¡AMurica!

As I walked uphill after a movie screening in Dana Auditorium, I caught a glimpse of the smokestack, unimpeded by trees, starkly alone; a museum exhibit in the distance. From its narrow neck it churned out a billowing cloud of smoke, which was torn sideways by the wind and grew organically like a furtive amoeba, lonely in the silent evening.

I found something about that image strangely poignant. The last time I saw a smokestack was on a winter afternoon in Tsinghua Universiy, Beijing, two years ago. I think it was the monumental madness of having something so huge tower over me that struck  me, a sense of insignificance and awe that I felt at the time. And yet smokestacks, since Mao’s

Great Leap Forward, have ceased to be at the center of human activity.

In the ISO packet that I received for my host family reception, I laughed when I saw 1984 on a reccomended list of books, claiming to represent China. The Cultural Revolution was considered a time of oppression and paranoia. Yet was it really such a bad time?

Putting aside surveillance and deprivation of personal freedom, the spirit of the age was what my father (he was among the ones who were condemned) felt nostalgic for. People felt like they were working for a cause. The absence of economic forces created a space where people were free to think. An abundance of literature at that time depicted the sentiments of innocence and idealism. Jiangwen’s In the Heat of the Sun portrays the bucolic lives of teenagers who lived during the period. Love stories, like Under the Hawthorn Tree, Shanghai Dreams and Naked Earth, portray relationships unadulterated by considerations of wealth and social position.

And now, China is flourishing economically. Yet, ironically, all sorts of problems have arisen in China — migrant workers suffer from economic inequality, corruption is rife and greed incites crime. In the past, people worked for a greater cause, but now the urge to profit or, sometimes, the urge to simply survive, drives the economy.

In modern China, the proliferation of materialism hasn’t actually brought any meaning into life, apart from an increasing existential dilemma. Some people long for the days of Mao’s era. The chaos brought on by the unbridled free market forces has led to a revival of leftist politics in China. The past seems better than the present.

What I dislike most about our present economic structure is that it generalizes everyone into the same, animalistic being that thrives on attaining unlimited wants, erasing cultural boundaries. But why can’t we battle the proliferation of materialism? Because we live by it. It is the capital with which we build our lives. By battling it we are trying to oppose a part of human nature. It is the way we have to live our lives, whether we want to or not.

The smokestack evokes not only a sense of nostalgia for the past and the simplicity it embodies, but also a feeling of the loneliness that one experiences in this vacuum of meaning. Our lives are ultimately divided by the inherent inequality of economic standing. While the Communist Era would be too radical a recourse, society should adopt a new set of beliefs less focused on quantifiable economic gains. While that might be restrictive to our freedom, it would force us to rethink the positions in which we stand.

And yet the question arises: is this retreat a regression? It seems that we are enchained by freedom, seeking to impose constrictions on ourselves that force us to be free. America experiences an ideological cycle — liberals and conservatives take turns in government. It’s ironic that all of this seems like a game, and yet it’s difficult to live if we don’t play it.