I found this text in the book “Weapons of Math Destruction”.
Racism, at the individual level, can be seen as a predictive model whirring away in billions of human minds around the world. It is built from faulty, incomplete, or billions of human minds around the world. It is built from faulty, incomplete, or generalized data. Whether it comes from experience or hearsay, the data indicates that certain types of people have behaved badly. That generates a binary prediction that all people of that race will behave that same way.
Needless to say, racists don’t spend a lot of time hunting down reliable data to train their twisted models. And once their model morphs into a belief, it becomes hardwired. It generates poisonous assumptions, yet rarely tests them, settling instead for data that seems to confirm and fortify them. Consequently, racism is the most slovenly of predictive models. It is powered by haphazard data gathering and spurious correlations, reinforced by institutional inequities, and polluted by confirmation bias. In this way, oddly enough, racism operates like many of the WMDs I’ll be describing in this book.
Reminded me of George Bush Jr. quote “Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions.”
In Tokyo, I always like visiting the “Muji Found” stores. These stores display handcrafted objects of everyday use from around the world.
I borrowed this book by an early 1900s author who encouraged people to look for beauty in everyday objects — perhaps he was the inspiration for Muji Found.
One essay is addressed to the Korean people; the author was unhappy with Japanese annexation of Korea. It is said this essay made many denounce the author as a Korea apologist and a traitor.
It reminds me of a scene from the movie Russia House. There is a party at a Moscow author’s house. Everyone one is in a happy mood contemplating the future (it was the late 1980s, reforms had just started in the Soviet Union). A visiting British author (played by Sean Connery) says to his Russian hosts If there is to be a hope we must all betray our country, we have to save each other because all victims are equal and none is more equal than others. It’s everyone’s duty to start the avalanche.”
Talking about Korea, Whenever I read a book about Pyongyang, I miss the cold noodles (Raengmyon, 랭면), more so in July/August, you need this dish to beat the heat.
Luckily in Singapore, I am near the mini Korean neighbourhood where a small hidden away restaurant serves this.
I will recommend See You Again in Pyongyang by Travis Jeppesen. The author gives a glimpse of everyday Pyongyang. The book is also serves as a quick history refresher on North Korea.
There is an encounter with a North Korean soldier that the author describes. He got into a casual conversation with a border guard on the North-South border. Halfway, the soldier asked the author about his home country. The author replied that he is from America, expecting the soldier to break off the conversation. The unperturbed soldier sensing the author’s discomfort, reassures him “Countries are countries, people are people”.
Reminds me of a similar encounter with an elderly man from Lahore I once met at Jakarta airport. We must’ve spoken for 15 to 20 minutes about Lahore, the summer heat, the street food. He asked me where in Pakistan I am from. I replied that I am from Bombay, half expecting the man to politely signal the end of conversation. But as soon as he heard my reply, he displayed a kindly smile and regretted the never-ending conflict between our countries.
Encounters in Meguro, a Japanese monk in 1900s Tibet
One day while roaming around Meguro, we spotted a temple festival at one of our neighbourhood temples.
Local youth pounding mochi (rice cake) at the festival.
We decided to explore another nearby temple - the Tenonzan Gohyaku Rakanji Temple (the 500 Arhats temple as it has many statues, each with unique expression). There is a small museum attached to the temple dedicated to a Japanese monk and traveler. As I was browsing the photos I remembered that I had read about this monk before.
It was around 20 years ago when I was myself exploring Western China. I had just discovered the writings of Peter Hopkirk. And it was in a book called “Trespassers on the Roof of the World” in which Hopkirk described Ekai Kawaguchi’s stay in Tibet.
Those days Tibet did not easily allow foreigners in. Yet, there was race on to make sense of Tibet between the Europeans and the rising Asian power Japan. Japan had just wrestled Korea and Taiwan from China and they were wary of the Russians who had designs on Tibet and the area now called Xinjiang.
Kawaguchi spent some time in British India learning Tibetan. He then sneaked into Tibet pretending to be a Chinese physician. He spend around two years in Tibet learning about the cuture and building a name for himself as an effective doctor.
Sometimes an official forms asks me to fill my religion. But they do not have Animism as an option. While interesting that a recent research on my ancestral belief is from a Japanese researcher.
Panjurli (boar spirit deity) headpiece used by dancers. (Image from Wikimedia)
Generally, Bhūta rituals are treated derogatorily by intellectuals and outsiders. However, local people worship ghosts, the dead, ancestors, heroes, animal deities, forest deities, mountain deities, earth deities, and tribal guardian deities. They are important and intimate objects of worship for the locals. In some situations, Devas, the god worshipped by higher class, are mixed or coexist with the lower rank deities called Daivas or spirits called Bhūtas. During rituals, pāddana narratives on the origin myth or historical story of the Bhūtas and Daivas, are chanted before the main rituals, most of which are filled with tragic atmosphere. Often the emotions of envy and grudge are also chanted about, depicting complicated historical background.
When people long for the days of the early web, the glorious idiosyncrasies of personal sites and forums, they are really longing for a time and a space where people were free to communicate their own values. Now that space is owned and rented to the highest bidder. A site like LinkedIn wraps you up into a tiny, uniform package, sets you in an enormous data warehouse next to millions of other tiny people just like you, and sells the lot of you.
Of getting lost
