The Working Week

My name is Lisa, I'm 21 years old, and I confess... I am hapless when it comes to a working week.

Since being stripped of our evenings and weekends (minus solitary Sundays), I've since come to better appreciate something that I'd not before truly understood.

In my family life, people work pretty hard. They do what they need to, working long hours, weekends, all the rest of it. The hectic nature of their schedules has always typified the uncertainty of their so-called "job security."

While I'd always recognized their rights to a more stable circumstance, one thing I'd never before been able to rationalize. "If I worked that hard," I've often thought, "then I would take my Sunday and do something joyous with my little leisure time."

While I still think that's certainly the way to go, I can better understand how ongoing fatigue can, despite best efforts, put you into survival mode... "Onwards, onwards, nearly there, don't think too much, just do it..."

"The human race indulges its (mortality) on Sundays, on which day people all over the world tend to be sleepy and subliminally irritable... noting that man was especially fragmented on Sundays. Not really present... For all his willingness and zeal... Sundays have always been... Call it the Sabbath or whatever you like... (designed to ensure) the previous week was declared null and void."

-- Gunter Grass' 'The Rat'


Yes... It's true. I'm light years away from hankering after a working week.

Bring on student life, come 2008! And bring on social liberalism, too. :)

The Concept of Face in the Face of Consumerism

Those earlier posts are extremely difficult to follow up on, I must say...! There's nothing like wearing your heart out on your sleeve (online) ...

It's worth noting that yesterday I was able to share some of my ideas with one of my students. She is not only a Professor of Western Culture/Civilization but an all-round remarkable, independent, thoughful and creative woman whose insights just totally astound me! In framing this whole cultural encounter in historical terms, and across the table from someone so knowledgeable and forthright in this field of study... what can I say? It was just great. We have a one-hour class together each week and its something that I really look forward to.

One thing this week that was particularly interesting was how I've realised that the concept of 'face' that I was taught in university has been completely turned up on its head. This idea that 'Westerners' tend to be overly direct and forthright and thereby create cultural miscommunications with their 'Asian' counterparts is mostly contradictory to my experience here in Taiwan!

I'm conscious of my over-simplified understanding of what 'face' is. However, I'll try to tease this out a little more.

I'd like to follow up with a number of examples as to how to this has been such a contradiction in terms. More interestingly though is how the concept of 'face' shifts as soon as there is a recognition of a student as a consumer and client of education. Indeed, from a teacher's perspective, the balance is tough to master. On the one hand, as the provider and facilitator of knowledge, there's a certain level of authority that comes along with that role. However, in a moment, that can be turned on its head, as one becomes a customer service provider and thereby subject to the grand gesture of "making people happy" above learning. When that happens, I feel almost at the mercy of their demands of getting their monies worth. Rather than whether or not I've actually contributed to their broader knowledge. It's such an unnatural feeling, a strange dynamic, and one that I hope in the future I won't have to undetake.

I'd love to explore more just how traditional concepts of 'face' shift when so conscious of rights and demands as consumers, before all else. A pertinent question for China, no?

I've always felt that, in the genuine liberal tradition, that education should be separate from business principles; as per religion and state. That if jeopardizing this divide, you run the serious risk of losing appreciation for the sheer joy of learning. That we are lesser beings if we cannot separate from what is pertinent to human happiness and what is simply smoke-and-mirrors.

As more time passes, I know exactly which side of the scales this opportunity sits on. I can only hope that in writing and thinking about this more, that we can develop some kind of framework to more effectively balance the two - at least in our own lives.

Music, Youth Culture and Taiwan

Every now and then, when exploring a new topic with your students, you will be handed an unpolished gem. An idea, an insight, undefined and rough to the touch. These precious cultural moments break the somewhat repetitious cycle of teaching and exhaustion.

In Monday evening's class I was discussing music with my students. These students are at an intermediate level and can be exposed to new vocabulary with a relative degree of comfort and poise. One of the articles we examined discussed the link between violent lyrics and violent behaviour in university students. 500 students were examined the study, half were exposed to music with violent lyrics and the other half to non-violent lyrics. The predictable story goes that listeners of violent lyrics make violent associations with words that can have both non-violent and violent interpretations, whilst the latter group chose the non-violent interpretation of the word. I'm not here to discuss the accuracy of the research and findings, I am more interested in the conversation that followed.

