James Fallows

As I mentioned a few minutes ago, our new issue (subscribe!) includes a Q-and-A I did with Linda Stone, coiner of the term "continuous partial attention," on how to maintain sanity and focus in an insane and unfocused world.

Here is the promised extended-play bonus version, beyond what we could work into two pages of the magazine:
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JAMES FALLOWS: You're well known for the idea of continuous partial attention. Why is this a bad thing?

LINDA STONE: Continuous partial attention is neither good nor bad. We need different attention strategies in different contexts. The way you use your attention when you're writing a story may vary from the way you use your attention when you're driving a car, serving a meal to dinner guests, making love, or riding a bicycle. The important thing for us as humans is to have the capacity to tap the attention strategy that will best serve us in any given moment.

JF: What do you mean by "attention strategy"?

LS: From the time we're born, we're learning and modeling a variety of attention and communication strategies. For example, one parent might put one toy after another in front of the baby until the baby stops crying. Another parent might work with the baby to demonstrate a new way to play with the same toy. These are very different strategies, and they set up a very different way of relating to the world for those children. Adults model attention and communication strategies, and children imitate. In some cases, through sports or crafts or performing arts, children are taught attention strategies. Some of the training might involve managing the breath and emotions---bringing one's body and mind to the same place at the same time.

Self-directed play allows both children and adults to develop a powerful attention strategy, a strategy that I call "relaxed presence." How did you play as a child?

JF: I have two younger siblings very close in age, so I spent time with them. I also just did things on my own, reading and building things and throwing balls and so on.

LS: Let's talk about reading or building things. When you did those things, nobody was giving you an assignment, nobody was telling you what to do--there wasn't any stress around it. You did these things for your own pleasure and joy. As you played, you developed a capacity for attention and for a type of curiosity and experimentation that can happen when you play. You were in the moment, and the moment was unfolding in a natural way.

You were in a state of relaxed presence as you explored your world. At one point, I interviewed a handful of Nobel laureates about their childhood play patterns. They talked about how they expressed their curiosity through experimentation. They enthusiastically described things they built, and how one play experience naturally led into another. In most cases, by the end of the interview, the scientist would say, "This is exactly what I do in my lab today! I'm still playing!"

An unintended and tragic consequence of our metrics for schools is that what we measure causes us to remove self-directed play from the school day. Children's lives are completely programmed, filled with homework, lessons, and other activities.. There is less and less space for the kind of self-directed play that can be a fantastically fertile way for us to develop resilience and a broad set of attention strategies, not to mention a sense of who we are, and what questions captivate us. We have narrowed ourselves in service to the gods of productivity, a type of productivity that is about output and not about results.

JF: When people talk about attention problems in modern society, they usually mean the distractive potential of smartphones and so on. Is that connected to what you're talking about in early-childhood development?

LS: We learn by imitation, from the very start. That's how we're wired. Andrew Meltzoff and Patricia Kuhl, professors at the University of Washington I-LABS, show videos of babies at 42 minutes old, imitating adults. The adult sticks his tongue out. The baby sticks his tongue out, mirroring the adult's behavior. Children are also cued by where a parent focuses attention. The child's gaze follows the mother's gaze. Not long ago, I had brunch with friends who are doctors, and both of them were on call. They were constantly pulling out their smartphones. The focus of their 1-year-old turned to the smartphone: Mommy's got it, Daddy's got it. I want it.

We may think that kids have a natural fascination with phones. Really, children have a fascination with what-ever Mom and Dad find fascinating. If they are fascinated by the flowers coming up in the yard, that's what the children are going to find fascinating. And if Mom and Dad can't put down the device with the screen, the child is going to think, That's where it's all at, that's where I need to be! I interviewed kids between the ages of 7 and 12 about this. They said things like "My mom should make eye contact with me when she talks to me" and "I used to watch TV with my dad, but now he has his iPad, and I watch by myself."

Kids learn empathy in part through eye contact and gaze. If kids are learning empathy through eye contact, and our eye contact is with devices, they will miss out on empathy.

JF: What you're describing sounds like a society-wide autism.

LS: In my opinion, it's more serious than autism. Many autistic kids are profoundly sensitive, and look away [from people] because full stimulation overwhelms them. What we're doing now is modeling a primary relationship with screens, and a lack of eye contact with people. It ultimately can feed the development of a kind of sociopathy and psychopathy.

JF: I'm afraid to ask, but is this just going to get worse?

