Cramoisy ascites

cramoisy (adj.): a crimson red color

ascites (n.): an accumulation of fluid in the peritoneal cavity.

Okay, I started writing a comment on Amir's "Rant of Political Nature" (see the post below this), but then it got pretty long, so I decided to put it into its own post. So, voila (you should probably read his post first, if you haven't already):

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You really need to be careful not to get too biased. Otherwise your points become really unconvincing.

1. "I also don't like how the Chinese government is letting hundreds of thousands of little girls and women be raped by Arab militants"

This is probably true to some extent, but you are looking at it so one-sidedly. You know, the UN doesn't even allow the War in Darfur to be called a genocide. That's because it's a lot more multidimensional than just a genocide - i.e. "genocidal intent appears to be missing", in their own words.

By no means do I claim to be very knowledgeable about the War in Darfur (or call it genocide if you will, the semantics are irrelevant to what's actually happening), but it's fairly obvious that the war isn't just about social or ethnic issues. In fact, no war is just about social or ethnic issues. The economy always gets involved, somehow. And it's not hard to see why in Darfur - the place is a desert!

Now, if you think about this, a UN reaction could possibly stall the fighting for some time, but has the UN ever really succeeded in repairing an economy. The UN has just too many divided interests to do such a thing successfully. I'm fairly sure they've worsened some economies, but I don't think there's really a case where they've helped a developing nation become self-sufficient.

Yet, ironically enough, if China moves in for oil and other natural resources, this inevitably creates local jobs. And while we can't put good faith in any predictions we make, once a stable part of an economy is set up, the rest of the economy tends to flow together nicely. You can see this in many cities - originally they may have been for some specialized purpose, say gold mining, but then developed into economic centers. So, China might be able to help the conflict in Darfur more than the UN, ironically enough.

2. Chinese censorship

Err, yeah. This is one of the unpleasant remaining vestiges of communist China. I do say remaining though, because China has gotten a lot better recently - it's practically emerging from a revolution, after all.

Whenever a country progresses into industrialization, things get shaken up a bit. It's only natural that it happens - you can't really flip the economy around without causing something to happen. In the so called "developed" countries, we've been industrialized for a while now, so understandably, our style of government will look quite different than that of, say, China. I may remind you, Britain under industrialization was not the least 'corrupt' place you'd find. America at the time wasn't much better.

Nevertheless, China is trying very hard to emulate itself after America. Whether you think it's for the good or for the bad, it's definitely understandable, as America is the most powerful (the "best") country in the world. Is it really bad for a country to want to be good?

3. The Zerg-ish hive-mind thing

Hmm, this is a bit iffy too, in that the entire social conscience of a nation is probably not so easily describe.. It may be true to some limited extent, though.

If you take any twenty people, even from some specific group like people that work at the same company or something, you'd probably hardly call them a "hive mind". After all, they probably have different interests, skills, dislikes, etc. Now take 200 people. It's more probable now that some of their interests, skills, and dislikes overlap now. And when you look at the group as a whole, you're more likely to call it a "hive mind" - in that they are converging towards a common point.

So, "hive mind"-ed ness probably increases with population. And since China has about four times the population of the US, it'll seem a lot more hive minded.

In fact, if you continue this line of reasoning, you'll see that the entire Earth as a whole is the most hive-minded thing. And while this is counter-intuitive, it's pretty true. Go look back in history and see all the patterns that have repeated, and try to tell yourself Earth isn't a "hive mind".

Of course, you probably mean "hive mind" in a slightly different way. But then you made a rather strange confusing comment.

But first, when you say "hive mind", you probably mean something like, "everyone in China wants to study hard in highschool so they can go to a good university and then go get a good paying job in some well respected field like medicine or engineering or something like that". Perhaps this is true. But: a. I wouldn't be surprised if most of our school thinks that way, and b. China has a population of 1.3 billion people. The Chinese economy does not have room for over a billion well-paying, respected jobs. Which means, for the average person, either you study really hard in school and follow that path, or you go work in a factory somewhere for the rest of your life. Maybe there are other paths, but they're much more riskier than the first path - and one might as well err on the side of caution.

Amir, if you think the Chinese government can somehow restructure their economy to avoid that way of thinking without decimating their population, please tell me. But if there was an easy way, it would have been done already.

Alright, but now for your weird comments - you give the absolute best examples of America being a hive mind. If the entire population adopts one mindset to work towards something, that's a hive mind! You give the Space Race as an example - you realize, they just had to beat Russia. Because communists were evil. And everyone thought that. Hmmm. Pretty hive-mindish.

You only seem to think China is different because the example dream you gave is work really hard to gain money and fame. Hmm. Where have I heard that before. It's definitely not the American Dream.

Overall, there might be some truth hiding in the points, but you really need better examples. Like, ones that don't contradict you.

Oh, and by the way, learn your history - Soviet Russia's downfall wasn't really their closed mindedness, it was their horrible economy. China doesn't really have that problem - and at this point, if it does fall, it's pretty certain that the US is going down with them.

-squid out

PS: Apparently Nintendo and BioWare are teaming up to make a Sonic RPG... should be interesting.