Check this out!

Either Google is ingenious or really stupid, we're about to find out. Check out this article. There are some great things about living in China.

Hunger

I’m pretty hungry right now, so maybe that’s why I’m thinking about this topic.  I ate from snack street on my way to Chinese class but apparently I didn’t get enough food.  Then I got back to my apartment (which I don’t have to pay for) and got on my laptop (which I often complain about) to read the New York Times and read about how an estimated 22 more children will die per hour this year, due to the ‘global financial crisis.’

Suppose I hadn’t eaten any dinner tonight, and you were sitting next to me with a steak, mashed potatoes, bread, and salad.  You would never finish all the food on your plate there is so much.  If the only way I was going to get anything to eat for dinner is if you shared, would you?  I like to assume the best in most people so I tend to think most of you would share.

These are some old statistics but I think they’re pretty relevant today, regardless of the exact number.

400 million people lack the calories, protein, vitamins and minerals needed to sustain their bodies and minds in a healthy state.  Millions are constantly hungry; others suffer from deficiency diseases and from infections they would be able to resist on a better diet.  14 million children under five die every year from the combined effects of malnutrition and infection.  As many as 1.2 billion people—or 23 percent of the world’s population—live in absolute poverty struggling to survive.  This means they do not have sufficient income to meet the most basic biological needs for food, clothing, and shelter.  Absolute poverty is probably the principal cause of human misery today.  The problem is not that the world cannot produce enough to feed and shelter its people.  People in the poor countries consume, on average, 180 kilos of grain a year, while North Americans average around 900 kilos.  The problem is distribution.  There is another picture to look at.  The opposite of absolute poverty is Absolute Affluence.  Absolute Affluence is defined by people who have more income than they need to provide themselves adequately with all the basic necessities of life.  After buying food, shelter, clothing, health services, and education, they still have money to spend on luxuries.  Instead of choosing food to stop hunger, we choose food based on what tastes good.  Instead of buying clothes to keep warm, we buy them to look good.  We buy houses to be in a better neighborhood or to have a playroom, not to keep out the rain.  After all of this there is still money to spend on a stereo system, video-camera, and vacation.  By this standard the majority of citizens in Western Europe, North American, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and the Middle Eastern states are all absolutely affluent.  There are therefore, the people who could, without threatening their own basic welfare, transfer wealth to the absolutely poor.  Americans give .15 per cent of the Gross National Product to poor nations, while spending 5.5 per cent on alcohol.

To give you an example from a philosophy book I had in college:

The path from the library at my university to the humanities lecture theatre passes a shallow ornamental pond.  Suppose that on my way to give a lecture I notice that a small child has fallen in and is in danger of drowning.  Would anyone deny that I ought to wade in and pull the child out?  This will mean getting my clothes muddy and either cancelling my lecture or delaying it until I can find something dry to change into; but compared with the avoidable death of a child this is insignificant.  It seems uncontroversial that if it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance, we ought to do it.

Would anyone disagree with this?  I agree completely and yet I do not live as if I believe that.  If I take this seriously and act upon it my life would look completely different.  I probably will not see a child drowning in a pond but every day I can assist someone living in poverty.  I know that it is a bad thing, and it is within my power to help at least one person if not more without sacrificing anything of comparable significance.  I have an obligation to help, an obligation just as strong as the obligation to rescue a drowning child from a pond.  Not to help would be wrong.  Helping is not a charitable act that is praiseworthy to do, but it is something that everyone ought to do.

I am bringing this to your attention because I struggle with it.  I find myself buying a cup of Starbucks coffee when I could EASILY go downtown, find someone who would not eat dinner that night, and spend that 3 bucks buying them food.  Everything I own is just kindling for the end of the world barbecue anyway, so why am I trying so hard to hold onto it?  I’m bringing this to your attention so that you will hold me accountable.  What do we really NEED?  Not very much.  I’m not pointing the finger at anyone but myself.  The Bible talks about money more than almost any other subject and I think there is a reason for that.  I think Jesus meant what when he said in Matthew 19.  How can I get rid of this poison in my mind that thinks I need so many things I do not actually need?

Darfur

I don't really know what good it does for me to post this article, or for you to read it but I feel like at the very least we can care. Obviously something bigger needs to happen but we can start by hitting our knees. We can ask that brutality and hatred will someday become a thing of the past. Care to join me?

"The worst sin towards people is not to hate them, but to be indifferent toward them. Contrary to popular opinion, the opposite of love is not hate, the opposite of love is apathy."

