Falun Gong is not an innocent religious organization.

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shlaifu
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10 May 2022, 8:34 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

SkinnedWolf wrote:

The negative history of the "Taiping rebellion"/"Taiping Heavenly Kingdom" is rarely mentioned in Chinese public education due to the nominally special ideology of Chinese officials.

It is hard to say here that there is "an impact on our view of religion". This is not the first time in Chinese history that such violent revolution and extremist religion have been combined.
I'm not good at Chinese history, but "White Lotus Religion" and "Yellow Turban Rebellion" are examples that come to my mind right away.
I'd rather admit that this is what the ignorant lower classes of Chinese/all-human-beings would have done in ancient times, than that the otherwise virtuous people got some kind of unexpected stimulus.

According to the local historical records of different regions, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom has a system that is extremely terrifying even in the history of Chinese autocracy.
Newspeak.
A rigid hierarchy combining Christianity and Confucianism.
Gender segregated so that sexual intercourse is a crime.
Being opposed to "Manchu culture" but being ignorant at the same time deprives civilians of the right to wear traditional clothing.
Use the death penalty for misdemeanors.
This was even worse than the Qing government, which had ethnic oppression, in many respects.

This is a possibility as a hint of what might grow on this soil if "we" overthrow disfavored governments with populist violence before cultural improvement and enlightenment.
The water level of ideas here has not yet risen to the level of "equality for all" and "self-governance".
So the results may not be that one we need.

Falun Gong is just one of these poisonous fruits that survived.

This makes me interested in the question of what the actual bulwark is against that. In the US we lucked out that the founding fathers came from a crap enough situation that they got a lot of things right and their experience with 17th and 18th century religious wars in the UK seem to have landed some things in our laws to prevent us from having large scale Northern Ireland style problems, I'm sure freedom of religion translating to the right to own private property without belonging to a given religious sect being a significant piece of that but I'm curious what else. As geographically large and populous as our country is it's really amazing that we aren't in the same basket as India or China in terms of internal dynamics. Things might not be perfect now but clearly they went a lot better than they might have otherwise.

The US has not had to deal with redefining itself as a modern nation after its national history had been disrupted by colonisation, for one.
But also: the "culture war" that's driving the divide between coastal regions and heartland is essentially religious in nature, I'm not sure there actually is a "bulwark" other than ample space and federalism over centralized law making.

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Pepe
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10 May 2022, 8:42 pm

SkinnedWolf wrote:

Even disregarding the appalling parts of the Chinese government's propaganda, FLG's public opinion in China is not "innocent".
FLG are quite capable of defrauding the life savings of ignorant old people. And many times play the role of anti-vaxxer.
And FLG have a long track record of harassing the Chinese diaspora. This often impresses Chinese citizens traveling abroad for short periods of time.

I hope those who have a crush on them will enjoy these qualities of them. :lol:

Oh no, they only seem to be trying to poison ethnic Chinese.

What proportion of FLG engages in these immoral practices?

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10 May 2022, 8:45 pm

Pepe wrote:

SkinnedWolf wrote:

Oh no, they only seem to be trying to poison ethnic Chinese.

What proportion of FLG engages in these immoral practices?

I'm not sure, because people in the West are probably more familiar with them now than I am.

No statistics are available here.

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SkinnedWolf
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10 May 2022, 9:24 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

My intuition is that individualism has a lot to do with whether there is such a tendency. The default state of the current Chinese people's values seems to be authoritarianism, with some people deviating in the direction of totalitarianism, and some in the direction of liberalism.
Collectivist values in East Asia are a product of the natural development of human societies and are likely to be the norm elsewhere in the world (especially other farming civilizations), while individualist values in the West are a by-product of the decline of religious organizations, relatively higher status trade activities or more accidental factors.

On the other hand, traditional Chinese and Indian cultures (which for China are much more complex than mere "religion") support hierarchy. For the ancient Chinese, someone was either above me, below me, or a barbarian of a different culture, with very little in the middle.
Even other East Asian countries that have now emerged from authoritarianism, such as South Korea, have less healthy internal dynamics.

Personally, I would like to believe that as living-standards/educational-level improve, so too will people's need for personal freedom. And interacting with civilizations that already have individualism will speed up this process of cultural improvement/renovation.

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techstepgenr8tion
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11 May 2022, 4:44 pm

SkinnedWolf wrote:

Personally, I would like to believe that as living-standards/educational-level improve, so too will people's need for personal freedom. And interacting with civilizations that already have individualism will speed up this process of cultural improvement/renovation.

That makes sense, particularly with generational churn.

The cautious techno-optimist in me says that the less work that needs to be done by human hands, so long as we don't go full Mad Max with that and actually try supporting our human populations rather than just the algorithms, that the authoritarian tendency will decrease in a lot of places.

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techstepgenr8tion
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11 May 2022, 4:46 pm

shlaifu wrote:

But also: the "culture war" that's driving the divide between coastal regions and heartland is essentially religious in nature, I'm not sure there actually is a "bulwark" other than ample space and federalism over centralized law making.

It has that flavor but I do wonder if we were back to 1970's or prior economic well-being (assume for all races and both genders in this case), would we have this? Seems like an archetypal religious explosion but essentially driven by the constant dialing up of the pain-meter.

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27 May 2022, 7:09 pm

Source: Various Vietnamese-language media:
https://vietnamnet.vn/vu-thi-the-trong-thung-be-tong-ca-nha-luyen-phap-luan-cong-533384.html
https://cand.com.vn/Ban-tin-113/Nhieu-tinh-tiet-moi-phien-toa-xet-xu-vu-quan-tai-be-tong-o-Binh-Duong-i570499/
https://tuoitre.vn/rung-minh-voi-loi-khai-cua-4-phu-nu-vu-giet-nguoi-do-be-tong-20190519093010188.htm

Quote:

After each death of a man, the group of 4 women said that they kept the body in the house and continued to practice "Falun Gong" until the corpse decomposed, then put it in a bin and then poured concrete or tape!

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27 May 2022, 7:30 pm

I would take the CCP over the GOP any day of the week.

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