Thanks, Pallavi, we'll be heading for dosas and uppams in twenty-five days. What will have changed? The taste of the food is already awakening in my mouth.
China and the US share a common curse: they created a revolution - and succeeded. The Europeans failed - the last time grotesquely.
Exceptionalism is the price of success. In the US it is rather vertical (race and gender), in China geographical. The curse of meritocracy may be their undoing. Where "winning" is all that counts, the losers may find a way to get even.
There remains a basic difference. Oracle bones or nostalgia? Among the two, I'd rather choose the first instrument in looking ahead. Like a broken record, nostalgia only knows one reaction to change: more of the same....
Thanks, Pallavi, we'll be heading for dosas and uppams in twenty-five days. What will have changed? The taste of the food is already awakening in my mouth.
China and the US share a common curse: they created a revolution - and succeeded. The Europeans failed - the last time grotesquely.
Exceptionalism is the price of success. In the US it is rather vertical (race and gender), in China geographical. The curse of meritocracy may be their undoing. Where "winning" is all that counts, the losers may find a way to get even.
There remains a basic difference. Oracle bones or nostalgia? Among the two, I'd rather choose the first instrument in looking ahead. Like a broken record, nostalgia only knows one reaction to change: more of the same....