"Good People", "Bad System"
(Photo by Maëlle/浦翊嵐, Book 3 lesson 9 : 「旺來」是好運的意思 [“Pineapple” Puns with “Good Fortune”])
Fast links to my Leaving-America-Journal series:
“Bad System”, “Good People”
“The system is bad, but the people are good”, could have been a nice conclusion for my last journal in the United States. I even shared a heartwarming story about Isla in the process. All that, should be enough to convince a good hearted American like yourself, about my love/hate relationship with America. But there is one problem. “The system is bad, but the people are good” is one of the cliches that the American society accepts as it hesitates about its future in its slow pondering. The somewhat fatalistic mentality combined with the halfway justification, is somewhat un-American-like. Both statements are true–“the system is bad”, and “the people are good”–but one does not justify the other, nor can “people” be separated from the “system” without clarification.
Speaking about the problem of the saying, “the system is bad, but the people are good”, it reminds me of my friend, Mendy. He had called the bluff to this saying, which I have been repeating to everyone during my last month in New York. I am glad that he had called out the cliche.
Mendy and I met each other in a Political Theory class at Columbia University. As strong headed as he and I, we almost never agree on anything about politics. Even when we do actually agree, we seldom give each other the luxury of agreeing. But how we enjoy arguing about everything. The argument, and the teasing, gave us a sense of equality from the otherwise confusing City.
Mendy is a staunch believer of liberalism. He is a dedicated reader of Kant, who justifies rights and liberty with ontological transcendence. For Mendy, the idea that what is good is innately good, and what is bad is innately bad, has a certain “cleannes”.1 After graduating, Mendy has been preparing for law school. The reason for that being, paraphrasing here, is because the organizing of human disputes into legal matters has a certain beauty and grace, perhaps, a “cleanness” similar to Kantian philosophy.
Over the past three years, our argument has made a dent in each other’s intellectual outlook. Of course, before we depart, we talk about many things at my party, almost everything. After working on him for 3 years, I have finally convinced him to a certain degree that liberty and rights seldom justifies the wrongs. He, in return, made me appreciate the pessimistic wisdom of liberalism. In his words:
“Yes, we all have to eat. But only in America, some of us can afford to rise above the level of survival and see each other as Humans. If we are to put our hands in someone’s pocket, at least we won’t put it in each other’s pocket. And that's why we have liberty, rights, and the legal system. At least, we can still treat each other with respectability in court.”
Regardless of whether the US is the only country where liberty functions, It seems, the people are of the system and the system is of the people. The “good people” depend on the “system” of liberty to remain respectable. Without the system, the decent society would lose its mutual respect as we will have to snatch and grab for bread, and see each other doing so. Without the people, the system of mundane litigations will lose its ritualistic function to subside the dispute over bread, as, without the people, other than the bread, there is only the private life, where the intervention of liberty means things are already too far gone.
I will never degrade myself to agree with liberalism, but I have to admit that Mendy’s claim on liberty and people is an accurate reflection of how things are in the decent society of America. For me, the system of legislating, even adjudicating, is never as fair and innocent as its theoretical foundation claims. It is no news that the fight for bread and special interest of certain groups has invaded every corner of legislating, and even the highest shrine of adjudication–the Supreme Court of the United States. When the system of law that is tainted by special interests is adjudicated to real life cases, I doubt how much of the dispute is really resolved. But the fading of a people is not like the death of a person. It does not happen suddenly. Much of the good society maintains its respectable facade because it operates somewhat in the confine of liberty, although a dubious one.
You cannot make a political statement without recognizing the political facts. Over the past three years, if anything, I believe I have brought to Mendy’s awareness the struggle of bread that is often obscured by the facade of liberalism. As to Mendy’s contribution to my intellectual well being, it is brought to my attention that the struggle for bread has no bound and has no end. There is no solution to it through justice alone. The only solution is perhaps a synthesis of technology and a human ownership over our technology, which synthesis is its own topic.
