The average Japanese, Einstein wrote, is “unproblematic, impersonal, he cheerfully fulfills the social function which befalls him without pretension, but proud of his community and nation. Forsaking his traditional ways in favor of European ones does not undermine his national pride.”I'll just say 2 things.
While Einstein used male pronouns for deeper reflections about the Japanese, his thoughts about women were more about their physical appearance than their personality. Japanese women, he wrote as he observed them on the ship, “look ornate and bewildered. … Black-eyed, black-haired, large-headed, scurrying.”
His reflections about the Chinese, with whom he spent far less time, were more callous, even insulting. Though he called the Chinese “industrious,” he also described them as “filthy” and “obtuse.” They’re a “peculiar herd-like nation,” Einstein wrote, “often more like automatons than people.” He saw them as intellectually inferior, quoting — instead of challenging — Portuguese teachers he met during his travels who claimed that the Chinese “are incapable of being trained to think logically” and “have no talent for mathematics.”
There was, as Rosenkranz described, a “healthy dose of extreme misogyny”:
I noticed how little difference there is between men and women; I don’t understand what kind of fatal attraction Chinese women possess which enthralls the corresponding men to such an extent that they are incapable of defending themselves against the formidable blessing of offspring.His reflections in the few days he spent in China also reveal Einstein’s tendency to perceive foreigners as a threat.
“It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races,” he wrote. “For the likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary.”
First, this is another argument against travel. The #1 pro-travel argument that I have heard in my years of openly questioning the benefits of traveling the world is that it is highly valuable to encounter the people who live in different places. But you'll never run out of individual human beings to meet and get to know in your own home town. The idea of traveling to meet people is that groups of people living far from your home will be different in important ways that you ought to perceive and understand. The experience will broaden you. But observations and beliefs about groups of people are stereotypes. You're setting yourself up to be racist. Look at Albert Einstein — The Genius. He went to Japan and China, and he formed ideas about how the Japanese and Chinese are different. If that's something we enlightened people of today are not supposed to do, then there's a big problem with that #1 pro-travel argument.
Second, there are still writers today, very popular American writers, who travel and compare the Japanese and Chinese. Check out David Sedaris's "Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls" — the chapter "#2 to Go."
Posts
74 comments:
He must be disappeared from history.
Much of this doesn't sound like racism to me, more like his impressions of various cultures. You could do it in inner-city Baltimore and someone would call it racism.
That stuff is racist? Einstein may not have somehow anticipated 2018 political correctness, but his comments were downright enlightened in the context of that time. You want racist and misogynist, listen to a rap song.
He needed to stick to math and physics. What a terrible writer!
Also. Mr. Einstein was German and it was 1920. His attitude towards other races is actually pretty mild compared to what was taking root in his home country.
But what was his position on transsexual pronouns?
Dumb bastard could have discovered Diversity, which is our greatest strength!
Instead, the idiot wasted his time on the General Theory of Relativity.
I'll stick with individuals. Generalizations about groups are seldom flattering to either the group or the generalizer.
In other news, who needs Stuyvesant High School? Doesn't it just reward people with talent, discipline, and ability? What is fair about a selective high school with a blind admissions test? Why should people like Thomas Sowell get an education like that?
If he saw today's Left, he would have figured a way to go back in time and kill Marx and Engels.
Don't judge people of different eras by the standards of today.
"He needed to stick to math and physics. What a terrible writer!"
Of course, it's a translation. Not really fair to blame Einstein if you don't like the English. German can lead to horrible English. Who knows how translators deal with that problem? I think if you make it sound like the German, you end up with weird English.
"I'll stick with individuals. Generalizations about groups are seldom flattering to either the group or the generalizer."
Yes, it's built into the enterprise, isn't it? That's why it has been so useful in humor.
The differences in living standards of China and Europe at that time? Perhaps they were filthy...
Obama might think of me a typical white person. I don't think I like that.
"Obtuse" probably had more to do with language issues than with personality issues.
"In the Muslim school, the teacher wrote to tell my mother that I made faces during Koranic studies," Obama wrote. "My mother wasn't overly concerned. 'Be respectful,' she'd say. In the Catholic school, when it came time to pray, I would close my eyes, then peek around the room. Nothing happened. No angels descended. Just a parched old nun and 30 brown children, muttering words."
---Barack Obama, Dreams of My Father, describing school in Indonesia
Parched old nun is much more flattering and respectful.
