A Dialogue with Shin Yu Pai on "Jun in Taipei"

With Shin Yu Pai in Taipei on her last visit. Photo by Mélusine Lin
Well aware that my story "Jun in Taipei" played fast and loose with American stereotypes of Asian students, I wanted some input as to whether or not it at least worked as a story and how the elements of stereotype played out. Did the stereotypes put in play come off as cheap or mean-spirited; or did they rather, as I hoped, get absorbed in the glee and cross-purposed ironies of the tale?

Who better to ask than poet Shin Yu Pai, a sophisticated reader and friend whose writing experience as Taiwanese American had often put her right in the tangle of these same issues. Shin Yu was generous enough to spend some time in online dialogue with me on details of the tale. (Aside from her accomplishments as poet, Shin Yu has recently done more writing on Taiwan, her ancestral home and now for many years my own home and one of my favorite places on the planet. If you're interested in Taiwan, and you should be, here's one of her pieces from a recent visit back.)

I think, based on Shin Yu's reaction, that too many ambiguities remain in the tale. In short, just as I'd hoped! But she wasn't all that happy with the execution, so I have to work harder next time.

Since I'm not prolific in terms of literary work, I'm grateful for Shin Yu's comments on this one piece. I try to address some of the issues she raises in my reply.

The tale "Jun in Taipei" is posted on my blog.

Eric Mader
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March 3rd, 1:21am, SHIN YU writes: The way the story starts makes me uneasy as a reader. It is an opening/introduction that relies on trust, patience, and a reliable narrator (I’m not saying that the narrator is unreliable, but that combined with some other issues, he becomes suspect and that destabilizes the reading experience--it’s actually Parrish who’s the unreliable narrator). The story starts with a story within a story, a kind of hearsay until we arrive much later at meeting Jun the legend. So a lot relies on how the characters are introduced and represented.

Jun seems like a caricature. A kind of Long Duk Dong character from “16 Candles” that is “totally hopeless” and “kinda funny.” He is stereotypical in that he is a highroller/gambler, smokes incessantly, does not talk much, remains fairly undeveloped and is without a significant voice. White dude takes pity on Jun and adopts him as a kind of project/pet and doesn’t really know the guy--Jun’s behaviors are surprising to Parrish. I mean--he’s a gambler--is that like an addiction thing? He’s losing all this $--does he come from wealth and privilege, or does he have guys coming after him trying to break his knees? And then the scene with the older woman kind of being a servant/mother figure--that also felt unsatisfactory to me. There are questions that are unanswered--but I get that that’s also the point.

Parrish “has a good heart” and doesn’t know what questions to ask, because he’s not able to see himself or others clearly. Back to the depiction of the stereotypical in Jun’s character: the dialogue around the cigar was reminiscent to me of that moment in Lost in Translation when Bill Murray’s character is confronted with an escort who tells him to “lip my stocking.” (Rip my stocking.) It’s not exactly that the depiction of language and cultural misunderstanding is mean-spirited--but it might be useful to you to read some of the critiques of that film from Asian American viewers/critics.

The point of the piece seems to be about something of the anticlimactic. That and semantics/words--what is a legend. Is a legend supposed to be like a badass? And what is a badass. And what is privilege. And what is excess. And what is pathetic. But the characters are not very sympathetic. The guy from London seems like a stand in for the opposite of Jun and Parrish--but we never see what makes him charming.

It's actually a very complex story--albeit one that made me feel uncomfortable and cringy at times--not a bad thing per say--but it did lead me to question the position of the speaker

This kind of story could be very funny to a certain kind of audience/reader, but at the same time this is exactly the kind of reader who would identify with a Parrish vs. the speaker.

Issues of representation are very complex, and I could picture a dumbass reader just being like "Yeah, that Jun, how pathetic!" when actually there are many other layers of patheticness running through the whole thing.

I think you know this is not an issue of yeah I liked it, no I didn't like it. That's besides the point. I found the piece to have a lot of complexity. Was it fully unpacked, I'm not sure. It's very intelligent writing that invites a more critical mind, but I'm not sure all readers are going to bring it.

March 3rd, 3:48pm, ERIC writes: I knew I was doing the right thing throwing this little tale at you, Shin Yu. You raise a whole series of issues, some I was already aware of, others not.

I was initially happy with the story because I felt there was a lot there and that I'd done it through very simple language. I didn't however know whether the enclosed-tale structure worked on such a small scale, or if the shifting temporality and perspective would even be picked up by most readers. Or rather: I suspected most readers would pick it up, but would a sophisticated reader, like yourself, be satisfied with how it was done? Which is a different issue. So I was very curious how you'd react.

The narrative voice for the first half is, as you note, channeling Parrish. It's in free indirect discourse (at least that's what we used to call it) and I believe most readers have become so used to this kind of thing that they know this is not simply a personal narrator speaking from a kind of stable "I".

Nonetheless, I know there are many readers out there who will immediately react: "Hey, WTF! You stage this Korean guy as 'smallish' and 'quiet'--you even say he's 'hopeless'! That's just racist stereotyping."

Indeed I am staging Jun this way. Or rather: Parrish is. Through free indirect discourse. But the fact that the word "smallish" is not in quotes, followed by "Parrish said"--certainly it confuses some readers. Or perhaps we might say it invites them to feel consonance with that voice. Which I can see is an aspect of free indirect discourse which makes it less that trustworthy if one intends to provoke distance from this or that voice.