I can only fathom that in Western countries the proliferation of sociomusic-subgroups can be accredited to many things - Ah yes, the obvious lineup of scapegoats and suspects - market fragmentation (divide and conquer), industry incubation, individualism (identity), multicultural/media influences, not to mention the throes of emancipation. Also, a strong culture of critique and experimentalism. Taiwan's sociomusic strata seems less complicated, obviously less mature. I wonder why? I know that Taiwanse film industry was subject to extreme censorship by the nationalist government of Chang Kai-Shek and that the media fulfilled a similar propagandist function to that of the mainland. A film establishment had been created for the sole purposes of the government, content producing the cliche kung-fu films in the Hong Kongnese mold and the kind of kitschy love stories that are now encapsuled in Taiwan's beloved soap operas. Perhaps the music industry is still recoverng from a similar fate?

It's hard to imagine that this hyper-consumer market has not spawned or fostered different species of teenagers, greater differentation, when a few thousand kilometres away diversity and dynamism is the hallmark of a Japanese youth culture so hellbent on individual expression, irregardless of it's depth. Despite what I read, there seems little Western pop in the Taiwanese diet or at least little expression of sociomusical subgroups like that seen on the footsteps of Flinders Street Station in Melbourne. I have seen two punks in three months. Nothing that could be classified as a hyper-masculine hip-hop culture (although I did see one such clothing store in the youth district of Ximen Ding). I see plenty of familiar, sexualized pop imagery, both in youth attitudes and in the media. In that regard the cultural landscape is being eskewed towards a familar Western bent.

In some ways Taiwan's identity, politically and socially, is in a state of flux. Learning English and the adoption of pop-culture specifies the means of escape for some Taiwanese kids, their compasses reading only West. I know I'm just scraping the surface here, but whilst Leese and I place our faces the grindstone, these gems will have to remain unpolished.

-SS

Starting from Zero?

I find it enchanting that the majority of my Taiwanese students are unaware of the Christian calendar they use to keep time - unaware of the reason why we began counting from the year 'zero' roughly 2007 years ago. Revealing the origins of the modern dating system seems to disturb some students. They seem to retort in this moment of realisation, a gentle rocking of their boats. The majority of Australians will be aware our calendar's origins, but then again I wonder how conscious they are of it's symbolism.

Unlike our modern Christian calendar which enumerates the years from the birth of Jesus Christ, the calendar of the Taiwanese government continues the Chinese imperial tradition of using a sovereign's first year to delineate time - to 'restart the clock', so to speak. In this case, the calendar represents the sovereignty of the Republic of China, beginning with it's reign (民國元年) in 1912. Counting up from 1912 we find ourselves currently in the 96th year of the Republic (民國九十六年, 民國96年). The same counting system was used in mainland China from 1912 until the founding of the PRC in 1949 following the Communist Revolution.

This calendarical system, where time is represented by the ruling sovereign of the time, is, of course, not entirely unique. The Roman calendar counted the years from the founding of the city. For example, the city of Rome was founded in 753 BC, hence the beginning of a new 'calendar era'. Furthermore, in the Roman Republic the years were not counted. Instead they were named after the Consule Ordinaris who was in power at the beginning of the year. For example, the year 60 BC was named after Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer, the consul of the time. Our modern calendar is closely based on that implemented by Julius Caesar around the time of 46-45BC, and amended by Pope Gregory XIII in AD1582.

Even though Taiwanese culture retains the use of the Chinese lunar calendar for traditional purposes and the 'Minguo Calendar' for all non-governmental purposes, modernity demands that all Globalized (with a capital G) states adopt the Christian calendar for keeping time. It would seem these same forces are perhaps relegating the importance of these calendarical systems to the backwaters of history.

I wonder how important the Minguo calendar is to the Taiwanese identity. The connection is obvious - the calendar recognizes the sovereignty of the ROC. This is symbolism at it's most potent. Time, the magistrate, supports independence in it's current form. Yet is the Minguo calendar a dire attempt by politicians to further the imagining of an independent Taiwan in the minds of it's people? If it were no longer used, what would the consequences be?

And, again, I wonder whether our Christian calendar is any different from those forms that recognize sovereignty in their calendarical system. Subconsciously or otherwise, are we still counting the era of Christ? If yes, will there come a day when we create a new calendar marking the era of a new sovereign? Or, if the obliviousness of my students is our yardstick, has the Christian calendar been 'despiritualized'?

- SS

Leunig's Musings

"I suppose it dates back to an early childhood feeling that people weren't really saying what they were thinking. I think a lot of children grow up thinking, "Hang on, more is going on here, but people aren't saying it." I wanted to know what they really thought, what they were saying to themselves that they couldn't say out loud. People lie constantly, we all do. I think we suffer from the absence of the personal. When society lapses into the personal it gets all maudlin and inept and clumsy. Because we are not used to incorporating spontaneous, natural, truthful response...