-George Bernard Shaw

Dostoevsky

On a scale of zero to paradise, browsing a bookstore is even with a hot fudge sundae by a swimming pool. I get ridiculously excited every time I see a bookstore in China, and then realize that they probably have nothing I can read, and if they do it's usually some dumbed-down version that loses the beauty of the language.

If you're in a big enough city, though, you just might strike gold. To my sheer delight we found a bookstore in Hangzhou with real English books in them. When someone whose opinion I highly respect recommends a book to me, I'll definitely read it. So when we found The Brothers Karamazov for only 20 kuai I decided it was a good chance to add to my collection. You can't get a book for less than a penny a page very often.

I was really grateful I had it on our two overnight trains home. It's not what you'd call a light read, so it took me a little while to finish, and will definitely be one I read again. It's hard to keep track of all the characters at first, they seem to change so often. Probably the next time I read it I'll pick up on some things I missed the first time around. Although the story is rather dark, I really appreciated the psychological and philosophical nature of the book. It is expertly written and traslated. The book contains gems of insight into human nature. I think Dostoevsky over-emphasized some of the qualities of his characters (i.e. Alexei was rather perfect while Dmitri hardly had any redeeming qualities), but all in all he managed to capture several elements of human nature quite well.

I got the impression Dostoevsky viewed himself in each of the different characters, at different stages of his life. That could be just my own flawed opinion though. If you want to read a great novel that weaves discussions of the meaning of life and elements of humanity into the story, I highly recommend this book. It's not a mindless feel-good story though, so be prepared.

Awesomely, when I got back from Nanjing I called my sister and she mentioned she had just started reading Crime and Punishment, another masterpiece of Dostoevsky's. Neither of us have ever read one of his works before. I guess twins really do have some kind of mind connection :) I still can't feel it if you punch her though...

Favorite quote:
"For the mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for. Without a concrete idea of what he is living for, man would refuse to live, would rather exterminate himself than remain on this earth..."

Bucket list and the tangents from there.

I asked my students to name five things they want to do before they die, not just because I get sadistic joy out of making them write in English, but also because I think it is vital to a person to have goals/dreams/passions. I want to teach them so much more than the English language. A person should not merely survive, but they should live. And with purpose. So I have lofty goals for the two hours a week in which I hold young minds riveted on my words. I dream of changing lives in that short time.

As I gave them the assignment I forced myself to write a list as well, so that I would hold myself to the same standard to which I held my pupils. Their answers were hilarious and nonsensical and unfortunately I think they missed the point entirely; but one of the things on my list is that I want to write a book, which I am quite sure no one but my sister will ever read. Just like this blog. Regardless of who will read it, I feel the need to write one. (Please note that I did not say "irregardless" which is NOT a word.)

Living in China provides me with almost unlimited material for a book, much more so than my boring life in the U.S. So with my mom's urging I have embarked on the difficult task of capturing my thoughts and making them intelligible to others. One of the many subjects I'd like to broach is just how much I have changed and learned during the short five months I've lived in another world. It's hard to even realize, much less explain to others, the many things that have made me different and more aware.

One of the seemingly obvious yet fundamentally important revelations has been the value of friendships. Possibly the subject has special significance for me because I've always had a best friend with me, everywhere I went and everything I did. Having a twin gives you a life-long frienship. When we decided to live on different continents, we were aware that it was going to be the hardest thing we'd ever done. So what other people do their whole lives, I did for the first time. I was alone.

All of the English-speakers I have for friends now, I met upon coming to China. (Even Zack and Elizabeth, though I knew who they were before we came, our friendship began on the plane.) I have wonderful friends who don't speak very much English, and we get along great. But there's an indefinable relaxation that comes from being able to speak the same language as someone, that boosts your friendship beyond the normal. So I said all of that in preparation for this statement:

I am deeply gateful for my friends.

Troubles

Even though the wind may blow
Troubles toss you to and fro
Get on your knees and give it time
There the answers you will find

He's gonna let you know

Acid

If you don't read Nicholas Kristof's articles in the New York Times, you should start. His latest is about a terrible form of violence against women in Pakistan.

For the last two years, Senators Joe Biden and Richard Lugar have co-sponsored an International Violence Against Women Act, which would adopt a range of measures to spotlight such brutality and nudge foreign governments to pay heed to it. Let’s hope that with Mr. Biden’s new influence the bill will pass in the next Congress.

That might help end the silence and culture of impunity surrounding this kind of terrorism.