German and Chinese people are usually nice to each other – as nice as they can. It must be for cultural reasons. I guess we are all afraid of situations where they might hit the roof. Neither Chinese nor Germans are usually good at getting angry and saving their own face at the same time. In other words, both Chinese and German people can easily climb a tree – but they aren’t good at climbing down again.
Of course, I can’t tell if this is only true for German and Chinese people I know (myself included), or if this rule really applies beyond our circles.
Our political system stifles creative solutions.
Fortunately, for both our ancient cultures and nations, there’s the internet for venting anger.
My old chum Taide has translated an article by Adam Soboczynski for Germany’s weekly Die Zeit into English. And as Sobo compares current German anger movements with the American Tea Party movement, he has earned himself a long trail of devastating comments. (Germans have nothing against America, except that the average German thinks of himself as someone smarter than the average American. If you equate a German not just with the average American, but with the kind of Americans he deems reactionary, so much the worse.) One could think that Soboczynski has hanged himself in the meantime, after reading the first ten or so comments on his article.
But that would be a misconception. Most probably, he wrote his article precisely because he knew that he would earn himself a lot of new critics – or retread his old critics. I’m not very familiar with commenter threads at Die Zeit or Der Spiegel, but at first glance, I’d think that you’ll find the same usual suspects there, most of the time.
The major irony about Soboczynski’s article is that the way many of his critics react to it seems to confirm his point. It’s a fruitful interaction at the author’s terms, and predictable at that.
When Germans or Chinese air grievances and feel that those aren’t taken sufficiently seriously, they’ll feel deeply offended in most cases – more so than Americans or British people would. JR isn’t trying to analyze the issue here – he’s no psychologist, and besides, he is at times overexposed to both German and Chinese psychographs, for personal and professional reasons. He’s too close to the problem.
But while he believes that Soboczynski made the comparison with The Coming Insurrection (European) and the Tea Party Movement (American) mainly for stoking the fire on his commenting thread, JR feels that the two movements may have a high degree of bigotry in common. They feel mucked about by illegitimate powers that be, they use the political classes of their respective countries as scapegoats for grievances that are usually not about daily life, but rather about a feeling of lacking political empowerment. According to Taide, Soboczynski wrote:
Apparently, every sense of formal aspects of democracy have been lost: people don’t want to get involved in the political parties’ mean business, but shortcut opinion formation by referenda. Ggovernments relying on discreet communication are deemed undesirable; people celebrate WikiLeaks. People wish to restrict minorities (such as migrants or smokers) by referenda, while the state is unnecessarily still protecting them.
Stuttgart 21, Wall of Grassroots Democracy - Wikimedia Commons, Mussklprozz.
Of course, JR frequently feels angry, too. He may feel angry in his capacity as a smoker, for example. He’s discriminated against. His human rights are at stake. But as mentioned before, there’s the internet. And – in Germany – the Autobahn. (If you understand German, don’t miss the comments underneath the video.)
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Related
Why Wikileaks can’t Work, December 1, 2010
Anger Manipulation, July 12, 2009
“The Art of Happiness”, December 9, 2008
L’insurrection qui vient, March 22, 2007