LS: I don't think so. You and I, as we grew up, experienced our parents operating in certain ways, and may have created a mental checklist: Okay, my mom and dad do that, and that's cool. I'll do that with my kids, too. Or: My mom and dad do this, and it's less cool, so I'm not going to do that when I'm a grown-up.

The generation that has been tethered to devices serves as a cautionary example to the next generation, which may decide this is not a satisfying way to live. A couple years ago, after a fire in my house, I had a couple students coming to help me. One of them was Gen X and one was a Millennial. If the Gen Xer's phone rang or if she got a text, she would say "I'm going to take this, I'll be back in a minute." With the Millennial, she would just text back "L8r." When I talked to the Millennial about it, she said, "When I'm with someone, I want to be with that person." I am reminded of this new thing they're doing in Silicon Valley where every-one sticks their phone in the middle of the table, and whoever grabs their phone first has to treat to the meal.

JF: So people may yet find ways to "disconnect"?

LS: There is an increasingly heated conversation around "disconnecting."  I'm not sure this is a helpful conversation . When we discuss disconnecting, it puts the machines at the center of everything.  What if, instead, we put humans at the center of the conversation, and talk about with what or whom we want to connect?

Talking about what we want to connect with gives us a direction and something positive to do.  Talking about disconnecting leaves us feeling shamed and stressed. Instead of going toward something, the language is all about going away from something that we feel we don't adequately control.  It's like a dieter constantly saying to him or herself, "I can't eat the cookie.  I can't eat the cookie," instead of saying, "That apple looks delicious."

JF: You say that people can create a sense of relaxed presence for themselves. How?

LS: When we learn how to play a sport or an instrument; how to dance or sing; or even how to fly a plane, we learn how to breathe and how to sit or stand in a way that supports a state of relaxed presence. My hunch is that when you're flying, you're aware of everything around you, and yet you're also relaxed. When you're water-skiing, you're paying attention, and if you're too tense, you'll fall. All of these activities help us cultivate our capacity for relaxed presence. Mind and body in the same place at the same time.

People have become increasingly drawn to meditation and yoga as a way to cultivate relaxed presence.   Any of these activities, from self-directed play to sports and performing arts, to meditation and yoga, can contribute cultivating relaxed presence.

In this state of relaxed presence, our minds and bodies are in the same place at the same time and we have a more open relationship with the world around us.

Another bonus comes with this state of relaxed presence.  It's where we rendezvous with luck.  A U.K. psychologist ran experiments in which he divided self-described lucky and unlucky people into different groups and had each group execute the same task.   In one experiment, subjects were told to go to a café, order coffee, return and report on their experience. 

The self-described lucky person found money on the ground on the way into the café, had a pleasant conversation with the person they sat next to at the counter, and left with a connection and potential business deal.  The self-described unlucky person missed the money - it was left in the same place for all experimental subjects to find, ordered coffee, didn't speak to a soul, and left the café.  One of these subjects was focused in a more stressed way on the task at hand.  The other was in a state of relaxed presence, executing the assignment. 

We all have a capacity for relaxed presence, empathy, and luck.   We stress about being distracted, needing to focus, and needing to disconnect.  What if, instead, we cultivated our capacity for relaxed presence and actually, really connected, to each moment and to each other?

The June issue of The Atlantic has arrived. Say it with me: Subscribe! I read the "actual" (printed) magazine cover-to-cover last night, on the DC-NY train and then after arrival; it's full of good stuff. In my hypothesized "spare time" some day I will intend to do a story-by-story gloss. For the moment I'll just touch on a few in-house features:

• Ta-Nehisi Coates, on the encounter-with-French-language-and-the-French-people-eux-mêmes he has previewed on his site;
• Benjamin Schwarz, on the disappearance of "charming" men, an essay I loved despite specific disagreement with one sentence;
• Carl Zimmer with a fascinating extension of a grisly-fascinating discovery (people ossifying) reported 15 years ago in our pages;
• and a lot more.

This is by way of segue to two extra in-house aspects of the issue that involve me. One is a long story by me about the past-present-and-future governor of my original home state, Jerry Brown. I'll do a follow up item here soon, but the two points I tried to convey in the story are what is unusual (and impressive) about Brown as a person, and what is unusual (and instructive) about the predicament of California as a state. For now I'll say that I really enjoyed doing this story, except the always-tedious "writing" part; and it helped me come to terms with the changes for good and bad in California between my time growing up there and my sons' time there now.

Oh, yes, the story also involves my (and the governor's) discovery of what a certain literary term means.

