Cycles of Humans and History and Hearts

What is even more interesting and ironic is that, today, Taiwan seems to have eliminated the mass poverty that my father and many others in his generation wanted to eliminate in China. History often develops in strange circles, and as the ancient Greek tragedies show, heroes sometimes hurt or even destroy themselves trying to avoid an inevitable fate. They [the Chinese communists] saw something they disliked and tried to change it, but got exactly what they did not want. Had they simply left well enough alone, they might have reached their goal.

~ Zhu Xiao Di, p. 24

Everything we feared about communism -- that we would lose our houses and savings and be forced to labor eternally for meager wages with no voice in the system -- HAS COME TRUE UNDER CAPITALISM.

~ some facebook meme accompanied by a picture of a puffin (why a puffin?)

The first quote seems to offer Di's take on Lifton's cycle of atrocity-producing situations--that history is cyclical in a theatrical way--that perhaps understanding how normal people make atrocious decisions is the same as understanding the tragic hero. I wonder if in Di's mother's and father's private political talks, she ever put it in those terms, as a theater company director.

The second quote speaks to Di's experience as a student in America; seeing the criticisms he learned of America from his Chinese elementary education just now in college beginning to be understood by American students who were unraveling their skewed patriotic version of history; and the analogical realizations for Di about China. His professor remarked how good countries can be at pointing out the flaws of others while being blind to their own crimes--which is to name the downfall of tragic heroes. That they lack self-discipline and go too far, eventually coming full-circle and embodying the ills they'd set out to combat.

Another moment of Di in America informs the downfall. Di recalls reading Kennedy's famous "Ask not..." quote and being shocked at how his rhetoric was the same as Mao's, yet the two were supposed to be political opposites. Di concludes that

the difference is not so much the idea, but how it is spread in society. In a healthier society, an idea inspires people by its moral power. When administrative authorities were used to enforce an ideal or ideology, it often led to serious problems (84).

Separating religion from politics, to the extent that America tries to and that Maoist China failed, could determine the latitude a society gives its tragicness--if you're not conflating your government with gods, you might hold on to some sort of perception of those in power as flawed mortals whose ambitions have to be questioned. Whereas, when "Mao's thoughts" became "Maoism," the tragic hero [the country, the Red Guard generation] lost its ability to think the same way.

Hurka warning about the dangers of "governments divorced from the heart," and Di's account of loveless China at the time ("almost like Victorian England"), and Orwell's love of life ("which when all was said and done, agreed with me so well"), and Lifton's and Mandelstam's love of their respective spouses throughout their lives and works, and Baldwin's mindful attempts to keep love in his heart for his brothers--that stuff says a lot. That's always the other cycle. Makes me want to spend the next few years reading all of William Blake.