King_Simp

I know china doesn't need them (and probably doesn't necessarily want them either) but I was reading on western imperialism in china (not that I was ignorant of the concept before) and I dont think I ever conceptualized how much wealth the west got from china without ever paying a cent back. The forced loans in "war reparations" alone is probably in the millions

This is more a thought experiment than a genuine like, policy proposal or anything

I'm just going to list about a dozen works here, if you've read any of them I just wanna know some of your (Spoilers free) thoughts on them. You don't have to write a full review, even just a thumbs up or thumbs down is good. However I'm not just asking to have someone decide for me, I just want to be more informed before i delve into things, from more...ideologically coherent people. And obviously you don't have to say anything about the ones you haven't seen/read.

The list:

Road to Reality-Roger Penrose

Elements-Euclid

Bertrand Russel in general (honestly can't quite get a read on the guy to tell if going to get anything from him)

Peacock cries- Hong Ying

The Bathing woman-Tie Ning

Eileen Chang in general (I saw some of her books at a library and thought they looked interesting, wouldn't mind knowing where to start)

Water Margin- Shi Nai'an

Journey to the west- Wu Cheng'en

The Plum in the Golden Vase-Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng

Arsenal military academy (the TV show. Idk if there's something else by the same name)

A sacred and terrible air-Robert Kurvitz

(I want to read House of Leaves and Ulysses too. I'll ask about them while I'm here but I dont need to be persuaded to read them)

I'm sure I'm forgetting some, I'll add them in an edit if I remember. Thanks in advance

Look, I know how this is going to come off, but this has been inside me for a while and I just want to get it off my chest.

To preface, yes, I know, boo hoo for me I get to live in the imperial core and not starve and live in a home rather than a shack or be completely homeless. My point isn't to pretend that I'm the saddest sob story to exist.

Anyway, I just feel like I'm just...idk, a villain? That's not the right word for it. But when people talk about the labor aristocracy and such, I get it. I get that I and others have better lives than the global south specifically because of their exploitation. But at the same time I don't feel as privileged as online discourse would have me believe. I mean, I'm certainly more privileged than barefoot malnourished miners in the DRC, but it's still hard. My entire family works and are proles in some form, even my semi-retired grandma. My entire upbringing has been focussed on making do with what we have. I have trauma from my mom getting fired. My health is poor, and I havent been able to see a dentist or doctor in years. And what we do have we try to give away. We housed another family when they were about to be homeless.

And again, I can't say this enough, I know I'm not the most oppressed person. I know there are more important topics and such.

It's just that, I can't be happy about this getting worse. Obviously I want the empire to fall, and that entails things getting worse. But I'm not happy about that being the reality. And I'm certainly not "Bourgeois-ified" or whatever.

I guess my point is, I just feel overwhelmed sometimes. Materially I'm squeezed by poverty and overwork, and psychologically I'm constantly reminded that I have it good, somehow, and yet that i don't deserve to have it good. That everyone hates me, and they're probably right to do so.

I don't know, I'm going to bed, I just don't wanna wake up

(Source:Han Suyin's The Crippled Tree)

So, this era (the one between the early 1400s to early 1800s) has always intrigued me and I've always found it interesting, but unfortunately as an America, all of my pre-college education basically had a singular chapter on tbe period (granted I never took ap history but I'm an engineering major so :p) so honestly it's probably the era I know least about. But I feel like the transition from Feudal society to early capitalist society, early deism, the French revolution obviously, etc. Are all very important and at least very interesting (which is probably why I'm so interested in Modern Chinese history given that they essentially went through this change at massive speed comparatively).

Anyway, they don't have to be marxist (although class analysis would be helpful. I wouldn't be surprised if the USSR had something on the topic but I wouldn't know where to start looking something like that [if I can even read it]) Any source is fine as long as it's somewhat sane and not like, Guns Germs and Steel levels of bad)

So recently with the reports of Israel running low on AD missiles, I've been thinking. Why is it that during the "war on terror," equipment stocks never seemed to be as much of an issue. From my memory in Iraq and Afganistan and such it was more of a logistics issue vs literally not being able to produce enough. Idk, maybe my memory is just wrong here. But I wanted to ask

So I've been thinking about this for the past few days and now that the US has actually struck Iran...I have to ask what is the US's and Israel's plans here?