To the facts of the politics in the US, neither of us has a definite reconciliation. But there is also a light and bright matter to our conversations as opposed to its gloomy and heavy content. Whenever Mendy cheers to a statement of mine with his loud and embarrassing Brooklyn accent it always blows away the unbearable weight of our conversation as light as a feather. I used to be embarrassed by the volume with which we sometimes took our conversation in public, but perhaps that’s the only way we can make peace with the City. It seems, for him, what is good is always “clean” and presentable, and whatever he has to say, is naturally part of the excitement the City has to offer.
There isn’t a lot of our conversation about the “good people” that I can share with you. But, for me, and I suspect that for Mendy as well, the word “good people” meant something different than a people with good morals. The idea of the “good people” becomes true when we choose to talk about problems neither of us know the answer to. We talk about the difficult questions, not just to find a solution to it, but to make the problem seen, and in the process, we make each other see and be seen. This, the love of appearing and making appearance, is what exceeds the aggregated individual moral goodness. This propensity of appearing in the public space where things are seen to all, this love of showing oneself to all, is uniquely American. Besides his intellectual gibberish, Mendy made our appearance an enjoyment with his charisma.
It is prevalent to think of the American love of public openness as a solution to its many conundrums. But maybe it should be the other way around. Maybe it is that the conundrums of the United States have to be solved, so that we can have a public to love. When we talk about freedom of speech, too often we hear rhetoric such as: “open conversation is the key to solve our division. We really need to listen to each other so that we can resolve our division.” But if we really think of the equation carefully, since when did we become less distended when we talk about our experience? The more we talk about our experience, the more it is clear that we all live a different life, sometimes so different that our lives are beyond each other’s imagination. Nonetheless, we never completely cease to bring our conversations into the public, or form a sphere of public space when we show who we are by making known what we think. Could it be that this common love for appearing and making appearances, this love for the public space, is what makes it worth it to live a life as an American?
“Good people” does not justify “bad systems”. Furthermore, if Isla is to live among “good people '', “bad system” has to be fixed. Too often do we misunderstand the priority between people and systems. We often think that “bad systems” can only be fixed by “good people”. Indeed, there are a lot of good people doing what they can to help others to survive a bad system like New York City. It could be a cop, turning his eyes away when someone jumps the subway train. It could be a landlord, who voluntarily sacrifices his profit so that rent in the neighborhood is somewhat affordable. It could be a nurse or a doctor, who goes the extra mile to make sure the regulars at the ER feel acknowledged and cared. But, why are we so addicted to admiring the nobility of humanity in a miserable cave. Shouldn’t the bad system be fixed according to the “good people”?
If the people is of the system, and the system is of the people, it means somewhere among the “good people” there is already the seed for a “good system”. Mark that as my aspiration of my return.
July 23rd, 2023
Kado
Photo by Maëlle/浦翊嵐//@maelle_or_mey.mayl.mail
If you’re not used to the visuality of Taiwan, it is probably a little hard for you to recognize what you are looking at, in Maëlle’s photo, “「旺來」是好運的意思 [“Pineapple” Puns with “Good Fortune”]”. The photo is taken at an pineapple disseminating center at the country side. What you’re looking at is the pineapples sitting in the buckets waiting to be distributed.
There is a sense of privacy about the photo. There are furniture stashing everywhere. The lighting is dim. The pineapples’ faint golden glow is barely noticeable. The owner of the shop turns his back away from the visitors. The hand intruded the shot nonchalantly. The photographer is barely noticed. Yet the space also seems inviting as well. There is nothing blocking the visitors from entering the space. The contrasting colors of the baskets are vivid. The loosely stagnated pineapples are lively and adorable. It almost seems like the owner of the shop brought the intimacy from his home, and offers it in his shop along each bucket of pineapple he sells.
Taiwan’s adorable intimacy is sometimes hard to navigate.
“Cleanness” is the word Mendy prescribed for Kantian moral philosophy.