China is Already Dead

This is the story of how France a country famous for it's military defeats, has destroyed The People's Republic of China.

Disclaimer: This post is long (maybe 13 minutes) and riddled with typographical errors but I guaruntee, really interesting.

As Eiji tells it, one morning on the posthumously named Kojiro Island, Sasaki Kojiro was all in a temper because he was supposed to duel Musashi Miyamoto. It was understandably stressful because Sasaki "Ganryu" Kojiro was supposed to be Japan's finest swordsman renouned for his 'Swallow' cut which nobody knows exactly what it is. Musashi unfortunately was also regarded as Japan's finest swordsman renouned for his 'two heavens as one' style and having also singlehandedly defeated the Yoshioka Kempo school of swordsmanship.
Yet at the appointed time of the duel, Musashi was nowhere to be found. Which isn't true, they had to send a guy to get him from his hotel where he was found sleeping. He hopped in a boat and carved a handle into an old oar that was sitting in it. When he arrived at the island and got out. Sasaki approached him and in a temper drew his sword and flung his scabbard into the sea.
At which point Musashi rightly observed 'you've lost'

Musashi based his falsafiable theory on the fact that if Sasaki had intended to win he wouldn't have thrown away a perfectly good scabbard, because somebody who intended to win would sheath their sword afterwards. It was probably also a calculated cunt act by Musashi, just like turning up late, and not washing to psyche out his opponent.
If your read Musashi's own work Go Rin No Sho you'll see the man is no idiot, anyway I was watching

this

on TED.com which is a stimulating resource, more stimulating than my blog so what are you still doing here. Anyway Dan Dennett is perhaps misplaced in the section 'master storytellers' as he is a bit dry and the whole sitting while looking at notes really interrupts the flow. But he's talking about memes and a very important meme from his talk replicated itself into my conscious.

So permit me a Musashi style psyche out moment when I say 'China has been destroyed' it just occured to me in an A-ha moment that placated a niggling annoying semi-formed idea that has been scratching at my brain since reading 'The World is Flat' in China.

It's when Dan in this talk for those that can't be bothered sitting through a 14 minute presentation that barely scratches the surface of memes, it's when Dan talks about 'Guns, Germs and Steel' a book on how a small group of people from one corner of the globe managed to takeover the rest of the world or at least the choicest parts, in Africa, North and South America and Bits of Asia.

The conclusion of that book was that Germs more than guns and steel played the most significant role in wiping out populations the aliens came into contact with.

He then made an analogy between old school diseases like Small Pox, Cow Pox etc to memetic viruses.

While white people had historically an immunity to many diseases because of the lack of hygene in old Europe and animal husbandry, so too does the developed world have certain immunities to certain memetic viruses.

By the way meme = replicating idea, like a gene but it's just a piece of information.

So anyway what meme has already infected China and stands to wipe it out? Broadly speaking, Materialism. Materialism is a problem the world over.

The meme known as materialism is basically this 'you can achieve happiness through the aquisition of some object.' and obviously there's millions of different strains of materialism. Everytime Apple release a new iphone add they create a new strain of this meme example 'you can achieve happiness through the aquisition of a gen 2 iphone'.

Obviously this meme grips the world over, materialism is a big problem everywhere. The evidence is all the douchebags that willingly submitted themselves to lining up for hours to collect their new iphone the world over, a product they had not personally trialled or tested yet, and lines deliberatly created by apple to generate publicity.

That said there is still a certain immunity in the developed world. Sticking with the iphone example, I rode past one of these lines one day on the way to visit my friend that also had a new phone, not an iphone but had the good camera, web applications etc. and he told me I should get a new phone. And my memetic immune system kicked in and said 'I barely use 10% of the functionality of my shitty phone (texting and very rarely to make a call), why on earth do I need an iphone?'

You could call this immune meme something like 'utilitarianism' or 'skepticism' or 'douchedar' but I think most people in western society has a pretty robust immune system.

There is about a 25% population in the west of what are called 'opinion leaders' aka 'trendsetters' aka 'attention seekers' with mixed results. These people are self referential and therefore generally speaking subscribe to intrinsic values.

The rest of the population I am lead to believe are 'opinion seekers' that is their esteem is largely extrinsic, they need reinforcement from others to feel okay about themselves. The sorts of people that call their friends the night before casual day at school to see what their friend is wearing, and in latter life quietly take note of what Mischa Bardon is wearing (or whoever is alfa-girl at the time) and quietly duck down to sportsgirl to buy it.