A normal person who is not race-obsessed 24x7, if forced to read that garbage against their will, thinks "hmm that doesn't sound very racist to me, for private thoughts from 100 years ago" and moves on with their day.
The media is just like a drunk or high street bum shouting nonsense at passersby on a busy city sidewalk.
"The differences in living standards of China and Europe at that time? Perhaps they were filthy..."
i wondered about that too..
While what he wrote back then was not phrased in the proper modern way*; what did he say that was false?
Now, he Obviously needs to be condemned for not realizing What standards would apply 100 years later. He Should have Been SO IMPRESSED with their Energy, and Unity; and Been SO HORRIFIED with their APPALLING LIVING CONDITIONS... But, What did he say about 1920 asia, that wasn't TRUE? Inquiring minds want to know
proper modern way* Be respectful and laudatory of All Things Foreign.
Even (especially!) their shortcomings
Generalities when traveling - about other groups of people, food, clothes, work habits and business culture, manners, customs, built-in assumptions, etc - are unavoidable and even useful when they let us admit to ourselves, based on our own powers of observation, that not all cultures are the same.
We need to make generalities to make sense of the world around us.
None of this implies anyone is even the tiniest bit racist or xenophobic.
Travel may shed you of the delusion that diversity is the best thing for your home country even as you exult in the richness of a foreign culture.
"The idea of traveling to meet people is that groups of people living far from your home will be different in important ways that you ought to perceive and understand. The experience will broaden you."
Perhaps we should seek depth rather than breadth.
What strikes me is how childishly self-righteous all this judgment is. The "shocked" commentary, the whole tone of the writing. You really have to live enbubbled among True Believers, the Anointed, the Saved, to have these kinds of reactions. This is the way people talked, this is the way the non-elect, the Damned (the vast majority of human beings) still observe, still talk.
It's bad enough that they set themselves up as judge, jury, and social executioners of contemporary sinners. (Who died and made them God?) But their arrogance, their extreme parochialism in presuming to judge the dead is an even more toxic moral and intellectual failing.
There was, as Rosenkranz described, a “healthy dose of extreme misogyny”:
No misogyny there. Was that the same clown who said "shocking xenophobia" in the absence of xenophobia?
But observations and beliefs about groups of people are stereotypes.
No, observations and beliefs about groups of people are not stereotypes.
You're setting yourself up to be racist.
Oh the horror.
Einstein violated The Rule: No groups of people have any unpleasant characteristics except for white men; and if some group does have an unpleasant characteristic that can't be denied, it's the fault of white men.
Travels in Europe turned me into the Deplorable I am today.
Japanese are seriously weird.
Would one be more inclined to stereotype people in a foreign country than in, say, Mississippi? Does air travel to Hong Kong incite racism and stereotyping more than auto travel to New York's Chinatown or Tuskegee, Ala? And do you not meet people one at a time? And stereotypes are always wrong, always bad? And the stereotypes of Indian cities being hell holes of poverty and filth? Your lying racist eyes.
"But observations and beliefs about groups of people are stereotypes. You're setting yourself up to be racist. Look at Albert Einstein — The Genius. He went to Japan and China, and he formed ideas about how the Japanese and Chinese are different. If that's something we enlightened people of today are not supposed to do, then there's a big problem with that #1 pro-travel argument."
People like me, who see things when we look at them, yeah, you oughta keep us down on the farm. But as for the modern woke traveler, not to worry. Their educations and secular religion are superb safeguards, providing both primary protection and second-order sterilization procedures if any wrongthink should break past the mental cordon sanitaire. They can travel the whole wide world without any fear of experiencing any non-permitted "broadening".
Theory of Relativity must be rejected and dismissed.
This passage from Tolkien's "Silmarillion" says it best for me concerning why I like foreign travel:
"At length after long debate Feanor prevailed and the greater part of the Nolder there assembled he set aflame with a desire of new things and strange countries."
. . . a desire of new things and strange countries: that what I like and crave, and I make no bones about it. I don't try to understand or explain it, I simply act on it.
Paco: Travels in Europe turned me into the Deplorable I am today.
I blame Asia. Though Europe helped.
And I will note that admiration of things foreign can have as much a hand in creating a Deplorable, as disapproval. Though mostly it's neither of the above, just noticing the differences.
Fern: No misogyny there. Was that the same clown who said "shocking xenophobia" in the absence of xenophobia?
