I’m 3/4 Chinese and 1/4 Japanese, but I identified myself as Japanese for a quite a while just because I was born and grew up in Japan. In elementary and middle schools, I learned that white people in Europe are divided into several underlying races such as Anglo-Saxons, Germanic people, Latins, and Slavs among them. Then I actually get to spend Art school life surrounded by people with variety of races and genders in America, and I learned the importance of identity as an artist. Simply put, the importance of identity as an artist is that it is innate barrier to entry which is so high that no artist can cross by effort. Classic artists didn’t rely on this idea of identity, but instead they build up their skill sets through struggle during period of obscurity while witnessing many other artists giving up on their carrier as artists, and maybe after 10 years of that struggles their skill sets becomes high enough barrier to entry which protect their carrier from the rest of young artist wannabes.
Young artist nowadays first go to big city and start participating in group exhibition right after graduating Art school dreaming to become famous enough to have solo exhibitions and maybe find a partner in a big city. They think that they can move into suburb to create art to support family only if they already become somewhat famous in the city. However reality is tough.
Suppose that you are in New York City as a young artist for example. First you need to rent a one bed room apartment for $2,000 a month. You need to work tough and cheap part time job to pay for the rent. You become so stressed out that you need to go out for drinking with your artist friends pretending it to be meaningful art discussion and waste money. You become stressed out again about the fact that you don’t have as much time to paint as you wished. And even when you managed to actually have time to paint, you are tired and not in the mood to paint. Then repeat this cycle until your parents who financially support you suddenly call you usually within 2~3 years. And they ask you to come back to your home town and find some decent job, and you are gone now.
Those who are not good enough to be decent artists themselves yet shrewd or those whose family is rich enough that they don’t really need to work at all but need to pretend to be working to find a decent partner give up on becoming artists at early stage and choose to be on the management side by becoming a producer or a director. They somehow believe that they actually have better tastes than most artists despite the fact that their tastes weren’t thorough enough to become decent artists themselves.
Projects with financial muscle tends to have some political agenda. This was my experience in America, but around the time I graduated from Art school in America and looked for grants. Then I found out that most of grants were exclusively for sexual minorities. I thought that those were divide and conquer tactics by foreign capital back then. Divide and conquer tactics can be described as follows. When there were multiple groups competing in a region, some outside capital helps the weakest group with resources to dissipate stronger group’s resources. Once competition reach a deadlock, the outside capital appear in front of them pretending to be just another well-intended person and propose regulation which benefit this outside capital. When you look into history, this happens all the time.
Modern artists have much more efficient way to build barrier to entry than actually struggling for 10 years like classic artists, which is to utilize their own identity such as race, gender and nationality. While most people give up pursuing career as an artist, sexual or racial minorities become artists of medium standing thank to grants exclusive to minorities. Their parents are more patient than artists with ordinary identity since they feel like their kids are endorsed by the authority. As their influence gets bigger, it becomes easier to carry on divide and conquer tactics.
Then I came to wonder something of significance. My Chinese father have 10 brothers and sisters. They all married to other Chinese people from around China and eventually had children around my age, so I have many cousins who don’t look like each other. I think there are more underlying races judging by their looks among Han Chinese just like Anglo-Saxon, Germanic people and so on among white people, yet they are convicted that they are all 1 unified Han Chinese. And Han Chinese consist of 94% of entire Chinese population. Don’t you find it strange yet significant? It is ill-intended foreign capital proof unlike western societies.
Chinese power struggle has a long history. According to Art of war, Sun Tzu describes that conquering without firing a shot is better than winning 100 fights out of 100. In my opinion, peace is probably an advanced state of war. The notion of peace was originally created when war was ordinary and competition seriously needed a pause to prepare for the next war out of dissipation coming from ever lasting war. This original usage of the term “peace” is accurate to describe current situation too. What if the permanent peace after WWII was an illusion to create long enough period to prepare for the next war by the axis powers? After WWII, war by physical force among major countries were avoided due to its possibility of entering nuclear war, so nuclear class or higher military forces were only used for demonstration. War by physical force was replaced by financial warfare and R&D race anyway, and it became almost impossible to loot strategic resources like capital or information which isn’t physical any more.
At this stage, war mimicking to be peace start happening, and it became less obvious if there is any war or revolution going on or weather any country is violating human rights or not. Human rights in question is so called work ethics or regulations imposed by Western countries to developing countries, so that the West can keep its lead without fatigue. Western countries believed that they will never lose if fought ethically or even if they lost they could accuse developing countries of being against human rights.
To be blunt, the first people who violated taboos weren’t punished because there were no notion of taboos back then. As the result, the most criminal minded people took unfair advantages from murder, rape, torture, and pillage to unify a country and became kings. Halfwits and people who violated taboos after kings themselves invented the notion of taboos afterwards for their own interests literally became criminals.
War and revolution create dramatic change in life. People don’t notice war and revolution mimicking to be peace taking place, but the accelerating pace of change is implying there’s indeed such things as war or revolution mimicking to be peace. During mere peace, there is not much need to adapt to fast changes, therefore war mimicking to be peace is more effective than apparent war because it gives competition misconception that there is no need to hurry when in actuality they need to hurry.