At anyrate, it is not a dilemma but a spectrum. For example, I like to think that I'm pretty intrinsic, but this is convoluted by extrinsicsies. A few weeks ago I wrote that old cheap flannel shirts were cool in my 'rules for cool' I really like the grunge movement. On new years eve I observed to my horror that flannel shirts were cool again. Now some enterprising fashon designer/label I'm pretty sure has said 'economic circumstances are like 1990, meaning people are less likely to buy into luxury brands and aspirational goods. We should ressurect grunge fashion and market it actively' so I'm pretty sure the flannel shirts that are cool right now, aren't cheap.
Anyway the point is it made me realise, that despite nostalgicly loving the grunge scene, when I think about it people went and bought their Doc Martin shoes from the same stores at the same prices they buy their limited edition Airforce One nikes from now.
So you see, whilst I like to think things are intrinsic for me, the moment they get popular I generally retreat from them. I am infact merely an extrinsic contrarian. I look at what everyone else is doing, then I don't do it, in order to create a sense of identity.
So I'm probably about 60-40 split between intrinsic and extrinsic contrarion. What can I say I fucken hate opinion seekers.

But anyway, the presence of people like me, and broadly speaking opinion leaders in general confounds the opinion seekers in society.
Here's how that normally goes:

OL: Man that Johnny Depp is so hot. He totally pulls off that hat and glasses.

OS: Does he? Yeah he does look hot...

that night the opinion seeker goes to Chadstone and buys similar hat and glasses to those worn by Johnny Depp.

The next day:

OS: Hey guys!

OL: You douchebag? You look like Johnny Depp? You look like an idiot.

OS: Oh ha...ha...ha ha ha guys, it's just a dumb joke.

the opinion seeker confused takes off the hat and non-prescription glasses. Later that night the opinion seeker cries themselves to sleep.

OR FOR A REALLY BEAUTIFUL EXAMPLE OF WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT WILLIS, WATCH THIS:


It almost brings a tear to my eye. I'm contemplating doing a phd thesis on what happens in this brief segment of Topgear.

Under the VALS market segmentation system (somewhat less popular than other psychographic segmenters like MYERS-BRIGGS, DiSC and what not) there's two categories to be concerned with 'Visable Achievers' and 'Look at me'.

Visable achievers are people like Johnny Depp, to be blunt. They have nothing to prove to you. Their esteem is totally intrinsic and backed by the very tangible achievements they have obtained through a productive life. Steve Jobs, Bill Clinton, Warren Buffett, Meryl Streep, Micheal Jordan, Shaq, Charles Barkley, Chris Judd, Lance Armstrong etc. All visable achievers.
Lance is making a comeback for Lance. Not because he thinks people think he is a 'loser' having not even competed in the tour de france since he finished winning it a record 7 times.

Below them is the 'Look at Me' Nicole Kidman is a 'Look at me' she really needs to be acknowledged by the world as a legitimate actress to prove something to herself or perhaps Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise incidently would also be considered a 'Look at me' hence his whole marriage thing and disastrous PR. So too is Lebron James, that guy from Sun Microsystems that always bitches about Bill Gates, Kevin Rudd, Barack Obama, (indeed almost all politicians in the post Jeff Kennett world) but not say Jimmy Carter, Abraham Lincoln or George W Bush.

You'll notice the segmentation doesn't have anything much to do with popularity, although there is a generally positive correlation that visable achievers are more popular than 'Look at Me's' but the key meme for descriminating is perhaps astringency.

Anyway to tie 'Look at Me', 'Visable Achievers' and 'TopGear/Johnny Depp's Hat' together what you have to realise is that 'Look at Me' is extrinsicly aspirational. On Maslow's heirarchy they are trying to fulfill their need for esteem. They want to be part of the 'it' crowd.

Conversely Visable Achievers are fulfilling, or have fulfilled their 'self-actualisation' need. They don't want to be part of any crowd, they know the crowd is there, they want to know who 'they' are and set about finding out.

So 'Visable Achievers' appear to be highly original and unique. They are also generally speaking people that come across as interesting and self assured. Desirable qualities, generally speaking. As such they are the natural reference group for 'Look at Me's' so more or less you are back to 'opinion leaders' and 'opinion seekers'.

Now! Here's what is exciting about the Top Gear clip that means, the surefire destruction of China due to memetic contamination.
Top gear is a review show, it's worldwide popularity is testimony to a few qualities it posseses. I will go out on a limb and say that Top Gear doesn't beg car companies for their supercars to review. But car companies beg Top Gear these days to review their supercars.
People listen to the reviews on Top Gear because they find the hosts credible. This credibility was based on them having actual opinions. For most of last century and most of the remaining industry, car companies and magazines most often reprinted press releases often word for word.
Then Top Gear came along and would say things like 'Lamborghini's are the clowns of the car world' and that some new sports edition of the Subaru WRX was 'a complete waste of money' and that the rolls royce phantom 'drives like a donkey'.

