Think of this as Volume 12, Number 23 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.
This is my second straight week in Asia. I write while you sleep, I sleep while you work.
I am covering the CompuTex show in the capital of Taiwan, Taipei. You can read my coverage at ZDNet Open Source and at ZDNet's new blog, SmartPlanet, where I co-write the Smarter Tech blog and solo on their Smarter Health.
Here, however, I want to talk about what I have learned about Taiwan, about what differentiates it from Chengdu, and what that may say to the rest of us.
My first impressions of the place were dirty. The overpasses are older, the buildings all older, than on the mainland. Taipei has been a modern city for over half a century. This should not have been a shock. But after all the construction of new highways, office towers, and condominium complexes in Chengdu it was.
The Taipei air is also dirty. You can't get along on a bicycle here. You're either in a car or on a motorcycle. A motorcycle is better, because you can park it on the sidewalk. With a car you need to find a lot, which is expensive. Every light change is met by the roar of dozens of motorcycle engines. Many people wear masks against the soot, but that is of no help against the other pollutants they are making.
Think of this as Volume 12, Number 22 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.
Many Americans are familiar with “Mad Men,” about Madison Avenue and life in the early 1960s.
Today's China reminds me a lot of that show.
My son and I just completed a week in Chengdu. It is a nice city, situated in a bowl on a plain that was also the home of one of the first Chinese Kingdoms .
But in most ways it is brand new.
Like the rest of China much of its modern history dates from 1979, when the country began opening up economically. The differences between then and now are stark. The old city is nearly destroyed – there are just litle bits here and there – and a city much like New York has taken its place along wide avenues placed by Chairman Mao. (A huge statue of him directs traffic in the center of town.)
“Mad Men” is a show in which everyone lies to themselves about their inner reality. Everything about the 1960s is just below the surface, waiting to explode. Chengdu is much the same. All the various revolutions of the 1960s are waiting to appear, they are just below the surface, yet the citizens are completely wrapped up in their external prosperity.
The video above is more than a good song. It says a lot about the times we live in.
First, it's a collaboration among musicians in Africa, Europe, America and Asia who did not meet to record. They are singing the song of a Jamaican.
Many of these people come from poor backgrounds, yet they are able to use the same basic technology to make their contributions. See the headphones? Tracks are layered on tracks. The music is built using the Internet, the files passed around, additions made much as you would build a software program.
Which is the point. This collaboration was possible because people were using compatible technologies, because they had free interconnection, and because they shared a universal vocabulary.
In this case music. Other universal languages include mathematics, where equations look the same to a Chinese scholar or a Russian, and Java, which (like any computer language) uses the same structure whether you're Indian or Peruvian.
The difference between the ordinary and the extraordinary is calm in the center of the storm.
We see it in athletics, where the pitcher or the quarterback or the point guard is able to somehow control their emotions, stay in the moment, slow down the game and deliver the victory.
We see it in business, where a trader or CEO keeps his head while markets are falling and scoops up assets at a fraction of their "real" price.
We love to see it in Las Vegas. It's what the great gamblers have. It allows them to bluff and take pots when they have nothing, because they separate themselves from the emotions of the moment and take advantage of others' normal weakness.
We see it on the stage, in the movies. We see it in religion. The greats all have it. That ability to be still, to hold a mirror to the audience and let themselves be the hero the viewer wants them to be.
We're seeing it in politics this week, in the person of Barack Obama.
Think of this as Volume 11, Number 33 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.
Economies win wars.
War is not a romantic struggle between soldiers. It is not the strategy or tactics of generals. It is a life-and-death struggle between nations, between societies.
The stronger economy wins.
This is not news. This is taught to every American child, north and south, when history class turns to the Civil War. Generals and esprit held the Confederacy together for a while, but eventually it was ground down, methodically, by Grant and Sherman, whose most famous saying was "War is all hell."
It still is.
Thus, the Georgia War offers Americans an enormous opportunity, a once-in-a-lifetime teaching moment, a chance to crush the Republican Party of Joe McCarthy, of Richard Nixon, of Ronald Reagan, of George Bush and John McCain once and for all.
For American democracy to thrive, the Republican Party which emerges from its next exile must be very different from today's. And the difference should be this lesson, sweeping the neo-cons into the dustbin of history.
We can do this if we don't shrink from it. We can do this if we teach the lesson, and if we give our fellow countrymen credit for being able to learn it. Yes, we can. And yes, we must.
Start with a simple sentence. There are other ways to win wars.
Fortunately there is a single common-sense step the next Administration can take, which has the potential to break this logjam.
Offer our own leaders for trial.
There can no longer be any real doubt that our current political leaders are war criminals. The evidence of mass murder and torture, directed from the highest levels of the United States government, keeps mounting. It becomes more obvious each day in the actions of that Administration to cover up what it did and thwart justice.
