I mentioned in my last post that I like talking to fellow passengers on trains. There’s a particular kind of intimacy in conversations with people you’ll never meet again. (I do always make sure I give them a get out if they don’t feel like talking!) In recent weeks, it so happens, I have had two long conversations with young Chinese people, one a young woman graduate with a background in mainland China (this was an extra-long chat because we were in a train that stood in the station for a whole hour waiting for a driver who never showed up, and eventually moved together to another train), the other a young male first-year student with a Hong Kong background. They were both very intelligent, thoughtful people and I liked them very much. Neither of them was a fan of the totalitarian government of the PRC, but both had the same criticism of Western society, as compared to Chinese society. It is too individualistic. Too soft.
The young woman spoke about the rights of individuals being elevated above duties and responsibilities to the family, the community and society. The young man raised the issue in the following interesting way:
‘There is something that troubles me about Western society, but I don’t like to criticise it because it’s basically a nice thing.’
He really was reluctant to even name the thing that bothered him, but, after he’d circled around it a bit, I put it to him that what he meant was that we were too preoccupied in our contemporary culture by people’s feelings and vulnerabilities. Yes, he said, that was roughly what he meant – and then he repeated that he wasn’t saying that being sensitive to people’s vulnerabilities was a bad thing —it obviously wasn’t— but that… he hesitated again and I suggested that, nice thing though it was, an overemphasis on vulnerabilities might place a society at a disadvantage when it came to competing in a tough world. What’s good for individuals in the short run, may not in the long run be best for their society’s long term survival – a certain toughness is necessary for that. He agreed that this was broadly his point.
I’ve heard, or sensed, a similar critique before from other people from developing countries and it connects with the point I made in a recent post about ours being an old society. And I guess I’ve heard it too from people politically on the right when they talk about ‘snowflakes’ and oversensitivity.
A further question is whether actually it is even in the interests of individuals themselves to make too much allowance for their sensitivities. For instance, a teacher wishing to avoid hurting the feelings of students might be overgenerous in praise and sparing in criticism, and award high marks for work that really wasn’t all that good, but would this actually be fair or helpful in the long run for the students themselves? Wouldn’t it actually help them more to give them an honest appraisal, or even a harsh one if their work is poor, even if it does upset them? At least that way they are given the opportunity to learn and grow on the basis of genuine feedback, and can prepare for a world which will want to know their real abilities and won’t, just to be nice, give them jobs they aren’t equipped for.
A long time ago, I wrote a short story called ‘Valour’ (not one of my best to be honest) which described an alien race that saw the world in threes rather than, as we tend to do, in binary opposites (good/bad, right/wrong, left/right etc). These beings had three sexes, their bodies were based on a three-way symmetry, and they had a three-way morality which did not simply involve good versus evil, but had two rival, but equally valid, alternatives to evil – gentleness and valour – meaning that valour, gentleness and evil were three separate poles. To defeat evil, valour and gentleness would need to form some kind of alliance in spite of their incompatibilities, but often valour allied with evil against gentleness, which created heartless, hyper-‘masculine’ militaristic societies, or gentleness allied with evil against valour, which created flabby, overindulgent societies that would ultimately decay and fall apart. The idea wasn’t fully developed, I must admit, but you get the idea.
