"They Were Laughing As They Fired"

Today's front page of the Taipei Times is given over to yesterday afternoon's earthquake. Had that quake not occurred, I wonder whether the managing editor would have been tempted to run this story as the front-page item; it would have easily provoked the persecuted nation-statism which animates the green politicists just as it animated the foreign policy responses of the current KMT government.

Still, "they were laughing as they fired" is something which would rouse anger in anyone, of any nationality. I wonder whether the four Taiwanese men, who reportedly beat a Flipino to within an inch of his life down here in Tainan, laughed as they swung their baseball bats? The apparent fact that this story has only been covered once in the Taiwanese newspapers with no follow-up report as to the man's condition and hospital treatment is something of a curiosity is it not?

Well...

Frustrated nation-statism, patted on the back by hapless, western democracy-do-gooders, is of greater consequence than the mere double-standards it imprints on the pages of Taiwanese newspapers. It re-animates the collectivist urge to diminish individual human beings to hive specimens... 

"First, may I know your social status? What's your job?" *

A comment on that story in response to a Flipino. Whatever the Filipino has said, whatever the content of his thoughts may have been, for which he alone can be held accountable as an individual - all of this is explicitly and summarily dismissed by the demand "First" for hive-identification. That is the only criteria on which his comments will be responded to, not on the value of their implications to a discussion between adult individuals. And as an individual, the Filipino is instantly dismissed. Further in the comment, we are told why...

"Remember, each citizen's words and behaviors represent his or her country. Even more so if you are a professor or a high-ranking civil servant."*

Exactly as I have said: hive-identification. Whatever you say "represents" your country (think North Korean athletes), and this is even more so if you enjoy the luxury of even a remote connection to political power such as a professor or civil-servant. But what is more noteworthy in this sentence is its' first word: "Remember". Where is this sermon supposed to be remembered from? A previous discussion or agreement? Or old memories from the state education system?

A brief anecdote: last night I bought a couple of beers from a "Family Mart" convenience store up the road, rather than the 7-11 near to my house (I was after the Asahi "dry black" kind), and so the clerk had never seen me before. I happened to be both tired and wrapped up in my own thoughts at the time, so my face probably had something of a morose appearance even though I held no animosity to the clerk whatsoever. After he had given me my change he asked me a question in Chinese, which was the common question "what nationality are you"? I answered without thinking about it, but later I imagined him telling his friends that "English people" are unfriendly on account of seeing one such English person looking a bit morose whilst buying a couple of small beers late one night. The generalization is ridiculous, and no doubt it would not be difficult to persuade him of this - yet why did he ask the question? Speaking to Taiwanese people individually in Chinese, I sometimes feel a slight sense of shock when my status as a foreigner is made salient: it is something that is easy to momentarily forget when you are busy actually doing things or deep in conversation about solving some problem (e.g. a seemingly broken refrigerator). Yet, taken together in a group, those facts disappear and you become always the outsider, always the point of contrast with the group of Taiwanese, always the one who doesn't understand some local dialect word or joke.

Nationalism, as with other kinds of hive-psychology may be a "natural" thing consequent to the boundaries of abstraction from everday experience that modern forms of transport, communication and nation-state political organization make possible. Discussion of political topics and events typically remains limited by the boundaries of the nation. Yet this fact of everyday experience is the muscle on which the grip of explicit collectivist doctine pulls.

It is always there, latent, pulsing and ready to be "remembered".

***

*From a comment by one "Xu Wen" (徐文秀) attached to the online edition of the article made in response to a Filipino commenter.