Authority v Liberty. The curious case of South Korea

In my last post, I mentioned the censorship I have experienced in relation to the Chinese translation of my book, Seven Keys to Modern Art.  Last week, in my class here in Korea  with mainland Chinese students I brought it up with as much subtlety as possible. In the class, I discussed sociological approaches to modern art. As I am using Seven Keys as a textbook, and between them the ten Chinese and one Korean students have the Korean, English, and Chinese versions, they could compare editions. I pointed out the gap in the Chinese version between Barbara Kruger and Bill Viola, which is where Xu Bing should be. He’s gone because in my discussion in the book I refer to his shocked response to the repression in Tiananmen Square, which is still very much taboo in mainland China.

The students seemed very  surprised. But also understandably rather tight-lipped about the omission.

I taught them the word ‘censorship’.

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In the same class I showed the diagram above. It’s a rather good way of tracking the difference between China and the West, but also the unique position of the Republic of Korea. The West lies at the bottom right: ‘Individual Liberty’. China is up at the top right: ‘Collective Authority’. Hence the censorship.  South Korea is somewhere in between. It’s an experiment in ‘Collective Authority plus Individual Liberty’.  

The way in which these societies dealt with Covid helps to illustrate the differences. With its ‘zero tolerance’ attitude, China applied from the start its ‘Collective Authority’ model to the crisis. The West, by contrast, adopted an ‘Individual Liberty’ approach. South Korea dealt with Covid by mixing the two.

At first, ‘Collective Authority’ seemed the best option for everyone. The East Asian countries, being more attuned to this model, were quick to respond by introducing the necessary measures.  China went to lockdown. The Western nations panicked, because ‘Individual Liberty’ is so obviously inappropriate in such a crisis, and they too went for lockdowns as an extreme recourse.  South Korea managed to avoid lockdown, by contrast, but also  any extreme spread of the virus.  This is because with its unusual blend of ‘Collective Authority’ and ‘Individual Liberty’ it was able to steer a  middle course, epitomised by the skilful tracking of cases and the strict implementation of individual quarantines.

But with the evolution of the virus into the Omicron variant, ‘Individual Liberty’ has proven, rather surprisingly, in the long run a more robust social structure for dealing with the pandemic. China is now castrating itself by still pursuing the impossible goal of zero covid, even imposing lockdown once again in Wuhan, where the whole thing started. Only a society founded on ‘Collective Authority’ could work this way, that is, could be so rigid and maladaptive. Meanwhile, South Korea has segued to a situation in which the pandemic is confidently under control but in which people are still wearing facemask, because of the ‘Collective Authority’ component of this society. But it seems to me that the West has careened too fast away from the disagreeable experience of imposed ‘Collective Authority’  back towards a dangerous level of maskless ‘Individual Liberty’.  

In this context, the tragic  events in Itaewon, Seoul, over this Halloween weekend can be interpreted as an unfortunate unintended consequence of South Korea unique social blend, or social experiment. Inevitably, ‘Collective Authority’ and ‘Individual Liberty’ exist in uneasy tension. South Koreans tolerate a – to Westerners - very high level of group control, but they are also primed by Western ideals of ‘Individual Liberty’. The result in this particular case was a massive feeling of release amongst the young after the restrictions imposed during  the pandemic. But, ironically, their desire for individual liberty expressed itself in a very collective fashion!

Image source: http://factmyth.com/understanding-collectivism-and-individualism/

Chinese Roses and the West

Angolo Bronzino, ‘An Allegory with Venus and Cupid’ (1540-1550), National Gallery, London.

One of the things about modern roses that fascinates me is the fact that they are hybridized crosses between eastern and western species roses which were engineered by western breeders in the second half of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. In my forthcoming book ‘By Any Other Name. A Cultural History of the Rose’, I write about this remarkable example of organic cultural synergy. Below is an adapted extract.

