Culture

Watching old people use computers and phones makes me want to kill myself.

I don't think our children or children's children will understand this sentiment. Perhaps they will even envy us for having had the last chance to see living, breathing computer incapables, those stuck with the previous version of human mind software. To envy that would be perverse! But, it really is true that, although our genetic material is not changing, the capabilities of the software for the whole of successive generations of humans is changing. I'm not talking about my going off and studying chemistry and then knowing something you don't (if you're not a chemist) in that sense. I'm talking about that which cannot be described other than to say a fundamental capability — the difference between me going off and learning chemistry, and the actual capacity for my brain to even comprehend chemistry.

In a similar vein, I guess that the various people of the generations of new thinkers a few hundred or thousand years back would find me perverse. Because, honestly, when I read accounts of moderns living in unusual circumstances that have allowed their brains to preserve exactly what our antecedents likely had as neural software, I feel exhilarated and want to meet them. I feel exhilarated to know humans of the same physical make up really can and manifestly DO live in astonishingly different mental worlds. One example of this is primitive people who were asked to suspend disbelief and draw a hypothetical judgment based on a premise impossible in reality¹, something which poses no challenge to anyone would could be reading this text. The primitives simply couldn't or wouldn't entertain an impossible idea, even for exploratory purposes.

More exhilarating still is a read through Julian Jaynes's "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind", a book which suggests that differences in neural software alone can challenge the boundaries of our definition of human being. If a man does not have an ego, is he really deserving of rights "more" than the cattle we indiscriminately slaughter to satisfy our craving for steaks at dinner time? Of course having a meaningful discussion necessitates drawing a distinction between one not having an ego or conscience and being capable of gaining these faculties through some course of action and one literally being hard wired in such a way that no future action could bring about the expression of either faculty (as cattle). Think "critical period" as in language acquisition but as a concept that applies limits to far more than just neuroauditory production. Why not?

At any rate, as far as debates about peoples' humanity goes, computer disabilities are hardly a reason to draw one's personhood into question. I just wish I could “enjoy” them like a man from the future. And for Jaynes's bicamerals, I think it is prudent to admit that entertaining the idea of offering them “personhood”, more than of any philosophically sound moral necessity, is just a luxury we can afford because (thankfully) versions of consciousness software just aren't insurmountable barriers like human languages. Though differences of language easily persist into perpetuity, somehow, and this is the astounding thing, everyone's operating system software seems to get the upgrade in the same generation or three, regardless of where they are or what language they speak.

So now for my question:

Why the hell isn't anyone studying this? Surely I'm not the first to identify an important new field which stands at the cross position of sociology, psychology, and some sort of 'software' verion of neuroscience? While Jaynes's theory, if true, would certainly be the most profound of such transitions in the whole of history, surely there is no good reason to believe a change of neuro programming would happen but a single time. Let's get some version numbers standardized guys!

¹ [insert reference] I've been unable to locate a reference for this, but will attach one as soon as I can (may take years). If you can name a book or article mentioning this phenomena, PLEASE leave a comment.

My heart is still pounding as I write this. In the last minutes of 2008 and first seconds of 2009, I basically felt like I saw my life flash before my eyes. The firecrackers at midnight around the middle of Shanghai's Nanjing Pedestrian Street were like the light at the tunnel, and there was definitely no "countdown" for me because for the entire stretch of time I had no perception of the passage of time but only a perception like I was struggling to survive. Due to some very unfortunate poor decisions on the part of people whose job it is to know the danger of unlimited and uncontrolled immense crowds, and who were responsible for safety at the event, there was absolutely no limit or control whatsoever on the crowds nor was there enough man power or means, such as metal barriers, if they suddenly realized it was necessary to take action.

