Burning with envy is a
fatuous waste of time. Being content
with what you have is a rather elusive ideal.
Envy is easier to manage, when you know the direction it is
flowing. But I see a whirlpool, a
blender sputtering on pause, up ahead.
The Seven Deadly Starbucks (7DS) manuscript looks at each of
the seven deadly sins in a different Starbucks in North Asia. The one I chose for envy is my local
Starbucks, here in Shunyi, in the Beijing suburbs. The happy little establishment that’s over in
what’s known locally as “Pinnacle Plaza.”
Within, I try to suggest, the way envy flows in China has shifted,
significantly, in the years since I first arrived here, twenty years ago. The way Chinese view foreigners, the way
foreigners view Chinese, and the way Chinese view each other, all of this has
been shaken up and people aren’t sure quite where they stand anymore. Directions notwithstanding the gut feeling,
the 垂涎欲滴[1] is certainly waxing pungent.
At the beginning of the chapter I quoted the band Void from
their song: “No More Authority.”
One
day I’ll be old
And
then I’ll have authority.
And
I’ll wish I was young
And
then I’ll have envy.
Unless you were into American Hardcore Punk around 1981 or
so, it’s unlikely that you have ever heard of these four exceptional contemporaries
from Columbia Maryland. Void had three
extraordinary songs on the seminal “Flex Your Head” compilation of Washington
D. C. area punk from that time of which “No More Authority” is one. Other than the Minor Threat and the State of
Alert, (with Henry Rollins of Black Flag fame, on vocals) songs, it is these
Void tunes that clearly stand out listening thirty-two years later. The band later released an album, which they
shared with another Dischord Label band Faith that is ferocious and captivating
from start to finish. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Void_(band)
What did Void sound like?
Every morning I throw a bunch of fruit and a cucumber in the blender to
make a smoothie. There is a high pitched
whirling sound that is uncompromisably aggressive and confident, daring you to
get your hand anywhere near the source. Void was a bit like staring down a blender.
The rhythm section, bassist Chris Stover, and drummer Sean
Finnegan were tight and determined like a subway heading off the tracks. John Weifenbach’s vocals and facial
expressions firmly nail a piece of what all of us who were frustrated by the
radio, frustrated by school, frustrated by the Regan era felt,
alone down there in our basements. But
it is Jon Bubba Dupree’s guitar work, his Hendrixed-out hooks, bends and remarkable
use of feedback that anoints Void as something utterly distinct from that
time. I recently picked up a collection
of their earlier unreleased material that is spirited, but is interestingly devoid
of much feedback and the sound is less distinct.
I never got to see Void.
I missed the one show they played at CBGBs in New York. My dear friend attended and his depiction of
it is legend. He said they came out,
launched right in to the anthemic, “Who Are You?” The stage was mobbed, people
began diving, Jeff Weifenbach leapt off an amp into the crowd and then the band
one by one, stopped. A few minutes later
someone was heard to yell into the mic: “Fuck!”
And it became clear that the vocalist had broken his leg. An article I found that “verifies” my
friend’s memory was accurate and claims that the band were all on acid for
shows like these, which I hadn’t known, but makes perfect sense.
http://www.cvltnation.com/flesh-on-barbed-wire-void/
Three-hours and four bands later, Weifenbach apparently returned from the
hospital, with a cast demanding to be allowed to finish the set.
Earlier I’d referenced my fascination at that time with the
anarcho-pacificst band, Crass who’d called for a purist’s like consistency
against “the system.” And with hits like
“Condensed Flesh” Void had little to offer in terms of political critique,
other than raw dissatisfaction. But
capturing that dissatisfaction squarely was something we all tried to do, and very
few achieved in a way that still sounds distinct.
Void broke up after only three years of playing. Sounds like most of the guys wanted to go to
college, their musical tastes began to diverge not unlike mine did at exactly
the same time. Drummer Sean Finnegan
died of a heart attack, working on his house on the Maryland shore in 2008 at
the age of 43, escaping perhaps the aged life of envy, they’d warned about.
When I was a teen I was searching for distinct articulations
of what I felt. Void and the remarkable
off-the-grid hardcore movement of the time appeared as though it were the first,
real, underground, non commercial music movement ever, and what we were doing
had never been done. And it was, but merely
another chapter in the glorious current of underground expressions that have
always worked within American musical history.
To be in it as it happened, was to be one.
As I look back I certainly didn’t envy anywhere else in the world. I liked the way it sounded when you swore
with a Cockney accent, and I liked the idea of visiting other places. But I don’t recall being envious of other
places, other countries. I certainly
felt envy for this guy, who had that girl, or that family who had those things,
but this was all quite local.