Many years ago I worked as an official tour guide at the National Gallery in London, and one of the most striking, and for some, rather too erotically-charged, paintings I liked to talk about to groups is the Florentine artist Agnolo Bronzino’s Mannerist masterpiece, ‘An Allegory with Venus and Cupid’, painted between 1540 and 1550 , also known as ‘Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time’ and ‘A Triumph of Venus’. One’s eyes are drawn, as if by some magnetic force, to the hand fondling the breast of Venus, a hand that belongs to Cupid, which means the amorous embrace is decidedly incestuous, as he is her son. At the top left of the painting there is a horrified-looking woman with only half a head, and below her, a man or a woman screaming in agony. At top right, is an old bearded man, Father Time, pulling round or pulling back a blue curtain. The little boy on the far right, who symbolizes Folly, is holding a bunch of pink rose blossoms in his hand and seems about to shower the lovers with them.  Behind Folly is a pretty little girl holding a honeycomb, who on closer inspection turns out not to be a girl at all but a bizarre hybrid creature with a nasty looking lizard-like lower half.

The bunch of roses held by Folly looks very like a variety of Rosa chinensis. This supposition is based on the fact that the roses are clearly semi-double blooms rather than single or double, that is, these flowers have more petals than a Gallica but less than, say, a Damask or Cabbage Rose. Also, the flowers have high-centred bloom-forms, so the petals at the centre of the bloom stand above the ones towards the outside, like an inverted cup. In other words, both the number of petals and the shape of the flowers are unlike the familiar Western roses of the period, which, as we saw, were on the whole open in form exposing the sepals at the centre. However, we are unlikely to notice anything very surprising about the shape of the rose flowers in Bronzino’s painting for the simple reason that they look very like what we think of today as ‘typical’ of roses. This is because we are so habituated to looking at Hybrid Tea as Floribunda Roses. In other words, we are used to living  with roses that are deliberate crosses between Western and Chinese roses, and whose flowers are usually shaped like the Chinese parent. 

 If the roses in the Bronzino are indeed Chinas, then this painting can claim to be the first known depiction of a rose from East Asia in Western art, and is an indication that, at least in Italy, such ‘aliens’ were apparently already being cultivated. By the next century, trade had greatly increased between east and west after the setting up of East India Companies by the Dutch and British, and the establishment of trading posts along the Indian coast, and part of this trade was botanical. Especially important for the British was Calcutta, where garden plants from further east were often planted as a way-station, before heading on the long voyage to Europe via the Cape. In his Species Plantarum (1753), Linnaeus includes one rose from East Asia, Rosa indica, a dark red variety was known locally as the ‘Rouge Butterfly’. The Linnaeun name means ‘Indian Rose’, which is an indication that at that time this species rose was associated not with China but with India, from where it had more immediately come. In the mid-eighteenth century, the scientist Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin described and illustrated a variety of Rosa chinensis in one of his books, and this is probably what a couple of decades later became known as ‘Slater’s Crimson China’, one of the four ‘stud’ China roses which between 1792 and 1824 were picked specifically with the intention of crossing them with Western homegrown varieties.

Together, the resulting mutations caused the enormous changes in the range and characteristics of the rose’s gene pool. These ‘studs’ were: ‘Parsons’ Pink Rose’, ‘Slater’s Crimson’, ‘Hume’s Blush Tea-Scented China’, and ‘Parks’ Yellow Tea-Scented China’ [cover illustration]. Along with a few other native roses, these China and Tea Roses made possible most of the transformations that characterize the rose plant we know today: a bush-like, robust, garden plant with a wide variety of coloured flowers that are large, semi-double, high-centred, and bloom continuously from May to late autumn.

‘Parsons’ Pink Rose’, aka ‘Old Blush’, was brought to Europe as part of the cargo of a merchant ship in 1752, and was in England by 1793. The flowers are of medium size and semi-double, and light silvery-pink that darkens as they age. We now know that his rose owes its characteristic repeat-blooming habit to the fact that it is probably a cross between Rosa chinensis and Rosa gigantea. Soon, ‘Parson’s Pink Rose’ had replaced the ‘Autumn Damask’, the only already existing remontant rose, as everyone’s favourite rose. By 1823, it was said to be in every English cottage garden. Eventually, when it was crossed with the Musk and Dog roses, ‘Parsons’ Pink Rose’ would give rise to numerous very popular descendants - the Noisette, Hybrid Perpetual, and Hybrid Teas families. 

