Month: May 2019

The End of Eternity

A week ago, I saw Bi Gan’s movie The End of Eternity (《地球最后的夜晚》)– called In English Long Day’s Journey into the Night — on a Cathay Pacific flight. I came away thinking that this must be one of the great movies of all times. The next day I discovered that it was also playing at a neighboring movie house and so went to see it again. I couldn’t sleep after that as the images, words, and sounds of the movie were hauntingly coming back to me again and again in the middle of the night. Dark, mysterious, and melancholy, Bi Gan’s work is, in fact, a piece of the most sublime Chinese poetry and utterly captivating as this poetry can be.

Its story may be simple and even banal: a man looking for a woman he had known many years before. But it is developed captivatingly in a series of magical scenes that move back and forth in time and place in an unexplained fashion. Its logic is that of a dream, of free poetic associations in which images, words, and sounds repeat themselves in a disorienting fashion. The effect is heightened by the way the movie is constructed in two separate halves, the first shot in standard format, the second in 3D. While the first half is replete with images of water, the second is preoccupied with images of stone. The movie begins with the protagonist washing his face under a faucet; then he stands in a basement where water is pouring through the ceiling and accumulating on the floor. Later he arises suddenly out of a deep pond apparently in the same place, but when his companion steps into it that same water it appears to be only ankle-deep. In the second half, the hero finds himself suddenly in an abandoned mine; he drifts on a small gondola into a town in which everything is made of stone; he follows a torch-bearing woman up mysterious stone staircase but then, returning to the market-place, walks up once more on those same rocky stairs.

While the movie’s present-day story is set in the year 2000, it shows us nothing of the world of modern China. There are no high rises here, no motorways, no shopping malls, no huge teeming masses, and certainly no signs of China’s economic and military might. We are in a forgotten, claustrophobic corner of China. The signs of an outside world are few and far between. In the first few, passing shots we see some construction machinery and an old metal girder being cut down; we are told of the hero’s friend, a young small-scale crook, whose body is one day found in a mineshaft; there is the image of a cobra suddenly striking the wall of its cage; a disturbing upside-down scene of the hero aiming his gun at another man sitting in front of him in a movie theater; a house burned down by a jealous woman. But these moments of violence are never allowed to dominate the movie; they are embedded in it, rather, like sudden, fearful intrusions into a more languorous dream.

The movie begins with the hero’s return to his hometown after his father’s death. The father, he hears, has spent his final days looking at a dead clock on the wall. When our protagonist opens the clock he finds in its back a photograph of the woman he has once known. At the end of the movie our hero gives a watch to a woman he has just met and who may or may not be the one he has been looking for all the time. She notes that the watch is not working and tells him that a watch is a symbol of eternity. He, in turn, draws her attention to a pair of sparklers she has lit on her make-up table and tells her that they are symbols of the transitory. We are left to contemplate their kiss with these words in mind.

The European elections – A shift in political paradigm

The European elections on May 23 mark a point of transition in European politics. More than 50 % of Europeans eligible to vote made use of the opportunity. In some countries, the numbers were even higher. In Belgium 88.5% went to vote, in Denmark 66%, in Spain 64%, and in Germany 61%. These are remarkable figures. They show that for the first time in its history, the parliament has come to be recognized by a large number of Europeans as an important component of the political structure of the EU.  Not only the parliament but also the EU as a whole has thereby undoubtedly gained in democratic legitimacy.

But something even more important has happened in this election. Dire predictions about the inevitable rise of the radical right have not been borne out. Yes, right-wing parties did gain ground in some countries (Italy, UK), but they declined in some others (Germany, Spain). At the same time Left-Green won surprising new ground. Some commentators have bewailed that this  development will undermine the political center and thus threaten the political stability of the EU. We may, in reality,  be seeing the emergence of a new political order.

The established conservative and social-democratic parties of Europe have so far failed to pursue an effective course against the rise of the new right. It does not help to characterize this new right as populist, since that term can signify a multiplicity of different political positions. These “populists” are better described as localists. They hark back to the nation and the idea of national sovereignty; they try to construct walls against the outside world; they want to keep immigrants at bay; they seek to uphold traditional local values; and above all they oppose “globalization.” It is against this localism that Left-Green defines its agenda. Climate change cannot be combatted locally; it is a global affair; it demands international co-operation; our natural environment is the globe; all of humanity is bound together in the need to preserve the environment.

Environmental politics has, moreover, science on its side whereas the new right only has its little, shopworn, pitiful prejudices. But let’s not be too summary in that judgment. There is certainly value in tradition and in local cultures. Environmentalists need to learn that in addition to preserving natural habitats, we must also preserve cultural habitats. This insight is needed, if we are to drain the waters of the new right.

