“Westerners are not immune to the effects of surface appearances and fakery. One rarely sees an unattractive news reader on TV nor hears them speaking truth or substance.”
The Olympic spotlight shining on Beijing has illuminated some some revealing aspects of Cathay culture. With the world focused on the far-eastern capital, Chinese bureaucrats were understandably nervous. The revelation that a child singer had been substituted based on her looks may be a shock to some, but to those who are familiar with Chinese culture it comes as no surprise.
Of all cultures, the Chinese place the most value on appearances and they will do so at the expense of substance. That is one reason that Chinese products are famous for low quality and unreliability. The Chinese screwdriver that twists and breaks when it’s used to turn a screw, the toy that breaks as it’s being unpacked to be used for the first time, the baby formula that causes starvation because the ingredients have been faked; cough medicine that kills because the active ingredient has been substituted for a cheaper, although toxic chemical and many other examples, are the result of a mixture of greed, avarice and concern with face over substance.
In a global economy dominated by the transition of China to a capitalist consumer society, business people, bureaucrats and politicians have been falling over themselves in a scramble to join the rush to take advantage of the economic awakening of the sleeping giant. Criticism is put aside and moral judgment is suspended as long as there’s the whiff of a dollar in the wind.
But we would do well to remember the laws of Karma when dealing with the East. There have been thousands of victims of Chinese fakery in recent years. Dead babies, dead people, dead pets and broken hearted children are strewn around the globe. When the Olympics are finished, Beijing will fall into the economic slump that always follows these globally-hyped events. Suppressed, simmering social and ethnic tensions will no longer have the stop-valve provided by the semi-sacred specter of the Olympics and its effect on notions of national unity.
Westerners are not immune to the effects of surface appearances and fakery. One rarely sees an unattractive news reader on TV nor hears them speaking truth or substance. Hollywood and Madison Avenue may represent the epitome of shallow culture, where surgically-enhanced fashion victims can dedicate their lives to the art of the insubstantial. The militainment complex is happy to employ them to titillate the masses with trivia.
On the 8-8-08, while the world was transfixed on the opening ceremony in Beijing, Georgia started bombing the civilians of Ossetia. While the global masses were watching the partly-faked, digitally enhanced fireworks displays in Beijing, the Ossetians saw blood and bombs. As tensions began to build up, the people were distracted by the sordid love affairs of a failed political candidate and a story that bigfoot had been found and resided in a cooler in Georgia (USA).