Slater’s Crimson’, named in honour of a ship owner, is also known as ‘Old Crimson China’, and is technically Rosa chinensis semperflorens. It was known to the Chinese as the ‘Monthly Rose’ because it was a repeat-flowerer. ‘Slater’s Crimson’ is dark red with white streaks running along the inner petals. The double flowers are borne singly or in clusters of generally three. This, the second important China ‘stud’ rose, was imported to England in 1792 specifically for the repeat-flowering habit. The first specimen had been found growing in the Botanic Gardens in Calcutta, not in China, which is why in France the rose is named ‘La Bengale’. ‘Slater’s Crimson’ is, in fact, the oldest known garden rose - that is, domesticated rose.

The third ‘stud,’ ‘Hume’s Blush Tea-Scented China’, named in honour of Hume’s wife, is also a repeat bloomer, and has large well-proportioned pale pink flowers. But while this rose served initially as an important stud, by the early twentieth century the original plant appeared to have gone extinct in Europe. However, it was rediscovered in far-away Bermuda, where it was going under the alias ‘Spice.’ Today, it can be purchased from specialist rose nurseries. 

The fourth stud, Rosa odorata var. pseudindica, ‘Parks’ Yellow Tea-Scented China’, was discovered by John Damper Parks in 1824. It is a repeat bloomer, has a vigorous growth habit, bright green leaves, and very large double or semi-double flowers with an average diameter of 4 inches, which have the unusual characteristic of being straw-or sulphur yellow in colour. The petals are thick and mildly scented – ‘tea scented’. But the consensus is that although this is officially still in commerce, it disappeared 100 years ago. 

The cover of my book, which shows a painting by a Chinese artist of ‘Parks’ Yellow Tea-Scented China’.

One of the most interesting collections of botanical art from China was amassed in the early nineteenth century by the Englishman John Reeves, another East India Company tea inspector and amateur botanist. Reeves was stationed in China with the Company prior to the First Opium War (1839-42), and, collected plants in and around Canton in his spare time. He too was often frustrated by having to use Chinese gardeners as go-between due to the restrictions imposed on foreigners, and he had the capital idea of hiring Chinese artists to paint what he did get his hands on. In all, Reeves amassed over 800 pictures. Only 16 are roses, but they include a wonderful image of one of the ‘studs’ - ‘Parks’ Yellow Tea-Scented Rose’. Interestingly, the painting shows a specimen entirely without prickles. This painting of a China Rose graces the cover of my book, which will be published this November by Oneworld..

A Dubious Sense of Security

Who wins in the war on the virus?

This photograph was taken this morning from my home’s rooftop. The mountains in the distance are in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea –  North Korea. Normally, the mountains are far more hazy, but thanks to heavy rain and Covid-19, I can see their craggy details more clearly than I ever have.  Why thanks to Covid-19?  Because the pandemic has lowered pollution levels; usually a large proportion of pollution drifts across the Yellow Sea from China to smother the peninsula.

Up north, beyond the DMZ which lies between me and those mountains, the leadership claims to have completely won the battle against the virus. Of course, we can treat this claim with skepticism. But let’s for the moment take it at face value, and  put it in a broader context.   This means that the most successful nation on earth at eradicating the threat of Covid-19 is also the most oppressive nation on earth.

In fact, if you think about it, the more authoritarian the nation is, the better it seems to have  coped with the crisis (again, assuming the truth of the claims).   This is because in these societies, the individual must routinely sacrifice what to Westerners seems  like an unacceptable portion of their liberty in order to further what they are told is the common good.  And which nations have fared worst in the battle against Covid-19? Those with a more individualistic culture, and especially those who have elected populist leaders, such as the United States, Brazil, and the United Kingdom, who make a point of espousing individualism at the expense of the collective.