Just think of them as children with very limited vocabularies and limited conceptual powers, and you'll have some sympathy for how hard it is for them to make sense of a complex and frightening world.
They're doing the best they can with their bare-bones conceptual vocabulary, which essentially consists only of "racism", "misogyny", a handful of "-phobias".
And you should read what Einstein had to say about women in physics. Thank G*d for his reputation that Born talked him out of letting it get published :)
Althouse's comments about travel border on xenophobia. How else to explain such a rigid aversion to something she has so little experience at?
"I'll stick with individuals. Generalizations about groups are seldom flattering to either the group or the generalizer."
Yes, it's built into the enterprise, isn't it?
Really? You hold no positive group stereotypes? Weird.
That's why it has been so useful in humor.
Negative stereotypes are useful in humor, positive ones aren't.
Really? You hold no positive group stereotypes? Weird.
All of us hold stereotypical views of other ethnic and national groups. I am guilty of holding overly positive views of the Japanese, for instance, and unduly negative views of Parisian French. We spend a few weeks or a few years in a foreign country and think we know it [as Tocqueville did in America, heh! ;-)] and know it well enough to write about it. It is presumptuous at best. Even Kipling realized this.
"But observations and beliefs about groups of people are stereotypes." Not necessarily. And of course, as ample research has now shown, many "stereotypes" involve reasonable empirical judgment. See Jussim, Lee.
"You're setting yourself up to be racist." Great. All the more reason to travel, since stereotyping and comparing means striking a blow against prog hegemony.
"If that's something we enlightened people of today are not supposed to do, then there's a big problem with that #1 pro-travel argument." Only if we accept prog hegemony over what we are "supposed to" do.
In the real Enlightenment, of course, stereotypical comparisons were a way of generating knowledge and question local prejudice.
But I think Einstein would change his mind about the Chinese today. His implicit standard, I suspect, was how much any "group" did or could contribute to physics. Some groups, not so much.
Newton believed in alchemy and astrology and lost a bundle in the South Seas Bubble. It is very hard for any individual to separate himself from more than a fraction of the delusions of his moment in time. Einstein also believed in socialism and government managed economies. I wonder what Einstein had to say about Lenin. Lots of very bright people had kind words for Lenin........I won't be around to see it, but lots of our present attitudes will appear wrong headed and malicious in fifty years time.
I've been reading recently about Einstein and that almost everything he is famous for was actually already published work. The other top physicists of the time thought nothing of him, other than that he claimed credit for their work.
the Most Hilarious about Einstein, is that people that should know better refer to him as "the father of the atomic bomb", which he had nothing to do with. He was a famous guy that signed a letter, that's all
Einstein doesn't sound racist in those snippets. He seems to be dispassionately and fairly accurately describing the cultural aspects of those societies at the time he made his observations and through the lens of his own cultural experiences.
Are the descriptions not especially flattering. Maybe. Maybe not.
We also need to remember that the mind of an Einstein works in ways that are not the norm. Like a person with Asperger's his ability to filter (or his desire to filter) his observations is probably limited.
Even IF Einstein was slightly racist.....who cares?
The deification of Einstein is one of the greatest propaganda successes in history. He also stole work from his wife.
"I wonder what Einstein thought about Lenin?"
Well, he joined the German front group, "Friends of the New Russia" in 1923!
in the 1930's, There was an American League catcher named Moe Berg who traveled in Japan. He didn't ever say or write anything racist about the Japs, he was just a tourist; taking pictures of stuff, and writing about the cool things he saw.
Before playing Pro ball, he went to Princeton Univ; so, not Everyone from Princeton was a racist scum that looked down on the Japanese. If Only there were more people in America like Moe Berg!
> almost everything he is famous for was actually already published work. The other top physicists of the time thought nothing of him, other than that he claimed credit for their work.
Einstein's genius was to pick out what was important in a clutter of results and elevate it to an axiom. Maxwell was aware of the fact that his equations predicted that the speed of light was the same in all inertial frames, but he considered it a problem. Heaviside complained that Einstein had made a postulate of what was derived, Poincare proved the Lorentz invariance of Maxwell's equations, yet it was Einstein's insight that revolutionized the field. Sommerfeld's students took up Einstein's work immediately and with great excitement, the ideas were new and clarified everything. And that was just the one paper in the revolutionary year of 1905. Hilbert later remarked about General Relativity, that every child in Göttingen knew more about higher dimensional geometry than Einstein, but it was Einstein who found the relativistic theory of gravitation.