The other is a Q-and-A with Linda Stone, known inside the tech world for her work at Apple and Microsoft and known to the world at large for coining the term "continuous partial attention" to define our modern mental state. The print version of the interview, with tips on maintaining your own focus despite the blur, is here; the next post in this space will be a "director's cut" extended version of the interview, with more tips. I will try to maintain focus long enough to get it posted.

The tech-industry veteran Linda Stone on how to pay attention

In his reprise as governor, he's been as ruthlessly practical as he's been reflective, embracing his inner politician to restore the California dream.

1) Amtrak suddenly has much better Wi-Fi service on some routes -- starting with the Acela I am taking right now from DC to NY. Of course I admit that griping about the speed and reliability of a (free) Wi-Fi service, on a moving train, epitomizes having too few real problems to gripe about. But until recently the service really had been so slow and unreliable that I wished Amtrak would not even advertise it. That way, people who got any connection at all would feel lucky, rather than people expecting connections staring in frustration at their screens.

The whole episode lasted about 2 hours.  While the officers who questioned me were not overtly or personally threatening, the situation was intimidating and threatening.  I was never told details of the "profile", so I don't know how to prevent this from happening again, aside from talking to federal employees at all times while flying.  I am concerned that DEA and DHS now have files on me.  This distresses me GREATLY.  I am equally concerned that my plane's tail number is now suspicious in the eyes of law enforcement....

[He adds this caveat in a follow up note:] Although my adrenaline gets going when I think about this whole mess, and I can read the US Constitution, I have ENORMOUS respect for the rule of law and for the men and women who put their asses in harm's way to help assure my safety.  That includes local, state, & federal law enforcement agents, as well as our military.  The people who should answer for this crap are the cowardly bureaucrats who sent all those men, vehicles, airplanes, dogs, and guns out there - not the men dispatched to the scene.

His full account after the jump. After that is the second case, from Clay Phillips, a retired Navy officer who had a similar experience.

To say it again: I am not contending that the aviation world is being inordinately picked-upon. Overall it is a privileged part of society -- and demographically it skews toward older white males who are politically conservative, have money, and often have military experience. Ie, these are people who are not generally the object of police profiling for terrorist or other criminal tendencies. So if the security state is leaning heavily on them, you can extrapolate to other groups. The stories begin below.

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I half-heard the President's commencement address at Morehouse when coming back to DC this weekend. I saw a clip of it again late last night and thought: this is another sample and reminder of Barack Obama's reserves of rhetorical strength. Like his other big, punctuating speeches (as I have discussed previously here, here, here and elsewhere), this one appealed to both the mind and the heart; it built an argument over a span of paragraphs rather than in isolated phrases; and it grew from Obama's position as a man part of, but also apart from, America's normal racial classifications.

Before I had a chance to write anything about the speech, I read two other reactions. One was from my former colleague Andrew Sullivan, who was defending the speech against idiotic accusations that it was "race-baiting" and too black. The other was from my current Atlantic colleague Ta-Nehisi Coates, who criticized the speech for being too hectoring of Obama's Morehouse audience in a way he wouldn't have been at Dartmouth or Stanford:

Barack Obama is, indeed, the president of "all America," but he also is singularly the scold of "black America."

As I told Ta-Nehisi by phone this evening, I naturally cut Obama more slack on this point than he does. (And of course I hear the speech differently too.) We all take a different tone in setting expectations for "our own." I can hold Americans overseas to a different standard than I would Russians or Japanese; I can harangue (and have!) my colleagues in the press about why we should do better; I expect something from myself and my kids I wouldn't expect from you and your kids, and so on. The challenge for Obama, exactly as Ta-Nehisi pointed out, is that he is simultaneously addressing all Americans as his own (apart from those who consider him alien) while also in this speech addressing as his own the most historically distinct subset of our population.

So, I was glad to see Andrew Sullivan's defense; and I understood the logic of Ta-Nehisi Coates's frustrated criticism. Which led me to the main conclusion: about the near-impossibility of the tightrope act Barack Obama is attempting as America's first non-white president, and the unusual combination of virtuosity (as with this speech) and unflappability (as with criticism of the speech) with which he has mainly carried it off.

I increasingly think of Obama as walking a tiny, little rope suspended across a Grand Canyon. Through four and a half years he has mainly kept his footing, in a way that becomes cumulatively surprising -- and I say that even while disagreeing with many of his policies, notably including the recent security-state extensions.  Every now and then, as with this speech, we see how hard what he is doing is.

2) For reasons that will be evident if you see Side Effects, I found myself thinking about The Usual Suspects; which of course led to thoughts of Kevin Spacey; which in turn led to thoughts of Netflix's House of Cards, in which he stars with Rooney Mara's (less elegantly alarming) sister Kate Mara.

