China culls low taste TV

26 Jan 2012    

News: China culls "low taste" TV shows (WSJ)

Western Journalists constantly accuse the Chinese of managing cultural forces to maintain their grip on power. They say CCP censorship is a purely partisan self-interest issue which points in the opposite direction of justice, and therefore the Chinese leaders are unenlightened individuals. Furthermore, Western journalists say the Chinese leaders are fully aware of this violation of justice, so they are therefore what we philosophers calls sinners shamelessly committing evil. In the West, like women, we say everyone is born in sin and lives in sin and can only be redeemed by a good man, so an accusation of corruption rolls like water off a ducks back; in East, however, the men take objective truth seriously, so an accusation of shameless corruption is extremely serious and liable to create great animosity - which indeed it has.

As far as I am aware, no maverick in the Western press has ever boldly dared to make a splash by saying perhaps the Chinese are right to worry about cultural forces, perhaps justice is not always freedom, perhaps the Chinese leaders aren't really sinners and are in fact doing the right thing, perhaps we even need to follow their example, and our denial of that fact has to do with partisan self interest rather than incompatible visions of justice, making Western critics not Chinese politicians the real sinners. I am sure many Western journalists are itching to do so, they saw how well the Tiger Mother story sold, yet the poor wise men and women who write the news are forced to toe the line by their despotic bosses who care only about sales not righteousness. So the Western press takes a relentlessly negative line on censorship and stifles all debate, even clamping down on file sharing is written up as a catastrophe for human rights. The only thing the Western press allow anyone to censor is child pornography, this single issue is somehow judged dangerous to society even though all others are not. So the Two Great Commandments of modern Western Journalism run: (1) Child Pornography is forbidden (2) Everything else is acceptable, at least after 9pm.

In fact the Chinese President said two things: (a) cultural forces must be managed (b) countries needs to keep cultural forces in tune with the national psyche. He is, of course, absolutely right. A point I often make on this web site is that the West and East have very different thought processes and what is good for China is not necessarily good for the West and visa versa. The most spectacular example of this is Japan which has lost it's self control by adopting American culture. Imagine the effect Samurai culture (idealism by looking down detaching from the many human pleasure's of combat - creating self control) would have on a Puritan (idealism by looking up attaching to the divine pleasure's of combat- creating strength), and you see how dangerous cultural forces are. I am guessing, but I imagine the Puritan would probably simulate the Samurai's detachment by attaching to the feeling of inflicting pain, yet with less conviction, so creating violence combined with short term attention deficit. At the same time the looking down switch from looking up might make the Puritan extremely surface orientated. Because the Puritan would be rebuilding his psyche from scratch he would come across as a child to the Japanese. All in all it might produce a childish muddled up violent fractured attention deficit disorder which seeks to inflict pain on others in order to solve surface problems.

Although Western Journalists are undoubtedly very brilliant people, they need to understand that the Chinese are also famous for their wisdom and have a very professional setup. Can you imagine what it's like being part of an intellectual collective that never appears in public and leaves all the boring stuff to others? Such a man could really think carefully about the long term future in a way politicians in the West can't even dream of doing. So Western journalists should try to think carefully about some of their ideas, rather than attacking them instinctively whenever they hear them. Remember that whilst Anglea Merkel has half a plan, Obama and Cameron are just drifting, so the fate of the Anglo-Saxons now depends on the bright and brilliant journalists who have somehow been handed the tiller.

Plato talks about two big factors that destabilize cultural forces and weaken the mind of citizens - foreign influence (eg multiculturalism) and populism (eg capitalism). In the old days Western Kings instinctively preserved cultural integrity by censoring things he personally found distasteful. Remember Fredrick The Great: no erotic flowery Italian Opera in Germany. That's important because the German's take their strength from Heavenly Aphrodite and Earthly Aphrodite is a danger to them. Think about Faust, Sado-masochistic Kaiser Wilhelm II, Freud, German Cabaret, War.

The idealists of the past were not fools, we are the fools! Post modernism is a disaster, we have gone mad, we have forgotten everything about what statesmanship means. In the West 25% of internet searches are pornographic, most of the media is pure trash, Hollywood is hypnotic poison. Look at the number of close ups in a 2011 film compared to a 1980s film, we are turning ourselves into automatons. Who the hell is going to start a debate in the West about liberal cultural forces? How bad does the world have to get before the elite wake up? I know all you liberal atheists hate the idea of the government shaping society, but I know that more than anything else you are cowards afraid of death. Well you ignorance is killing you, you are creating a zombie plague that will end like Dawn Of The Dead. Only fear of death and calamity can wake you up!