Topgear is because of this 'self-actualised'/'visable achiever' style of review, an opinion leader. The obvious reference point for opinion seekers when choosing a car. Richard Hammond (perhaps the most opinion seekery of the hosts) even wrote a book 'what not to drive'.
What is in that top gear clip is a rare example of the western memetic immune system in action.

An opinion seeker of the 'look at me' aspirational variety, watches top-gear to see what car on the cool wall they can buy to gain credibility from the people they so crave validation from.

In the early days this came from the stellar review the show gave the BMW M3, the opinion seeker said 'that's a magnificent car, and if I buy it, people will know I'm a winner who knows all about cars'.

But then confoundingly on a later episode, Hammond and Jeremy pointed out that 'as magnificent' as the BMW M3 was (according to them) it was driven by cocks, and therefore seriously uncool.

So now the opinion seeker had a car that was truly a magnificent piece of engineering, the original meme they had purchased, but it was now labelled with a new meme - it was a 'cock' car and memetically 'seriously uncool' the very meme the opinion seeker fears the most.

It now became imperative to get rid of the 'cock' car for it was 'seriously uncool' and adopt a car that would rid theme of this poisonous meme. So what did they do? They went straight to the cool wall and bought the coolest car they could afford, an Audi! They were helped out by all the other 'cool people' driving Audi's on the road, (the opinion seekers intrinsic fallability).

Thinking they had beaten the system, they switched onto the new season of Top Gear with the cool collected comfort that they were safely on the cool section of the cool wall and therefore 'cool'.

Alas, the rest is history. The opinion seeker cant win. The cars move up and down that cool wall following them where they go. They may go through a few more iterations of upbeat denial. But sooner or later they will have to confront the simple fact that, they are a cock. Their behaviour is what is uncool. The belief that they can purchase credibility, rather than make it. Some may make the leap into self actualisation and be free of the vicious cycle, this is indeed my hope for mankind.

Others will tragically whither away and die, leaping from expensive car to expensive car in horror as everything they touch turns to small shrivelled cock.






So! What's this got to do with China? Here is the truly monstrous, truly horrifying pandemic that already dwarfs the avian flu in its devestation, and furthermore few if any people fully grasp the facts of what is going on.

Not specific to China, but high context cultures in general values are arranged in heirarchies, universals.

Malcolm Gladwell's talk on spaghetti sauce describes it well and in an amusing accessable way.

It isn't exactly science I guess, but it is everything in marketing. It's something a lot of marketing embraces, but in most corporate interests we should fight against.

It's much easier and more profitable to create desires in a vertical heirarchy. So if you take two people, me and my japanese friend Keiko you have an illustrative example.

I am from a low context culture being Australia, and Keiko is from a high context culture being Japan.

I ride a bike and carry around books and sketchbooks, notepads and bike repair materials and bike locks and a spray jacket, and sometimes basketballs and bball shoes with me, so I have become fond over the years of Blackwolf backpacks. My new one I love, the back is shaped to reduce the big sweatpatch I get on a hot summers day after a ride, it has a hydration port (hole I can stick a hydration pack straw thing through) and even a dedicated hole for earphones to plug into my ipod in a little ipod pocket. It's a 27 litre bag which gives me enough room to pack overnight gear and bike repair shit if I one day decide to ride from Melbourne to Ballarat overnight and back the next day.

Keiko does I don't know, I guess she goes to Kareoke and other shit young women do in Japan. She goes to Hiroshima to see her boyfriend who was still her boyfriend when I saw her about a year ago and at the time she worked at Toyama department store in one of the approx 17 Burberry concept stores above Nagoya Central Station.
She needs a handbag for keys, a scarf maybe, feminine hygene products, makeup for touch ups, train tickets, purse etc and so she I'm guessing prefers Louis Viton handbags.

I prefer a black wolf backback, Keiko would prefer a Louis Viton handbag.

In a low context culture, variability if not reins, is at least known to be present. Intrinsic esteem/self actualisation is a significant and unchecked cultural phenomena that creates a desire for variety. Therefore I could have my backpack, and keiko can have her handbag.

Keiko might look at me with disdain with my tacky backpack that is so 'I'm a uni bum' even though I'm well out of uni. Just as I might look at her and think 'man what an idiot, spending hundred s of dollars on a crappy handbag, she'd get the same functionality out of a McDonalds takeaway bag.'