After making a lap and a half across the entirety of the street, a friend and I timed our walking to arrive at the center of the action about ten minutes before the final countdown. As we got closer the density of the crowd very quickly became such that one lost any choice in the matter of what direction to move. A street upon which cars can drive intersects with the middle of Nanjing Street and as a precursor to how nuts things were getting, I saw a lady driving a small motorized two-passenger carriage have the vehicle surrounded by all sides with people and shake and almost tip over several times in either direction as it rocked with the warring direction of the crowds. At this point the pressure on my chest was a bit frightful, but no more than I had endured in a Pantera concert up next to the stage many years back. My friend and I proceeded, as I foolishly thought that in another two minutes everyone would stop moving around and just watch so the dangerous back and forth rocking would stop and then probably everyone would just wait to move until there was enough space to do so.

My estimations were terribly wrong. As the pressure increased I saw a child wincing and a look of terror in the eyes of many nearby females. Some people began shouting to move in such and such direction and the crowd began rocking left, right, left and right faster than I could maintain my footing. Everyone was struggling to maintain their footing and I think more and more were beginning to panic. As I've no doubt heard countless stories of people being trampled to death in such a manner, I was pretty much seized with terror and the absolutely certainty that if I slipped down there was no chance anyone around could help me even if they wanted to. I got turned around such that walking backward it was impossible to keep my footing. Then, the guy behind me went down. I couldn't do anything. With him behind me I had no choice but to fall as well and I saw the image of 100 people piling up on me and knowledge of what it would be like to die of suffocation for there was already enough pressure that it was a bit hard to breath. My legs were underneath all the people in front of me and I reached out my hands screaming "救命，救命" (Help, help!) and "我喘不过气" (I can't breathe). The poor bastard behind me seemed to have already given up on living, being that much closer to the ground, and had a look of absolute terror and hopelessness on his face. There is NOTHING on this earth you can do to save yourself if things go wrong in such a crowd. It's like a force of nature.

In short, last night really, REALLY sucked. If you were there and were less in a panic, maybe you think I'm making too much of it. But, really, with just a bit more panic in the air, and if someone hadn't begun shouting "some people have fallen down, stop moving" then I know without a doubt how relentless the force would be if everyone had no choice but to just walk over top of me, leaving me unable to breath. I lost track of my friend for a half hour after, as cell phones were not working too well with the density of people there. He later told me people near him had fallen and were on the ground crying, but miraculously the crowd was able to pick them up one by one. If the slightest thing had set people apanic, the ones on the ground would have been goners. My friend also said it seemed some people got pushed through the glass doors of one of the stores. I don't have any evidence to confirm that, since he couldn't see clearly, but it sounds horrible.

When I reached my hands about three layers of people back screaming for help, they were able to help pull me up. The only way I could get my leg out from underneath all those feet was to yank it with all my might and discard my shoe in the process. I had to walk an hour in the freezing cold, missing one shoe, before finally getting a taxi. I would have spent more time looking for the shoe except for the fact that the whole street was littered with shoes, and the asshole street sweepers were already sweeping them up. Fortunately or unfortunately I was so much in shock for that hour that I didn't notice it was even cold outside.

静水流深 - 日记 [2008年12月31日] - Someone else who was there (in Chinese).
(Three video clips attached to the full entry.)

[Deactivate Chinese ability]

A charismatic speaker stands before a crowd of several thousand Chinese students of all ages. They raise their hands and shout out as male and female attendees alike have tears running from their eyes. Obviously a very mesmerizing preacher has taken it upon himself to lead god's lost little children to the salvation which can only be known through the salvation of the lord and savior Jesus Christ. But how on earth is such a thing being permitted on Chinese state-controlled television?

[Reactivate Chinese ability]

"Do you realize the sacrifices your parents have made to send you to college?" (The camera pans to more students driven to tears.) "Repeat after me, I - will - not - let - my - parents - down, I - will - learn - English - well." (Attendees all repeat after him in unison). Is this guy a fucking English Bandit manufacturing machine or what? If they're going to be this crazy to make me their "tool" should I feel any remorse if someone shouts their English at me like this and I spontaneously bop the little jackass in the mouth? Welcome to the future of China and a crazy ass dude named Li Yang's genius ploy to become filthy stinking rich: Crazy English.

Wikipedia reads:

His method can be described with the quote "To shout out loud, you learn." Students practice his technique by going behind buildings or on rooftops and shouting English.