As for your comment about the "dumbass" reader who'd simply enjoy the story because in fact he's totally in harmony with the racist stereotypes and sees no irony there, I hear ya. I know there are many people who would read the story this way. But what I was hoping was to trip them up--in part through the shift to "legend" territory. But that, I know, is itself ambiguous at best--because yes, what IS the status of legend here? Isn't it ultimately a pretty pathetic concept of legend that's put in play?

I guess I'd have to answer that for many men out with friends in a bar what I narrate here is in fact the most commonly evoked notion of "legend". A legend is not quite the same as a "badass". Rather, the legend is a fuck up who nonetheless has character and is not even really miffed by being, or being seen as, a fuck up. The real legend may not KNOW how ridiculous it is for a man to name his dog Lancôme, but the main point is--once he's shown how ridiculous it is, he doesn't give a damn. He laughs himself. At himself. And is on to the next "adventure". That's my best explanation of "legend", of the redeeming element in the concept, and I think you largely got it.

But again: Does this sudden jump in Jun's stature in the eyes of a bunch of white guys who took him "under their wing"--does the jump to legend status really show that their initial attitude toward him, as a sort of "pet", as you put it, was wrong? I think the answer to that is complex. I think it shows them as largely wrong.

But again: Is this a story that shows up racist stereotypes or isn't it? Hard to answer, I believe. What makes things even less clear: When I called Parrish and his friends "good-hearted", I meant it, or meant it, say, 80%. The word "good-hearted" is still channelling Parrish, who ascribes to himself good-heartedness, but it's also, to a great degree, meant to be literally true. Yes, they were having fun with Jun, they were laughing at him, but ALSO: they were likely most of the time to have such mocking fun at each other's expense too. And were likely besides to know how to laugh at themselves. So for them this embrace of Jun was actually an act of true friendship. Arguably, at the very least.

There's much else in the tale that's ambiguous, I know. I found it interesting that you thought the character Laurence was meant to counteract both Jun and Parrish. I intended that only to a very slight degree. I couldn't give Laurence an actual voice in the tale without destabilizing the general narrative tone, which was set by Parrish and by the narrator, who only comes into selfhood toward the end, and who really does laugh heartily at the Jun "legend" as it's narrated.

As for the first appearance of Jun's real character in his demand for a "singer", I think it's hard to really characterize this as mean-spirited. Everyone who lives as an expat or who lives between two languages knows that much of the joy in life is in other's and one's own linguistic mistakes. The best we can do is celebrate it. The only instance where I find laughing at such mistakes to be problematic is when those laughing assume English to be a kind of default language--assume it to be, indeed, language as such. This typically only happens with people who've never seriously studied another language. Which is to say: Most Americans. But not in Taipei, which is where the tale is set.

I will see if I can find some of the writing on Lost in Translation you refer to. You end by asking if the story was fully "unpacked". If I understand what you mean here, my answer is: By no means. The whole thing remains in tension, with much left unanswered. For instance: How did Jun have that much money to lose in Tulsa? The reader isn't supposed to know, but perhaps will guess: Family money. Is this, then, a rich family? The smart reader will likely guess: A family rich enough that their son losing thousands of dollars does not mean the end of the world. But is a catastrophe nonetheless. Jun's idea of showing up his American friends by showing off having seduced the Korean wife of another white guy, and his pathetic staging of Korean chauvinism, in which the wife nonetheless seems a fully willing accomplice--even, perhaps, the source of the lunch idea--this is meant to be troubling and ultimately unexplained. One of the tiny touches in the tale I'm proud of is the obvious fact that the Parrish character and his friend don't even realize what's going on: they just go for the food. It's only later they get it. And when they do get it it of course is just added onto Jun's status: Legend.

Yes, I'm a partisan of fiction, especially short fiction, as troubling, ambiguous, annoying, unexplained. I'll say one more thing: reading your comments I was led to realize this kind of story is likely to get (or perhaps to reveal) three kinds of readers: 1) the dumbass reader, who never quite notices that much of the tale is framed via shoddy American stereotypes of Asians; 2) the smartass reader (with a class or two of cultural studies behind her/him) who ONLY notices these stereotypes and doesn't notice how they're being put into question; 3) the good reader, who may end up satisfied or not by the tale, but sees the tension in it.

Many many thanks for your excellent comments, Shin Yu. You think this tale worthy of trying to publish somewhere? Just a thought. I don't much care one way or the other. I'm likely going to come out with a collection of short prose pieces (prose poems; tales) later this year and may place it in there in any case. Any time you want to throw something at me, I'll do my best to comment. But: I'm likely to be less useful commenting on your poetry than you are commenting on my prose. It's been a great little dialogue. Thanks.

[Shin Yu sent me a link that collected a sampling of Japanese and Japanese-American press reaction to Sophia Coppola's film Lost in Translation. There was a pretty wide spectrum: accusations of racism, defenses of the film as focussing on the characters' confusion rather than stereotyping, etc. Unfortunately the link is now dead.]

