fsebugoutzone.org:9999

Post 9sAZE75UpjL5RabXfM by wbtd@ex.tending.to
(DIR) More posts by wbtd@ex.tending.to
(DIR) Post #9s8iCrIAaOoXR85aHQ by snowdusk_@mastodon.sdf.org
2020-02-17T20:18:55Z

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Henan, Kaifeng Jews persecuted along with other religions | Asia Newshttp://www.asianews.it/news-en/Henan,-Kaifeng-Jews-persecuted-along-with-other-religions-46272.html

(DIR) Post #9s8ibEwUJ3sHjjZcP2 by Shufei@mastodon.social
2020-02-17T20:23:20Z

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@snowdusk_ It’s been nice they can get back some of their traditions. Last I heard they had rebuilt the synagogue and had trained a rabbi.

(DIR) Post #9s8ijK15KCEln4Zrcm by snowdusk_@mastodon.sdf.org
2020-02-17T20:24:48Z

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@Shufei Actually I have just learned from this article that the CCP recognizes 5 religions! i thought all religions are banned in China!

(DIR) Post #9s8j6LkT3FRBp3mkym by Shufei@mastodon.social
2020-02-17T20:28:58Z

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@snowdusk_ Sigh... Alright, here’s what to understand bout how things work yonder: they create these puppet institutions which are recognized as official to say “hey, everything is jake!” Religions, minority nation reservations... It’s bantustanism. So, yes, 5 major religions are “recognized” through state party controlled organs. That’s not to say good people don’t try to make it work. I’ve known some in those bureaucracies who try to make things better. But it’s a fugazi, a con job.

(DIR) Post #9s8jGPbVZV2afyOPeC by snowdusk_@mastodon.sdf.org
2020-02-17T20:30:46Z

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@Shufei aha i see! i am not surprised. Thank you for explaining this to me!

(DIR) Post #9s8joGsQWclNSHS3vs by Shufei@mastodon.social
2020-02-17T20:31:14Z

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@snowdusk_ But yes, during the cultural revolution and such, whatever it said on paper, no one could practice openly. People literally had to go underground sometimes: caves and troves. And even today, though you will NEVER hear of it in western media, the most repressed religious tradition on the ground is Chinese Folk Belief. Apparatchiks still go gazoo for bulldozing temples in hundreds to win party brownie points.

(DIR) Post #9s8joHdZhKTdoVViQC by snowdusk_@mastodon.sdf.org
2020-02-17T20:36:53Z

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@Shufei when u mentioned underground i immediately remember Japan&#39;s &quot;Hidden Christians&quot; a.k.a. &quot;Wall Christians&quot; (wall because they hid statues of sacred christian images inside their walls and worshipped them with the wall betw the them. Many generations passed they eventually forgot why they were worshipping the walls hence, &quot;wall christians&quot;. Not sure if this is true but many said it is😅💦Driven Underground Years Ago, Japan&#39;s &#39;Hidden Christians&#39; Maintain Faith | NPRhttps://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/10/11/446865818/driven-underground-years-ago-japans-hidden-christians-maintain-faith

(DIR) Post #9s8ksKd8c0IyCznglk by Shufei@mastodon.social
2020-02-17T20:48:50Z

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@snowdusk_ Haha, the first rule goes triple for Japan, but you grok. There’s a thing at work in many Asian cultures which North Americans don’t often grok, even though it happens everywhere in some ways. Knowing disregard. Implicit understanding. Often orthopractic community can be formed around NOT challenging every ideological point. Westerners like sound bite explanations. But usually reality is unspoken. The hidden Christians may have survived in such situations after the purges.

(DIR) Post #9s8ktw7MigJAlPhj84 by Shufei@mastodon.social
2020-02-17T20:49:09Z

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@snowdusk_ Did you ever go to such towns and churches yonder?

