I've had lots of experience with Indian and Inuit people in Canada, especially
in the north. Because, over historic times, we've moved in on them and
marginalized them, a whole raft of social and economic problems has resulted.
However, what I've seen is their mostly gradual but at times rapid movement out
of the mess we've created for them. The groups I worked with have largely
settled their land claims and developed their self-government institutions.
Some of their kids have successfully moved through the education system we've
imposed on them, some to the level of Ph.D. They are progressing, slowly in
some things, rapidly in others. The most important point that they keep making
in a variety of ways is that they want to move forward but they don't want to
become like us. More than anything else they want to rediscover the nations
they were and build on them in the modern world. It's a hard path. Some, one
hopes many, will make it; some will not.
What can we learn from them? We like to think of ourselves as Canadians,
Americans or Europeans. But whatever we call ourselves we are not homogenous
entities. Increasingly, one sees large divisions forming in our societies.
Some of us are very rich, some of us are not too badly off buy fading in that
regard, and many of us, an increasing number I'm afraid, are poor and becoming
poorer. A growing number of us think internationally but many of us, again a
growing number, are confined to thinking locally. Drugs, poor health, and what
to do with an aging population are growing problems.
What I would suggest is that we take a long look at our Indian and Inuit
populations and see how they are dragging themselves out of the mess we made of
them. They are recreating and organizing themselves. We may have to do a lot
of that too.
So, Ray, don't quit telling us what the Cherokee are doing and how they are
adapting to life and change. I learned a lot in working with the Dene in the
Yukon, the Inuvialuit in the Western Arctic and the Inuit in general. Do keep
telling us about how the Cherokee are coping with the mess this world has
become.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: Keith Hudson
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION ; Ray Harrell
Sent: Monday, January 10, 2011 2:15 AM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Why China won't win in this century
At 01:46 10/01/2011 -0500, you wrote:
Well that was an ignorant patronizing statement. Anyone else agree or
have experience with real Indian people?
REH
What are the Cherokees saying about rising energy costs and automation? That
is, if you don't deny that they are two of the most serious problems that we
(and the Cherokees) face today?
You, as a product of modern times, are no more a traditional Cherokee than I
am a medieval English serf. As before, the Cherokees have a great deal to tell
us but no more than a great many other non-industrial societies.
KSH
From: Keith Hudson [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, January 10, 2011 12:21 AM
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION; Ray Harrell
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Why China won't win in this century
Ray,
I'd rather not hear about the Cherokees any more apart from the traits they
share with many other pre-industrial societies that have existed and still
exist around the world. They all -- in common -- have a great deal to tell us
about instinctual behaviours which show through in all human organization.
Apart from the same instinctual behaviours which we still carry forward,
the Cherokees, as Cherokees, have nothing to tell us about the problems mankind
faces as fossil fuel energy becomes more expensive and as automation proceeds.
KSH
At 16:08 09/01/2011 -0500, you wrote:
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="----=_NextPart_000_003A_01CBB017.65A77200"
Content-Language: en-us
I dont think I agree with either Keith or Mike on this. The complexity
of a billion people and the requirements for integration are so immense that I
would question whether those of us from huge areas with minimal populations or
Island nations with relatively small populations could even begin to explain
the issues involved. I was delighted to hear about Keiths work on the
Chinese Dictionary. Thats a context that makes things more clear.
Keith, we have a Cherokee poet, and member of our community here, that has
translated four volumes of du fu with his own versions of the poems. I
find them beautiful. I would be interested in what you thought of them.
Hes gotten a good reputation here in the Chinese community and is even making
money on their purchases on Amazon. Its called Murphys du fu. His name is
James R. Murphy and he is also a world expert on the math of string figures.
Hes a shy recluse of person and doesnt flash credentials as I do but hes a
graduate in physics of Harvard and has been an educator up until retirement.
He developed the string figures for students who were Math Phobic but could be
stimulated through hand/eye/memory work with string loops. His two volumes
of string figure books are also on Amazon. Hes a prolific poet and has
written many volumes of poetry. Most unpublished but hes making money on the
versions of the du fu and the string figures because they are used as texts in
schools for certain types of math phobias. Hes currently working on versions
of si jo Korean poetry and of course Cherokee poetry.
Id be interested in anyones opinion especially Keith as the resident
Chinese scholar.
REH
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of D and N
Sent: Sunday, January 09, 2011 2:27 PM
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Why China won't win in this century
Add to the list below the study of the energy flows of the body and
acupuncture to treat dis-eases of the body (over 3500 years of use). This
style of medical intervention is still little understood by the western world
partly due to the arrogance of our scientific society and the need for the
present medical/pharmaceutical businesses to maintain their grip on the
lucrative resource at hand. Let's mention as well the vast knowledge of the
ancient Chinese of the medicinals of the natural world and the Chinese
achievements in astronomy.