March 3rd, 10:20pm, ERIC writes: Thanks. A good range of pieces, and in fact I think pretty well balanced. The fact that Asia Media Watch went against the film isn't surprising. Asians in America, who probably are especially sick of being stereotype, would be more likely to focus precisely on the otherness (and zaniness) of the Japanese depicted. I think we have something similar when we project how Stateside readers (whether Asian or not) vs. expat or more international readers will interpret the staged miscommunication of Jun's "singer" request. A Korean in America, faced every day with Americans who seem to think English is the only language that exists, would think it's mean-spirited. One of these monolingual Stateside folks (what you might call the "dumbass" reader) would think it's funny because it shows Jun's aberrant English. Those whose mother-tongue is English but who have done serious time in another culture would likely see it as the kind of day-to-day mishap that gives life flavor. How would Jun himself see it? As a "legend", as I defined it, I think he's likely laugh too, once the mistake was explained to him. And then might joke about Americans in Korea and their absurd pronunciation of Korean words.

Anyhow I ought to go back and watch that film again. Been a long time and have only seen it once.

March 4th, 11:49pm, ERIC writes: As for short fiction, I often think of you as the one who introduced Ben Fountain to me. A brilliant short collection. I haven't read his more recent novel however.

Did you ever get to the writer I suggested in exchange--George Saunders. He's gotten famouser and famouser since then. And I still think he's often great. But the collections have gotten a bit weaker. At least in my estimation. The best is still CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. One of the things I object to in the recent work is his move toward more structured closure in the tales--tales you can see setting up their closure from the first pages.

March 6th, 3:38am, SHIN YU writes: I also really enjoyed the dialogue. I have always been impressed by the quality of your mind and your thinking and reading your story helped me to think and to ask questions of my own biases. As for whether or not you should send it out to journals, etc.--I want to say again that it's a very complex and multi-layered piece. And it deals with race/culture, a sensitive topic. That might make is more difficult to publish. But I think you could send it out--it has a quality of completeness, but also ambiguity.

I haven't yet gotten around to reading George Saunders. I have him on my library list/queue, but I think I have user #250 or so in a long line of readers waiting for like five copies in the Seattle Public Library system. Since you first told me about him, I've noticed his career skyrocket. He's always doing big gigs and readings these days.

My Shifting Racial "Default": How Race Perceptions are Changed by Circumstance

Some of my peeps: Taipei teens I teach in a Monday night English class.
I'm on the sidewalk in front of a Taipei book store. A woman is walking past, around thirty-five. I watch her approach, glance at her face, and my mind says: "Is that a Westerner? Is that an Asian?"

For some reason my mind can't distinguish. I look at her face carefully, but can't decide. Then, when a few seconds has passed, my mind says: "It's happened again. She's Asian. Of course."

What's it all about? Somehow I know intellectually that the woman is Asian, but can't tell, at the level of immediate perception, that she is.

In fact this happens to me a few times a month in Taiwan. I will look at a man or woman and not be able to tell if the person is local Taiwanese or a Westerner. Then, within seconds, the fugue dissolves and I realize: "Of course. Taiwanese."

The process from confusion to clarity never lasts more than ten seconds. But why does it happen in the first place? And why does it feel so odd to me when it happens, as if there's some kind of deep and nagging confusion going on.

I have a theory. My guess is that people who spend half their life among their own race, then move to another continent and live many years among another race undergo a shift of sorts in racial perception. What happens, I suspect, is that the mind starts to take the facial features of the new race as the "default" human features--with the result that the new race comes to be perceived as one's own; i.e., it loses its aura as "foreign"; one's sense of difference becomes confused.

In my case, my own race, that race I grew up with, is white-bread American. For nearly twenty years I've lived among East Asians.

Please note that I am not here looking at people of mixed ancestry. It's not a matter of people who have evidently Asian and Western blood. The issue here is different.

It's a commonplace that we typically perceive people of another race as all looking similar to each other. So that the white, black or Latino American first arriving in East Asia will walk the streets and half-consciously think: "Wow. These people really look alike." In an extreme version the thought might be: "How do they even tell each other apart?"

Growing up in a uniformly white midwestern American suburb in the 1970s and early '80s, this is a question I occasionally heard about big city blacks: "How do they tell each other apart?" The question, usually stated with a kind of smirk, was of course tied up in complex ways with the racism of that white suburb. Having created a social order that more or less kept blacks in their own city neighborhoods, it became easy for the white privileged class in the suburbs to perceive black Americans as somehow foreign. And that's just what they did. As often the case with racially-marked foreignness, the feeling that "they all look alike" appeared there as well, but this time applied to citizens of one's own country. (Of course this desire to separate, to project a racially different community as also deeply other, is far from overcome in America. Anyone who doubts it need only consider the shameful nonsense our current president has been subjected to. But issues of how race gets ideologically charged, in America and elsewhere, are different from my topic here, so I won't pursue them further.)

I've learned firsthand that in any case the perception of "similarity" in the features of a different race is by no means hardwired. It wears off quickly with contact, and may even reverse. Yes, eventually people of one's own race may come to look more and more similar to each other. Doubt it? It's happened to me in striking, almost unsettling ways.

Living in Taipei, I try to get back to the States once a year. Once when I flew back to Wisconsin, and was waiting in the Milwaukee airport for my father and sister to pick me up, I got a bizarre lesson in the depth of the racial-perceptual shift I'd undergone. In sat in the arrivals hall, people approaching from down a hallway. With the second or third 30-something blond woman I saw approach, my mind said: "There she is: my sister." When she got closer, I saw it wasn't. In fact the woman wasn't even very similar to my sister. Odd. And she had to get quite close for me to realize.

