Mediocrity and
self-interest are far too often the norm in Taiwan. Given the existential
threat it faces, the nation cannot afford this to go on, and there are people
who are doing something about it
It’s been almost
eight years now since I dropped everything in Canada and moved to Taiwan, a
country about which at the time I only had a superficially academic knowledge
of. Since then I have, in some ways, gone “native” by getting very close to the
grassroots, the local vendor, the man on the street, the victim of forced
evictions, the farmer whose land has been stolen by the state, and the
idealistic youth that is rising to do something about it.
Through my work
as a journalist, I’ve had the opportunity (sometimes the honor) of meeting
presidents (three of them), ministers, senior government officials, legislators, politicians, diplomats, top
academics, business leaders, generals, ace pilots, journalists, and many other
individuals who make, and often are, the news.
Sad to say, but
the majority of them were either mediocre, cowards, self-interested,
self-promoting, Taiwanese-hating in disguise, or completely enthralled by the money god.
Many couldn’t look beyond their banks accounts, the next elections, or an
opportunity to get some publicity. Most cruise through life as if Taiwan isn’t facing an existential threat. Media moguls who purportedly fight for
liberal values and Taiwan’s democracy behave no better than the worst tyrants
on the other side of the Strait, mistreating their employees and altogether
corrupting the very values they are supposed to defend. Taiwan first and
liberty foremost? Think again. My bank account and land development — employees
and Taiwanese, to hell with them. That’s more like it.
Such feebleness
of mind and heart, such lies, would already be problematic in a “normal” country, but is
all the more worrying in a country like Taiwan, whose existence and way of life
are threatened by an authoritarian giant. How could Taiwan possibly meet that
challenge when the people who are in charge of defending it are cowards, mental midgets, really, who require no more than the bare minimum from the people under them, and who
will punish those who actually care and are willing to fight for this place?
Such cowardice, the worst sin of all, as Mikhail Bulgakov wrote in The Master and Margarita, is nothing less than treason. How right he was…
Yes; I’ve
brushed elbows with them, have attended banquets in their honor, interviewed
them, written about them, and been employed by them. And you know what? None of
them matter, for towering above them, like the tallest of Formosa’s majestic
mountains, are the youth I have gotten to know in the past year — educated,
politically aware, untouched by the corrupting money out there, driven not by
the promise of glory but by a sense of justice, by injustice, by a desire to
stand side by side with society’s most vulnerable against its most powerful. They
are the students and activists who make short shrift of the mediocrities that
pass off as ministers in this country, who will stop at nothing to defend and
help define that which makes Taiwan unique. They are the residents of Dapu, Huaguang, Losheng, Yuanli and Taidong who have proudly and honorably fought for what is theirs when the government abused its authority to steal from them. I have learned so much more from
them in the past year than I have in the previous seven cavorting with the rich
and the powerful.
People speak of
tearing down the government. I fear that doing so is only part of the mission
ahead. A whole system has ossified that needs tearing down.
 |
| Where the future lies |
“It is a sign of
a nation’s extinction when there begin to be gods in common. When there are
gods in common, they die along with the belief in them and with the nations
themselves,” Fyodor Dostoevsky once wrote.
That god is
money. Taiwan’s activist youth knows there is a different god out there, one
that animates their beautiful country. (Photos by the author)
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