Basic science have 3 categories: natural science, social science, and humanities. Natural science includes mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, geoscience, astronomy and so on. Social science includes jurisprudence, political science, economics, business administration, sociology, pedagogy and so on. And humanities include philosophy, religious studies, psychology, history, archeology, linguistics and so on. When considering how to apply basic science to war, people tend to prioritize in order of natural science, social science and then humanities, but that is likely mistakes to make for someone who aren’t familiar with history of wars.
For example, the management of nuclear weapon which is the product of physics is only accessible to people who are able to behave politically correctly, so there is no nuclear war happening as the result. Which also implies that any technology which has more impact on society than nuclear technology such as quantum physics or free energy will be only accessible by politically or rather ethically correct people. At this stage of development, it becomes obvious that the understanding of humanities such as ethics and social science such as political science is more important than pure understanding of natural science such as mathematics and physics. This is about peaceful use of technology, but given that peace is an advanced state of war, humanities and social science obviously have higher priority than natural science as we approach the end game. And I want to believe people pick ethics which is humanities over politics which is social science given a choice.
I’m going to talk about the real significance of humanities in another context, but to explain this, I need to introduce a bit of Chinese history and my personal experience. As to Chinese history, China was ruled by people other than Han Chinese twice in history, who were Mongolian and Manchurian. What happened as the result? Both Mongolian and Manchurian voluntarily assimilated into Han Chinese over generations. Thus Han Chinese have always been able to lose the battle yet win the war by assimilating foreign ruling class. In my personal experience, I have always been identified myself as Japanese as I grow up, but after I learned the importance of identity as an artist in American Art school, I was spending years figuring out who I really am in Japan. By that time I was already studying under my Chinese art teacher who has been the best friend of my father for decades, but I didn’t recognize the humanistic importance of Chinese art yet.
To pursue the identity as Japanese, I read books like “The Book of Tea” and “Representative Men of Japan,” but I figured out Chado (茶道) derived from Zen in Southern part of China (南州禅) and one of the representative Japanese who are introduced in the book, Takamori Saigo (西郷隆盛) studied 陽明学 (Yangmingism) which derived from Confucianism. I figured many elements of Japan I once thought unique to Japan actually derived from China in many ways, but I still tried to pursue my Japanese part of identity rather than my Chinese part at the time. Then I applied to Japanese Art school for master’s degree in Japanese painting. However during interview after figure drawing exam, I was asked why I want to pursue Japanese painting even though I have a great environment to study Chinese art. Then I couldn’t come up with the answer right away. Maybe that was the reason why I couldn’t get into the graduate school, but the question was impressive to me in that I could have guessed to be asked that kind of question easily, but I just didn’t have the answer. So I finally decided to pursue Chinese art seriously.
Why winners of battle against Han Chinese always assimilate with them over generations to begin with? This happens when someone trace his/her ancestor through humanities such as history, archeology and linguistics. And chemistry happens when someone realize that one of the essential aspects of communication is in social mounting. Understanding this fact also teach us why people with multiple conflicting identities choose specific identity over others with high probability and certain ethnic and cultural group end up becoming dominant in number.
Weak male Chimpanzees avoid physical fight by letting dominant male Chimpanzees mount on them. Smart introverts somewhat misunderstand that the essence of communication is to communicate ideas logically in school years and end up losing the competition to pick up female who judge dominance of male according to the ability of momentarily mount on other people by their volume of voice, posture, facial expression, hair style, fashion and pretty much everything which is not related to content of their conversation. This is actually a good thing for some introverts because while those who lost in relationship in school year improve strategy by pursuing their studies, they also slowly start picking up the tactics extroverts used earlier in more sophisticated manner and become able to mount on them later by every means. Then they finally become relevant enough to get some smart females to actually pay attention to what they are thinking.
People compete with each other before understanding who they really are. Those who become somewhat successful try to find the answer why they succeeded in the question of “who am I?” Cultural communication is understanding diversity among young and irrelevant introverts, but it is actually an act of social mounting based on cultural superiority from extroverts’ perspective, in other words, cultural power struggle. And the older and more original the culture is, the more superior it is when it comes to social mounting. Because some of the truly old, relevant and original cultures actually derived from necessities based on the logics of dominant male hominid in the group. And current Chinese Character is the only characters which can date back to Oracle bone script from ancient China which is one of cradles of civilization. Basically all other hieroglyphs from other cradles of civilization are discontinued and became unable to decipher. And ancient Chinese literatures written in this Chinese characters are full of information derived from necessities based on the logics of dominant male hominid in the group. And original Chinese ink painting derived from bamboo painting on rice paper with bamboo brush by ancient Chinese intellects who studied Confucianism out of boredom coming from studying too much relevant materials. Therefore Chinese art which is composed of painting, calligraphy, and seal cutting consists of Chinese philosophy, religious studies, psychology, histories, archeology, linguistics and so on. Which means Chinese art can be called mixed humanities which is powerful tool for cultural struggle deciding winner of battle’s identity which decide winner of the war.
In my imagination, political correctness minded western civilization is checkmated during war mimicking to be peace where we compete humanistically because Chinese people don’t care who wins the war in the end as long as the winner is Chinese. I hope you know what I’m talking about.
Makoto Shijo 