Next: "That's him: my father."

No. It was just a white American man in his sixties, who, as he approached, really did look quite a bit like my father; but no, as I analyzed the features, I realized they were actually quite different.

So what gives? I false ID'd two more sisters and three more fathers before I started to laugh at myself. In terms of perceptions of white Americans, I realized, I'd actually become Asian myself. Aside from the different hair colors and different sizes (fat or very fat) all these white Wisconsinites looked pretty much the same to me.

This is just one of the anecdotes I could bring up. Many times my perceptual grasp of Western faces has proved suddenly not as sharp as it should have been.

And now here I am in Taiwan, in a country where nearly everyone has black hair and dark eyes and olive or ivory skin, yet I almost never mistake people at a distance. To me they all look quite distinct from each other. And in fact my mind occasionally gets confused as to whether they are not actually part of my own tribe--as with the woman by the book store.

Ideologies of race have proven to be one of the most poisonous of cultural phenomena, and we are unfortunately far from done with the challenge they pose. Yet there are other levels of racial perception, where racial difference is first noticed and marked--"Those people are different from me and my people"--and these levels too seem to be in some degree a construct of sorts, though in this case I'd say they're a kind of cognitive construct rather than an ideological one. I'm sure this question has been studied, though I haven't tried to research it. It's this cognitive shift that I've experienced firsthand. (The ideological shifts I've experienced are another matter: a long learning process that continued through university and beyond, and probably still continues.)

Interestingly, it seems to me that the ability to distinguish racial difference (or at least the perception that such difference is meaningful) only begins in the late toddler stage. It's only approaching age three that children begin to see people of other races as "different", sometimes different in a troubling way, as I know very well from the curious but frightened looks 3- or 4-year-olds often give me here. Infants never. To Taiwanese infants I am obviously just a person: they don't notice my odd facial structure or skin tone as marks of (problematic) difference.

I've raised a various points here, which may have been a mistake. My main questions remain: How is it that our minds construct the basic paradigms of sameness and otherness between different races? How does my sometimes confusing experience relate to these perceptions of sameness and otherness? Where is the fluidity and where the solidity? Do we all carry a somewhat unstable sense of a "default" human race in relation to which others stand apart in difference? Is (as is likely) evolution somewhere in this mix?

Heady questions, and no, I haven't done the work even to look into answers that may have been proposed by anthropologists, etc. I'm just a guy on a street in a foreign city noticing his mind in occasional fugue.

In conclusion I should point out that I understand very well that many people who read this piece will have good reason to say: "Hm, it must be nice being able to consider racial difference from such an easygoing vantage point. It wasn't like that for me." I'm aware of this distance--that it is a heavily charged one--one that makes it somewhat inappropriate for me even to write about what I've noticed. Yet I write anyway. Readers are welcome to tell me if or where I've been insensitive. Aside from in that initial step of writing. Which may in itself be insensitive enough.

The Lion from Piraeus

Visiting Venice recently I set out early one morning walk to the gates of the Arsenal to see the Piraeus lion. Though I'd long wanted to see inside the Arsenal also--the medieval mother of all shipyards--I knew it was off limits. But the lion was worth the walk.

Sculpted in white marble, the Piraeus lion is one of two placed on either side of the Arsenal's entry. Around nine feet tall, the sculpture is a striking example of the vagaries of history. It's rare to come upon Greek marbles inscribed with Scandinavian runes. 

Originally stationed at the Piraeus harbor near Athens, the two lions were transported to Venice in 1687 by Francesco Morosini after a successful campaign against the Turks. From the beginning it was noticed that one of them had strange markings carved into its shoulders, apparently some kind of writing. Nobody knew the meaning of the writing, however, or even what language it was. Only much later did scholars recognize the markings as runes--a puzzling discovery.  What were Scandinavian runes doing on a marble lion taken from a Greek port? The inscribed words themselves would answer the question. A guidebook gives one translation of the inscription on the lion's left shoulder:

Hakon, combined with Ulf, with Asmund, and with Orn, conquered this port. These men and Harold the Tall imposed large fines, on account of the revolt of the Greek people. Dalk has been detained in distant lands. Egil was waging war, together with Ragnar, in Romania and Armenia.

According to the runes on the lion's other shoulder, it was Harold the Tall who ordered the inscription, against the wishes of the defeated Greeks. At the time he and his cohorts were working as mercenaries for the Byzantine emperor.

Proof once more of what my grandmother used to say: Those Vikings didn't dress very well, but they sure got around. In an essay about the Scandinavians and their ambiguous conquests, Borges makes a similar point, underlining their odd individualism, how they covered vast territories and raised settlements, only to, culturally speaking, disappear:

Hernan Cortes and Francisco Pizarro conquered lands for their kings: the Vikings' prolonged expeditions were individual. . . . After a century, the Normans (men of the North) who, under Rolf, settled in the province of Normandy and gave it their name, had forgotten their language and were speaking French.