That's how low context cultures work. This is a general rule, in reality, Keiko thinks I'm 'hilarious' with all my strange ways and 'unique character' and I think Keiko is 'japanese' with her Louis Viton handbags and other cliches, but otherwise pretty cool.

High context cultures work like this, Lousi Viton is known to be the worlds best maker of luggage, handbags and purses, therefore he is the best anyone can aspire to. Black wolf backpacks are not known for anything, anywhere, are cheap and therefore double-plus ungood.

Keiko is right, I am wrong. Keiko is a much better person than I am.

Generally speaking this is how high context cultures work. In reality, Keiko doesn't think she is objectively a better person than me, after all in foreigners are known to be different and strange.

Low context = variability. High context = universals.

Low context = horizontal. High context = vertical.

Got it? Good. Now it isn't really black and white, when it comes to psychographics. Just like everyone get's sick from the flu, not all people die from it. Everycountry is sick from materialism. Just look in Australia at the proliferation of Lawyers. In 2003 there were 28,000 law students in a country that only has 40,000 practicing lawyers.

People do law by and large for esteem purposes, because law is a boring, repititious and draining profession, yet it is also really hard to do, intellectually challanging and well compensated.

But high context cultures are ill suited to materialism. If you start in Japan, a now long time developed nation, you can see how devestating universals have become when compared to the US.

Japanese people cannot comprehend the meme 'exclusive' not fully anyway. Because they have universals, not variability.

In the US if you see someone toting a genuine Lousi Vitton handbag, you'd think they have more money than sense perhaps. You'd also presume they were someone phenomenally wealthy like Jessica Simpson or something. Because you have to have money to burn if you are going to spend that much on a handbag.

But if everyone in the US had a Louis Viton handbag, you could bet the last person you'd see toting one would be someone actually wealthy. Because there is no physical realisation of achievement in toting a bag everyone can afford. They would simply seek a product that was an exclusive status symbol because it would 'eclude' most people from posessing one.

In Japan, it is estimated that 94% of Tokyo women in their 20's have at least one item of Louis Vitton at home in their Tansu dresser. The exact oposite of exclusive. But high context cultures subscribe to universals! so it's okay.

Because Louis Viton is the best, it is simply that, the best! High context cultures are the memetic equivalent of aids, and Materialism is pnuemonia. Japan has all kinds of social problems that have evolved out of this status conscious homogenous memeoplex. The proliferation of 'compensated dates' 40 year old dirty businessmen get to have sex with schoolgirls if they buy them Lousi Viton handbags, and of course the economies wider toxic debt level, that came from the astronimical excesses of the 'Japanese Miracle'.

And Japan struggles to escape its universals today. It is carried along by a few companies that were intrinsic in their esteem thanks to the visions of their founders, companies like Sony, Nintendo, Honda, Mazda, Toyota etc.

Cross the ocean to China, and you have the country that not only got the meme equivalent of HIV, it kept sharing needles for 50 years.

China isn't just high context, under Mao and Deng it completely institutionalised a darwinian meme suicide. In China's case, if Mao had a Louis Vitton handbag and I had a blackwolf backpack. I would be killed.

Literally within the context of China, the memes you possessed would determine the outcome of natural selection.

If you had meme's that were not to the liking of the party, you got removed from the meme pool. Go to a chinese bookstore the only foreign books you can buy are largely from pre-1940. (ironically I saw 1984 in Wuhan).

For the longest time Chairman Mao's leadership was not open to debate. Chairman Mao IS a great leader. The Party IS the people. Communism IS the only way.

Like a hospital, the CCP set about systematically steralising any ideas that were threatening to the people of China. The Cultural Revolution involved meme genocide.

They ended up with a robust meme system where some meme's deemed favorable, like 'Party Members are better than the average person', and 'The leadership is the best we'll ever have' and 'Beijing is the most beautiful city in the world' had been elevated to status reserved in the west for meme's like Newton's Laws of Motion(which in fact anyone is free to question and many did, they prevail because they are robust badass memes that replicate on intrinsic merits).

This all was fine, like a hospital is generally a very sterile environment. Until some badass meme of great appeal enters from a foreign body, a superbug.

The precise moment China 'tossed its scabbard into the ocean' sealed its fate and ensured it's defeat was when Deng Xhiaoping discarded in one breath several of communisms central memes in the statement 'black cat, white cat it doesn't matter so long as you catch the mouse' or rather 'to be rich is glorious'.

Then perhaps we need to take a last diversion into (psuedo) history, to France, the Musashi to China's Sasaki Kojiro.