Here's one thought about Kevin Spacey: I contend that for many American men he holds a place similar to Jack Nicholson's a generation ago, and maybe Humphrey Bogart's before that. He comes across on screen the way you imagine the idealized tough-guy version of yourself coming across, in some fancified other existence in which you were an idealized tough guy. But I digress. Anyone who eats up the serialized dramas of today's golden era of Dickensian/Tolstoyan TV -- from The Sopranos and The Wire (still the best) to Mad Men and Breaking Bad and the rest -- has to consider this a worthy new entry.

 Silverstein, the pilot in command, raised objections and was given three options: wait inside the FBO [the "Fixed Base Operator," the little office that exists at most small airports] or  wait quietly outside, or be detained in handcuffs. An instrument-rated private pilot and AOPA member, Silverstein is also an active real estate investment banker who has never committed a crime, he said.

The three Obama "scandals" have varying characteristics and varying levels of legitimacy, but all three share a meta-story. And I think I know whereof I speak as a former GOP staffer.

 

Beginning with the dethronement of Jim Wright and the House banking scandal, and achieving escape velocity in the mid-1990s with Matt Drudge becoming the virtual assignment editor of the mainstream press during the Clinton impeachment, the Washington press corps has become increasingly "wired" to accept the Republican view of what constitutes a scandal. The public has been ignoring Benghazi for 8 months; as for the Washington press, we saw how Jonathan Karl got played by Republican staffers' misrepresentations of the administration's e-mails.

Let's think about the modern history of "the scandal," and how such episodes emerge. 

The modern saga all starts with Nixon. Obviously there have been scandals throughout political history, and in the immediate pre-Nixon era you had Bobby Baker, Billy Sol Estes and Walter Jenkins with LBJ; Sherman Adams under Eisenhower; and such different political dramas as the Army-McCarthy hearings in the early Eisenhower era and the Bay of Pigs aftermath under JFK. But Nixon marked the beginning of the modern scandal era. That is because the phenomena of the televised high-stakes public inquiries (as with the Watergate hearings and impeachment preparations) really dates to then, as does modern press-consciousness of how coverage of a big, exciting scandal looks and feels.

I. The main stops along the way:

  Nixon: Watergate -> hearings -> dramatic revelations -> Supreme Court hearing -> impeachment -> resignation.

  Also under Nixon: Spiro Agnew taking a brown paper bag full of bribery money, in his Vice Presidential office, and having to resign, something barely remembered now.

  Nixon era: Teddy Kennedy and Chappaquiddick.

  Ford: None really.

  Carter: No long-running ones, despite flaps about his budget director and his chief of staff. But his era marks a major change, since round-the-clock news coverage was just getting going then, and Ted Koppel's Nightline, originally known as America Held Hostage, pioneered what we now think of as scandal-style coverage, of the American captives in Teheran.

 Reagan: The Iran-contra mess, complete with Fawn Hall and Oliver North.

 GHW Bush: None, really, though the Clarence Thomas nomination got scandal-style coverage because of the charges against him and the dramatic hearings.

Clinton: First the phony scandals of Whitewater and Vince Foster. Then the real problems via Monica Lewinsky. Clinton era notable for the creation/revelation of something like a permanent-scandal mentality in politics and the press.

GW Bush: Few scandals in the technical sense. But the election, recount, and judicial overreach known as Bush v. Gore got scandal-style coverage. Then Abu Ghraib, waterboarding and torture, and the war as a whole.

Obama: In his first term, the phony scandals of birtherism and Shirley Sherrod. Now the three-"scandal" combo made of elements that have nothing whatsoever to do with one another and don't necessarily have anything to do with Obama himself but that nonetheless satisfy that phantom-limb craving for a good exciting scandal.

II. What a Scandal Takes, to Take Off

  1. An underlying offense people can understand. Clinton and Monica meet this test. Also Nixon ordering wiretaps, or Agnew taking a bag of money. Iran-Contra was always sort of a struggle on this front -- for people to grasp what exactly the offense was. Today's IRS/Tea Party accusation meets the test (despite complexity of the underlying reality); Benghazi, less so.

  2. Evidence of president's personal involvement. The Watergate tapes again lead the way here -- Nixon's own voice, cursing and swearing. Monica and Clinton -- whew. Obama "scandals" lacking here.

 3. A formal hearing/ investigative structure that guarantees an ongoing daily drip-drip-drip coverage. When there is a schedule of witnesses for a hearing, an upcoming set of votes, or a sequence of new revelations, then the story can keep going for weeks, months, even years. Darrel Issa, listen up!