Runic graffiti can still be seen on the marble balustrades of Hagia Sofia in Istanbul, carved ten centuries ago by Vikings who made up part of the Byzantine emperor's imperial guard. One imagines the Northern warriors standing through the Byzantine liturgy, understanding none of it. Restless and bored, one of them begins to scratch in the marble with a knife or the edge of a buckle: Halvdan was here. That, at least, is what the longest bit of graffiti says. Borges writes of runic inscriptions "scattered across the face of the earth," of Leif Eriksson's expedition to North America and the failed Viking settlement, of the Vikings' books--particularly the Icelanders' great literary tradition of the sagas, how in the twelfth century they developed an advanced art of narrative fiction, a hardboiled realist form whose like wouldn't be seen again in the West until the 19th century. This literature remained a phenomenon entirely of Iceland, utterly without influence on the other people's of Europe:

These facts suffice, in my understanding, to define the strange and futile destiny of the Scandinavian people. In universal history, the wars and books of Scandinavia are as if they had never existed; everything remains isolated and without a trace, as if it had come to pass in a dream or in the crystal balls where clairvoyants gaze. In the twelfth century, the Icelanders discovered the novel--the art of Flaubert, the Norman--and this discovery is as secret and sterile, for the economy of the world, as their discovery of America.

But think of the poor lion. Sculpted to guard a Greek port, it ends up getting inscribed upon by northern henchmen: crooked barbaric characters are chiseled into its once proud shoulders. Later it's dragged to Venice by yet another conqueror, this one Italian. Finally the lion has to suffer being photographed in the morning light by another barbarian of sorts, this one an American in sandals wielding a digital camera made in Japan. The greatest indignity yet?

The Greeks who carved the lion might be glad to know that my camera later malfunctioned and the photos of its shoulders, as well as all my other photos of Venice, were erased. One-hundred-fifty carefully shot images gone in an instant. It's called technological progress.

Though the runes on the lion's shoulders are much weathered, they are still recognizable, after all these centuries, as runes. The memory chip in my camera however is empty, utterly void. And as for this page you're reading, as for anything you've read online today--if you don't print it out it and store it safely, if you don't scratch it into copper or carve it into stone, it will likewise disappear as soon as the Internet crashes along with our own overproud civilization. It's called technological progress.

Eric Mader

[An earlier version of this piece was posted at necessaryprose.com. Photos taken from various Internet sites; Borges' essay, "The Scandinavian Destiny," is in Borges: Selected Non-Fictions, ed. Eliot Weinberger.]

馬的問題 -- The Problem With Horses

從前，馬是非常好的交通工具。如今多數卻成為上流社會女性用來炫耀的裝飾品。

如果人人都能有一匹馬，牠應該會獲得尊重。可惜，目前來看，有錢有閑的人才有能力養馬。

在目前無解的難題中，暫且拋開階級層面的考慮。單單探究馬的智力就是無比沈重的負擔：馬究竟有沒有自覺？

由於馬頭乃是木刻而成，馬會有智能，使人感到意外。在木作的腦內，到底可以有多少個神經元同時運作？科學家仍然十分困惑。

從外觀可我們明顯可以看出：馬頭從馬的身體長出，宛然樹幹，又從樹幹長成馬頭的樣子。眼睛有真實動物的模樣，其實不過是木刻。看來也不過就是樹木。牠在看人的樣子就像呆呆的木頭。你怎麼可能對牠有所寄望？連流浪狗都可以在牠腳下繞，也，佔上風。

勞勃‧瑞福的電影＜＜輕聲細語＞＞可能會誤導人們對馬的理解。事實與電影情景相反：對馬輕聲細語的那位，並不希望別人聽到他說什麼。

馴馬師可以教馬跳舞。通常馬能跳舞，也可以跑得好。

散文名家蒙田寫過一篇文章，提到馬可以用蹄數拍來回答算術。我可一點也不信。

以上這些討論都只是初步探討階段。我還未進行到問題的核心。問題關鍵在於：馬總是讓執韁者決定行動方向。對於任何一匹馬而言，我們該問的是：誰在騎馬？

換一個角度來問：權貴階級究竟想往哪裡去？

* * *

THE PROBLEM WITH HORSES (original)
Once a useful helper and means of getting where one needed to go, horses have become largely a decorative toy on which upper class ladies show off their poise.

Horses might still be respectable if everybody could have one, but at present only the idle rich can afford to keep a horse.

Class issues aside, the problem of horse intelligence is no small matter in our current impasse. Are we even dealing with a creature with a mind of its own?

Given that horse heads are carved from wood, it is amazing the animal shows any intelligence at all. How many synapses can fire simultaneously in a wooden brain? Researchers still puzzle over this problem.

Having grown out of the horse's body like a tree stump, the head slowly carves itself into standard horse shape. This much we know. The eyes make it look like an animal rather than a tree, though in a way it really is a kind of tree. It stares dumb at you, all wooden. What can you expect from such a creature? The lowest street dog could run circles round it, and does.

Don't be fooled by the Redford film. In reality a horse whisperer is someone who doesn't want you to hear what he's telling his horse.

Horses can be taught to dance and seem to enjoy both dancing and running.

Montaigne writes of a horse that could tap out the answers to simple sums with its right front hoof. I don't believe it for a minute.

But all this is just preliminary. I haven't gotten to the real problem with horses. It is as follows: Horses always go wherever the person holding the reins wants them to go. In other words, for any given horse we must ask: Who holds the reins?

Or to put the question another way: Where do the rich want to go?

