标签：freedom

Equality or Freedom: On the Question of Attending School Outside One’s Hometown

Culture & Public Commentary2012.12.17
Equality or Freedom: On the Question of Attending School Outside One’s Hometown
Recently, the case of the non-Shanghai girl Zhan Haiter has drawn a lot of attention, especially because it happened in Shanghai, so I can’t help but offer a few comments as well. Of course, I support Zhan Haiter’s struggle, and I support every citizen’s open expression of his or her demands; but as for the content of those demands, I do not support it. This matter involves too many questions, all tangled together, making an already complicated issue even more complicated. So first we need to break down the questions involved. There are two big issues: one is education, the other is regionality. It should be noted that the problem…
culture China freedom commentary
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2012年12月17日
The Shameful Greek Spirit

Culture & Public Commentary2012.08.14
The Shameful Greek Spirit
The London Olympics are over, and I should also turn my jet lag back to the timezone of my graduation thesis. This essay can count as a bridge between what came before and what comes after~ Let me give a heads-up first: this should be a fairly loose, freewheeling conversation, not entirely centered on the title. During the Olympics there were obviously two kinds of people on Weibo: those watching the Olympics, and those not watching the Olympics. Among the latter were a considerable number of people who were either cursing the Olympics or using the Olympics as a pretext to curse the system. Basically speaking, the left in China…
China freedom autobiography pursuit
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2012年8月14日
The Left and Right, Chinese Style

Enlightenment & the Spirit of Freedom2012.05.15
The Left and Right, Chinese Style
Recently I’ve been mentioning the left and the right quite often, but always rather cautiously, always wanting to add a couple of lines: I don’t like taking sides, I only use labels because I have no choice, and so on. To keep on like that is not really a solution, so I might as well write an article and talk through my understanding of the so-called left and right. My first acquaintance with the concepts of left and right probably came in middle school political class, where the teacher explained that the left was progressive and reformist, while the right was backward and conservative. We children, brainwashed by China’s rote-learning…
China freedom autobiography tradition
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2012年5月15日
Do the People Have the Right to Be Ignorant? — With a Discussion of Enlightenment and Unconcealment

Enlightenment & the Spirit of Freedom2012.05.14
Do the People Have the Right to Be Ignorant? — With a Discussion of Enlightenment and Unconcealment
People have the right to stupidity—this is Tian Song’s claim: “The people have the right to stupidity; if they are deprived of the right to stupidity, they will only have the right to be made stupid. The key question is: who has the authority to draw the line between civilization and stupidity?” Back then (almost six years ago now—terrifying), I already had reservations about this, though I did not discuss it in detail. Yesterday Jing Qi raised this claim again, and recently I have also been paying attention to pedagogical questions, so this is a good moment to talk through my thoughts. First of all, Teacher Tian, including Teacher Liu,…
China science freedom education
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2012年5月14日
Satisfaction and Choice—Reading Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants

AI & the Future of Technology2012.04.24
Satisfaction and Choice—Reading Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants
I recently read this book: Kevin Kelly: 《What Technology Wants》, and what especially caught my attention throughout the book was the discussion of the Amish. The original title plainly says Technology, yet the Chinese translation from CITIC Press has actually turned most of the instances of Technology into “科技” (“science and technology”)—utterly baffling. As a product of this “brand” called CITIC Press, notes, indexes, and so on are of course uniformly absent; the fact that an “Acknowledgments” section was preserved is already extraordinarily rare. In itself, this book, though not especially profound academically, is still a very good popular introduction to philosophy of technology, somewhere between the academic and the…
book reading technology notes freedom
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2012年4月24日
Night Reading Mencius: The Traitor Faction

Chinese Civilization & the Way of Chinese2012.03.21
Night Reading Mencius: The Traitor Faction
This article arose from the explanation in the previous post. Of course, apart from taking issue with one particular junior classmate, my more important intention is to emphasize that interpretations of the Confucian classics are plural, and the Mao left can forget about monopolizing the right to interpret the Confucian classics. When I was a freshman, under Yang Zi’s influence, I read some chapters of the Mencius. Though I have little recollection of them now, I did come away with a rough impression: even though the Mencius is not as invigorating to read as the Analects, it still felt pretty good. The night before last I dug it out and…
philosophy culture China freedom
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2012年3月21日
Democracy Against the People-as-the-Basis: A Debate on Weibo

Culture & Public Commentary2012.03.21
Democracy Against the People-as-the-Basis: A Debate on Weibo
Some days ago, I had a rather spirited debate on Weibo with a left-leaning junior fellow. I’m not very fond of slapping labels like “right-wing” and “left-wing” on people, but this argument was indeed representative in a certain sense, so I need to note this junior fellow’s left-wing background. As for me, who sparked the argument, I was not aiming my dissatisfaction specifically at him; rather, I took the opportunity to express my long-standing opposition to the rhetoric of the so-called Mao left. I once stated my personal position in the essay “Liberty vs. Equality—I Am a Right-Wing Socialist,” but that was mainly constructive rather than refutational. Still, I’m willing…
culture China freedom tradition
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2012年3月21日
Black Bear and Virtue Ethics

Culture & Public Commentary2012.02.23
Black Bear and Virtue Ethics
The black bear issue has been blazing hot lately, so I’ll throw in my two cents as well~ Simply put, morally speaking, I oppose live bear bile extraction. As for whether Genuizhang should be allowed to go public, I think that’s another matter; I’m not familiar with the relevant legal framework. Why oppose live bear bile extraction? The usual arguments tend to focus on whether the bears are in pain, but I think that is actually a secondary issue. If the bears were injected with some kind of drug so that they not only felt no pain, but even became addicted to bile extraction, would that make everything okay? Utilitarianism,…
philosophy China freedom commentary
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2012年2月23日
Maid Cafés and “Professional Ethics”

Philosophy & Thought2012.02.03
Maid Cafés and “Professional Ethics”
Stirred by the Fang Yaohan incident, I wrote three articles in a row, which is already quite enough to have gotten my money’s worth. Since Han Han has also announced that he is stopping writing and not talking about it anymore, I may as well stop here too. So this article continues from the earlier piece “The Kingly Way”; everyone can skip the previous three articles, and we can continue talking about “morality.” We say that the kingly way is the path to supreme goodness, and supreme goodness is nothing other than “the best life.” But in the traditional sense, for a ruler, the kingly way merely provides one of…
philosophy freedom pursuit Marx
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2012年2月3日
Bottom-Up Reform

Culture & Public Commentary2012.02.02
Bottom-Up Reform
During the “onlookers biting Han” incident (see my previous two articles), I took the opportunity to skim through the legendary “Han Three Essays.” I have to say, Han Han really is better suited to snark than to building arguments… But on the basic attitude toward these three big concepts, I completely support Han Han: oppose revolution, be cautiously skeptical of democracy, and emphasize and fight for freedom. Why am I “anti-revolutionary”? In middle school, I did indeed hold some sort of “quality theory” position: the civic quality of the Chinese people was still far too low, there was a lack of self-discipline, and once things got chaotic they would be…
culture China freedom politics
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2012年2月2日