 4. A press culture and DC culture that is now wired to swing into "scandal mode," and start writing stories and giving commentary reflecting that "narrative." 

5. A structure of news coverage that keeps the scandal narrative going. This was probably at its strongest in the era of the weekly news magazines (Time, Newsweek, etc.) Then you would have: daily coverage in the papers; nightly coverage on TV news; weekly advancing of the narrative by news mags (and Sunday talk shows); analysis of "Administration in crisis" and "President under pressure"; and it would all keep going. Now, in a sense, the hourly / minute-by-minute cycle can make scandals "burn out" too fast. 

... be sure to come by the 5th anniversary Air Show / celebration for the Hangar 24 craft brewery. If I weren't necessarily at a policy big-think event in DC this weekend, I would be there myself.

I was living in Beijing when I saw news of Hangar 24's opening five years ago: that long-sought combination of small-airport aviation and micro-brewing in my original home town. I ended up spending more time there than I expected in 2008, as I went back and forth from China in my dad's final months. I've been there in happier circumstances as often as I can recently. Have a Columbus IPA or Orange Wheat for me if you go there -- or for my dad, whose 88th birthday it would be. And enjoy the air show!

After this item late last night.3) Many, many readers are unhappy with my assertion last night that the AP leak investigation is the one of these episodes that should be held against the president. Samples:

Is it your position that any government official should be able to leak any classified information to a journalist with impunity even when that leak endangers lives and compromises national security? Where are your boundaries?

And:

I don't think you're really grappling with President Obama's argument in favor of the leak investigation. His argument is straightforward: revealing national security secrets is a matter of life and death for Americans overseas. Anyone who reveals those secrets should be arrested and prosecuted as a matter of justice and deterrence. That's a solid argument, and for you to rebut Obama by talking about the lessons of history is an exercise in evasion. When Aldrich Ames exposed the names of CIA agents and sources to the Soviet Union, those agents and sources were promptly arrested and executed. It seems very likely that the wikileaks data dumps had the same result, especially since Julian Assange refused to redact any of the information. The Bradley Manning court case has been an embarrassment, but it's hard to argue that the federal government should not have moved heaven and earth to find the culprit and prosecute him.
 
I could be persuaded that AG Holder was wrong ... and that President Obama was wrong in backing him. But I am skeptical that the verdict of history is self-evidently against the president, who after all does have a responsibility to protect national security. One of the temptations that presidents should avoid is worrying about looking better in history's eyes. As you know, history is greatly influenced by journalists, who have a certain conflict of interest on issues like this. I am sure the President would rather not prevent journalists from talking to sources (in contrast to President Bush, who would have been overjoyed to send a few journalists to prison), but it's not his top priority. Should it be? You still have to do the hard work of arguing that this tactic, in this instance, was misguided.

Several people also pointed out this item, by Kevin Drum, on why the government took such a hard line in this leak case (although they've been consistently hard on leakers all along). And a university math professor said, in response to my claim that "secrets always get out," "My jaw dropped reading that, given the selection bias inherent in the claim!" (If I had said "all secrets always get out," I would have to respond Touché. My point is that every president has had to cope with "shocking" and "dangerous" releases of classified information.)

In explanation of my own hard-line tone, let me be more precise. On the "Administration's side" of the case, I recognize these points:

1) Leaks can do genuine, terrible damage -- mainly by exposing vulnerable informants and sources, in the way Kevin Drum explains. One reason I was never a fan of the Wikileaks approach is that I knew how many sources in China, in particular, were likely to be harmed by this indiscriminate info-dump.

2) Organizations can and should take reasonable steps to police themselves -- that is, to encourage their own members to observe codes of confidence, and to identify and if necessary punish those who transgress. It matters tremendously to me and other staff members of this magazine that we protect the confidence of people who share information with us. That matters in corporations; it matters in government agencies; it matters for doctors and teachers and detectives and on down a long list.

So what is my complaint?

3) There is a very long history of presidents losing all perspective about leaks, and compounding the problems the original leak through a disproportionate reaction. Jonathan Bernstein explains some of that here (thanks to AS). That is the history that I said a figure as level-headed and unflappable as Barack Obama should be aware of. Also see James Traub on this pattern in Obama's time.

3a) There is also a history of leaks usually (though not always) being less damaging than initially claimed. See: the history of The Pentagon Papers.

4) An important exception to point (2) above is that these post-leak punitive hunts are most likely to lead to trouble when they spill over to the press. The CIA giving its own members lie-detector tests or intercepting their mail to see who's disloyal is one thing -- and generally a proper thing, in my view. Same for a police department, a military unit, or within reason a company.

