sobota, 15 grudnia 2018

The Letter for J

Asia that attracts me is deprived of courtesy as Westerners are used to. No hellos, no goodbyes, no asking for names, no needs to express grattitude for being handed over things already paid for. In the long run it can be tiring too. No petty talks, no free smiles and without a family no one really matters here. The state doesn't care for sure. But people enjoy a different kind of state - the one of community in an almost gypsy or even a tribal way. Gates are wide open for everyone to see those living rooms where most of lives are lived. The privacy is scarse but in the end things end up more relaxed. It's just fewer secrets left to hold on to.

Physical confrontations? I got myself into one of those a few times in Europe long past my childhood and I took notice. The West is built on idividualism. That makes a huge difference in terms of ability to control overgrowing egos as compared to collective ways of Asians always governed over by a strong ruler. If you are brought up thinking that the individual is more important than the whole you will sure grow up antagonistic. But the Asian ways are forced by harsh realities rather than a communal spirit of a conscious quest toward paradise. Socio-communist Poland would share some aspects of it as well. It only began to feel gone in times of changes demo-capitalism imposed. Money always win. Isn't that sad? I hate that money controls everything but sadness is the nature of melancholy and melancholy is a theme of the past. In fact no one minds money in control as long as they have plenty of it to wage some kind of countercontrol. But Asia! Physical confrontations! Something men always have to be careful of? I would tend to think so but the Cantonese, the Vietnamese, the Cambodian, the Laotian, they are tinier. It's not that they cannot be aggresive. It's the idea of provoking a fight with a heavier opponent that never really occurs to anyone. I saw them wrestling among their own kind. 
Sure. Good night. We will not talk again...