Eric Mader
Taipei

Father Joe

Kim Getgood, a friend of mine from my Madison days back in the 1980s, also the woman who introduced me to Thomas Pynchon, recently put up this brief post on Facebook. It's so good I've decided to go ahead and steal it for my blog:

My hero as a child was a man named Father Joe. He taught my brothers and me catechism at Grace Episcopal Church in Madison, Wisconsin. He wore a black dress and a beaded crucifix necklace and was very very old. He armed himself with holy water and a special brand of compassionate wit. When I confessed to him as a child of eight that I could not morally believe in heaven if there was indeed a hell, he whispered that I was "absolutely right." He never posted pictures of himself or his wife on Facebook armed with AR-15 rifles or pistols aimed at the camera because he died three decades before he had to witness the Internet, let alone the violent sacrilege of "right-winging, gun-slinging" evangelicals.

The father of my faith was a man of love, compassion and the Holy Spirit. He used to tell me: "Arm yourself with the Truth. It is all any of us will ever have or need. It is the only weapon of the Righteous."

My greatest spiritual examples (Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi and so many others) have been willing to die unarmed for their faith. I can't trust people who say they are here to minister to our faith but then proselytize gun violence. Where is their faith that God is their protector? Or ours?

Progress--Our hope or our doom?

Here we come!
Some quick essays on progress by Taipei teens. I talked about different sorts of progress in class--technological, medical, social--then wrote on the board: “Many people believe progress is good. What about you? Explain using examples.” Students had twenty minutes to write an answer.

I’ve corrected grammar mistakes, but otherwise left the essays as are. Sitting in front of the class for twenty minutes or so, I also penned an answer, which I place last here.

No, this post is not related to Taiwan's Sunflower Student Movement. These are mostly teens writing here.

Eric Mader

Kelly on Progress

As the world progresses, many things progress too: technology, media, society, etc. I think progress is good, but too much is bad. Some social progress is good. For example, ensuring women’s rights, children’s rights, etc. But technology is just a little too fast so that this world can’t keep up with it.

For example, now many companies need people whose technology skills are good, so some elementary schools or junior high schools start to use the method of technology to teach children. Every child has an iPad or iPhone for class. I think it’s bad for them because children’s eyes aren’t completely developed. Putting them into the phone world for a long time will cause their eyes to be worse.

Many kinds of progress are good, but we don’t need more now. We need to think about whether we can digest them.

Tina on Progress

To be honest, I agree that progress is always good. Thanks to perfect constructions, the economic development in our country can be faster and faster. Without progress, we can’t live so peacefully and conveniently as now.

For example, if there weren’t an airport in the north of Taiwan, it would be very difficult to interact with foreign countries. No one could see our country’s features and culture. And business people couldn’t even earn more money. Without new construction, our commercial development might be worse.

But if the progress goes too quickly, it may cause some problems and serious damage. In that case, the air may be polluted. Besides, people would flock into the cities. It would be too crowded. We should find some approaches to solve these problems in the future.

Jenny on Progress

The modern world has considerable progress in many areas, such as technological progress, medical progress, social progress, etc. For most people, it seems that “progress” is seen as something that always brings them happiness. However, as far as I’m concerned, this idea of progress is too narrow.

For example, social progress enables people to have more freedom. They can say whatever they want to say and try to get the rights which benefit them. Indeed, in many ways people’s lives become better than before. Nonetheless, there are more and more battles, whether protests or civil wars, at the same time. Then I start to question whether progress is always good. My answer is negative. Progress brings people happiness, but it brings people misfortunes too. Because of social progress, there are many innocent people suffering from others’ irrational attacks.

Therefore, as we push for progress in our lives, we should also learn to be understanding and respect the difference between ourselves and others so that everyone can enjoy the benefits from progress. We should not try to impose our own ideas of progress on everyone.

David on Progress

Most people think that progress is always good, but they don’t think about the bad things that will come with it.

Thousands of years ago, Chinese people invented paper. After they could control the skill of making paper easily, they started to cut trees. When recycled paper and iPads were finally invented, it was too late. The pollution and damage they made on the Earth was nearly impossible to fix. This is one of the reasons That I can’t agree that progress is always good.

Although progressing is an important part of human civilization, people often regret things they did. They always have to worry about how to fix problems caused by themselves. That’s what we do.

Schani on Progress

Progress is a power for the improvement of human life. However, is progress always good? My opinion is that it depends on the circumstances: sometimes it’s good but sometimes it isn’t.

For example, I think social progress from emperors to democracy is good. In past Chinese history, when kings ruled the country, you could easily be killed because someone near the king didn’t like your style. Or you could easily get banished to a very far place if you said one wrong word. Living in that environment made people unsettled and afraid of expressing their own feelings, which I think is nothing good.

Another example is the technological progress of cloning things which I am worried about and think is bad. When the first cloned sheep “Dolly” was created, people knew that our genetic engineering technology wasn’t far from cloning human beings. But as many Hollywood science fiction movies have shown, people might have problems agreeing on self-identities. You don’t know whether your parents cloned you from someone or if you are a real person and they are cloned. The confusing situations may lead the world into chaos.

In conclusion, to say if progress is good or bad, we have to consider its effects on humans. After weighing all the advantages and disadvantages, we can announce whether the progress in question is positive or negative.

Bryan on Progress

I do not agree that progress is always good. Let me show you some reasons.

For example, the technological progress is good, but on the other hand it is bad. Why? Although it brings more convenience for us, it often pollutes our environment. It may have benefits for progress, but also may be bad for our lives. Many people think that progress is always good, but I don’t think so.

