Thank you for your patience. This is what our instant society needs. In my previous essay, I wrote the first disappointing incident that taught me effective communication in my sustainability retreat. Another incident that disappoints me is my county in northern Virginia used to provide Chinese-language lessons to adult language classes. This spring semester Polish and Turkish are added to the world language program. No Chinese classes any more. As a US citizen who was told by my government and top officials such as President Obama and Secretary Albright that this country welcomes legal immigrants and international visitors, may I ask my fellow citizens and the Commander-in-Chief of the country: does distancing ourselves from China, Chinese people, Chinese food, Chinese culture, Chinese language and perhaps boycotting all Made-in-China products and services make us more inclusive and invincible?
I feel powerless to the increasing anti-Chinese sentiments globally and the anti-American sentiments in China. I also feel the pain of the US-China trade war. A few months ago I wanted to buy several Chinese language books from an e-merchant in China. My friends in China told me that it would take much longer time than usual for the books to be shipped to the US. She told me citing her postmaster that the shipping containers to North America had been stalled at the port for more than three months. She said if I would want to receive the books faster she could send them by air which cost me more. This is how the pandemic together with the rising US-China trade tensions have impacted ordinary life. Do you remember in the first essay of this reflection series, I mentioned that if we look at our economic life as a contract, as a consumer, we’re always Party B in this contract? And the contract is written in a language that ordinary people without legal training are doomed to be victims. My experience exemplifies that.
Learning to live with my inner self in harmony is a profound lesson in my sustainable retreat. After I watched the latest movie adaptation of a renowned play, “Cyrano de Bergerac,” I was inspired to write what it now becomes a six-part article series. In the 2021 film “Cyrano,” the protagonist Cyrano had a line that resonated with me. He said he was a poet and his words would go to waste unless they were spoken. I’m a mindful global citizen. I care about public policies that matter to ordinary people and to the planet that I love. It’s my civic duty to give voice to the voiceless. Ordinary Chinese people are as innocent as an American farmer in Ohio or a Chinese-American scientist in Yale. Their ordinary lives somehow are impacted in the damaged US-China relationship.
Applying for colleges in the US used to be something proud to do for young Chinese. Not today any more. More Chinese students prefer staying at home for further education or applying for high-paying college degrees elsewhere that is not so hostile to Chinese nationals. The US-China trade war starting before the pandemic, the Covid-19 pandemic itself, and the US-China diplomatic clashes seem to have gone out of control. I see the toxic legacy of the 45th President of the United States—the long-term pain of alternative facts, binary thinking and hostility toward marginalized groups and creatures—across the States and the Pacific. What’s worse, the national-level toxicity has seeped into civilian life like the long-term complication of the Covid-19 virus. I haven’t lived in the era of Cold War but I feel stressful to introduce myself to my prospective employers as a US citizen with Chinese ethnicity. Binary thinking prevails! I surrender. We have to live with it despite our differences. A sustainable retreat might be a safe bet to put down the fire in great power politics.
Two forces are tearing apart my country: young people who are pushing for a systemic change and older people and their kin who are worshiping the legacy of the Gilded Age. The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed and enlarged the vices and virtues of humanity that I read about in classic literature. I come to realize that maintaining the status quo is crucial to the well-to-do individuals, businesses and industries. The negative impact of the climate crisis is well understood by these people and groups with full access to up-to-date information and good education. But how they react to world scientists’ warning is a different story. Some climate deniers are elected officials and business leaders. Big Oil crowd out competitors in the renewable energy transition, compressing margins for solar and wind developers.
As mentioned in my previous essay of the series, in the climate race against time, we don’t have an energy crisis. We have an energy transition crisis. Adding to the energy transition crisis, an obstacle appears to me is how technology can help distribute wealth and income in a global scale more equitably. In India, for instance, the discrepancy between the haves and have-nots in the country is widening in terms of accessing modern technology and vaccination. Tech-savvy Indians write code to secure COVID-19 vaccination whereas millions of others don’t even have access to smartphones or the internet. As for wealth inequality in the US, you may refer to the powerful search engine. There’s so much to read on this topic.
The most advanced technology is usually in the hand of a government or in the hand of the few wealthiest people. My student life in Pittsburgh allows me to learn closely about American philanthropy led by Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon, Henry Frick and alike in the late 19th century. Comparing to these millionaire industrialists, my impression is today’s billionaires’ philanthropic work in America is less known to the public. Bill Gates perhaps is the most known philanthropist in the Information Age. That’s why I have this concern about technology only can make a few people more powerful and prosperous. Perhaps amassing wealth is what technology can do better than redistributing it more equitably, unless an intervention is in place in this reinforcing loop. In my systems thinking, I often look for the leverage points.