The individual is overwhelmed by the magnitude. We have embraced technology and economic systems that are just unfathomable and massive and all-powerful. I think television is a totally destructive and corrosive medium. People are living lives though television and films and the media rather than through their own lives. They are not living creatively. They are living reactively and passively all the time. We feel we need all this stimulation, but in fact we need very little...

At the very simplest, I think as Van Gogh said and St Francis would have said, we must find nature. Just to be in the presence of nature your feelings and 'little seedlings' start to awake. So if we disassociate ourselves from God we cut nature out, too. More and more we turn nature into a commodity, into eco-tourism. But we must integrate it into the way people live every day...

My work is often therapeutic because I often give expression to this inner voice. For example, I might make a small piece about a person oppressed and ground down by tiredness. This life is actually very exhausting. It doesn't give humans much time to contemplate anything. We are not resting ourselves and there is the feeling we have got to keep working and pushing really hard. So I draw the person running and running and running-for no apparent reason. And suddenly I find that I have touched on something that is perhaps universal...

I made that piece with the total compassion I feel for what I see as a sad drift in the nature of family life in modern society, and that its infants and children who are so vulnerable are being forced onto a kind of production line of life too early. I think play, and tenderness and slowness and safety are being taken away more and more. You see I was just representing the voiceless one, the child, as I understand it. My sympathy is with the mother and child both-I understand all the different reasons for putting babies into care. One of the functions of my work is simply to try and speak for the voiceless ones, and there are many voiceless people.

...You see a society that's provided for by television is a society that says it doesn't need too many parks or natural situations for children to play in because television will look after them. So I think we, we start to construct the shape of our cities and our suburbs is built around this fact that people can be taken care of, they can be plonked in a room and absorbed in this virtual reality and reality itself becomes kind of a little bit degraded. I have a sense that it is mad making somewhere. That the quality of attention we give to each other as humans is degraded and diminished eventually with the sustained cultural usage.

...There is a kind of letting go of the particularities of this time in which I live. You start to relate more to nature. You start to identify with all cultures and all humans. The problems of existence and this whole matter of living you start to see as having been essentially the same for the past 2000 years. You begin to feel for all things from all times and places so you are no longer a creature of these times as much as you used to be: concerned with the novelties of the moment. I have been shedding the technologies, the gadgets. I don't have a television. I cook with things I have always cooked with. I believe if you can move away from the time in which you live and allow yourself to be drawn to the eternal aspects of life, and the simple tools which simplify life, then you can almost move from this life automatically into what follows in another."

- Michael Leunig (C)
www.leunig.com.au

The Social Democratic Tradition in a Hayekisian Australia

"...Hayek’s polemic against the left was an axiomatic component of his advocacy of a radical, neo-liberal alternative – one which argued the absolute centrality of the market; a role for the state as a protector of that market but little else besides; and apocalyptic warnings that any political interference with the integrity (even ‘sanctity’) of the market would place the entire national project on the “slippery slope” to totalitarianism...

It is important to state clearly the essential elements of the Hayekian orthodoxy. Hayek’s political philosophy is premised on a stark view of human nature that social democrats find confronting. In his Australian lecture, “The Atavism of Social Justice”, Hayek argues
that the altruistic feelings human beings had for one another in small tribes in primal society are rendered redundant by the impersonal demands imposed on human beings in more complex societies through prices determined in the market....

...In other words, social justice, whether it is taken maximally to mean equality of outcome, or more minimalistically to mean equality of opportunity, has absolutely no place in the Hayekian scheme....

...Social democrats have a range of objections to the market fundamentalism of the Hayekian system – a system which represents a radical departure from the schema expounded by Adam Smith two centuries before in the Wealth of Nations... Hayek is in every sense, therefore, a radical... whose philosophical system continues to drive much of the intellectual and policy software of the Howard Government, together with the bureaucracy that serves it...

...Furthermore, Hayek remains oblivious to the fact that social democrats are ultimately shaped by Smith (among others) rather than Marx. Social democrats have always respected and accepted the creativity, the efficiency and the wealth-generating capacity of markets.
But social democrats, unlike Hayek’s neo-liberals, have never been blinded by free market fundamentalism. Social democrats, by contrast, have always recognised a positive role for the state in performing functions the market cannot...

... Social democrats reject Hayek’s a priori assertion that altruism is a primitive value which can and should be purged from human consciousness. Social democrats accept the Smithian view that human beings are equally self-regarding and other-regarding and, as noted above, both should be reflected in a social democratic political economy. To the self-regarding values of liberty, security and prosperity should be added other-regarding values of equity, solidarity and sustainability. Properly constructed, these latter values are also market-enhancing
rather than market-detracting. Furthermore, this spread of values embraces social democratic concepts of both negative and positive liberty – not just the absence of coercion of the individual but equally creating the opportunity for the individual to participate fully in economic, social and political life..."

