…your essays make me want to visit and learn so much more about China…this one especially made me very reflective towards my perception of community and individuality…scale in any artform looks more impressive all the time…
Thank you 🙏 again for the edit suggestions! Any specific idea on community/individuality - always curious. (And, making one reflect is the biggest compliment ✨✨ thank you)
…i guess the thought is how much power there is in the collective vs. the individual, which in our billionaire ai-aire era seems contradictory to a perception i’m carrying that the individual is prioritized economically, scifi wild west if you will…i’ve described the social media environment this way before, but it basically feels like we are all in a theater watching an empty stage play starring ourselves, everyone talking at once, barely anyone watching/listening…i know some of this is my cynic, but also the capital I internet seems catered to individual experiences over community…so to read your piece was to reflect on all the worldly systems that carry that larger connection, businesses, countries/cities/states, church, sport, etc. …even the successful solopreneur or influencer is made individually successful through collective supports…so while i percieve the collective less, feel it less, i have access to and am a part of it, and perhaps the challenge is to seek more of where i belong than where i don’t…
The SAT “being” trick as a window into how collective pattern extraction works in China is such a good opener. Not reading proficiency, just distilled pattern, and it works. The barber with genuine contentment in 小人物思維 is my favorite though, “You don’t have to hold the whole picture, and there’s a strange relief” — that’s the whole dichotomy between the two systems in one sentence. Really loved this one Coco 💙
…your essays make me want to visit and learn so much more about China…this one especially made me very reflective towards my perception of community and individuality…scale in any artform looks more impressive all the time…
Thank you 🙏 again for the edit suggestions! Any specific idea on community/individuality - always curious. (And, making one reflect is the biggest compliment ✨✨ thank you)
…i guess the thought is how much power there is in the collective vs. the individual, which in our billionaire ai-aire era seems contradictory to a perception i’m carrying that the individual is prioritized economically, scifi wild west if you will…i’ve described the social media environment this way before, but it basically feels like we are all in a theater watching an empty stage play starring ourselves, everyone talking at once, barely anyone watching/listening…i know some of this is my cynic, but also the capital I internet seems catered to individual experiences over community…so to read your piece was to reflect on all the worldly systems that carry that larger connection, businesses, countries/cities/states, church, sport, etc. …even the successful solopreneur or influencer is made individually successful through collective supports…so while i percieve the collective less, feel it less, i have access to and am a part of it, and perhaps the challenge is to seek more of where i belong than where i don’t…
The SAT “being” trick as a window into how collective pattern extraction works in China is such a good opener. Not reading proficiency, just distilled pattern, and it works. The barber with genuine contentment in 小人物思維 is my favorite though, “You don’t have to hold the whole picture, and there’s a strange relief” — that’s the whole dichotomy between the two systems in one sentence. Really loved this one Coco 💙
Thank you so much ❤️