While chatting on #Joiito I was reminded of a little geography lesson I had with my 8 year old cousin Frida. I asked her (in Norwegian), “What country is next to Norway and speaks a language very similar to our own?” She answered, “Bergen”
I couldn’t stop laughing…what a beautiful reply.
While I was back in the US, I went to see the “Last Samurai” and have been promising my family that I would share some of my thoughts on the movie here. There has been a flurry of mails going back and forth on the H-Japan discussion list about the movie so I had read quite a lot about the Tom Cruise Hollywood production before I went to see it…
Continue reading Last Samurai
Kenneth Waltz, one of the leading scholars on international relations theory, is very careful in his work. The same can not be said for those who apply his theories. A million things separate IR theory from the history I now study and especially recent “theory” used by historians but today I’m adding a quote to Muninn’s quote database which is quite revealing of the huge gap:
“In order to test a theory…Eliminate or control perturbing variables not included in the theory under test.” – Kenneth N. Waltz Theory of International Politics p. 13
It is this “control” and “elimination” of variables (especially culture) which lies at the center of controversy. It is also, of course, a major problem with every attempt to rationalize our social world and create human “sciences”.
In and of itself, the above quote doesn’t necessarily have to become an issue, you need to dig deeper into Waltz’s analysis of the relationship between theory and reality (which depends on a pragmatist rather than a traditional correspondence theory of truth) to really debate some of the more troubling consequences of his approach.
However, such a discussion is relatively benign compared to how IR realists write and argue about real world problems. Their frequent jump from “theories” of international affairs to direct assertions about this or that state, this or that leader, and even more frighteningly the jump from the interests of the state to “my” or “our” interests all disregard the more limited claims that form the foundations of Waltz’s neo-realism.
A new year has arrived, along with my plane back from two weeks in the US spent with family. I now back in my cottage on the outskirts of Tokyo. I wish everyone the best. There is lots of exciting uncertainty in this year and I can’t honestly say I know where in the world I’ll be a few months from now, and more importantly, from next fall.
I’m back in the US, spending a quiet Christmas with my family. Until my uncle Thomas, and my cousins Frida and Alex arrived, I spent much of my time the last few days in the Bartlesville, Oklahoma library where my sister works, making slow progress on translation and catching up on various journals that I subscribe to that pile up at my parents’ house. As a break, I sometimes pick up interesting looking books from the nearby shelf. My most interesting recent find is the bookThe ISI Guide 2004: Choosing the Right College: The Whole Truth About America’s Top Schools. I didn’t notice when I took the book off the shelf that the phrase “the Right” was a different color from the rest of the title, nor should I have, since the Intercollegiate Studies Institute is described as a “a nonprofit, nonpartisan educational organization”. The cover and back of the book also professed an objectivity that I would find growingly amusing as I flipped through the contents….
Continue reading Choosing the “Right College”
“Good riddance, the world is a better place without you,” says Bush about the recent capture of one of world’s tyrants, Saddam Hussein. There is indeed much cause for celebration. While I agree wholeheartedly with the US president’s statement, we should remind ourselves of a number of things:
1) My government has put into power, funded, and supported militarily far more tyrants than it has overthrown (including Saddam). Let us not, in our euphoria, believe for a second that we are a benevolent empire.
2) There are hundreds of cruel men holding power in infamous regimes all over the world. These include many of America’s regional allies and Saddam’s neighbors. It once included Saddam himself. As has been the case throughout history, we befriend evil men when it suits the interests of our empire and we destroy them and denounce their atrocities for the same. Whatever the motives of the individuals who fight and die for them, nations are not and never have been the agents of justice.
3) The security of the Middle East is better without Saddam than with it. However, it is not entirely clear if the security of the region is net increased by the new presence of a US client state. It may well be that the new configuration will be ultimately more destabilizing, but this depends on a number of as yet unresolved variables.
4) If we rejoice for the capture of Saddam, let us at least not fool ourselves into thinking that we have attained the US goals of the conflict (though a personal goal of the Bush family and the dreams of millions of others have been realized). We have not found WMDs and more importantly, we have almost singlehandedly self-fulfilled the prophesy of violent opposition on almost a civilizational level. We have literally fed the flames of terrorism. We might as well have been spraying oxygen instead of water.