The modern fashion of making the heroes of yesterday minor figures -- everyone from Newton, to Edison, to Einstein -- is just one more sign of the long lefty march through the institutions and the destruction of Western Culture.
Paco Wove:
Travels in Europe turned me into the Deplorable I am today.
For me, travels in Europe solidified my Deplorableness. That and perusing a few issues of Communist Life magazine. And that was before I even thought I could go.
My dad told me the Chinese used their streets as their toilet, so Mao sent the message that’s verboten by having those who incurred the infraction shot.
It's okay to travel to white countries and make generalizations about the inhabitants, but that doesn't apply to POC.
Seems like pretty standard travel observations to me. I don't know anyone who goes anywhere who doesn't come back with an armful of similar generalizations.
"All of us hold stereotypical views of other ethnic and national groups. I am guilty of holding overly positive views of the Japanese, for instance, and unduly negative views of Parisian French. We spend a few weeks or a few years in a foreign country and think we know it [as Tocqueville did in America, heh! ;-)] and know it well enough to write about it. It is presumptuous at best. Even Kipling realized this."
For a guy who is regularly held up as the arch-racist/imperialist, Kipling was remarkably sophisticated and respectful of the peoples he formed an impression of, especially considering his times. People who stereotype Kipling haven't read Kipling.
I like travel but meeting the people is not really the reason.
It's often been said that France would be a paradise if only there were no Frenchmen. A joke, of course, but France is really a beautiful place.
The same is true of a lot of places. A lot of what you see these days is the artifacts of a civilization that is almost gone.
In Greece, it's all gone.
Obviously, we need to stop teaching anything that Einstein created - we mustn't pollute our schoolchildren with the products of his racist mind - so, no more special or general relativity. Repeal his Nobel Prize. Ban him from the history books. Because social justice!
What's "all gone" in Greece? I don't see that, and I've traveled around Greece on many occasions. I see antiquity all around, the country -- and its people -- are suffused in it. It's a wonderful place and so are the people.
Traveling puts you in contact not just with different individuals but a different social environment. Diversity is not simply talking to the local weirdo, but going places where you are the weirdo.
There are ways and ways of adjusting to being the weirdo, and these are instructive.
Not everyone is cut out to be a traveler. Women, I think, tend to be bad travelers. They are much less likely to "go native" and more likely to limit themselves to the local expat or tourist bubbles.
Instead of traveling to confirm stereotypes, bring the stereotypes to your location. Thus was conceived as the concept of diversity, and the progression of color judgments (e.g. racism) under an onslaught of emotion and semantic games designed to frame and suppress people.
Kipling was an excellent traveler.
The very opposite of the glib tourist bubble-dweller.
A great observer of persons, he could draw a telling, accurate and sympathetic picture of character that could cross cultural boundaries. See, for instance "Kim", throughout. His critics objected, mainly, to his cultural loyalties and to his reluctance to sugar coat realities. But in that way he was nearly identical to, say, Orwell.
I like the compare/contrast of "Burmese Days" vs Kipling's Burmese pieces, notably the near forgotten "Ballad of Boh Da Thone". The Indian babu is priceless. It is a stereotype, and probably created the stereotype in the larger Anglo world, but only because it is so correct. Orwell does this sort of description too, but Orwell had a problem with humor.
The same is true of a lot of places. A lot of what you see these days is the artifacts of a civilization that is almost gone.
Exactly! Travel in Europe is, for an American, all about history. Most of the people I want to meet are long dead. But exploring their former environs is the next best thing.
Einstein? Cis white old man, am I right?
Obviously racist, sexist etc.
The real reason for all the current problems in the world.
I've been reading recently about Einstein and that almost everything he is famous for was actually already published work. The other top physicists of the time thought nothing of him, other than that he claimed credit for their work.
The Shakespere of physics, am I right?
I think Einstein's views about the Chinese are probably a reflection of the condition of China at the time. Honestly, I have a fair bit of emotional attachment to China, and a high regard for Chinese civilisation, but I find a lot of Chinese (both in China and especially as tourists overseas) to be extremely annoying. The fact that they apparently have radically different notions about queuing is also highly aggravating (in China, I've had people cut in front of me in lines in the most blase fashion; I don't like having to be so aggressive to protect my place in line). If anything, it's the precise opposite of the "herd" mentality -- it's a mad scramble, every man for himself, like New York City x 10.