(DIR) Post #9s8qpQH3lruuZLTBS4 by snowdusk_@mastodon.sdf.org
2020-02-17T21:55:31Z

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@Shufei when I was in Japan I was invited by my Filipina friends there to a Filipino mass.. not in a church but more like a sports gym 😅. Most Christians were I lived are foreigners but there are a few Japanese. My Filipina friend is married to a Japanese Christian guy. I think most Japanese Christians live in the south - Kyushu island, specifically in Kumamoto and Nagasaki

(DIR) Post #9s90oIe7e59CABMOUS by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
2020-02-17T23:47:23Z

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@Shufei @snowdusk_ The usual motive for authoritarians &amp; totalitarians to suppress or control religion has to do with alternative sources of legitimacy. In the case of Chinese folk practice (often miscalled Taoism), I wonder if &quot;alternative foci of community organization&quot; might be the more relevant concept?It&#39;s one of the things which makes me glad there are Chinese communities, at least, not directly under the control of the PRC, broad though its influence is.

(DIR) Post #9s9kgIIZeKvGezOyMi by Shufei@mastodon.social
2020-02-18T08:21:22Z

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@publius @snowdusk_ That’s pretty much the tack. There’s really nothing new about how the bureaucracy tries to coöpt and control in this way; the level of religious suppression has been steadily increasing since Yuan days.They fear popular religious loci with some reason. They themselves were such a cultic movement, so it’s reasonable to worry another such may replace them. So I get (though don’t support) why they push down Falun Dafa and such vernacular millenarian zealotry.

(DIR) Post #9sAZE5vX9Hm9qOw4Uy by Shufei@mastodon.social
2020-02-18T08:23:18Z

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@publius @snowdusk_ What is new is the hegemonic Maoist cultus, antagonistic to CFR in a way no previous administration was. Antagonizing folks worshipping on holidays or at house altars and churches... 🙅🏽‍♀️ Behind the parvenu facade, these are still the same insecure fanatics who want “China to be modern”, so they tear down Daoist and Folk temples as a kind of atheist tradition of intimidation, like the bully who doesn’t really need your lunch money but hits you on general reptilian principle.

(DIR) Post #9sAZE6YsmzFdoRLUpc by Shufei@mastodon.social
2020-02-18T08:51:16Z

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@publius @snowdusk_ I think what most westerners don’t quite grok is that... Chinese culture has always been religiously pluralist, and sometimes democratic. It’s one of the best things, something we should be proud, yet... Imperial regimes fear this.But usually they have had enough pro forma humility to build on organic community, coopt and control. Mao had no compunction. This regime can never truly 治國 because they unavoidably stew in the apocalyptic dread and poison of the Maoist cult.

(DIR) Post #9sAZE75UpjL5RabXfM by wbtd@ex.tending.to
2020-02-18T09:22:03.020034Z

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@Shufei @publius @snowdusk_ Mao (and Maoism) was, in a convoluted way, very much a product of the intolerant and inflexible European enlightenment. Adam Chau has done good work on shared shrines in Republican China. He and I both contributed to a volume edited by Glenn Bowman where all of us were trying, in different ways, to theorise normal human plurality outside the modernist cage of hyperindividualism.

(DIR) Post #9sAZE82hHch6PCIowS by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
2020-02-18T17:47:39Z

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@wbtd @Shufei @snowdusk_ I mean, we can blame Descartes&#39; attempted to force everything into a binary mould of yes/no, good/evil, existent/nonexistent ― with its attendant suppression of domains such as the one Aristotle identified as the &quot;preferable&quot; ― for a lot of things, &amp; Heaven knows I do. But, to borrow Marxian terminology for a moment, Mao&#39;s ascendance was very much predicated on the material conditions existing within China. European influence was far from the whole story there.

(DIR) Post #9sAZjkBJX8BVfVPNUO by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
2020-02-18T17:53:26Z

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@wbtd @Shufei @snowdusk_ I mean, we can blame Descartes&#39; attempt to force everything into a binary mould of yes/no, good/evil, existent/nonexistent ― with its attendant suppression of domains such as the one Aristotle identified as the &quot;preferable&quot; ― for a lot of things, &amp; Heaven knows I do. But, to borrow Marxian terminology for a moment, Mao&#39;s ascendance was very much predicated on the material conditions existing within China. European influence was far from the whole story there.

