Are you not Wanted?

I went to a friend's wedding today.  The bride and the bridegroom fell in love when they were both undergraduates, and it has been 8 years since then.  Needless to say, many of their classmates, including me, participated the event as guests.  We were supposed to be the selected few and the future elite of China when we got the admission from our university.  But nothing particular happened afterwards, we all become faceless clerks in some organizations that have remote relation to what we learn, and all have to work 10 hours a day just to pay our credit card bills.

What went wrong?  I could not help thinking about those people who dropped out of school due to poor academic performance in the university.  Have they find a better way to spend their life than we do?  After all, they probably learned not to listen to everything the education system told them.  And that gives them more possibilities in life, probably?

Now I think I am beginning to understand Wanted, the graphic novel by Mark Millar.  The institutionalized individuals are surrounding us, trying to tell us what to do and what is right.  Sometimes these advices can be helpful, but in many cases, they just make you hesitate, doubt, and fail.  One does not need to possess super power to control their life.  The important thing is to know what one wants, and ignore the distractions in the guise of "for your own good" that prevent you from achieving your goal.  In this way, you can one day pretty much fuck anyone you want, or die trying. 

In the novel, the point where Wesley proved that he know what he wanted was not when he walked out of his miserable clerk life, but the moment after his most beloved and respected father told him to become the best gunslinger in the world, he still can seriously consider defying Fox and his father and return to the old life.  The strongest super power is the ability to make decision for oneself and bear the consequences, and it is free will at its best.  And you do not need to be special to have that power.

一本睹物思人的小说

我看小说本来是只看写成十年以上的，因为小说太多，去芜存青最简单的办法就是看它出来以后10年还有没有影响力，有没有书商愿意再版。但董其章的《天工开物·栩栩如真》体例比较特别，初看到的时候还以为就是一本介绍香港风物的非虚构作品，而且在豆瓣上评价似乎还好，所以在书店里没有多翻几页就买下了，结果现在只好破这个十年之例。

小说还只看了个开头。我对作者虚构的“人物”世界还没有看得很明白，但描写“我”以及“我”的祖父和父亲的生活史那些章节却看得我很是唏嘘，作者以电波和声音比喻情感的写法很是新奇，而又似乎格外准确。作者状物而不役于物，寄情而不耽于情，这样的写作风格我很喜欢，而且估计华语小说界是没有别人模仿得来这种写法的。不过也如“独裁者”的序言所说，作者写的一切还是太自我。希望作者在这三部曲里能有一个立意上的突破。

就这么一说

今天读完了 Maur d'Entrèves 的 The Political Philosophy of Hannah Arendt。对 Arendt 的政治主张有了一些了解。直接民主看上去很美，但不难想象在人口规模达到一定程度后还是需要一定的代议制，否则达成一项决议要吵一年，即使它真的完美无缺，也不免失去了时效性和相关性。更何况阿伦特理想中的政治公民未必一定存在。

不过，阿伦特提出的通过在公共空间中发起讨论，让想法撞击从而形成公民身份的想法似乎是很可取的。不排除中国“木秀于林，风必摧之”的文化造成了社会生活中英雄式政治和大众化政治的缺失，结果中国人一直处于不关心，不负责，不行动的臣民状态中。我曾考虑过网络空间能否成为阿伦特所讨论的那种政治空间，但网络毕竟不是面对面的交流，也许对练习诡辩有帮助，但化身背后的争辩对于形成个人的政治身份恐怕一点用都没有。看来国人要形成自己的政治主张，只有从在咖啡馆里跟意见相左的人聊天开始了。这也许可以解释为什么我跟传教的人可以聊得那么 high。温和地让不同的观点冲突是最给人满足感，最让人愉悦的交流形式。就这么一说。

Understanding your animal life

It must be quite interesting to examine the life of Maggie Gee as a writer with more than an educated mental profile in herself, and presented by herself. To me, it is always hard to imagine how can any professional writer write seemingly not for building a brand, but out of one’s desire to write. Who can maintain such an attitude for decades?

The answer may be found in her autography My Animal Life. The passion of writing may be coming from her recognition of multiple factors which shaped her personality, and the complexity of a person who is both a sentient being and a product of natural processes. Possibly, it is out of the need to understand oneself, one set out to understand the forces that contributed to her present condition.