Tell it to Steven Hawking. A person's physical stature does not limit his/her potential for work that does not rely on his/her physical stature (e.g., English teaching, as well as physics). The cultural attitude that those who are discriminated against because they do not fit the culturally desired norm should be outcast or should be provided for by special environments that can be sold as entertainment venues to those who will not deal with their own prejudices is a cultural attitude that perpetuates discrimination against all who are 'different'. The problem here, as elsewhere, is a matter of dehumanizing those who are 'different' - prejudicial culture that regiments anything that deviates from its standards, rather than dealing with the prejudice itself. Why not have a theme park within which 'foreigners', with all their funny habits, can be kept, so that they do not disturb the 'normality' of cultural prejudices? Actually, there could be many: one for 'black people', one for Tibetans, one for Japanese, one for gay people, one for Han Chinese people who have given up their 'traditional' clothing for 'western-style' clothing (e.g., the great majority of Chinese, over the past century or so) - in fact we could subdivide and subdivide until nothing was left but mutual nonrecognition. All these would help to maintain the narrow identities of 'normality' that can be relied upon to advance support the cultural attitudes that promote the continuing inability of people to recognize each other as human, and to celebrate and accept their differences - not as entertainment items, no matter how 'cute', but as full human beings. How different is all this from apartheid?
This effort to maintain prejudice can, of course, be profitable to those who invest in it, and convenient for social engineers and political elites who want to maintain an elite power status by reliance on it.
The place is an insult to our common humanity and a spotlight on cultural attitudes of exclusion. Those who find that they enjoy such displays should take a good look at the nature of the culture that has formed them so narrowly. Cultures change; cultures have always changed; cultures are presently changing and will continue to do so; there is nothing sacred about cultural attitudes. Our common humanity is an ongoing project, and those who imagine they are not part of such a project are simply contributing their own blindness to it, and limiting themselves in the process. It's not the 'dwarves' who are the problem, its the people who will not accept them as within the boundaries of 'us'.
Rural Yunnan township takes flak for alcohol ban
Posted bySuggest the drinking is related to difficulties of adaptations to, and even of any clear understanding of, rapid socio-cultural change coming from the outside and the denigration of local culture involved, both in objective terms - insecure sense of identities, commoditization, new irrelevance of traditional cultural understandings, etc. Doesn't exactly strike me as mysterious. Religion, including 'new' religion, can play a part in this, either aggressively or defensively, but usually a bit ambiguously, a bit of both.
1920s China through the lens of Joseph Rock: Simao
Posted byI think Rock is buried in Hawaii.
Editorial: Hydro expansion will fail without energy market reform
Posted byPlenty of articles about problems caused by hydropower. 'Cleaner', well, maybe, but clearly not good enough in the long run, which is going to require further development of solar, geothermal, wind, etc. It's going to be expensive in terms of money, but that's where the money has to be put in. In the meantime, maybe you've got a point, but the meantime isn't going to last all that long, and it's probably not a good idea to move too many people around, silt up dams, ruin fisheries, risk dam collapses in earthquake-prone areas and all the rest...no, I don't know a lot about this stuff, and burning fossil fuels, including natural gas, is obviously lousy, and nuclear power is really good and clean and safe until it isn't (Japan, not long ago)...okay, I'm no expert.
Editorial: Hydro expansion will fail without energy market reform
Posted byThen again, Chinese, as well as Lao and Thai, hydroelectric potential seems to be screwing up the Mekong for many in Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and the Mekong Delta in Viet Nam.
Editorial: Hydro expansion will fail without energy market reform
Posted by@ michael: Got your point. Southeast Asian countries are closer, but then Viet Nam, Laos, Myanmar have plenty of hydroelectric power generation potential of their own, although some of them (Laos, for instance, which can and to some extent does provide power to Thailand) probably don't have the cash to develop it. Rather doubt that Viet Nam, for one, would want to become dependent on Chinese power generation.