Although this piece and book have been thoroughly discussed on twitter in the past few days, I want to talk about something in more general terms: cognitive impression of another culture / identity. A "weird" thread. https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1318441926199136256

Empathy is a very interesting social phenomenon. In Chinese literature, we have several proverbs relating to empathy: 子非鱼，焉知鱼之乐？You are not a fish. How do you know the pleasure of being a fish? 夏虫不可以语冰。A bug born in the summer does not know the coldness of ice.

My personal view is that empathy is not a completely rational capability: it can be described, felt, but it is very hard to be gained through formative trainings. A part of it is a gift from birth, or acquired in social interactions where such qualities are stressed / rewarded.

Under the "modernity" narrative, the existence of empathy is doubted because the narrative heavily relies on contracts to drive relationships, whether they be personal or between political entities. There are "social contracts" to define how people interact with

governments; "rule of law" to define how powers / rights are distributed and regulated; "rational agent assumption" underlying economic theories and "public preference theory" to drive political analysis. Even in finance, "efficient market" is still being lauded as default state

: things *should* be rational, transactions always clearly defined, with very little cultural / habitual / emotional elements anywhere to be seen or desired.
This framework would largely be fine if we use it to analyze the indigenous situation at home. However is that still

true when applied to drastically different situations? The human mind is a very stubborn construct: when facts don't agree with theories, the urge is immense to bend the facts, not the theories. This is especially the case when, because of vast difference in indigenous conditions

people often *don't know what they don't know*. However we still *must* explain, and predict. We simply can't acknowledge that we don't really know. Let's just use the existing framework, which has explained our own situation rather will (or not), and force over-fit here.

By this point I might get criticism that I'm promoting exceptionalism, which I do not accept. See, my point is that each culture is "exceptional" in that we need to recognize its own "origin story": there was not only a "narrative" which got imposed on it, but also very real

geographic, demographic and other natural conditions that caused the culture to be what it is today. If I do not study into, say Indian or Japanese literature and history, I would be hardly confident to say I understand their cultural pride. However, it would be intellectually

dishonest, lacking such in-depth knowledge, to dismiss such cultural pride as nonsensical and "fragile". It would be a show of lack of empathy, which is not likely to be changed by education / study, but arrives from temperament: a lack of willingness to concede that differences

do exist and are real: if not "proven" with "hard facts", at least real in the sense that millions or even more people firmly believe in them.
Think about the Lebanese diaspora who got rejected citizenship by German officials only because he refused to shake hands with a woman.

The episode stems from people's lack of appreciation of the simple fact that different cultures do exist, and people do take cultural norms that do not comply with our own seriously and sincerely. Just because the man refused to shake hands does not make him a misogynist.

Then, is his stubbornness to still refuse to do so, even at the threat of not getting citizenship, a clear sign of bad faith? I tend to believe not. The problem is with our insistence to interpret other people's thought process within our "universal" framework, refusing to

consider other possibilities.
In China's case, our culture stemmed from a continental land mass, where natural endowments have not been particularly generous, and feudal industrial capacities dictated central government as the more efficient way of social organization.

The ascension of Confucius doctrine was not a grand scheme to assassinate all other schools but rather a Darwinian evolution where the system most suitable to that specific set of endowments emerged as the winner, and for the following years as long as conditions remained largely

unchanged, there was simply not much impetus for the system to change. That endowment, organizational, and thus cultural continuity drove the continuity of our national identity. It's not a superstitious belief, dictatorship lie, or yet-to-debunk hoax.
All this got changed with

an exogenous shock: the industrial revolution and the ensuing era of colonialism / imperialism. However, as normally is the case regarding human cognitive dissonance, when perception fights with reality (that China is not so exceptional when weighed against the global powers), it

was not the core of the exceptional belief that got changed, but the driving motivation that "we must adapt ourselves to be strong and good", to live up to that self-perception. In this sense the Chinese identity was not coined by Dr. Sun Yat Sen as a convenient rallying call.

Dr. Sun and many other revolutionary thinkers simply knew this concept was the most effective rallying call *because* people have long and firmly appreciated and believed in it as one of, if not the most important core foundation beliefs.
Otherwise, why would scholar families in

Ming Dynasty educate their children with how valiantly Song generals fought northern invaders? The motto 精忠报国 where 国 has existed in people's minds - it's certainly not perceived as a remote and detached nation not of our own.
Alas, I know this thread has been "weird" in

some's eyes, and I don't have complete confidence to explain all the thoughts in my second language, under time constraint and in twitter format. I hope I haven't done an entirely terrible job this time, and helped to advance the empathy we have toward each other's culture. /FIN