Doing prison time in Hong Kong

On my current visit to Hong Kong I am once again trying to talk to some of the activists in order to get a better understanding of the shifting political territory. When I contacted Joshua Wong, one of the most dedicated pro-democracy campaigners, he wrote back to me: “I might not able to meet you since my court case sentencing is scheduled on Thursday afternoon. I need to prepare before being locked up in prison.” This will be the third time he is sent there for his political engagement.

In 2017, he was jailed for his role in the occupation of Civic Square three years earlier. Last year, he was in prison for failing to comply with a court order concerning a protest in Mong Kok in 2014. Meanwhile, the organizers of the Occupy Central demonstrations of 2014 have also recently been sent to jail.

The Hong Kong authorities are using a heavy hand in dealing with those activists. In other jurisdictions such cases might have been dealt with more leniently and in a spirit of reconciliation. But here in Hong Kong the opposition is tolerated only as long as it accepts that it is and will always be only a minority and submits meekly to the edicts of the ruling system.

One begins to  understand why the ancient Greek democrats thought of majority rule as a form of tyranny.

 

 

Hot Days in Hong Kong

Saturday May 11, 2019

There was heavy fighting yesterday in the Hong Kong legislature over a newly proposed extradition law. Legislators were injured in the melee. The previous day had seen demonstrations in the street.

The law is supposed to sort out a pending case of a murder committed by a Hong Kong man in Taiwan. The accused has fled back to Hong Kong and the authorities say that he cannot be extradited because there exists no appropriate law to do so. But Hong Kong democrats are highly suspicious because the law would also allows extraditions to mainland China.  They see in it the long hand of Beijing which wants to get hold of those it accuses of having committed political crimes. The Hong Kong government is trying to soothe tensions by arguing that there are safeguards in the new law. Extraditions will not be automatic but will be reviewed individually. But knowing the weakness of the Hong Kong authorities in the face of pressures from Beijing that sounds hardly reassuring.

Officially, Hong Kong s a “self-administered region” under the current “One Country, Two Systems” arrangement. But that arrangement is under pressure. It is set to come to an end in twenty-four years. At the same time, Beijing is increasingly making itself felt in a hundred different ways. It’s goal is evidently to integrate Hong Kong step by step into the Chinese system: politically, economically, and socially. The resukt is an inevitable struggle between those who are willing to go along wirh Beijing’s demands and those determined  to resist.  We must look forward to more turmoil in the years ahead.

 

A stalker at the door

Stalkers can be terrifying – as we know from the media: even when they are not, they can still be a real nuisance. I know, because I have been dealing with one for a long time. I will call my stalker Frau M. for short. She is utterly irrepressible and has been following me around for twenty years. Nothing will stop her, it seems, from harassing me with her unwelcome approaches.

Frau M. first showed up after I had taught a seminar on Wittgenstein at the University of Hamburg, She approached me at the time as someone seriously engaged with this philosopher. But her work proved quickly uninspiring and I tried to tell her so. But then the tone began to change. She had somehow come to convince herself that I was attracted to her as a person. That was, in fact, far from the case as I sought to communicate to her repeatedly. But my protestations had no effect.

Since she lives abroad, Frau M.’s harassment takes the form mostly of an endless stream of emails – sometimes two or three a day. She writes to me about sex, about wanting a child from me, about wanting to marry me, about prospective visits; she writes also about the details of her own life, attaching photos to her messages. But there have also been occasions when she showed up in Berkeley. Suddenly she would sit in my lecture room and take photographs of me as I am lecturing; or she would scratch unexpectedly at my office door, trying to hand me a present. After she found out where I live, my neighbors heard her caterwauling outside my door. In desperation I went to the local police to lodge a complaint against her – but it is difficult to pursue this matter since she is not a US resident. She was warned, though, to stay away from me – not that this has had any effect.

In a recent emails she writes: “I will happily marry you, e.g. in Las Vegas or San Francisco; then I will stay forever.” What gives her the idea that I would be remotely interested, since I never respond to her emails? In a subsequent email she announces another visit to Berkeley: “As I have said, it would me important for me that we spend a beautiful time together. I am coming because of you. As I have previously come because of you. We could rent a holiday house through Airbnb, then we would be undisturbed. Or we cold take a vacation in your house in Berkeley.” I am totally nauseated by the possibility. Fortunately, I will be away from Berkeley this summer and so I may escape her unwanted advances this time around.

What can I do to stop this madness once and for all? Perhaps, someone out there has a useful suggestion. That’s why I am making this public. I bear no ill will to Frau M. I feel, in fact, sorry to see her caught in her delusions. All I need is to be relieved of her impositions.

P.S. Frau M. has now read this post and the result has been a new volley of absurd emails. She is making up a whole new set of stories of her supposed relationship with me; one more ridiculous than the other. She doesn’t even understand that her behavior amounts to stalking – i.e., imposing herself again and again on someone unwilling. One of her email responses to the above tells it all. It said: “Swissair offers flights at 800 euros. If you don’t want me to come, I will stay in Asia.” What is it that this woman doesn’t get?