Perhaps not all progress is bad: there is still good social progress. Women’s rights are raising. It’s good progress. Everyone, no matter men or women, have equal rights.

Eric on Progress

Some people say that progress is always good. In fact in modern societies it’s hard to find anyone who thinks it is bad. Our scientific and capitalist cultures are busy 24/7 trying to persuade us to pursue new and “better” things. I’m different from most people here. I think a lot about the bad side of progress.

Consider the current world population. Though humans have been around for around 200,000 years, the total world population for most of that time was only a few million. In 1800 the population reached one billion for the first time, thanks to agriculture, trade and other kinds of progress. But now the population is around 7 billion. A thousand years ago the world didn’t even have half a billion people on it. Suddenly, in a few centuries, we went from half a billion to 7 billion--a 1,400% increase! And in the next thirty years, if we survive, we may reach 9 billion. Our environment cannot support so many people, and the result will be not only the possible permanent destruction of our planet but also terrible wars and famines.

This population explosion only happened because of scientific developments in agriculture and other areas. Wouldn’t we have been better living more in harmony with nature, with a much smaller population? The way we are now, we may not even survive another two centuries: we may become extinct.

But also I am very sceptical about technological progress in terms of everyday life. Our machines (cars, etc.) get us around but also make us fat and lazy--all while polluting the environment. And look at our TVs and portable devices. They allow us to think we’re experiencing the world when we just sit and absorb sounds and images from a screen. Our devices make us think we are communicating with people, but in fact they mainly help us to ignore the people around us.

There is a legend I heard many years ago that conveys something of how I feel about progress. Long ago an inventor came to the Emperor with his new invention. He’d made a perfectly clear kind of glass that could not be broken. The Emperor’s guards tried to break it with their weapons, but could not. Nonetheless the glass was perfectly clear! The Emperor thought about it. “You are the only one who knows how to make this glass?” he asked. “Yes,” the inventor said proudly. The Emperor then turned to his guards: “Kill this man,” he said. “And go to his house to burn his papers.” The Emperor took the glass and flung it into a lake.

Although the Emperor could see the glass was amazing and could be used for many things, he also was wise enough to realize that it would change the world in ways he couldn’t foresee. It was better not to start making such glass at all.

[Alright, I cheated. I planned to add the legend about the Emperor while in the classroom, but didn’t have time. I’m adding it now at the computer. --E.]

The Long Decline of the American Left: Thoughts on Daily Kos, American "Progressives" and the PCA

Founded in 2002, hosting an enormous amount of blogging and chatter since, the Daily Kos community has become symptomatic of the decline of the American left in general. Willfully blind to their favored team's continual shift rightward, the community maintains its dogmatic allegiance to the Democratic Party and the Obama Administration. Since the start of the president's second term, the site has in fact only grown more blindly pro-establishment, its regular contributors doing their best to pretend their political goals are being realized.

As a progressive community in constant discursive action, DailyKos can be especially depressing to watch. I've followed the site for years, and since I'm in solidarity with many of the community's goals, it's been frustrating to see how easily folks there let themselves get sidetracked. How? The pattern is cyclical: 1) Republican talking points are quoted in a rage and then disproved by facts. 2) The mere fact of this typing out of the truth on the Daily Kos blog is then presented as a victory for the bloggers and the left they represent.

As if facts were what is at issue. As if the main goal of a movement of the left is refuting the idiotic and misleading cant that comes out of the GOP and Fox News. Because, hey, within days there arrives a new spate of Republican talking points, and the DailyKos bloggers all set to work mocking and refuting those.

Meanwhile the corporate coup continues, whether it's Dubya or Obama abetting it. The facts be damned.

It seems clear enough to me that for two decades now America has had just one political party. There are the Republicans (called Republicans) who are anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage, and there are the other Republicans (called Democrats) who are pro-abortion and pro-gay marriage. As Americans we get to choose between these two corporate-controlled right-wing parties: parties that pursue virtually identical policy goals--except in relation to sex and gender.

Strange, isn't it? Why is it our two parties are only allowed to offer choices in the specific areas of sex and reproduction? Have you ever stopped to think about that?

The answer is obvious. Wall Street and the big corporations don't give a damn if you're straight or gay, a mother of five or a woman who's had three abortions. All Wall Street and the corporations care about is being able to own your ass. And what d'ya know? They already do.

And why is that? Why do they? Why has the 1% gained so much control during these past decades? Why is it that in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 70s, why is it that America had strong protections for working people, truly effective public services, an actually sensible tax system? Why did our country have these things but does no longer?

In my own analysis much of the blame rests squarely with those people who now call themselves the "progressive" left. When fashionista leftists (media, Hollywood, gender studies academia) began stressing sex and gender issues, the Democratic Party proved more than willing to accommodate, because, simply put, it was no skin off their backs. It wasn't going to undermine their corporate support. After a couple decades of this, America's once left-wing party (the party of workers, farmers, teachers, civil servants; the party, in short, of the public good) had morphed into the party of abortion and gay marriage. The party of political correctness on all hot-button fashionista issues.

I refer to it in my title as the PCA, or "Progressive Corporate Agenda". The word progressive here carries a deceptive double meaning, one that, sadly, most American progressives refuse to recognize.