It is something else to force reporters to testify (or go to jail if they refuse), or to seize records of their phone calls or meetings. Let's leave aside the First Amendment issues: the complications are similar to those involved in forcing clergy members to talk about their parishoners, or doctors about their patients, or attorneys about their clients, or husbands about their wives, and parents about their children. The CIA investigating its own is straightforward. Dragging in the press is different and has very rarely turned out well. That is the reality that I expected a leader with Obama's Niebuhrian awareness of tragic possibilities to be guided by.

I think this is it for me on this theme. I hope the first two faux-scandals peter out, and that the issues of secrecy and disclosure in the era of long twilight war get more serious examination.

This follows my dispatch last weekend on the proper and improper bounds of foreigners finding fault with a big, contradictory, quickly changing, disorderly-but-progressing society.

I have been in China, offline, and in other ways removed from the US news ecosystem through the blossoming period of the three simultaneous problems for the Obama administration. Here is how they look after a day's worth of catching up:

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Reader WSR, who has spent a lot of time in Shanghai, alerted me to this one just now. It's from our old friend The Shanghaiist:

Sidney Rittenberg's The Man Who Stayed Behind (with Amanda Bennett) is a genuinely astonishing book. To be more precise, it is a dramatic account of a genuinely astonishing life.

Rittenberg, who grew up in Charleston, South Carolina in the 1920s, went to China in the 1940s as a language expert with the U.S. Army (right) -- and stayed for decades, as a committed believer in Chinese Communism and the new path being blazed by Chairman Mao. His loyalty to the country and its leaders survived his two long stretches, totaling 16 years, in solitary confirement as a political prisoner there in the early 1950s and again in the late 1960s. He still travels back and forth to China and, in his 90s, is actively involved in US-China affairs.

This evening -- Tuesday, May 14 -- I will have a chance to talk with Sidney Rittenberg about China then and now, at an event in Seattle sponsored by the Washington State China Relations Council. It's at 6pm at the ACT Theater; details here. I understand that C-SPAN intends to film his remarks, but if you're in the vicinity, please consider coming. I have met him before but am tremendously excited to have a chance to ask him about his experiences and views. It is an opportunity to hear about history, first-hand.

This took place while I was on the road in China, so I didn't catch up with it until just now. It is an editorial in (surprise!) the WSJ ten days ago that represents a certain kind of perfection in false-equivalence / black-is-white thinking. As a reminder:

I've been thinking quite hard about the amount of negative China articles that have appeared on your blog, usually in the form of links to Western laments about Chinese life and culture, as well as, of course, pictures of Beijing's pollution [1]. This is part of what I view as a general media trend of China-bashing [2]. Clearly, you love China, so I'm not accusing you in any way of being anti-China or malevolent, but I think you would agree there has been a rise/change in tone in coverage of China over the last year and a half.[3]

A prime example is the piece you linked to two days ago, where the author made sweeping generalizations based on singular anecdotes that paint the entire Chinese populace as rude, shallow and sub-human (or at least sub-Western.)[4] In analyzing a country of over a billion people, how can we take seriously someone who can paints with such a biased (and shockingly untruthful, if we were going to compare anecdotal memories) brush? Wouldn't it be similarly possible to write a similar anecdotal and nonfalsifiable story about America? Or any other country? Would we assume a fair appraisal if a Chinese person did the same to us?[5] I doubt it.

So why does this piece get coverage from you and the rest of the internet? I believe it's because it fits a media narrative that has been growing in strength over the last year or year and a half. I would summarize this narrative  as: "News Stories That China is Not As Good As The West."[6] Examples of these stories include the story making the rounds the last week on the quality of lamb in restaurants,[7] ubiquitous reports on various degrees of Chinese corruption and of course, pollution pictures.[8]

Now these are big important stories (except the lamb one,) but the focus on on China as opposed to say, India seems particularly acute. I am assuming that this is due to the news media's need for a rival to the United States in the post Soviet Era.[9] As China actually has some potential to pass the US in GDP (kind of meaningless) and perhaps have a say in regional (and maybe global?) security matters, I guess this is makes for news? I am assuming it's the present version of the Cold War Era "look how long the Soviets had to wait in line for bread" stories.[10] 

 

But at least China is open for Westerners to visit,[11] as opposed to the USSR of the 70s, leading to a particularly annoying narrative: the disgruntled foreigner leaving China because of excess pollution/corruption/hurt feelings. What kills me about this type of article is the total lack of acknowledgement of a huge advantage any Westerner gets when living in China: a five or ten fold increase in purchasing power.[12]

Some small examples from my time there:

• You can ride the Beijing subway, whose frequency and coverage exceeds all American lines with the possible exception of New York, for 30 cents (2 yuan.)
• You can take a taxi for 2 miles (maybe 3 or 4?) for an initial fee of 10 yuan in Beijing, or $1.60.
• You can swing into a hutong restaurant and order enough (incredible) food for 4 easily for 80 yuan, or maybe 3$ a person.
• You can hire a maid for 50/100 yuan to clean your likely cheap apartment. 