Maybe things are different out in the country.
"Women, I think, tend to be bad travelers. They are much less likely to "go native" and more likely to limit themselves to the local expat or tourist bubbles. "
Understandable considering that a woman travelling solo is likely to be treated as a prostitute.
My bet is that Einstein was markedly less sexist than the Chinese and Japanese he met on his travels. They were probably all equally opposed to gay marriage, however......I don't think the writer would use Einstein's sympathy for socialism and a government managed economy as an example of his stupidity. The writer might have a few unexamined prejudicesof his own.
I've traveled around Greece on many occasions. I see antiquity all around, the country -- and its people -- are suffused in it. It's a wonderful place and so are the people.
You have more experience there than I have.
In 2015 we had a whole trip planned and then the economy collapsed. ATMs had no money, Restaurants would not take credit cards. I did not want to go around, in the midst of the migrant thing, with 2000 Euros in a money belt.
So we went to Belgium.
I was there in 2006 and went to tourist places like the Acropolis but did not have a lot of experience with the people.
My interest in Greece is mostly with ruins and history. The exception is Mykonos, which I want to go back to.
We had planned to go to Crete, which I have not seen, and that was all history.
Maybe we just have different interests.
in China, I've had people cut in front of me in lines in the most blase fashion
This happened to me at school, where I was waiting to speak with the professor, and a Chinese girl stepped in front of me as if I was merely an apparition, a figment of my imagination. I never considered that it may be a cultural orientation.
Wouldn't you like to have a camel spit on you?
It would be hilarious.
I once had a llama spit at me, I wouldn't have missed it for the world.
Made my day.
If it were a daily occupational hazard that would be something else. #$&$$& camel!
"Women, I think, tend to be bad travelers. They are much less likely to "go native" and more likely to limit themselves to the local expat or tourist bubbles. "
Hmm. Anecdotal to be sure but I know more solo female travelers than solo male travelers. I'm assuming it's because women are more apt to be widowed in their retirement years and can afford to travel. Widows seem more independent than widowers. Men are used to being taken care of.
Balfegor, same thing in Japan, the only real gap in their usually impeccable [to me] manners. Men will push and shove men and women to get into an elevator. Alas, I've never been to China but always wanted to go.
A lot of farms in WA have llamas as guard animals for their flocks/herds.
I am very much like Ann in her view of travel: its a bit overblown as something one MUST do, and those who claim it is the only way to grow as a person are irritating. However, if you want to broaden a very *specific* type of knowledge, such as botany or architecture - you may have to travel if you wish to see and truly experience unusual, rare or exceptional examples of whatever you are into. Further, putting yourself in a radically different landscape is also an experience with a slightly different goal than 'meet a bunch of foreign people'. "Generalist Travel" vs. "Specific Travel".
Those of you who don't like travel don't have to! Just quit telling the rest of us what a hassle and a waste of time it is.
In the future no one will read such diaries, as all will be found to have been heavily encrypted.
I've been sick of Presentism for a long time.
Was Einstein being racist, or just reporting his impressions accurately? As people often say on the Internet, "Your mileage may vary." I've never been to China or Japan so I'm in no position to say his observations were accurate; neither can I say they were inaccurate.
I have a friend, Jewish and a former "freedom rider" during segregation days. She has several Black friends. The other day we passed three Black people in a store and she said to me, "Probably with a combined total IQ of 100." Was that racist? Unturned around and looked, and the three people she had described WERE unusually stupid-looking in a brutish way. Her observation may have been uncharitable, but it was not inaccurate.
I speak as one who lived for the better part of two years in Deliverance country--literally. The movie was filmed there, and I was told that the Kid With the Banjo, now grown up, lived in the town. So I've seen enough brutish-looking Caucasians about whom my friend's observation might equally apply. Had she actually said it about three stupid-looking hillbillies, no one would have called her a racist; but I'm sure people would have called her a racist had they heard her remark in the store. I don't know how an observation, in and of itself, can be racist. People see what they see. (Although of course perception can be distorted by prejudice.) If you really want to read some hardcore anti-Asian stuff, read what the artist/journalist Frederic Remington wrote about the Chinese laborers he observed during the Spanish-American War. Unlike Einstein, Remington was seething with disgust. Yet I wasn't there; I didn't observe those laborers; so I am in no position to say Remington's observations were accurate or inaccurate.
Ahhh! All of us are Idiot Savants in different degrees
Post a Comment