First meaning of progressive: American social liberals, tired of the bigotry of the Christian right, vote Democrat because they support the party's progressive social policies on abortion and sexual orientation. Holding progressive positions in these areas and actually voting for such policies, Democratic leaders then claim to be progressive as such. Which is an utter sham, isn't it? Because these particular sex and reproduction issues occupy only a small spectrum of any legitimate leftist agenda. Meanwhile, on most meat and potatoes issues, the Democrats vote with the corporate elite. And somehow they largely get away with it, election after election? Why?

In our current hyper-mediated culture, our society of the spectacle, where Lady Gaga carries more weight than any mere labor organizer or leftist scholar, Democratic candidates still get enough buzz to give them the progressive credentials they need. Offering pro-choice and pro-gay policies--namely, those things that so enrapture recent Hollywood and academic types--is enough to set them off as the "progressive party". They've won over those whose professions are in the "spectacular" industries (as Guy Debord would have it)--fashion, media, film, music. And who sets the pace in our society of the spectacle if not precisely these groups? And these groups, in their turn, continue the marketing of their "countercultural" gestures, (thus determining the progressive aura) as ever new commodities in a market which itself remains unchanged. All of which is fine for the Democratic party, who, it is painfully clear, fears any change that isn't linked to sex or reproduction.

Amazingly, the American "progressive left" pats itself on the back with each new turning of this cycle. And none of it has the least effect on the corporate coup which continues unabated.

Which brings us to the second meaning of progressive, to glimpse which we must look more closely at the actual accomplishments of this supposedly progressive party. What has been the result of these years of "change we can believe in"?

The policies pursued by the Obama Administration have only served to maintain the status quo. In terms of corporate hegemony, financial regulation, tax policy, foreign policy, the Obama Administration has been indistinguishable from any right-leaning Republican administration of past decades. It is here we can see the second, or what I would call true, meaning of "progressive" in my title. It's called the Progressive Corporate Agenda because it allows for the ongoing progress of the corporate takeover of our democracy. Shamefully, this progress of corporate power is being expedited by a party that itself holds onto power only by flattering the sex-and-gender thinking of liberal voters. On all other issues, in terms of the traditional goals of any truly left-wing platform--well, see for yourself. After six years of Obama in the White House, it's business as usual for Wall Street and the corporations and the 1%. And for the military and the NSA. In fact on some of these fronts it's business unusual--the drift is even further rightward than we've seen during any previous administration.

I too was largely taken in by Obama. I thought he would likely bring significant change--not a thorough remaking of society, but concrete change. I thought the idiocy and excesses of the Bush years, having triggered the 2008 meltdown, had shown Americans once and for all that trickle-down economics and deregulation don't work. But Obama has proven to be essentially a continuation of Bush. A few turns on health care, yes, a few turns in the culture wars, blah blah, but these things, really, do not a left party make.

If I could impose a twenty-year truce in the culture wars I'd do so immediately. Because it is the culture wars that have greased the wheels for the corporate coup that has ruined our democracy. And on the left, allowing these issues to occupy center stage with all the shit that's going down is dangerous, naive, ultimately self-destructive. That American liberals have chosen not simply to uphold LGBT rights (which was the right thing to do) but to push for same-sex marriage, a fundamental change to our culture's very definition of marriage--really, could one think of anything better for keeping the citizenry polarized? To me this move more than any other shows the subtle workings, the cunning, of the Progressive Corporate Agenda (PCA) in action. The American people are led to squabble about sex and marriage while the 1% continues to impoverish them, undermine their education, pass destructive new trade pacts, etc. When Obama came out for "marriage equality" I'm sure guys in board rooms across the country were slapping their knees in glee. And it wasn't because they'd soon be able to tie the knot with Steve or Abdul or Matt. Rather it was "Good job, Barry! That'll keep the rubes busy!" And by rubes here I don't just mean those red state rubes we all love and know--"Rube Classic"--but also the new and supremely rubish bunch that makes up most of our progressive so-called left.

In the past fifty years the American left has learned three or four neat new things. Good job. At the same time it has forgotten fifty essential old things.

This is part of the political impetus behind much of my recent writing and thinking on same-sex marriage. Though I've always been in solidarity with the struggle for LGBT rights, I'm disappointed no end to see the second-tier issue of "marriage equality" continuing to fire liberal passions. I'm despondent to see a youth culture that thinks this kind of thing is worthy of political center stage. Considering all that is going down! Gays and lesbians I can't blame for getting behind it (though some LGBT people have been against) but the heterosexual majority? Can't you people see how you're being systematically distracted and led by the nose here?

In short: The Progressive Corporate Agenda keeps you all so busy you don't notice it's really the Progressive Corporate Agenda.

The right has their Liberty, Patriotism, Christian Family Values. Which when their politicians take office simply means pushing the agenda of the 1%. And you on the left have your "progressive" issues. Which when your politicians take office simply means pushing the agenda of the 1%.

I began by writing here about one "progressive" online community, Daily Kos, but what I say obviously takes in a much wider slice of America than just that group of folks.

If they've nothing more to offer, Democratic candidates deserve to lose. Simple as that. Republican candidates don't deserve to win, but Democrats who continue to abet the corporate impoverishment of the American citizenry do not deserve our votes. If some third party or outside force is not mounted to shake up our current one-party circus, there is in effect no American left at all.

Eric Mader