dongwei

Biggie was right

This morning the following items passed my breakfast routine:

The K-pop effect - South Korea (video) - The craziness of South Korean pop culture and its ridiculous beauty standards (and the widespread acceptance of it throughout the mainstream culture). A type of video which is getting kind of old, but I suppose it’s still something people like to see. And should see, I suppose.

After that the Shanghaiist pointed me to this video about the worries/anxieties of China’s rising (upper-)/middle class (video). Thanks to Liz Carter from Tea Leaf Nation for translating the video.

One of the things these videos proved to me was that there’s a Brainpickings post for every occasion. As a proper brainpicker extraordinaire, Maria Popova recently posted this great piece on How to Worry Less About Money. Focussing on the book written by Melbourne Business School philosopher-in-residence John Armstrong, it pointedly differentiates between worries and troubles. This chosen quote by Popova hits it right on the head: 

This book is about worries. It’s not about money troubles. There’s a crucial difference.

Troubles are urgent. They ask for direct action. … By contrast, worries often say more about the worrier than about the world.

This applies to both cases shown in the videos above. The case is that both the kpop fans’ and the Chinese yuppies’ worries are being considered as direct troubles, and they feel compelled to address them directly. Yet, as explained in the Chinese yuppies video, “longstanding feelings of inexplicable anxiety” remain ever-present in their lives.

I am reminded of one of my first introductory psychology classes, where we discussed the classic conditions of worth, and how most of the reason why people feel unhappy and anxious is that they have interpreted external conditions of worth as their conditions to live by. This almost seems to simple an explanation to be true, yet it always crosses my mind when I see cases like shown in the videos above. Ideas of succes, money, beauty, fame, popularity.. what makes these ideas to powerful? And how come these ideas have become so rigid? The second part of the quote used on Brainpickings points out a very likely explanation.

So, addressing money worries should be quite different from dealing with money troubles. To address our worries we have to give attention to the pattern of thinking (ideology) and to the scheme of values (culture) as these are played out in our won individual, private existences.

So.. now how do we do that? 

After I watched the videos and read the Brainpickings post again, the first thing that popped up in my mind was: Biggie was right.

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By the way, the joke’s on you. As if I have a breakfast routine. I just sort of wake up, roll out of bed, and try to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to do today. Every. Morning.

Note: I guess that’s a routine?