- The Hon. Kevin Rudd, MP
An Address to the Centre for Independent Studies
As Shadow Foreign Minister
Sydney, November 16 2006

Karma Cola Musings

"To go from the monomania of the West to the multimania of the East is a painful business. Like a sex change. Too many visitors discover that changing their names does not inevitably lead to a change in their vital organs...

The Eastern Master, when asked, "What is the Answer?" has traditionally replied, "Who is Asking?" In that lies a central difference between Eastern and Western thought. The East is not concerned with intellectual aggrandizement, so much so that Jung testily called the Eastern mind childish, a mind that didn't ask questions, but simply perceived them. In a tradition where the question asks itself and the answer replies itself and all that remains is to establish the identity of the asker..."

- "Karma Cola"
Gita Mehta

Spot of Leunig on a Saturday Afternoon

Must say, absolutely loved this piece from Leunig courtesy of today's Saturday Age... "Is journey neccessary?"

"...If we are inclined to the view that life itself is a journey, the question of its necessity is also worth answering. If the answer is no, life is not necessary, we can then see beyond its apparent urgency and regard it as a mysterious stroke of amazing good fortune, or amazing grace... a liberating vision that can make it more beautiful and poignantly funny, as well as more bearable when... the owl of despair hoots in the night crying, "What's the point, what's the point?

I recently shared a dinner table with a man who had grown up by the Mediterranean Sea, and we discussed life's bearable and unbearable nature at some length.

"In the town I come from," he said, "when people meet each other in the street, they begin with, 'Shit, what's the point?' Right at the start, they go to the heart of things, and this allows real conversation to happen."

It seemed like a lovely, earthy social convention to me, and a very practical idea, but I know it's not likely to catch on in Australia. And I don't know how a man with a background like that was allowed to immigrate to our shores, where sunny, positive thinking is compulsory and negative capability is regarded as a brain disorder...

Teaching in Transition

So, aside from everything else, there are some options that we're considering at the moment.

At this point, our lives feel so transitory. This is liberating and a little frightening, though each day we've felt more at ease in this context.

Our first paycheck is tommorrow, and though it won't be much, it'll keep us afloat in the meantime. In the following few weeks, we should be able to settle down a little bit more, as we'll have enough money for a deposit on an apartment, and will no longer be living in this hostel.

Aside from that, though, the question is: What do we want to concentrate our energies on? English teaching is enjoyable, but is it enough to sustain us? Teaching in this style of cram school, where the focus is on the student as a consumer that needs to be "satisfied with a product," is markedly different to any actual education system, we feel. The students consistently need to feel as though they're "getting their money's worth", as ultimately, it's an extra-curricular activity for them. For this very reason, there are no tests, no certifications, no real rules in the class and not much actual authority in the hands of the teachers. It's our job to make these students (clients?) feel as though their English has improved, whether or not this is the case. It's interesting, to say the least, but we can see how it won't be enough for us to be "service providers" full-time.

Teaching, rather, "tutoring" in this way, is immediately "rewarding" in that you can see how some students warm to the opportunity to speak to a native speaker. Gaining their trust, allowing them to feel as though they can make mistakes, is "rewarding" in that sense; but, on the other hand, I'm not sure if a number of "little satisfying moments" actually add up to an honest sense of job satisfaction. By which I mean, we derive so much joy from reading about the state of the world, polarization and globalization, all that boring stuff :) - but that's what we love, and the sense of satisfaction that we derive from that just doesn't compare. Learning Chinese is also in that bracket. We're really really looking forward to having a steady paycheck so that we can pay for lessons during the mornings, and teach in the evenings.

We can see how being good for the "business of supply and demand" will enable us to have other options at hand. But we can also see how you could become so involved with it, that other goals like learning Chinese and taichi and more about Taiwanese local culture could just fade away. Ultimately, we have to stay true to the people that we are and hopefully, this transitory period will allow us to do that. As the lovely George Smith told us... We just have do all we can to "just be happy."

The Power of Less

"In a letter to the philosopher Sidney Hook, Robert Frost stressed that an essential difference existed between grammatically correct sentences, and a living sentence. He could not define the difference, but suggested that a living sentence could be identified by its undismissable effect... Living sentences allow us to listen with our whole selves and not just the eyebrows up. The words last as written words or speech because the unimitable knows no substitutes. It lets itself be known by the heart, which is the best form of knowledge because it confirms an ongoing presence...