What lessons can we learn from this striking contrast? One is that, at a deeper level of significance, this pandemic  isn’t about  the existential threat posed by a virus, but about  how to achieve a sense of security, and about how to define ‘security’. What does ‘security’ mean, what value does it have for human beings, and how much are they willing to pay for it?  After all, viruses are nothing new. They are an inherent part of human existence, and we literally live with them inside us, as well as outside. What Covid-19 has exposed is  not so much our vulnerability to viruses  or our dangerous unsettling of the ecosystem but  the urgency of the perennial problem of existential and communal security.    Or, more accurately,  it has drawn attention to the urgency of the problem of  how to achieve a credible sense of security, which isn’t the same thing as ‘security’ per se.  Having the ‘sense’ that I am secure is a state of mind, and not necessarily a material condition or existential fact.   But if I believe I am secure, then I will feel secure.  There has been a lot of talk about ‘the normal’ and ‘the new normal’. What this  means in this context is  ‘the secure’ and the ‘new secure’.

Real, genuine, existential security can only be based on a shared unity of benevolent purpose, which has the effect of collectively shouldering awareness of the inevitability of insecurity, rather than trying to conceal it. This, alas, is totally unachievable within complex societies. But actually, one might call it generally utopian, in that it seems probable that humanity has never achieved such a refined level of social integration. But we are still capable of imagining it. In the meantime, a sense of security has  become increasingly premised on another  utopian dream: the irradiation of  insecurity, or the perpetuity of security. Enter religion, with its offer of eternal life (read: eternal security). As I suggested in a previous post, this search for absolute security  originates in childhood vulnerabilities, and fantasies of parental omnipotence. It makes us very susceptible to the rhetoric of infallibility, something that tricksters, con-artists, charismatic visionaries, and politicians, profit from. But in the context of my present argument, the key point is that the feeling of security is a state of mind, not a reality.  Total security is a figment. A fantasy . But that doesn’t mean the notion of ‘security’ hasn’t got real, compelling, influence over human life. In fact, it’s what has driven us towards the endorsement of an increasing dehumanized society.

If we look at history, we can see that the sense of security is relative.   Compared to today’s society, the level of rampant insecurity of a typical peasant in the Middle Ages might, objectively speaking, seem far far higher. But thanks to his religious faith, this peasant was actually likely to have had a sense of security that surpasses that of many people today. In other words, a sense of security is not linked like cause and effect, but is relative, and determined by specific  priorities.  The medieval peasant’s physical life is likely to have been ‘nasty, brutish, and short’, but his faith guaranteed him eternal life in heaven, and this guarantee, in turn, made his existential life feel more secure.

In this sense, security is determined by individual and societal visions of the future. A positive vision of the future will make the present feel more secure, while the absence of such affirmation, will make people more pessimistic. So  a sense of personal and communal security is closely bound up with a society’s capacity to forge and maintain a credibly positive image of the future. This is precisely one of the things that  the pandemic has brought to attention: the vulnerability of our image of the future. I will return to this problem in a future post, and return now to the lessons of the pandemic for our understanding of security.

The sources of  our insecurity come and go, and very quickly become normalized and cease to evince fear, or an active sense of insecurity. The Atomic bomb massively increased feelings of insecurity within modern society, but within a generation it had become part of what is deemed ‘normal’ - that is credibly ‘secure’ -  society. Sources of insecurity function like gestalts. They rise out of the undifferentiated ground of general impermanence to become foci of attention, then slip back into the ground. Or they suddenly land in our perceptual field and become foci of attention, but then, all going well, are more or less rapidly consigned to the unnoticed background. Indeed, we could say that a sense of security is dependent on consigning sources of fear to the background or periphery, where they will be unnoticed, but have not actually disappeared. Any ‘normal’ society is  therefore characterized by a  process in which sources of insecurity are ferried from focal attention to unnoticed background.  But they do not disappear. Rather fear is transmuted into dread and anxiety.

A vital purpose of any national leadership is to supply a sense of security. Even a despotic one must at least guarantee security for its supporters and enforcers. But, as Marx emphasized, it is also usually politic to provide or sanction an ‘opium’ for the masses, just to be on the safe side.  In the modern state, democratic or not, whoever is in control must make a good proportion of the people feel secure in the face of manifest insecurity. They do  this by  acting as guarantors of security through deflecting attention away from intractable sources of  insecurity – nuclear war, pollution, climate change, random violence -  and focusing attention instead on more tractable ones – terrorism, Covid-19. They  know from studying history that insofar as security is the highest human priority, that the members of the society over which they rule will sacrifice a good deal of their freedom to possess a sense of security, and will thank their leaders with compliant support.   