(DIR) Post #9sAhkVUMRgeC1SByeO by Shufei@mastodon.social
2020-02-18T19:23:15Z

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@publius @wbtd @snowdusk_ I’ll please neither of you by agreeing with both of you. The revolutionary generation held to Marx and Mao for Chinese reasons, and Marx was translated into a sociopolitical context best framed as millenarian, populist, and quite religious. I’m not sure western commie kids will understand that Mao was in a long line of “burn it all and start anew” cult figures. His worship is framed by Marx as Imported orthopraxy.

(DIR) Post #9sAtOxv1GIatH99jtI by wbtd@ex.tending.to
2020-02-18T19:15:16.516305Z

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@publius @Shufei @snowdusk_ (last) I would argue &quot;folk religion&quot; is one of many &quot;genuinely Chinese&quot; (*not* Han) points of resistance to what, sadly, was yet another example of ideological colonialism. That&#39;s why he hated it. For example, a genuinely Chinese (ecccch! bad terminology again, but hard to find a succinct improvement) revolutionary ideology would not, as Mao and Maoism did, treat the ecosystem itself as an enemy to be subjugated.

(DIR) Post #9sAtOyXIxxDdBt4JZA by Shufei@mastodon.social
2020-02-18T19:41:36Z

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@wbtd @publius @snowdusk_ I prefer Chinese Folk Religion to Chinese Popular Religion because the latter term doesn’t quite aproxímate the endonym being translated: 中華民間信仰. And there’s inevitable confusion in any language because this term *used* to mean the kind of kooky movements like 法輪大法 but now often means “Chinese shamanically infkected community religious practice sort of like Hinduism“. “Sinism” hasn’t caught on, haha. On the street we just say Chinese religion.

(DIR) Post #9sAtOz1n8bbaiRKf5M by Shufei@mastodon.social
2020-02-18T19:41:56Z

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@wbtd @publius @snowdusk_ I go back and forth on how much Mao May have understood about what he was setting off. Yes, he aped USSR in what seems sometimes stupendously naive and doctrinaire ways. But I think this indicates less that he didn’t understand so much that he *didn’t care*. Russia gave him a fresh, ready, and more or less adaptable model, and his imperative was to burn everything good or bad and start anew.

(DIR) Post #9sAtOzaB4l6wR5Q7gO by Shufei@mastodon.social
2020-02-18T19:42:54Z

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@wbtd @publius @snowdusk_ I care less what Mao and other demons thought than what the revolutionary generation felt. There I can’t help but be conflicted for personal reasons. They had just cause for catharsis, even if the catharsis was disastrous. And “making China great again” was always on their mind, Han or not. I’m not sure that energy could have been productively yoked to a liberal state as @jackyan and I muse... But I do feel the future depends on restoring the public earth altars.

(DIR) Post #9sAtP0BOqMswIWpqhU by Shufei@mastodon.social
2020-02-18T19:49:54Z

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@wbtd @publius @snowdusk_ @jackyan Swerving apropos, I reckon one issue is that we do *not* make the hard and fast lines of “religion” which westerners do. People do rituals, in community. There are community and clan temples for various contexts. These contexts have a deep integral organic rôle. Some people do take refuge (like baptism) as Buddhist or Daoist, and the three teachings inflect and overlap with each other and at the popular/folk level. The tensions are usually productive.

(DIR) Post #9sAtP0sIGtCERYu6Yi by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
2020-02-18T21:33:45Z

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@Shufei @wbtd @snowdusk_ @jackyan I am of course reminded of what the Shinto priest replied to the Episcopal bishop who attempted to question him minutely on matters of doctrine, theology, et cetera : &quot;We dance.&quot;

(DIR) Post #9sAteDoKSRL4uLIkng by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
2020-02-18T21:36:32Z

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@Shufei @wbtd @snowdusk_ I see Mao as, to a considerable degree, a kind of heir of Hong Xiuquan. It is certainly an exaggeration to say that Mao was only as Marxist as Hong was Christian ― ie, to say that this Foreign Thing was a convenient hook to hang his hat on, without internalizing any of it ― but it may be, to some extent, useful to frame the broader movement that way.