The noble virtue that is the opposite of envy is “kindness,”
which to my ears doesn’t cool things off as effectively as say temperance does
to gluttony or charity does to greed.
You can ooze kindness, genuine or otherwise, and still burn with envy.
Here is a piece from the ‘Envy’ chapter of ‘7DS’:
Across the nation, bold, incessant,
growth, as a constant. Manifest
environmental degradation, suspicion, cynicism, and so much hope, all as simply
normal, everywhere, for two decades, running.
And this growth phase is only the latest manifestation of a revolution
to accommodate modernity that stretches back to the Taiping Rebellion. Constant, rapid adaptation, as what had been
the only civilized world, was absorbed into a western, multi-state version of
civilization on western terms. Finally,
after all these years of turmoil, China and the world begin to consider what a
Chinese reconfiguration of “civilization” might look like in the post-modern
epoch.
Certainly during my time, the
prevailing attitudes of people have been stretched and pulled to accommodate
this constant stress. Not the reflexive
fanaticism that angrily confronted the world, forty years ago, nor the
comparatively humbled disposition that China met the world with two decades
back, as it actually began to engage.
Now there is a steady waxing of confidence among Chinese, certainly
outward facing, commensurate with the acquisition of wealth. Envy no longer flows, the way it did twenty
years ago.
I can remember being an awkward
object of envy in China, as a naïve American in my twenties. It was both deeply uncomfortable, and completely
seductive. One would launch into
predictable explanations of all the problems endemic in the U.S. “We’re nothing to be envious of.” The monotonous course of that dialogue has
shifted to become a whirlpool, of appropriate complexity. Now I and everyone else are, perhaps, a bit
lost. Confronting people who are
unnecessarily humble the urge is to lift them up or dispel the artifice. Anyone dealing with an arrogant person for
too long looks for a chance to pop that person’s bubble. In ascendant China, envy is now smeared
broadly between the foreign and various domestic communities. The increasing complexity makes China feel
very crowded these days, with individuals and opinions, demanding my attention.
I’d say that there remain many things; the relative
stability, prosperity, freedoms, etc. that many educated Chinese people still “envy”
about say, the United States. And of
course there are many things that are repulsive about the U.S. as well. But unlike twenty years ago, there are
various, former pools of envy that have now dried up with the march of economic
advancement and cultural assertiveness.
If we talk in terms of broad tectonic plates like civilizations; is it
possible to imagine a world where Western civilization is envious of Chinese
civilization? Certainly. And if such a thing is possible, is it a fait accompli? Does it happen gradually, or decisively?
Envy is never pure or undiluted. Islam didn’t simply “envy” the West, when the
arc of modernity, the vanguard of scientific thought passed from the caliphate
to Western Europe. People loved
themselves, their families, their traditions, and their soil. But the infection of imperialism, meant conquered
civilizations necessarily experienced some degree of “envy” for the power to
project one’s will with impunity that the victors, firmly held. No amount of “kindness” all by itself was
going to cure that disempowerment.
Painting broadly, China was the civilized world and assumed
that the rest of the barbarian world envied Chinese majesty for just about all
of its history. This was true for the
entire progression traced yesterday from The Spring and Autumn Period all the
way to the mid-Qing and Qianglong’s rule.
It was Qianlong in fact who sent the British emissary Lord McCartney
packing in 1793 telling him China had no need for any of his wares. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macartney_Embassy
McCartney, for his part, was not impressed by the Chinese
defense works that he noted during his mission.
The British would return before long with a rather irresistible narcotic
and gun boats to ensure an orderly drug trade that would reverse the flow of
specie back out of the country, back into British banks.
And with the Opium Wars, and the Taiping Rebellion, of the
mid nineteenth century, the flow of envy began to trickle and then surge out of
the empire to places with navies, like Britain, or convincing
self-strengthening movements like Japan, or redemptive ideology, like
Moscow. And during it all, in spite of
it all, Chinese remained rightfully proud of their civilization. But I think it would have been difficult to
identify much of any envy flowing back towards Chinese civilization for much of
the last hundred and fifty years. That,
I believe, is about to change.
Returning to a place of centrality, assuming you are the
envy of the neighborhood, assuming you are a paragon of civility is nothing new
for Chinese civilization, regardless that no one alive has seen this flower in
bloom. It is the historical default
position of for all of Chinese history, through Qianlong until shortly
thereafter. But what does the West look
like when envy begins to trickle and then, perhaps surge in another
civilizational direction, for the first time since the Renaissance? I think this will be an interesting current
to track. There may well come a time
when we have “no more authority” to stop the whirling of that blender.
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