I do not make this statement to denigrate the language of statement, which does serve a neccessary purpose. However, it is not language at its fullest. Once its serves its purpose, it evaporates. This is the language which dominates our public life...

The American poet Henry Carruth once identified poetry as "the great voice within us" - within all of us. Why is this voice missing in our public discourse?... After all, a society exists when human beings live not in isolation but in conjunction with one another and where they individually and collectively face all the trials that "flesh is heir to", while simultaneously striving to perfect those abilities whch distinguish them from all other creatures i.e. speech, imagination, reverence for life, etc...

It would seem that in such circumstances "the best words in the best arrangement" (T.S. Eliot) would help them live in harmony whilst inspiring them to live justly and fully. But as long as people see themselves not living in a society but in an economy, they become more prone to regard themselves simply as consumers, purchasers, assets... In time this language becomes the language of quantity, not quality - the language of abstraction and generality and not the language of felt thought. It becomes the language of inhumanity.

Caminante, no hay camino.
Se hace camino al andar.

"Wayfarer, there is no road.
You make the road as you go."

- Antonio Machado

Reading or hearing words in this way - experiencing these felt thoughts - eases something in us. It reassures us that we had the right to feel the way we do. We live, thereafter, quickened and deepened. It is, what Robert Frost called, "a momentary state against confusion." True language is a momentary intensity, like kisses or tears, they have no past or future tense. Like telegrams, they eschew the superfluous and treasure the vital. They emphasise the power of less."

- "Poetry and Public Speech: The Power of Less"
Samuel Hazo, Director of the International Poetry Forum
Speech delivered to the University of Pittsburg,
February 1, 2007

Helmets Ain't Cool

The traffic in Taipei is incredible. Cars and scooters swim through the city streets like schools of fish. Lisa and I have flirted with the idea of buying a scooter here to get around on. Maybe a little Vespa, how romantic! Very Roman holiday. Riding a scooter is a large part of living in Taiwan. The roads of this tiny island can't accommodate every citizen's desire to own a car, and although the relatively new MRT in Taipei has eased the pressure on the city's roads, scooters are the populace's main alternative. To demonstrate the sheer volume of scooters here, Taipei city's population is over 2.6 million people; the number of registered scooters is over 1 million. Hence, riding a scooter is a large part of Taiwanese culture.


Prior to 1998, wearing a helmet whilst riding your scooter in Taiwan was not a requirement by law. Needless to say the culture here has embraced this new law half-heartedly. I can liken this lack of enthusiasm to wear helmets with skateboarding culture in Australia, where attempts to make skateboarders wear helmets has been rejected by the community, and hence the inconsistent application of the law. Entrenched cultures are resistant to change. Most of Taipei's 1 million scooter drivers wear not-so-much helmets but tin hats. They can be bought by the roadside for around $200NT or $8AUS. These thin pieces of metal are a superficial level of compliance with the authorities, enough to keep the police off your back. Youths can be seen wearing t-shirts chastising the helmet laws. Wearing a helmet ain't cool.


The practical benefits of wearing a proper helmet are, of course, obvious. And the predictable downside of wearing hats instead of helmets is the potential danger to the human skull. Combine a lack of protection with the bedlum of traffic in Taiwan and you have a potent recipe for death. In fact, 70% of all traffic fatalities in Taipei City are scooter operators. Many are victims of the greater problem in Taiwanese society: the lack of respect for traffic laws, drink-driving, and the lack of effeciency in policing Taiwan's roads. A trip around the island by car is a tour of traffic lunacy. In the mountains, buses and scooters overtaking cars on blind corners. Cliff-hugging roads with inappropriate barriers. People running red lights. Cars and motorcyclists not yielding to emergency vehicles. There are few guarantees as a pedestrian in Taiwan. Chaos is the law. Drivers and street-walkers alike seem to have developed a sixth sense for predicting traffic. Most of the time scooters and cars weave through the streets in schools with a kind of chaotic harmony, but it takes so little for that harmony to be broken.


Just the other day Lisa and I were walking to the bus-stop when we witnessed our first major collision. A man on a scooter had been hit by a car. He was wearing a cheap helmet - better than a tin hat, but not by much. Unconscious, eyes flickering in the back of his head. The typical thoughts ran through our minds - frustration, despair and ultimately sadness. The traffic in Taipei seems to mirror the island's path to modernisation. Intoxicating, blindingly quick, inconsistent and at times dangerous. Goodbye romantic ideas of driving a scooter in Taiwan. I'll take my chances with the footpath and the MRT.