Chinese TV is a barrel of laughs, though I'm not exactly sure if the remaining 1.4 billion are laughing their guts out for an hour at a time like me. For my 60 yuan every 6 months, I'm really getting top value for my money!!!

Continue reading "Chinese Cable TV: Top ... »

Practical Jokes Taken Too Far

The Chinese are real practical jokers. Sometimes it seems they can't take anything seriously. The station master of the Shanghai city subway system seems to be the biggest joker himself, and this morning again he caught me with one of his dirty tricks.

One of the survival strategies I employ during the commute to and from work is to keep earphones in my ears and a PDA screen glued to my face at all times. It may sound like an annoying anti-social behavior, and surely the people who have to avoid me because I am about to walk right into them without looking probably think I'm a dick, but after getting way too angry and frustrated at the impenetrable mass moving human wall that pervades the entirety of all public areas in Shanghai one too many times in the past years, I realized the best way is to just forget it exists, forget that I cannot possibly hope to ever move more than 20% faster than the slowest mosier in the crowd, and just assume the identity of a slow motion human pinball.

The problem happened when, gazing with full attention at my PDA screen, I stepped on to the upward-bound escalator at my destination station. The spontaneous sensation of an earth-quake took to my senses as the masses of humans around me moved upward on the escalator as in correlation with my expectations, but my own body, in contrast, seemed to have no stair propelling it forward and upward along with them. I lost my footing and very nearly fell on my face when I came to realize that once again the station attendants must have randomly decided to pull the "turn the escalators off in the middle of rush-hour" prank. As I climbed the stationary escalator steps all the way to the top, a strong feeling of sea-sickness overwhelmed me. The last time this had happened, I was nearly to the top when the steps suddenly stopped moving.

The thing is—this kind of shit happens every day here in Shanghai. One week you go down to wait for the subway to work and see that every single one of the time-till-arrival LCD TVs have gone missing. A week later they magically reappear, but they won't be there more than a few weeks before they disappear again. Another day the screens will work all day, but when the last train for the night in a particular direction has left the station, station personnel will turn the screens off to "trick" everyone into waiting for a final train that will never come.

• In the office I work in, the handle for the faucet in the lavatory has disappeared randomly and inexplicably, as in the "here's a sink but you can't wash your hands after taking a dump" prank, more than 10 times in the past few months. But, that's not nearly as good as when you put soap on your hands FIRST and then realize the sink faucet handle is there but is glued in place. I shit you not!
• WHEN IN THE AIRPORT, THE ASSIGNED GATE NUMBER FOR MY FLIGHT WAS CHANGED 2 MINUTES PRIOR TO THE FINAL GATE CLOSING CALL ON THREE OCCASIONS! I ALMOST MISSED THE FLIGHTS! AND I KNOW THOSE FUCKING JOKERS IN THE AIRPORT WERE TRYING TO PULL THE PRANK ON ME BECAUSE THEY SAW THAT I WEAR HEADPHONES TO PASS THE BOREDOM AND THOUGHT I WOULDN'T HEAR THE ANNOUNCEMENT.
• City workers in Shanghai actually booby trap the sidewalk tiles such that when it is raining, if you accidentally walk across the wrong tile you will be sprayed with a puddle of cold dirty water. The bastards are experts at disguising the "trigger" tiles as well, so the only safe way is to locate them in advance on a dry day, and then avoid them any time it is wet out.
• It seems there may even be a competition for cruelty in pranks going between the various city management groups, as recently I have observed that the subway station master has upped the ante. Previously I had assumed the warning beeps and flashing lights which proceed the subway door closing were computer controlled and thus could not be omitted by human error. I was disturbed to learn that such is not at all the case when the subway conductor nearly succeeded in slamming the subway doors on a woman's face with NO WARNING AT ALL!

The thing is, pranks are really cool and all but, myself, coming from a culture in which they are generally reserved for friends, acquaintances, and enemies, I have had a lot of trouble adapting to the Chinese prank style of giant corporations (i.e. "melamine poisoned milk and the kidney stone joke") and, indeed, the city government itself (Mr. Subway Station Master) trying to fuck with me. That's why it's very hard for me to condemn my fellow expats when they get fed up with this shit and do something incredibly anti-social about it thinking, mistakenly, that they can "teach Chinese to stop pulling these ridiculous tricks".