(DIR) Post #9sBJEDCggqNoItxA24 by Shufei@mastodon.social
2020-02-19T02:23:10Z

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@publius @wbtd @snowdusk_ That’s quite on point. I ought to have expected you’d know of Hong, haha. The strange thing about these modern era millenarian rebels from Hong to Mao is how often they had an exoticist tinge, looked for answers from beyond the empire, however facile.Economy in shambles, massive famines, constant internecine war... people had lost hope to such extent. I don’t read many Qing era texts. Often too depressing, really...

(DIR) Post #9sBJS2U1LSSj6pebWy by Shufei@mastodon.social
2020-02-19T02:24:11Z

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@publius @wbtd @snowdusk_ It’s also a pet peeve of mine with fans of the Three Kingdoms era, this elision of vast apocalyptic suffering. But anyway...

(DIR) Post #9sBJS3jIi8HMyVoJzE by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
2020-02-19T02:25:38Z

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@Shufei @wbtd @snowdusk_ Which is, quite incidentally, the main reason why I really don&#39;t like the classic fantasy novel THE WORM OUROBOROS by E.R. Eddison.

(DIR) Post #9sBJsyvkf6vfuRTKbo by Shufei@mastodon.social
2020-02-19T02:30:35Z

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@publius @wbtd @snowdusk_ Wow，id never heard of this novel. Thanks.Strangely someone else today on fediverse mentioned the ouroborous... It’s redolent of the moment perhaps.What is your complaint of the book?

(DIR) Post #9sBLdJCzhVFe4lBvto by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
2020-02-19T02:50:06Z

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@Shufei @wbtd @snowdusk_ It&#39;s this long fantasy, allegedly set on the planet Mercury but that is not carried past the first chapter (for one thing, Mercury has no moon ― which is the other thing I don&#39;t like), involving a war between two groups of aristocrats. We see just in passing, in a scene or two, the horrible suffering of the common people. At the end, the hero basically gets one wish, &amp; (it&#39;s not too much of a spoiler to say this given the title) decides to do it all over again!

(DIR) Post #9sBLny6oUO3tp0NpXE by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
2020-02-19T02:52:02Z

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@Shufei @wbtd @snowdusk_ The idea that there is nothing more noble, nothing that better proves one&#39;s mettle, than murderizing everyone between here &amp; breakfast, is NAUSEATING to me. If you want to call yourself a Lord, show me how good you are at building up the land &amp; the people, not at destroying homes, burning cities &amp; fields, demolishing everything that everyone cares about for your own self-aggrandizement.

(DIR) Post #9sBMA3TVDeeApoWmSu by Shufei@mastodon.social
2020-02-19T02:56:04Z

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@publius @wbtd @snowdusk_ I skimmed the wiki just now and... it sounds utterly devastating, grim, despondent, smothering. Something about a ghoul genocide, too? Existentialist fantasy...It’s on my “get an ebook copy for reference but otherwise ignore” list. Grandiose noble born superheroes... I’m not a fan usually.

(DIR) Post #9sBMRb3Dda5ptMb9Y8 by Shufei@mastodon.social
2020-02-19T02:59:15Z

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@publius @wbtd @snowdusk_ On this point, old bean, we are unanimous. It’s also a big part of why I tune out the puerile Hollywood droppings of this era. It just doesn’t feed me.

(DIR) Post #9sBRhhPyETTS2ijnyS by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
2020-02-19T03:58:08Z

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@Shufei @wbtd @snowdusk_ There&#39;s a great deal to admire in terms of writing style, construction, imagery… but the story itself, in the end, falls somewhere between &quot;disappointing&quot; &amp; &quot;repellent&quot;.