So why wouldn't someone expect a tradeoff if they moved to China between prices paid and living standards? And why isn't it explained by China watchers that while Chinese GDP per capita is 1/6th the US? That China is not a developed country, and that it's nowhere close to being one, despite it's massive growth of the last few decades? That Westerners who travel or live there that are expecting the comforts of home are fooling themselves?

Excuse the rant. I'm not sure why I'm responding to you about this. I think it's my fear that over the coming decades, the US and China will be thrown into an antagonistic relationship that will be an antagonism of choice.[13] And people who do not share the love for China and the Chinese people you and I do, will  look to this rising negative tide for rationalization of fear and hatred of the other. But in doing so, both countries will be turning their backs on incredible places and peoples that offer so much to each other. 

Thanks for listening. And here's hoping you have many future sunny Beijing days. The mountains ARE beautiful when you can seem them.

On the assorted points of disagreement:

• I should probably underscore the context of the "I hate China, and that's because I hate the Chinese people" rant I provided a link for [4]. The initial surprise value is that it comes from a site whose usual tone is "We hate foreigners, and that's because they criticize China." This post, equal in fury though opposite in direction to what normally appears, was from an ethnically Chinese foreigner who was having difficulty in his several months of living here.
  
  The central message of that post was: the Chinese people are worse than their system. As I pointed out in linking to it, my view has been the reverse: "Even though a thousand aspects of modern Chinese life drive me crazy, I still can't help liking the openness, the vim, the life of most of the people I meet here. That is, I find it easier to get along with the people than with the whole system." For instance, see a moment from one of my early visits to the Qingdao Beer Festival, at right.
  
  
• What's the reason for noting harshly critical material like this at all? It is because modern China -- like America, like Israel, like Turkey, like Mexico, like any other place that matters or any topic that deeply engages people -- is the subject of ongoing, passionate debate. People have strong views pro and con; opinions interact with one another and evolve; realities are so complex that many contradictory statements can all be "true" at the same time. I didn't agree with this (pseudonymous) writer or think that he had provided a "fair" [5] overview of everything Chinese. But I thought his venting was worth noting as part of the mix.
  
  
• Anyone, including me, needs to struggle against being defensive when criticized, and I realize that the reader-in-Boston is going out of his way to say that he doesn't think I agree with the ranting guy. But for record, the balance I've tried always to convey, and that I actually believe, is this: China is a society with enormous problems and probably-greater strengths and assets; life in China was, for my wife and me, usually harder than in other places, and usually more rewarding; the relationship between China and America involves very serious disagreements, but much more numerous areas of common interest; and so on. Check out here or here or here for chapter and verse.
  

Skipping past a bunch of other incidentals, here is the big point of agreement: Like the reader in Boston, I think it's possible (1) that the U.S. and China could end up in a snarling position of mutual suspicion and hostility, (2) that if this happened it would be self-induced, since it is not inevitable, (3) that a mainly hostile rather than mainly collaborative US-China relationship  would be bad for people in the two countries and everywhere else, and so therefore (4) it is very important that it not occur.

Where I differ from that reader is on whether "critical" stories about China -- carefully alarming ones, about food safety or pollution, or insanely hostile ones like the "I hate China" rant -- are driving the countries apart. To me, on balance, they suggest a properly realistic portrayal: neither too rosy and credulous, nor too resentful and suspicious. This is why in everything I write and everything I say I urge Americans to "take China seriously, without being afraid of it." Americans understand the realistic mix of goods and bads in our own country. Of course it's easier to maintain that balance about your own self/family/country than to apply it externally. But I think the range of good and bad coverage of China now being presented to the world -- like the mixed goods and bads about America that have long been on display to everyone  -- is in the long run indispensable to, rather than destructive of, a real relationship.

Enough in that vein. The book-length version of the argument above is China Airborne. For the record, specific annotation points:
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[1] It is worth harping on pollution, because (according to me) "sustainability" in all its aspects is the major threat to China's continued development, and the major challenge China's economic growth poses for the world as a whole.

