Well I'm sorry Lunchtime Lush, but on that score you are dead wrong. Communism (Mao) was an utter disaster for China. Having been there and seeing the poverty during its dying communist days, dead bodies floating down the Yangtze river, a suicide too on our boat...........................Originally Posted by Lunchtime O'Booze
Although it's interesting. I breakfast most days at a little cafe that is run by a Chinese immigrant family from Shanghai. The owner and I often have quite long discussions about well everything really, usually philosophical in nature. He often talks about life in China during communism when he was a young man, the simplicity of it all, people being more or less equal, everything the same. Life was simple, people were happy, even though they were not rich. He looks back on those days with quite a degree of nostalgia missing his life more simple, and for him at least, a simple happiness. Now there's the bills to pay, the cafe to run, long hours, seven days a week sometimes. A son to put through college. Life is more complicated, more demanding, harder, and he's not getting any younger. Happiness is very important to him, but his hard earnt wealth has not brought him happiness, and I think he is genuinely puzzled about that.
But I don't see this as an issue of puzzlement, or economics. It's an issue of awareness. Living back in communist China was like living as a child lives. There was no awareness, the State provided everything, just like Mum and Dad provides the world for their child to live in. And it's difficult to long for something you don't know even exists. So in this simple world, ignorance is truly bliss. But we are not children, and living life as a child is no way to live. It's NOT living. And I have often asked my friend, if all Chinese thought the same as you, how come China changed? If everybody was so happy living in the workers paradise of life as a child, there would be no need or desire to change. But clearly that is not the case. I guess for every happy Chinese like my friend, there was another who was unhappy, who wanted to leave home, grow up and become all they could be, or at least have a go at it. They want opportunities and choices, and the rewards that go with taking a chance and success. They want to grow and create and to be somebody. They want to live.
You see my friend wants to impose a system of government on all people because it makes him feel comforted to live that way. It's easy, its safe and its predictable. But many do not want to live like that, because it simply fails to satisfy them. So why should my friend get ti impose his will on others because it makes him feel better about himself? If that were to happen, they well be no great art, literature, science, engineering. There won't be any great plays to go and see or any great books to read, because children don't need that kind of stuff.
To me it all comes down to what is the best system to live under that allows as many people as possible the freedom to really live as they wish. Communism by its very nature produces a suffocating mediocrity and little chance to escape from it. At least under our system my friend can choose how to live, and if he really wants to return to a more simple life for happiness, then he can choose that too. But choice by definiation implies awareness.
Reply With Quote