Any ruler is in the business of delivering states of mind not existential truths, and they need to conjure up the right ones. But in truth, the best any  ruler can do is to transmute a dangerously destabilizing,  fear-inducing,  reality into a more socially manageable anxiety-inducing reality. All human life is, as Heidegger argued, lived in an atmosphere of anxiety, which is fear that has been dematerialized or de-focused. The security we are being offered is therefore not the absence of insecurity, but rather an acceptable level of insecurity. The job of a  benevolent ruler is to guarantee this level remains more or less stable, while that of a malevolent ruler is to manipulate insecurity in order to maintain and profit from the increasing opportunities for social control and domination it will provide.

So one thing the pandemic is bringing to the fore is the price people are willing to pay for maintaining  their illusory sense of personal and collective security.  Quite a high price, so it seems. The pandemic is forcing nation states to re-calibrate  the grounds upon which to establish for their citizens a credible sense of security. They are doing this in the time honoured  manner : by extending  their control over their citizens.   And the  reason their citizens  are so willingly giving up their freedoms  is because they have been conditioned to believe that  the state controls security, whereas what is really happening to that the ruling elite is using the primordial need for security to extend its control over their lives. 

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Another lesson to be learned from the pandemic is that the form of a nation’s leadership is important in determining how a  society  can act collectively, but also, that whatever the ideology being espoused,  the common goal is always  the  panacea of  security. But the pandemic has starkly revealed the extent to which collective action to achieve security, when organized within a rigid and oppressive hierarchical system, is much more successful when compared to a system in which  collective action is decentralized, local, and driven more by individual initiatives. By ‘successful’, I mean in relation to its capacity to effectively cultivate the  belief among members of its society that they are secure.

The more totalistic a state, the more efficient it is at guaranteeing a clearly defined sense of security. This is because the totalistic state has the monopoly on security, and defines what it is, who will be granted it, and what will happen to those who do not conform to the regulations imposed to ensure the consolidation of this  fabrication called ‘security’.   China and North Korea claim to have successfully protected their peoples from the virus   through strictly policing them. A sense of security is granted and achieved  through the measures initiated by the state to ensure the limiting of the spread of the virus. But it is success gained  at the price of   strict conformity imposed through physical and psychological threat.  The techniques used to fight the virus are, however, merely   extensions of the range of routine techniques used to maintain a sense of security in ‘normal’ times in China and North Korea. In other words,   security from the virus has been achieved through   a concomitant heightening of  awareness of the level of state induced personal insecurity that will ensue if obedience isn’t forthcoming.  The state offers a sense of security by  effectively  monopolizing  and deploying the fear that the security it establishes  is ostensibly  intended to allay. 

The state removes  security in order to guarantee  security.  It monopolizes security and its absence. This individual and collective  conformity is   ensured   through the establishment of a dual regime. First, through systematic state-controlled indoctrination -  ‘brain-washing’ -  and second, through state-controlled surveillance.  State-controlled indoctrination, or socialization, ensures a high-level of conformity, which  surveillance helps to police and enforce. So the totalistic state’s  monopoly on security is built on its  monopoly on violence. Lock-down or else!

Ultimately,   the pandemic in China and North Korea has been ‘defeated’ through  the willingness and  ability of the leadership  to use insecurity –  on the one hand in the shape of fear of the virus, and on the other in the shape of the state apparatus of control and repression – so as  to ensure the continuing establishment of an illusory sense of security.  The major difference between China and North Korea is that China’s regime  relies on strict state controlled indoctrination supported by forms of surveillance  that are increasingly accomplished, and exponentially  extended and more efficient,  via digital media.  North Korea still relies on the old ‘analogue’ methods – that is,  almost hegemonic state controlled indoctrination via the pre-digital media (print, radio, tv, cultural entertainment), combined with the old surveillance techniques of  the neighbour’s spying eyes and ears, backed up by the punitive threat of a boot in the face.  

Both China and North Korea have  discovered that the danger of a pandemic  can lead profitably to an increase in the state’s power to control the lives of its citizens, and that its people will accept the further invasions of their lives if it there is the caveat that this is necessary in order to guarantee the feeling of being secure (although it has to be said that imagining where this extension of control has infiltrated North Korean society is difficult, as the state already has such a total monopoly on security).

