I think part of the problem is that they are so isolated that it is difficult for them to even create a common cultural understanding. It’s like the difficulty of Americans understanding of a respect culture, in that you show respect for your elders even if you do not agree with them simply for the fact that they may know something you don’t for having lived a long time.
Mind, respect culture developed outside of capitalism, where living a long time was not a given. It also goes against much of the youth fetishization of the U.S. but therein lies the hypocrisy of the American culture, is that it is a culture of youthfulness created by old men for the purposes of keeping you naive and exploitable, not a culture of respect that derives from a level of respect you are supposed to have for yourself.
My point is that that only China has been able to successfully do it, by mimicking and exceeding western standards of success. Other socialist countries likely don’t understand it, or if they do, they believe our definitions of success to be silly and short-sighted.
It’s like anarchists decrying the DPRK’s military parades, which, while understandable, misses that it takes a massive collective effort and culmination of years of practice and setup to pull off something of that. It takes more than the threat of violence to pull that off, it requires massive amounts passion, expertise and belief. Which we know now definitely because we’ve seen what the U.S. does to try to replicate even a fraction of the theatre.
I think part of the problem is that they are so isolated that it is difficult for them to even create a common cultural understanding. It’s like the difficulty of Americans understanding of a respect culture, in that you show respect for your elders even if you do not agree with them simply for the fact that they may know something you don’t for having lived a long time.
Mind, respect culture developed outside of capitalism, where living a long time was not a given. It also goes against much of the youth fetishization of the U.S. but therein lies the hypocrisy of the American culture, is that it is a culture of youthfulness created by old men for the purposes of keeping you naive and exploitable, not a culture of respect that derives from a level of respect you are supposed to have for yourself.
My point is that that only China has been able to successfully do it, by mimicking and exceeding western standards of success. Other socialist countries likely don’t understand it, or if they do, they believe our definitions of success to be silly and short-sighted.
It’s like anarchists decrying the DPRK’s military parades, which, while understandable, misses that it takes a massive collective effort and culmination of years of practice and setup to pull off something of that. It takes more than the threat of violence to pull that off, it requires massive amounts passion, expertise and belief. Which we know now definitely because we’ve seen what the U.S. does to try to replicate even a fraction of the theatre.