The struggle to 'achieve' in anything (sports, technocracy,
business/economics, government, etc.) can lead to a blind arrogance toward
other aspects within a field or society or toward other cultures. It is this
unacceptance of 'differing ways and values' that can lead to misunderstandings,
conflict and disaster in the long run.
Darryl
On 1/8/2011 11:50 PM, Keith Hudson wrote:
Ed,
Yes . . . well I mentioned this in my piece. Over the centuries the Chinese
amassed a large number of inventions here and there in a vast country which
then drifted into Europe in the Middle Ages. The real problem for China began
at the time of the Ming dynasty (early 1400s) when multi-masted ships (that is,
international trade) was outlawed. >From then onwards they were no longer
receptive to catalytic ideas from the outside world. It's economy was large
enough (and its internal freight routes were adequate enough -- principally its
grand canal linking the 'export markets' of the north and south) for it to
remain viable, but it never made any great strides from then on. Its culture
and economy was largely locked and introverted.
The original problem (that the abstract scientific ideas of the West from
about 1700 onwards couldn't be immediately written down in ideographic Chinese)
doesn't apply any longer. (Now that they've absorbed the ideas they can be
written down in Chinese -- albeit in railway length words!) The problem today
(which, as I said, the government is seriously worried about) is that their
children and young people are not curious or creative enough -- and they (not
I) put it down to the many years of intensive rote learning necessary to
acquire reading and writing.
Keith
At 12:28 08/01/2011 -0500, you wrote:
Interesting Keith, but despite the problem of their written language, the
Chinese do seem to have been able to come up with inventions in the past. I
recalled reading something about them having invented gunpowder, so I looked
that up on Wikipedia and to my surprise found that they had not only invented
gunpowder, but a host of other things:<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
China has been the source of many significant inventions, including the
Four Great Inventions of ancient China: papermaking, the compass, gunpowder,
and printing (both woodblock and movable type). The list below contains these
and other inventions.
The Chinese invented technologies involving mechanics, hydraulics, and
mathematics applied to horology,metallurgy, astronomy, agriculture,
engineering, music theory, craftsmanship, nautics, and warfare. By the Warring
States Period (403221 BC), they had advanced metallurgic technology, including
the blast furnace and cupola furnace, while the finery forge and puddling
process were known by the Han Dynasty(202 BC AD 220). A sophisticated economic
system in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /><?xml:namespace prefix = u1
/>China gave birth to inventions such as paper money during the Song Dynasty
(9601279). The invention of gunpowder by the 10th century led to an array of
inventions such as the fire lance, land mine, naval mine, hand cannon,
exploding cannonballs, multistage rocket, and rocket bombs with aerodynamic
wings and explosive payloads. With the navigational aid of the 11th-century
compass and ability to steer at high sea with the 1st-century sternpost rudder,
premodern Chinese sailors sailed as far as East Africa and Egypt.[1][2][3] In
water-powered clockworks, the premodern Chinese had used the escapement
mechanism since the 8th century and the endless power-transmitting chain drive
in the 11th century. They also made large mechanical puppet theaters driven by
waterwheels and carriage wheels and wine-servingautomatons driven by paddle
wheel boats. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_inventions)
The quote mentions agriculture, but not the intensive agriculture of the
rice paddie. I recall reading somewhere that rice paddies were partly a
response to the need to feed vast armies.
Despite the problems raised by their written language, the Chinese must
have had some way of encapsulating their inventions because they were quite
widely used. And in the case of Europe, it wasn't so much language that was
essential to the spread of ideas. Rather it was the invention of the printing
press and the movement away from Latin to the vernacular that swept ideas
across the continent.
If their written language presents a problem currently, there is good
reason to believe that the Chinese will have no problem in adapting. A few
days ago, I saw a TV interveiw with Justin Yinfu Lin, Chief Economist of the
World Bank. The interview was in English, and Yinfu Lin's responses were in
English, but in an English so thick that I had a lot of trouble understanding
what he was saying. However, he knew exactly what he was saying.
My point is that if there is a problem, I'm sure that the Chinese will find
a way around it.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: Keith Hudson
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, ,EDUCATION
Sent: Saturday, January 08, 2011 5:44 AM
Subject: [Futurework] Why China won't win in this century
The reason why China will never win hands-down in its current economic war
with America is the same as why Japan didn't succeed in the 1980s when all were
expecting that its corporations and banks would eat America up (Americans
included). The reason is that both countries are good at copying ideas and
technologies; neither is good at inventing new ones.
It's their written language that's the main part of their problem. It's
non-phonetic. It means that in order to acquire a basic vocabulary -- of, say,
2,000 or 3,000 words (the content of their average newspapers) -- children have
to learn uniquely-shaped characters (whole words) which have no, or very
little, relationship with their utterance. A Chinese or Japanese child can
learn to speak his language quite as readily as children do the world over, but
learning how to read or write each individual word takes many years. And
there's only one way, unfortunately for children, and that's by rote learning.