[2] For the record, I'm against any variant of the term "bashing" to describe international discourse -- Japan-bashing, China-bashing, America-bashing, etc. It assumes, rather that argues, that any criticism reflects prejudice rather than actual grounds for complaint. Saying that America has a Guantanamo problem -- or a social-class-divide problem or a drone-warfare problem -- is not America-bashing. Saying that China has problems of its own is not China-bashing.

[3] I think there has been both "good" and "bad" coverage (ie, both positive and negative stories) about China in that time. It is inarguable that in 2010 and 2011 China's foreign policy claims (based on its increased economic confidence) provoked reactions in many other Asian countries. Similarly, the Bo Xilai case occurred in this time; pollution levels rose; etc.

[4] Yes, this was a rant, revealing as much about the author as about the subject.

[5] Yes, but people make extreme complaints about America all the time -- I do it myself. For a subject as vast as America, or China, no single assessment can be perfectly "fair." If it tried to be, it would be really boring. You hope that the  flow of info and argument in its entirety will be enlightening and thus "fair" over time.

[6] Speaking personally, I have zero interest in whether China is "better" than America, or vice versa. It's like asking whether a car is better than a baseball game. These are societies with some points of similarity and a lot of points of difference. Even the Cold War-era arguments on whether the "American model" or the "Soviet model" offered a better path to development don't apply here. For reasons of scale, history, geography, and other factors, China and America are each a category-of-one internationally. Neither offers a realistic model for others to apply.

[7] The lamb-meat-or-is-it-rat? stories are important rather than trivial, because they're connected to larger concerns about food-safety that matter to much of the Chinese public.

[8] Again: pollution and the environment constitute Issue Number One.

[9] As I argued in a long story here, during America's era as a world power, it has often projected fears about its own economy or society onto foreign rivals. I think it's a big mistake to do so with China. Whatever is wrong with America now would be just as wrong if China didn't exist. The converse is mainly true for China. The right way to use the Chinese "challenge," in my view, is the way Obama has in some of his big speeches. That is, as a positive challenge: If China can develop wind energy, so can we, etc.

[10] I agree on this. Whether from Americans or Chinese or anyone else, the "well, what about your problems" reflex gets you nowhere. China has pollution problems; to say, "Well, America has too many schoolyard shootings" doesn't get you anywhere. America has violence problems; to say "Well, China is polluted" also does no good.

[11] China is more open than the Soviet Union generally was, and more than it used to be. It is not as fully "open" as it should be. Ask the Western journalists and scholars whose visas are denied or yanked on purely political grounds. (Yes, I know, the US also has a visa problem, but one of different nature and scale.)

[12] For what it's worth, the China-as-bargain-basement angle is, for me, not a significant part of its appeal. Some things are very cheap; others are expensive. Mainly, as noted, it is the life and vividness of the typical day in China that attracts me.

[13] Back to our agreement. From Richard Nixon's through Barack Obama's, an otherwise completely different sequence of American administrations has adopted policies based on the premise that the United States and China need to find ways to work together rather than become enemies. That the relationship between China and America has been as constructive as it has been reflects credit on people on both sides. It's worth working to continue it.

Now preparing for the trek back to the U.S. -- and in the knowledge that the airport from which I begin the trip, Beijing Capital, will be far more convenient, modern, and pleasant than the one where I'll arrive, Washington Dulles. I suppose you could fairly call me a Dulles-basher.

I mentioned two days ago that I had encountered famous Chinese artist Ai Weiwei (and famous Spanish/American chef Jose Andres) in the evening in Beijing. I didn't mention that a few minutes after the picture I used was taken, I had seen Ai Weiwei giving a highly stylized haircut to someone in the courtyard outside a restaurant.

Ai Weiwei, oversized personality that he is, must understand the cult and farce of celebrity and those who would fawn in the face of it. At the risk of reading way too much into this, perhaps that's the wry, mischievous reasoning behind his deliberately woeful haircuts: because he knows you -- you - will appreciate it, since it came from him. It's why you'll wear it for a day, a week, a month after the fact, looking ridiculous because no one else understands the context. You know, however. You got a haircut from Ai Weiwei.

The past week in China has been as packed and enlightening as any comparable span I've spent anywhere, but since I have to get up in a few hours for a very early-morning (China time) muster, I will wait until tomorrow to begin a description.

I don't know who at Google had the wit to think that the 93rd birthday (?) of the late Saul Bass (??) was an occasion calling for celebration via a "Doodle" -- a one-day tribute on the home page.