened was the commodification of houses: as they rose in monetary value, they became commodities we kept our stuff in, not our homes. Indeed, we knew that this was happening because of the perverted emphasis in the real estate business on the phrase “buying a home” the overuse of that word “home” indicated, in fact, just how much the actual concept of a home had been lost.
Culture, commodification, crisis. Stay tuned...
17 December 2007
Peace in the Middle East, Annapolis, and All That
It struck me the other day that "the troubles" (to borrow the old term for the English entanglement in Ireland) between Israel and her neighbors has now spanned three generations. When my father was born, no state of Israel existed; he then went on to live through a time that saw Israel fight her neighbors in several wars. I was born in 1963, and so lived through several more of those wars (e.g., the 1967 war), right up to the incursion into Lebanon. Now I have a child, and it is likely that she, too, will grow up in a world where Israel is still engaged in conflict.
What's my point? A better question is what's THE point -- this continued conflict has transcended any kind of sense, even geopolitical sense. These wars and police actions, everything from Israeli tanks rolling into urban area to Palestinian suicide bombers, have only set the stage for more conflict. Little has actually been resolved. Moreover, this perpetual strife, and the agitation it creates among the citizenry, is corrosive to the societies in the Middle East.
But more profoundly, it makes no sense on a personal level. What I mean is that if one were to talk to individuals (not take polls or listen to politicians), one would find that the average Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian, Jordanian, Israeli, and so on, was interested in just a few basic things: family, work, friends, a proper meal, and some measure of happiness. That is, the average person in the Middle East would be interested in the things that the average citizen in most of the world is interested in (one might add soccer, too). War and conflict, simply gets in the way of the average citizen's just getting on in life.
One wonders why citizens don't just rise up -- not against the Palestinians, or Israelis, or any other such "grouping", but against these conflicts themselves, and just demand peace.
It is interesting indeed that citizens sometimes, when left to their own devices, are quite capable of living in peace. I had a friend in graduate school who had been in the Israeli military. He was never quite clear on what he did in the Israeli forces -- something murky, I suppose, perhaps even the Special Forces -- but he himself was a very mellow guy, and a good musician (we played in a band together).
I asked him once about the continuous conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. He looked at me and smiled, answering, "You know, the battles between the Israelis and the Palestinians is really between the politicians in many ways. When they want to, the Israelis and the Palestinians get along fine..." I asked him exactly what he meant. He replied, "You know, in the underworld there, all the 'mafia' stuff -- stolen cars and so on -- the Israelis and Palestinians work together all the time, no problem!"
And he was serious. If there is truly such honor among thieves in the Middle East, perhaps there is hope for the rest of us.
What's my point? A better question is what's THE point -- this continued conflict has transcended any kind of sense, even geopolitical sense. These wars and police actions, everything from Israeli tanks rolling into urban area to Palestinian suicide bombers, have only set the stage for more conflict. Little has actually been resolved. Moreover, this perpetual strife, and the agitation it creates among the citizenry, is corrosive to the societies in the Middle East.
But more profoundly, it makes no sense on a personal level. What I mean is that if one were to talk to individuals (not take polls or listen to politicians), one would find that the average Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian, Jordanian, Israeli, and so on, was interested in just a few basic things: family, work, friends, a proper meal, and some measure of happiness. That is, the average person in the Middle East would be interested in the things that the average citizen in most of the world is interested in (one might add soccer, too). War and conflict, simply gets in the way of the average citizen's just getting on in life.
One wonders why citizens don't just rise up -- not against the Palestinians, or Israelis, or any other such "grouping", but against these conflicts themselves, and just demand peace.
It is interesting indeed that citizens sometimes, when left to their own devices, are quite capable of living in peace. I had a friend in graduate school who had been in the Israeli military. He was never quite clear on what he did in the Israeli forces -- something murky, I suppose, perhaps even the Special Forces -- but he himself was a very mellow guy, and a good musician (we played in a band together).
I asked him once about the continuous conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. He looked at me and smiled, answering, "You know, the battles between the Israelis and the Palestinians is really between the politicians in many ways. When they want to, the Israelis and the Palestinians get along fine..." I asked him exactly what he meant. He replied, "You know, in the underworld there, all the 'mafia' stuff -- stolen cars and so on -- the Israelis and Palestinians work together all the time, no problem!"
And he was serious. If there is truly such honor among thieves in the Middle East, perhaps there is hope for the rest of us.
01 October 2007
Burma: Lesson Learned?
In my last posting, I noted how international "outrage" wasn't going to change anything in Burma. I also complained about lack of media coverage of why Burma's government can't so easily be tossed aside: it's got billions in revenue from the export of its natural resources.
So, I was pleasantly surprised today that the media, in some quarters, does seem to understand how politics really works. A report from Paul Reynolds on the BBC today noted: "The military crackdown in Burma is a reminder that street demonstrations do not necessarily lead to success for popular uprisings." Although the report did not mention the important economic factors, it at least adds this: "External pressure, in the form of international condemnation and talk of sanctions, has not been strong enough to be decisive."
So, I was pleasantly surprised today that the media, in some quarters, does seem to understand how politics really works. A report from Paul Reynolds on the BBC today noted: "The military crackdown in Burma is a reminder that street demonstrations do not necessarily lead to success for popular uprisings." Although the report did not mention the important economic factors, it at least adds this: "External pressure, in the form of international condemnation and talk of sanctions, has not been strong enough to be decisive."
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