The question then is , to what extent is North Korea exemplary? In other words, is this level of social control actually more acceptable and potentially exportable elsewhere  than we imagined? George Orwell certainly thought it was.

Meanwhile, in the United States, Brazil, and the United Kingdom a different leadership model  and supporting ideology exists at the apex of a  more amorphous social structure. Here, it is said  that the state’s obligation to achieve a sense of security for its citizens must be counterbalanced by the promotion of the idea that   individual freedom is sacrosanct. This concession to  individual freedom inevitably jeopardizes the ability of the state to achieve a monopoly on the sense of personal and collective security.  The  underlying assertion is   that security  must to a certain extent  be sacrificed in order to protect  personal freedom and ensure economic stability. This reflects the self-image of a culture within which the ideology of individualism requires that security be defined in relation to personal separateness and autonomy. Security for the individual trumps security for the group or collective. 

We can see this cleavage in worldviews very clearly in relation to the farrago over face-masks. To wear or not to wear, and why? The face-mask has  become a cipher  for the difference between the collectivist and individualistic responses to the crisis. Those who protest that the wearing of a face-mask is an infringement of their personal freedom are essentially claiming that security is monadic, atomized, and is in opposition to every other individual’s security.  By contrast, the collectivist mindset, which a  one-party state like China and North Korea endorses and distorts, claims that the curtailing of personal liberty is necessary   to achieve group  level, rather than personal level, security.

But both are fundamentally deviations, in the sense that they both draw false conclusions from the same evidence. The individualistic solution, by assessing the problem from the false premise of a separate, localized, independent self,  erroneously   concludes that a sense of security is   gained through emphasis on more bounded autonomy, more personal differences. The collectivistic solution, on the other hand, starts from the actually more reasonable  premise that the boundaries of the self are fluid and extendable, that personal security is indivisibly connected to the security of the group of which the individual is an intrinsic part. But it transplants this insight onto the one party political system, in which the party becomes the embodiment of this extended self.

Both the individualistic and collectivistic models  are  superstructures built on the basic foundation of what the writer and activist  Charles Eisenstein calls ontological ‘separation’, that is, on a way of being  that is based on a fundamental distortion   and dissimulation (1). The cognitive fluidity that allowed Homo sapiens to best other hominids, such as the Neanderthals, meant having a sense of independent and reflexive selfhood - of separateness. It allowed humans to act  as if from outside the world it shares with animals, vegetables, and minerals, and as a result,    placed them  in what no doubt at first seemed like an enviably advantageous  position which made possible the wholescale exploitation if the rest of nature, and also, when expedient, other human beings. This, as we now know, was a magical trick, and furthermore, one that  is   has turned out to be blatantly   self-destructive in the long run.

The big difference between the collectivistic and individualistic models of human sociality is therefore  that the former seeks to consolidate the assumption of ontological separation through collective means, the latter though individualistic means.  Both are equally about domination of the Other. The collectivistic model has a very long history, one in which security comes through domination  achieved by the hierarchical organization of   society directed towards collective goals. The individualistic model has a much shorter history, which parallels the growth of Protestantism and capitalism, and where the underlying premise of separation becomes manifest and is exponentially exaggerated.

So collectivism is closer to  what was probably the norm in per-agrarian hunter-gatherer societies, in that it seeks to use the primal  interconnectedness that pervaded these communities, but  now in the service of providing security for a particular, separate,  community. The individualist model, on the other hand, while also bringing a sense of security to the community, does so by exaggerating people’s awareness of separation. To this extent, I think we can claim that individualism, while further away from an inherent sense of what Eisenstein calls ‘interbeing’,  is nevertheless closer to  re-connecting with  such ‘interbeing’, because it makes manifest – makes explicit  - what is still only latent, and therefore much further away from conscious awareness,  within collectivist societies.

(1) Charles Eisenstein is a recent discovery for me, and I highly recommend his writing (and talks). This is his website: https://charleseisenstein.org/

I also draw in today’s blog on his much shared on-line essay ‘The Coronation”: https://charleseisenstein.org/essays/the-coronation/