Under the 'Ancien Regime' in France kicked off by Europes first Absolute Monarch King Louis XIV 'the Sun King' Fashion was introduced over time as a system to reinforce power.

Based around the very concept of Status, the King (supposedly) deliberately stretched the resources of nobles of the former fuedal states with a psychological attack. Perhaps one of the earliest meme-warfares. He allevated appearances in importance such that whilst the King had money and military power, the nobles just had money.
If they converted that money into military power then they might threaten the King's reing. If on the other hand they were to channel their resources relentlessly into meaningless status symbols, while they may appear impressive to the average pauper they would pose no threat to the king the sole possessor of both high fashion and military might.

He simply diverted his competition into the pursuit of 'the appearance of power' not 'actual power' over the course of 4 centuries, the French world was divided into 'Visable Achievers' (the monarchy) and 'Look at me's' (the nobles). The Kings kept moving the targets (or more brilliantly the nobles started moving the targets on eachother) just as TopGear moves cars around their cool wall and suddenly the paradox of fashion destroyed internal conflict amongst a bunch of power brokers.

Over the past 6 centuries the west has been dealing with this concept of fashion warfare such that we survive and are able to differ in opinion and thus sometimes put our resources into more worthwhile pursuits, namely checking ourselves before we wreck ourselves. The materialism meme is still pnuemonia, and should be taken seriously. But all people in the west through exposure to that 25% vague minority of people that carry the 'individual' meme have a chance to overcome it.

What then in China, where after 50 years they have managed to maybe peg the 'individuals' the 'question authority' meme's down to say 4% of the population? If you don't believe this is the case think of the extraodinary resources China spent on the Beijing Olympics to have the 'greatest show on earth' and win a whole bunch of Olympic medals.

Olympic medals! As if an Olympic Gold Medal in Rythmic Gymnastics compares to being 'the fastest man Alive' Usain Bolt, or even if it compares to Spains achievement in winning the Silver Medal in Basketball up against the best US Mens Basketball team since the Dream Team.

And at the close of the Olympics did anyone actually believe that China truly was the greatest country on earth because of it's medal tally? I would say maybe 20% of the world's population did. Most people forgot it and got on with their lives. Australia in particular due to 7's terrible coverage of the games had forgotten it while it was happening.

Turn on SBS for any of the numerous excellent documentaries on China and you'll see what was scratching at my brain for so long.

I have seen or heard about documentaries covering:

1. A Chinese provincial farmer that goes to the big city and leaves his farm in order to purchase a car, and despite it being useless for farm work, drives it home where he is celebrated as a hero!

2. The largest Chinese Restaurant in the world hosting a wedding, where I quote the bride said "Of course you need to be rich to have romance, we are a very realistic society and understand that money is the most important foundation of marriage" and one of the dancing entertainers said "What do you want me to say? If someone introduced me to a rich husband I wouldn't have to wiggle my butt out there." The Groom bought a new car for the wedding and threw about $10,000 in red envelopes into the house of his bride so they parents would release her, the guests all brought about a month of wages as a gift to save face and all up the groom spent about 1 million USD on the wedding. In China.

3. Peasants boiling down old computer parts (at great personal toxicity) in order to make enough money to buy their own house.

4. Chinese boys committing suicide because they aren't rich enough to get a girl in the huge gender imbalance encouraged by the one child policy.

And so on and so fourth. China is that french noble subjugated by the King and impressive only to paupers. From the west it looked like (and probably still is) one of the worst places to live in the whole wide world. But it had the means to do some serious fucking damage (and admittedly still does). It used to dedicate all governmental efforts into preserving its stranglehold on its own population.

Now the stranglehold is more tenuous, afraid of the population to the point of paranoid delusion since tianmen square 'incident' the government replaced the old meme 'We are Great no questions' and replaced it, suicidally with the meme 'We are great because of our economic reforms' Now they desperately scramble against other meme's that have made them particularly vulnerable like '8 means fortune' a meme that prevailed even in the catastrophe rife year of 2008. So China won't let there GNP growth slip below 8% and impossibly unsustainable economic goal and a disastrous PR meme.

So China is Already Dead, they have contracted a meme they don't have the memetic immune system to withstand. A badass meme virus that has been plaguing the west since 14th century and we've learned to deal with in a way, a memetic badass that has had Japan in death throws since the 90's.

The only question is how it will play out. Will The Chinese Government destroy it's people? Or will the people destory the Chinese government? Or will the environment destroy them both (and the rest of us)?

As for Musashi and Sasaki, Musashi smashed Sasaki's head in with the oar on his first strike then fled the scene. What a cunt.