And thousands of hours of rote learning over many years under the strict
discipline of slave-masters in the schoolroom doesn't do anything for the
creativity of young minds -- or for older minds for that matter because the
basic mental skills are aptitudes are thoroughly laid down before puberty.
The Chinese and Japanese governments are well aware of the damage that rote
learning is doing to them -- and say so quite frequently. Although both
countries can churn out ten of thousands of science and engineering graduates
every year, there's scarcely an independent mind among them. Independent
'garage inventors', as we have in the West, are as rare as hen's teeth in China
and Japan. For example, Japan has been industrialized for over a century --
only a decade or two less than other Western countries -- yet it has only won
15 Nobel prizes in the science subjects. Compare this figure with those of
America (261), the UK (91) and Germany (88). China has only won 10! However,
this comparison is unfair because China's have only been won since it woke up
in the 1970s. America's number also needs to be modified because about a third
of its prizes have been won by foreign-born scientists who became American
citizens after migrating there.
It's all Emperor Qin Shi Huang's fault (yes, the same as is famed for his
terracotta army). Once Qin had conquered several countries and unified China in
221BC, he standardized as many things as possible from weights and measures and
currency through to the written language. All the various scholars throughout
his empire, speaking scores of different languages (some with and some without
a written form) were forced -- on pain of death -- to produce a composite, but
common, written language. And this could only be non-phonetic, of course. Even
the mighty power of Emperor Qin couldn't force millions of his subjects to
learn a new common spoken language but he could certainly force his relatively
few scholars to produce a new common written one. One popular penalty in those
days was to cut someone through his midriff, mount him on a platter of hot tar
and take him around the town, gesticulating and shouting before he expired.
And herein lies a paradox, because the industrial revolution in Europe
would never have happened without starting from a basic stock of scores of
innovations -- such as canal locks, differential gears, sowing grain in rows
and so forth -- that had drifted in from China along the Great Silk Road over a
period of centuries. However, this doesn't signify that the Chinese had been
more inventive than Europeans. But its common written language had meant that
when one innovation -- say a wheelbarrow (very important indeed for both China
and Europe) -- had been invented by a genius in one tucked-away corner of
China, then the local mandarin could write and tell hundreds more all about
this wonderful new device.
But what once had been an accelerator for both Chinese and European
civilizations actually became a retardant for China when the Western
Enlightenment and scientific revolution stirred into life in the 1600s and
1700s. The Chinese had no way of encapsulating these new ideas. A Chinese
mandarin visiting Europe in, say, the 1700s or 1800s, and learning about the
new exciting scientific ideas (if he'd learned Latin or another European
language of course) had no way of disseminating them widely in China because
there he had no method of writing them down in Chinese words that would have
been instantly recognizable by fellow Chinese scholars or engineers. He could
only convey the new ideas vaguely by speaking of them face-to-face when he
returned home.
Thus Japan (which had inherited thousands of Chinese words) and China were
left behind by the industrial revolution in England, Germany and America. They
didn't begin to catch up in earnest until the the 1870s (the Meiji Revolution)
and the 1970s (the Deng Xiaoping Revolution) respectively. And this is still --
largely -- where they are today. Both the Chinese and Japanese governments are
trying to phoneticize their written languages but only very slowly, such is the
cultural conservatism of two thousands years to contend with.
What might be significant in China (though not yet happening in Japan), is
that all their college and university entrants have to learn spoken and written
English these days. All their top government officials speak English and most
business and science faculties in their universities use English widely in
their seminars. Also, thousands of their brightest young post-grad scientists
go to America or England for research experience and qualifications. Indeed,
once they are here for a few years they become quite as inventive as Western
scientists (if not more so when you look at the authorship of many papers in
heavyweight subject, say genetics or particle physics). Unfortunately for the
Chinese and Japanese governments many, if not most, of the most innovative
scientific minds elect to stay in their adoptive countries rather than to
return.
But the problem is even more serious for China and Japan. Almost as
important as are the original ideas of innovative individuals is the necessity
of other individuals who will give a welcome to new ideas and help to develop
them. And it's this open-minded hinterland which is still limited because of
their deep, conservative, authoritative cultures. Goodness knows, new ideas
often have a hard time being accepted in the West. Even here, the crazy ideas
of yesteryear sometimes have to wait until its die-hard opponents are dead and
buried and a brand new generation appears. Only then are the ideas seen to be
not so crazy after all.
There we are then. Japan came close to hollowing out America and Western
Europe 30 years ago with its superbly made (Western-invented) products. China
is threatening to do the same in the coming years. But the innovative momentum
is still with the West and this sort of cultural momentum takes a century or
two to die down -- if it ever does -- or a century to acquire -- if it ever
does in China and Japan.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/01/
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