Obel

That European award committee "that matters" announced Big O is getting the big P about 5 minutes ago. It's safe to say this took people by surprise. It's also hard to see this as anything other than a giant big fuck you to W. I mean Al Gore was clearly well-qualified and he had to share his award. It could also be a prayer or an appeal to keep the drive for multilateralism alive. It's probably both. But still, guys, you couldn't wait a year or two, or 4 or 8 or 12? It's one thing to care and change your posture on all these things when you start, but what about after a while. Will he still want to a chair a committee when he's 64? Did they really just give him an award for being the first sitting president to say we weren't going to go it alone as a policy? Are they just giving the american's an award for not disappointing them again (and because they won't give any Americas else the Obel for Lit anytime soon)?

I tend to think the silliness and randomness of their award-giving (no offense Herta, I love your work) is symptomatic of and furthering the slide toward strangeness and irrelevance. One day someone with balls is going to stand up and just kick those people out or set up a group to replace them. People get old and stodgy, so I'll be the nobel committee will be like this for another 50 years. Then again, we did all of a sudden get a black president, so anything's possible.

美國不是我們的家 - 野火集 龍應台

This more appropriately belongs in Hard Drafts, but whatever yo. Parts 2 and 3 shortly, I'm lazy.

America isn't our home
Wildfire
Long Yingtai

Part 1

I received lots of letters in the mail. An older reader wrote, “Every time I read one of your essays my heart starts racing and it won’t stop. My tears start falling and they won’t let up.” A college student wrote, “Before we all end up apathetic, please tell us what we can do for Taiwan, our so-called ‘motherland’?” An high school student had this to say, “Anything we do won’t make a difference anyway. After I graduate I’m just going to leave for America.”

That young people are angry and pissed and older people are sad and in tears certainly isn’t due to the quality of my essays. For people who care to notice, this outpouring of emotion reveals two things. One, the seriousness of the situation facing us today. The pathetic nature of the environment we live in isn’t something only the servants of the upper class are complaining about, they’ve become a problem for everyone. Two, is the feeling of powerlessness individuals have. If this society had any useful ways of allowing people to express their opinions and see their demands met, things wouldn’t have reached the explosive level they are at now. They wouldn’t be looking to a trivial bunch of essays to express their anger.

The second issue is much more serious than the first. No matter how much the environment deteriorates or how complex are problems become, if people take the appropriate actions and believe they can make a difference, they will continue to forge ahead successfully. If on the other hand, our problems aren’t that serious but people believe they have no ability to change things, their frustration will just build up inside them waiting to explode.

Six months ago a young girl who loved reading went over and killed her neighbor because she was always reading loudly and disturbing her. There’s obviously no excuse for violence, but let’s look at the causes here. If all this girl had to do was call the police and they would come and tell the girl to stop, couldn’t we have prevented this murder? Even if she called over and over begging the police to stop her and they didn’t do anything, and she went and pleaded with the other women to stop reading over and over to no avail, couldn’t she just have moved? But seriously, where in Taipei can you find any guarantee of peace and quiet? With the annoyance day after day and night after night and no reasonable chance to change things, what was she supposed to do?

After Socrates was condemned to death he decided against breaking out of prison. He said, “When I’m faced with a system I’m not happy with I have two choices: I can either leave the country or I can try to improve it by taking the appropriate legal actions. I have no right to destroy the entire system just to fight against it.”