Israel is obvious, strike Iran until the US gets involved because Israel has to escalate the conflict to survive. But the US plan is going to be...what? There's the obvious boots on the ground answer, which might be the case, but...why do it like this? With Iraq for instance, the US didn't go in Milquetoast (from my memory at least). Obviously Iraq was a different beast but the point still stands. Why waffle about with these feigned feigns and then just say you struck the nuclear sites. Is it to goad a response from Iran?

There's another option, which is to stick with bombing and use insurgent groups, a la Syria and Libya. But again, Iran is a different beast, and the elephant in the room here is that Iran isn't going through a rebellion of any sort.

The last option is to just start Carpet bombing Iran until they can't fight back anymore. Honestly I see this as the most likely option but...its just a really dumb plan. I mean sure it would complete the goal of (maybe) knocking Iran out of the middle eastern conflict, but it'd really be the least effective. You risk planes that are already getting shot down, strategic bombing doesn't really work anyway, and when you're done you don't gain anything while also wasting a bunch of resources you're rapidly running out of.

So looking at all of these i really can't figure out which direction this is going to go

I'm on episode 11 currently (if anyone posts spoilers I will send you to a Gulag) and it's good. I did think it was going to be a procedural but I forgot thats more of an American thing (no I don't want to discuss the cultural and historical reasons why America was the birthplace and is the home of the procedural TV show). I will say it was a little hard to keep track of who is who and what their positions were, both because I'm bad at remembering names and also because intially you're jumping between Beijing and Handong, but I'm getting the hang of it.

Interestingly, I only two gunshots (as a dispersal method which im pretty sure is portrayed as a bad thing by the show) has been fired (not including the flashback to the 2nd sino japanese war). As an American I had to remember that not everything ends in massive gun violence (/s). I will say I'm not...very versed with how the chinese government works so how promotion and transfers and certain other specifics relating to laws and such (i.e, I assumed incorrectly that the Procuratorate would have automatic jurisdiction over people suspected of corruption that municipal police couldn't just block, since in the USA usually the federal law enforcement like the FBI trumps local law fairly easily)

I do like it so far and do really appreciate that most characters do have a decent amount of depth to them, even the antagonists. I'll have an update once I'm further in but I did want to see if anyone else has opinions on the show. It's definitely nice that i can get my cop/detective show fix with no guilt as compared to watching American shows.

Obviously I am not saying I'm smart generally, or that some people are inherently mentally deficient. But i will say that to a certain extent I'm smarter than the people who I interact with and whom make up the government that governs me. Obviously not in all feilds (I trust I am a worse chef than those who are chefs and a worse physicist than those who are physicists and such), but in broader more systematic ways probably. And of course ideologically.

I mean, when you hear that Henry Ford couldn't remember basic American history, or you see tech entrepreneurs make stupid, stupid decisions, or when I hear Justice Scalie cite fictional character Jack Bauer to justify torture, or when you hear Richard Feymann say you shouldn't brush your teeth or that he would fool people into thinking he was speaking a "regional dialect" of their native tongue by speaking gibberish, or when you simply listen to George Bush or Ronald Reagan or Rishi Sunak or any number of officials speak. It makes me think "wow I am smarter than these people. I am ergo very smart and can teach others with decisive authority"

Azure Scapegoat (who is a fairly decent youtube channel [which is high praise from me]) talks about the exact feeling when you realize you aren't smart, it's just that society is stupid. That CPC youth league members are more intelligent than you, even in matters of ideology (Seen here:https://youtu.be/GoHxcRxX4L8).

Of course learning never ends but the absolute depth of the unknown is very demoralizing. I was thinking of making a substack and writing but I realized that all I would be doing would be just saying "listen to these people." That's not helpful, no? Especially when I lack the investigative ability to find new sources or to evaluate the efficacy of said sources. I am not like others who will proudly dictate knowledge while not having it, but humility does not create usefulness. I can say "oh no no I do not know that much." But that is not solving problems, it is preventing harm. Of course I do strive to learn and to improve myself, this is not me giving up, but simultaneously I do wish to discuss these emotions and thoughts i have.

Occasionally I'll read about pre-luther/pre-catholic/orthodox split and...idk, it feels like people actually cared? I mean i dont want to say modern Christians don't care about Christianity, but genuine theological debate about the fundamentals of Christianity is a lot more interesting than "noooo the pope has too much power" (I know its more than that but compared to some of the more interesting stuff like splits between mainline Christianity and nestorianism and gnostic sects etc. It's a lot less interesting).

I know I'm oversimplifing it but I wanted to say something since I dont see people really mention it anywhere