I’m back in the US until the end of the month spending time with family.
I was sitting in the airport in Houston, Texas (at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport no less) yesterday and getting my first taste of American media in a long time via airpot CNN. On the debate program “Crossfire” a CNN correspondent describes how he drove across Iraq to get to Baghdad. On the way, his team stop for gas, where there are 4 miles of gas lines.
He describes how his group of American ex-special forces CNN mercenaries pull in front of the line of Iraqis waiting to get gas, commandeer the gas station and keep everyone else away as they fill up with gas and drive on to Baghdad.
The fiery democrat debater (I don’t know his name) asks the correspondent the exact question that was on my mind when I heard this: Isn’t this exactly the kind of behavior that is stirring anti-American sentiment in Iraq?
Yes, he answered, but as a Westerner in a dangerous country, there was no other option…
What right does a bunch of American reporters and armed mercenaries have to cut in front of miles of waiting Iraqis and, by force of arms, commandeer an Iraqi gas station?
The answer is not, I believe, that this was some blatant act meant as an insult to the Iraqi people or that anyone there necessarily believed they were more important than anyone else in line.
It is the law of the jungle. In the absence of security provided by a state with a monopoly on organized violence, all parties, including but especially prone foreigners who are most likely to be targeted for attack, will act in such a way to protect themselves and achieve their goals.
However, let there be no illusion that the United States of America gives a damn about the Iraqi people, their rights, or their future. Also, let there be no surprise as to why we are despised by the people of Iraq as self-serving hypocrites.
You know…after close to 27 years on this hunk of space debris, I realized that I haven’t a clue what culture is. Note to self: Figure out what culture is.
What prompted this was a simple question? I was translating a debate from a Japan/Korea joint conference on religious education as a part time job. I came across the phrase, “…not only do we fall short in the study of other cultures but we are also severely lacking in the study of our own.”
What does it mean to study your culture? How can it be mine if it is unknown to me? In what sense are traditions, rituals, and prescriptive norms a part of “my” culture if I don’t even know about them, much less follow them…
A Taipei Times article mentions the results of a new survey which includes a question about Taiwanese identity:
“…given the choice of identifying themselves as Taiwanese, Chinese or both Taiwanese and Chinese, the proportion of people identifying themselves as Taiwanese had risen from 37 percent in late October to 50 percent.
Those who considered themselves both Taiwanese and Chinese had dropped from 48 percent in late October to 38 percent.
The poll did not, however, show the figures for people identifying themselves as Chinese.”
I suspect this trend will only continue.
Just went to the hospital. No no, nothing life threatening, but that’s where you go when you get sick here. I have had a breathing problem of late and went to have it looked at. I went once before to the Adventist hospital in Ogikubo, which is the biggest hospital in my area, but the sign on the entrance said they only accepted walk-ins from 8:30 to 10:30 in the morning, which is a pretty bad window for me.
I went back today just before 8:30 and was really impressed with the whole experience. I was told to sit down along with three rows of other patients in a little TV salon. A hospital employee came to welcome us promptly at 8:30, announced the opening of services and explained the procedures like we were about to start a ride on a roller coaster. Well, we were…sort of. By 10:10 they had supplied me with my own new patient card; sent me to a nurse for the measurement of height, weight, and blood pressure; sent me to a doctor who discussed my problem with me; sent me to their X-ray division for a chest X-ray; sent me to their “heart” section for an EKG, and their “general inspection” area for a blood test. Everyone was incredibly friendly and simply took my patient card, and one of the pieces of paper that the doctor had handed to me, performed their section’s task and sent me packing to the next stop. Most of my time was not spent waiting for anything, but in getting from one section of the hospital to another. From the time the doctors started working at 9, it took just over a single hour to go through everything, including the half hour that the doctor spent with me. Since I am on the $25 per month national Japanese insurance plan my hospital visit and all of these tests cost about $110.