McDonald's Crosses The Line

(This is not a work of fiction.)

It was pouring cats and dogs outside. A young foreign man entered a Shanghai McDonald's both hungry and with an intense pressure in his bladder. Longing for a swift and relaxing visit to the little boy's room, our hero was not looking forward to yet another round of Chinese practical jokes. He marched swiftly to the bathroom only to stop unexpectedly, dumbfounded with exasperation that the door refused to open. He opened his eyes wide to take note of his surroundings. Oh not again! The Chinese had succeeded in pulling the "we know you really have to piss, that's why we're going to fuck with you and close down this whole bathroom" prank yet again. A sign was posted on the door that directed the would-be race horse urinator to climb several flights of stairs with his already painfully full bladder and expel his waste in a porcelain bowl on the third floor.

"No! Not today I'm not", he thought as he smiled smugly at the ingenious Chinese sign. Taking no further consideration of his surroundings, the man spontaneously whipped out his cock and began spraying a stream of dark yellow urine on the battered wooden door. A stream, not dissimilar except in size to those left on department store floors across China by children with open-crotch pants at the direction of their parents, flowed swiftly down and away from the door itself. A river of yellow spontaneously streaking across a large expanse of the floor further magnified the conspicuousness of an already larger-than-life utterly inconceivable spectacle.

Soon, a nearby security guard took note of the odd event transpiring. Shocked far beyond the wildest expectations he had had in 15-odd years of humdrum play-with-your-cell-phone-and-act-official guard duty, the poor man's mind couldn't even begin to conceive of a possible appropriate response to this obvious violation of the building whose sanctity he was employed to protect. The guard approached from a distance, rustling his keys enough in the process for our hero to take note of his presence, and then stopped dead in his tracks gawking and thoroughly disoriented. Our hero, having a bladder still not satisfactorily relieved from its prior state of fullness, took note of the guard's presence and returned to the more pressing matter of pissing at hand, literally.

A few seconds later, a practical eternity to the guard and any other passersby happening to pay witness to the absurd sight, the otherwise respectable young man pulled the elastic flap of his underpants over his cock and zipped up his fly. Nonchalantly he returned to the table he had come from to join his friend and enjoy a fine meal.

A few minutes later a more official looking head security guard approach the table. In Chinese he said sternly, "Which one of you just took a pee on the door over there?" The two foreigners seated at the table, our hero included, feigned inability in the Chinese language and continued their conversation in English. The head guard repeated his words, but, assuming doing so in a language that wouldn't be understood by the "foreigners" was in vain, he soon gave up, turned, and left.

If we were to discuss the greatest virtue Chinese have, I think with little doubt I would have to say it is: tolerance for one's fellow man. Damn!!!

In this ever changing age of technology, it's always comforting to know that some things never change: people cheating on their wives, computer crashes, students' lack of enthusiasm for school after returning from the summer holiday—and the Chinese postal service beating the living fucking hell out of your packages with a baseball bat before delivering them. I assume my birthday present didn't look like this a few days ago when my parents sent it:

The good thing about all of this, though, is that they were polite enough this time to affix a sticker to alert me to the fact that they bashed the piss out of my gift before giving it to me. Kudos to the genius who thought of that. If I hadn't seen the sticker there, I might have just assumed it was a modern art box design. This is definitely an improvement over a box I shipped from China to the USA five years ago which they had beaten the shit out of then poked a hole in the side and poured in dirt to mix with my books and clothing, but to which no such sticker had been attached.

The other really great thing about the Chinese post office is that THEY WON'T EVEN ACTUALLY DELIVER. That's right—if you get a box, they'll send you a postcard which says: "We have your box, come get it your damn self cause we are so busy bashing the fuck out of people's packages we don't have time to come give you". Of course, pray to god the sender didn't write your name in Chinese on it, because if you're like me—having graduated long ago and pitched my only ID (my student ID) that actually had my Chinese name on it—you're going to have a helluva a time trying to convince the counter lady that the English letter composed name printed on your passport is the "equivalent" of the Chinese name on the box. And, yes, you do need to take your passport. No, they won't let you use the postcard as "proof" that it's your package.