So open an investigation. Do this openly, transparently, publicly. Offer to share the results with the International Criminal Court, and to respond appropriately to its future requests in the matter.
This is how you win the War on Terror. By proving to the world that we will not be terrorized. Not by anyone. Not even by our own leaders.
When I began The Chinese Century, then The American Diaspora, I was trying to distance myself from the reality around me, and building (in my mind) a different kind of utopia on a foreign shore. I recognized that from the start, but it didn't stop me. When I picked up The Duke of Oil it was with the intention of finishing that story out, embracing the idea of a different energy future and tracking the fall of the Bush Administration characters who had brought us to this end.
But as I wrote the idea of a South African utopia, as opposed to the dystopian reality, became less and less possible to me.
Many historians date centuries based on relevant events, not the turn of a calendar page. (From the collection of the State Library of Victoria, Australia. Click here to see it as more than a thumbnail.)
The 20th century, in other words, did not start on January 1, 1901. It started with the Guns of August. World War I ushered in the Great Power era, the wars of ideology, the mass murders, and the auto civilization for which the 20th century will always be known.
We are still living in that century. We still depend on cars, and oil. We still obsess over ideology. We still die over resources, and in vast numbers. We are still divided.
But this old order is dieing. If the War in Iraq should prove useful in any way, it is to kill these presumptions about ideology and resources. Capturing Iraq's oil did not make its price manageable. The "good vs. evil" Cold War game the Bush Era created has been shown to be a sham.
The 20th century is not going out with a bang, but with a whimper. What began in shock and awe is going out in economic and environmental dysfunction.
Most of us have known for many years what the 21st century will be about:
The Global Crisis of climate change.
A single planet requiring a single set of standards.
Think of this as Volume 11, Number 22 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.
All the scandals of this decade can be summed up in one word.
Loyalty.
Misplaced loyalty sees this word as a two-way street. I'm loyal to you, you're loyal to me.
In fact it's a circle. Loyalty always flows upward. When you're on the top of the tower, that means it flows to what's really most important to everyone else, the customers and owners in the case of a corporation, the voters and the system in the case of a politician. That loyalty then showers down like rain and blesses everyone below, watering the roots, raising everyone up.
In a corporate loyalty chain the result is higher profit, higher sales, and goodwill. Think Warren Buffett (left). His loyalty is to his shareholders, and he teaches that their loyalty is to customers. As a result his annual meetings are a joy, a Buffettstock. Like IBM meetings in the 1920s, Coca-Cola meetings in the 1950s, or Microsoft meetings in the 1990s. When companies are run right this is what all their meetings should be -- celebrations.
In the case of political loyalty the result is much the same -- peace, prosperity, power, and the respect of other nations. All the good feelings one has when one thinks of the word patriotism.
In both politics and corporate life we are supposed to have figures who keep an eye on the powerful and make sure the proper loyalty is maintained, that loyalty to people does not replace loyalty to the system. Prosecutors and courts owe their loyalty to the law, nothing else. They have no loyalty to the people at the top, even when those people are in high office. And when those in the chain of command are questioned by such people, their loyalty too must flow to the system, not to their bosses. Otherwise what's the difference between a political or corporate hierarchy and a Mafia crime family? None.
The words of our national anthem, unfortunately, don't teach this lesson. They're taught better by songs like Norah Jones' American Anthem:
Let them say of me
I was one who believed in
sharing the blessings I received.
Let me know in my heart when my days are through,
America,
America I gave my best to you.
It is in short-circuiting this system that this generation of politicians and corporate leaders have led the United States onto the rocks. They have destroyed our nation's credibility, they have destroyed the credibility of our markets, they have destroyed the credibility of our dollar. That won't be returned to us, automatically, by the results of any election. In a sense we're all like James Frey, whose A Million Little Pieces was shown to be fiction although it was billed as autobiography. (Also see Miller, Judy and Blair, Jayson.)
Lies have been told in our name, and believed. People have been murdered. We have betrayed the trust the world gave to us. Our collective credibility is zero.
The only way to rebuild is from the ground up, brick by brick.
The husband of our hostess, my son's Chinese teacher, wrote to say that there are still fears the dams will burst, and that the area is not yet safe.
He advised his wife not to follow through on her own travel plans, to stay a while here in the U.S. Since they haven't been together in almost a year, and must miss each other very much, that decision was not taken lightly.
Right now our plans are to delay departure until April. That will be my son's Spring Break during his senior year. The Chinese schools should be back up by then. The weather should be very nice. And the disaster should be over.
Meanwhile, we're going to do a little fundraising. Once his teacher returns home we'll stay in touch via e-mail, learn what the schools there need, and try to help supply it.
Recent Comments