this was JUST SHARED by @XiranJayZhao lol! https://twitter.com/36transform/status/1338605158729596928 …
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Replying to @RiffChick @mssilverstein and
I mean it's a hot take but it's actually kind of literally true Confucius believed -- and Mencius elaborated on -- this idea that if you truly cultivate a virtuous understanding of your place in the world, society just works, automatically Everyone knows their job and does it
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Replying to @arthur_affect @RiffChick and
This phrase we talk about so much in modern SJW liberalism, "negotiating consent", was something Confucius didn't like In his taxonomy of different professions merchants who make their living "haggling over prices" were close to the lowest of the low
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Replying to @arthur_affect @RiffChick and
some interesting background here, arguing that local villages were effectively running on gift economies, and that traveling merchants charging market prices were in some sense "cheating" by those standardshttps://acoup.blog/2020/08/21/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-iv-markets-and-non-farmers/ …
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Replying to @perdricof @arthur_affect and
i.e. that the village was running on a sort of invisible credit. i have a good harvest this year and yours sucks, i don't take advantage of it--in fact, i give much of it away through feasts, dowries, blah blah blah--because who knows what the next harvest brings
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Replying to @perdricof @RiffChick and
Yes, exactly, and when you actually turn it into numbers that get written down and you make a conscious, public thing of demanding people keep track of whether they've settled up, you make the system worse and less stable Stuff that was once let slide becomes a festering debt
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Replying to @arthur_affect @perdricof and
I think we all kind of get this People talking about how they don't keep track of who paid for what among friends because that kills the friendship Rich friends quietly subsidizing poor friends to keep the peace without actually saying upfront that's what they're doing
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Replying to @arthur_affect @perdricof and
The transition from a "gift economy" to a "money economy" over time is like Jerry telling Kramer from now on he pays for everything that goes missing from the fridge after he visits, only on a society-wide scale Lots of bad feelings and broken relationships
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Replying to @arthur_affect @perdricof and
On the other hand, a lot of people actually are aware that they always chip in more than they get back even if they don't make a public show of it and eventually they get fed up
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Replying to @arthur_affect @perdricof and
It's funny that the PRC is now trying to vaguely reconcile traditional Confucian values with their nominally Communist past They were more honest in the Cultural Revolution days
2 replies 1 retweet 7 likes
The essence of a communist uprising -- "I've been putting more into this than I'm getting out and I'm sick of it and I'm collecting on my debts by force" -- is absolutely anti-Confucian On a foundational level It is a way to think that you get taught *by capitalism*
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Replying to @arthur_affect @perdricof and
Which is why the emergence of capitalism -- putting a dollar value on shit, keeping track of credits and debits on a piece of paper -- is a *good thing*, even as it seems to broaden and deepen the scale of oppression it leads to future liberation That's the fucking dialectic
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