Case 1: Cutting In Line

If you were waiting in this line would you (a) jump out and try to steal a cab with a 1 in 100 shot of succeeding and a 99 in 100 shot of being bitched at by a line guard and police officer or (b) wait your turn?

So there's a certain part of the city where it's generally exceedingly difficult to catch a cab. On one side of the road you have the "free for all" war zone taxi flagging area where you have a shot at getting a taxi in 5 minutes or less -- but it takes a lot of energy because you have to be aggressive and keep cutting in front of the people that cut you by moving further and further down the road and towards the middle of the street. On the other side of the road there is an orderly line with two full-time traffic employees: one to flag down taxis and send the first person in line to the next cab, and one at the back of the line to protect the entering and unloading taxis from being snatched by line jumpers.

Every time I go there it's the same story... 20 minutes of waiting, and about every 10 minutes some smart fella at the end of the line decides to pull a traditional Chinese "I'm blind, I'm blind" trick -- pretending he doesn't see the line of 30-40 people waiting, or pretending the line is a bunch of idiots standing in a line next to the road for no particular reason. Every time it's the same story: the guy moseys up to the end of the line, looks around to see if anyone is eyeing him, jumps out, grabs the cab door and tries to get in... at that very moment the "end of the line" guard jumps out and starts screaming at him, and with a feigned look of bewilderment he exasperatedly acknowledges the line of 40 people, "Oh! It's a line! Oh dear golly, I hadn't any idea! I thought these people were just standing here looking bored as balls for the fun of it."

The only way I can explain it is that Chinese brains seem to have some sort of "boundary of reality" checking algorithm such that they must always check that the rules of reality still apply just so they can be sure everything is right with the world. I guess the simplest analogy would be if someone's brain were preprogrammed to jump off a building every time he saw a ledge just to be sure that there is nothing wrong with "the matrix" and the law of gravity is indeed still in effect. Really -- it's a total waste of time. Between the two line guards and (often) a police officer, I have yet to see a single one of these suckers get away with snatching a cab. But if you're Chinese -- I guess it's worth a try, right?

Case 2: Dirty Laundry Pile

If these were your new clothes would you: (a) throw them in the washing machine or (b) take them out to the dumpster?

Without fail visitors like the real estate lady, the night guard, and the repair man see my pile of dirty laundry, which, mind you, is comprised mostly of clothes which were very recently purchased in the U.S.A. for a total of some hundreds and hundreds of dollars, and ask me if they can help me throw them all out in the garbage. The first time I was asked, it was the real estate lady asking. I dismissed it very quickly thinking "oh she's a bit of a crackhead anyhow". After all, she was the one spontaneously start plungering my toilet, without my asking, when she saw it was backed up with disgusting shitty water some months prior. (Bless her heart.) The repairman, however, had seemed more revolted and less enthusiastic a year back when I DID request his help in plungering -- and I had thus presumed him to be more of the sane variety. When I had him come up to change a ceiling light bulb requiring a ladder, he ALSO asked if he could throw all of my dirty but new clothes out. I patiently explained to him that in my understanding the apartment had come equipped with a washing machine under the assumption that I might actually like to wash the dirty clothes and then wear them a second or even third time before discarding them, thereby saving myself perhaps a thousand dollars or more per month in clothing store fees. By the look on his face after I finished explaining -- I'm not entirely sure whether or not he bought into my strange argument...

Not to laugh at them or anything, but I thought these folks --- earn like --- not even enough to buy that pile of clothes in a few month's time??? So why on earth do they think I have money to wear clothes once and throw them out instead of throwing them in the wash machine as, I presume, a considerable portion of the Chinese population does??? Ah.... the every elusive Chinese mind and it's many preprogrammed environmental responses. It'll always be a mystery to me.