Adapting to change should be, and will be, an undertaking that my generation and younger global citizens must take in our lifetime. Changing our lifestyle is easy for some but difficult for many. If your community has not yet responded to the global call of climate action, why not start from yourself? Everyone can become self leader. You might influence others to join you. If the change for eco-friendly-and-socially-equitable best practices is easy to do, more people will follow. I notice that living in a small place I shop less. If you’re interested in Japanese minimalism, I’d recommend to read “Danshari (断捨離)” by Shin Katazukejutsu. Less is more.
Online shopping is a double-edged sword. It brings convenience but also pollution problems. Responsible consumers usually shop sensibly with reduce-reuse-recycle principle in mind. With online shopping, a click under our fingertips brings us a sense of satisfaction faster than the traditional in-store shopping experience. For disabled individuals and single seniors, online shopping could be a life-saver.
Nonetheless, online shopping can be developed into an addiction if we cannot keep track of our shopping behavior. You’re giving your money and personal information to the online merchants in exchange for goods and services. This give-and-receive status quo is exactly what e-merchants are happy to maintain. Of course, this is my perspective as a responsible consumer. If I’m an eco-friendly online merchant, I’ll pay more attention to my selection of suppliers, packaging materials and shipping methods. Why is the phenomenon of demand higher than supply? Online shopping frenzy adds to the supply chain hiccups. I also want to remind you that the quicker we change our phones, computerized cars and internet-of-things like we change socks, the faster we will deplete the Earth’s finite natural resources. I have so much to explore in my sustainable retreat, one of them is how to make reusing easier and cheaper than buying something new.
Lastly, I’d like to point out that our cognitive world is heavily polluted by overconsumption of graphics, numbers, and human-centered soundbites. A walk in the woods will bring you a fresh perspective. I attended several workshops about writing resumes. As a lifelong language student, I take every workshop and webinar seriously. What can be more fun than learning communication skills and composition from other professionals? I gathered a similar piece of advice. That was, it’s best to quantify your career achievements in the resume. Instead of saying you’re an efficient salesperson, for instance, if you sell ten cars a month, you might write something like you “exceeded retail sales goals by an average of X% every quarter in year XYZ.” I find this language and expression fascinating and mind-boggling, too.
There is a joke in the Chinese workplace. You can make fun of your supervisor but never the HR colleagues. I consider HR professionals as judges that determine others’ career life. I wonder if the algorithm-oriented recruitment process makes these career judges stiffer or tenderer. In other words, if I don’t follow the writing tips to write my resume, will my application be most likely disqualified? After all, resumes won’t be read by humans for more than three seconds. Is this really how we should value human capital? If human-to-human communication is becoming so difficult, how can attention-deficient humans pay attention to natural capital and conservation? In our instant society, don’t we fall victim more easily to the attention deficit disorder symptoms?
Like letter writing vs. texting, technology may improve efficiency and accuracy. But when it comes to administration, hiring and resolving interpersonal conflicts, every individual in a workplace is like a book, including decision makers of all management levels. Recruiters are mystery books whereas job seekers are biographies. How can you read a book in three seconds after computer screening and say you understand the book thoroughly? As a deep reader, I can’t say I remember the details in a book even though I read it three times cover to cover. If only I had the skills of the HR professionals to read a person in three seconds.
In Asia, it’s common that job applicants affix their ID photos to the resumes as well. In America, the trend of photo identification goes upward at an exponential speed like the advancement of exponential technologies. In the pre-pandemic days, I didn’t know what my plumber looked like until he showed up at my door. A few days ago, the plumbing company immediately sent a photo ID of my plumber to my phone upon my request for a plumbing job. If you’re a writer, you write well is no longer enough. You must look good in photograph too. Have you seen any book festivals, article bylines or online social events without posting a headshot of the speaker/writer? Aren’t we all, willy-nilly, becoming the same judging-the-book-by-its-cover-sort of species? I call for a sustainable retreat.
“Our sensations of wonder and pleasure, our capacity for conscious thought and speculation, our restless curiosity and drive are hers to share. This new interrelationship of Gaia with man is by no means fully established; we are not yet a truly collective species, corralled and tamed as an integral part of the biosphere, as we are as individual creatures. It may be that the destiny of mankind is to become tamed, so that the fierce, destructive, and greedy forces of tribalism and nationalism are fused into a compulsive urge to belong to the commonwealth of all creatures which constitutes Gaia. It might seem to be a surrender, but I suspect that the rewards, in the form of an increased sense of wellbeing and fulfilment, in knowing ourselves to be a dynamic part of a far greater entity, would be worth the loss of tribal freedom.”
—James Lovelock, author of “Gaia: A New Look At Life on Earth“
(The End)