Crying in the Party

As many Hong Kong people know, this is a Cantonese song sung by Eason Chan. It tells a story about a young man bursting into tears after swigging a few glasses of alcoholic drinks. The joyful party music was then brought to a halt and his friends came around him. The story ends with the consoling thought (or the thought consoling to the lyric writer himself) that when all young tears run dry (!) you will find yourself a mature person missing the old days. Physiologically speaking, however, tears are secretions that can be repeatedly produced through lacrimation as long as you are not dead.

Understandably, "young tears" may be different. I have heard from many people that they sometimes felt extremely lonely when in the loud laughing crowd, but would not cry in the public after a certain age. Deep loneliness cannot be dissolved easily by talks about the bright side of life or the eternality of anything. Loud laughs in the party are but flavourless background music when your mind plunged deeply into loneliness.

Fortunately, there are some people who often laugh from the bottom of their hearts, without a gleam of melancholy. Perhaps that may be a stage that will pass eventually. Yet they deserve to be envied by any “mature person.”

Ah, Hong Kong People Hate Chinese Mainlanders...?

BBC Radio Oxford has also reported the news that a full-page advertisement was published on a Hong Kong newspaper complaining about Chinese mainland “locusts” swarming into the territory. Perhaps many British people believe that a large part of us, Hong Kong people, hate Chinese mainlanders, and they feel proud of their colonial rule.

In Hong Kong, there have been two sorts of responses to that advertisement: that it is always wrong to discriminate against the mainlanders; and very differently, that we can make use of the discrimination to resist the Chinese Communist Party. The latter suggestion is a chimera; at least it is so at the present stage of Hong Kong politics. How about the wrongness of discrimination?

Discrimination causes two kinds of harm: harm to others and harm to self. Obviously, it can harm others, for in most cases discrimination is motivated by malicious stereotypes, which are seriously disrespectful to the victims, and these stereotypes may lead to the outcomes that are much more violent than disrespectful attitudes. A friend of mine has explained that nicely: “A stereotype needs not function as a valid and sound accusation against a group of people to be dangerous; all it needs to do is implant a certain image in people's minds, which is inevitably and subconsciously invoked when we interact with that particular group of people.” This kind of implanted image, being the product of oversimplification, can be very effective in motivating actions (consider the Holocaust and Nanjing Massacre).

What, then, is the self-harm of discrimination? Very often, we discriminate against others because of ignorance and arrogance on our part, but ironically, we are inclined to give moral reasons (the superficial ones, of course) for why we discriminate against others. In such a way, we are being inconsistent and morally ugly: the inconsistency needs no further explanation, and moral ugliness is nevertheless ugliness whether we love to scorn at morality or not. These can count as self-harm. There is another kind of self-harm, a more tangible one. Stereotypes, as said, are products of oversimplification; interestingly, they in turn encourage further acts of oversimplification. In our case, some Hong Kong people’s stereotyping of mainlanders must have made themselves even more ignorant about their countrymen through oversimplification, and oversimplification, in this wonderful self-sustaining cycle, encourages more arrogance and laziness of thinking, both of which are fantastic cheerleaders for discrimination. (First draft on 10th February)

Laissez-faire and a Misunderstanding

It has been said again and again that Hong Kong’s success story owes to laissez-faire. Many laissez-faire supporters think that the value of money is objective, but most other things are valuable only for those who consider them important. In the same vein, environmental protection, heritage conservation, and art promotion are considered by many to be valuable only for those who love them, although these things, they think, may be valuable for everyone in terms of the money they may produce.

Having laissez-faire internalized throughout their lives, many successful businessmen in Hong Kong understand social development in the following way: “Talk less about historical value and conservation value as we always disagree about them; let’s think about economic growth since everyone needs it!” Here, “we” and “everyone” are being used, and these words (and the like) are frequently used in defence of laissez-faire. This shows that many defendants of laissez-faire believe their view to be sound as it is justifiable to every person (would they love Scanlon’s contractualism as soon as they read it?). We should then clear up a common misunderstanding, which is also a common self-misunderstanding — many laissez-faire supporters, actually, do not brush aside morality; at least, they cannot afford to do so in front of journalists. (First draft: January 9)

Self-honesty

Over the past few years, I have come to believe that there are two things that are of great importance for anyone who is honest to himself and wants to think better and better. Let me discuss the two things.

First, be prepared to give up what we believe. Every day, we (including me) spend a lot of time to think and speak in a way that shows euphoria of our self-image; this is not necessarily bad. But modesty is far more important than euphoria in many cases, especially when euphoria disallows us to think straight. As a philosophy student, I prefer to put my point in the following way: If you’re not prepared to end up becoming a philosophical anarchist, you can’t think very well.

Second, reflect constantly upon the way we are being critical, indignant, disappointed, euphoric, nonchalant, and so on. For example, we ask ourselves: why am I criticizing things in this way? Why was I angry in that way? Why did I seek people’s attention in that way? Sometimes—just sometimes, our answers are these: mostly because I envied; since I was too confident about my view; since I am not confident enough; because I am too lonely; etc. Reflection of this kind can be very useful, and should be done with a great deal of honesty. Honesty, however, does not require us to belittle ourselves either in the process of self-examination or after it. (First draft: January 13)

Worries and Happiness

A very good friend of mine kindly gave me some advice, since he was afraid that I might suffer from the melancholic feelings of “being unable to take a high post, but unwilling to take a lower one” (my translation of the Chinese saying “高不成、低不就”). His worries are very sensible, as I sometimes appeared to be cynical when discussing things about human life and philosophy — I spoke in a strong tone, and I showed my disagreement in one way or another when I disagreed with him or with others. In response, I said to him that I might sometimes suffer from those melancholic feelings, but on closer introspection later, I could not remember when I suffered from them, although my character has many other weaknesses that I would be abashed to discuss here.

I do have other worries, one of which is about my father: I fear that he would become long-term sick or even terminally ill, for if that happened he would probably be very pessimistic, and I would not be able to afford the medical expenses. As he is getting older and older and I was not able to purchase medical insurance for him, that worry has become a spectre in my mind. Other worries are much less disturbing; after all, I have learnt from some difficult years of my childhood not to worry too much about my future (though I should think a lot about it). My happiness, I think, is mainly based on these things: human relationships, aesthetic experiences, freedom and leisure, the pursuit of knowledge, and some simple satisfaction of desires. Money and fame may not bring happiness — for me, this cannot be just losers’ logic. Yet because of boredom and vanity, that has been treated by most of us to be a mere commonplace. (First draft: December 27)