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pastwatcherI hate dishonorable people. If I were a better person I'd keep this to myself, but I want to rant and I want someone to agree with me, or argue, or whatever.
We all have a language pledge, and it's fairly loose; we can speak English on the phone in our room, and write English; as long as no classmates or teachers hear, in theory it's okay, but we're also not supposed to use English to communicate in person with people who can speak Chinese. I stretched it to the limit (and broke my promise to myself, which was stricter than what I could technically be allowed) once when I went to meet Mom's friend by speaking English with /her/, because she barely speaks any Chinese, and I felt bad enough about that but I would've felt worse refusing to speak properly with her otherwise (we actually met again, but this time with her son who /does/ speak Chinese, so I just spoke Chinese). But three of my classmates--two whom I thought were almost certainly lazy enough to speak English whenever they felt like it (one of whom even burst into an English sentence today) and one whom I really didn't think would do so--were just out at the gate of our dorm, speaking pure English to each other. Never mind that we're all pretty fluid, and I even claim to be fluent (though I'm still missing some obvious vocabulary, like "elbow"), so Chinese is no problem at all.
It's kind of ironic, actually; I have a possibly bad tendency to judge certain kinds of people pretty quickly based on their clothing or behavior. Forgive my language, but if they dress like they want to sleep around (well, okay, maybe only like they want to be in a magazine) and they go no further than to find out my name (come to think of it, I still don't know the names of the two of them) before ignoring me, I'm not going to like them, and furthermore I'm not going to respect them. Now the problem with this kind of judgment is that I often think of them is dumb, which these days since I'm mostly meeting such people at Harvard or this high-level program is not true; in fact, they're not even unmotivated. But they /are/ dishonorable, often--by which I include lying. They also don't care about things like rules. I can even understand not wanting to follow rules; after all, they're not of one's own design. But the language pledge?? I can even understand realizing that at this point, using lots of English doesn't necessarily matter; at least for me, unless I'm speaking to a Chinese person there's not much improvement as long as I use Chinese most of the time, because switching is easy. But in truth, though the third girl doesn't seem to have a problem with Chinese, the other two /do/ have a problem leaving English words out of their speech. And we /promised!/ It's disgusting. No wonder the teachers want to treat us all like possibly mischievous (that's pronounced [mis-chi-vus] all vowels short, not [mis-chi-vi-us] middle two vowels long, by the way) children, if my classmates are going to act as such.
The girl whom I /did/ like was apparently coming in as the other two were going out, and when I ran into her I actually asked why she wanted to speak English. (Er, the meaning of that, despite use of the word "要，=want” is closer to "Why were you speaking English" in Chinese.) She just shrugged, and said something I couldn't hear after I pointed out that she had promised.
The worst of it is I am in the age-old goody-goody dilemma of whether or not to tell on them; I think not, obviously. They're only cheating themselves--well, that's not true, they're "polluting" me too, in theory, and to a more significant degree each other--and it's their own promise they're breaking. Furthermore, I don't like to tell on rule-breaking people, because rules aren't of my own design either. But this really seems different. Like Princeton's honor code, which I am in love with; did you know that at Princeton if you plagiarize or cheat you are expelled, not because you broke their rules but because when you came in you signed a code of honor promising you wouldn't cheat or plagiarize? So there's nothing to rebel against but the very concept of honor and promises, and "beating the system" (how I hate that phrase) doesn't make as much sense as it does at Harvard. You're also honor-bound to report cheating etc., though, with the result that at final exams, after staying a while to answer questions, the professor just leaves, and there's no proctor, but I've never seen anyone cheat. Of course I've only taken math exams there, but still.
So that's event number 2 of the day that has made me realized there are still real reasons why I'm not made for mainstream or at least "fashionable" society, at least in my age group. (The first was a Chinese table talk, with different people who /would/ have to talk about dating, and their "standards," and their "perfect men" whom they wouldn't deserve after maturing in mind for 20 years, and how "all guys cheat," etc. No, I'm not bitter, not at all.) I'd started to wonder about it--having a sense of pride in being different was something I started to think wasn't good for me, and maybe people were more like me than I thought--which is true, but there /are/ important gaps. I don't mean to imply that I think everyone is like this, nor that I can stereotype the entirety of American college students outside of me, my friends, HRSFA, and people I do respect (heh); note that I speak of two/three students out of us 27, and I attempt not to act on the jugments.
Phew. No,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
timmypowg has not hacked my livejournal and posted this, I promise. Oh, and I keep my promises as best I can, dammit.
At any rate, the aforementioned dinner with Anson and his mom's friend did happen, and was fun. I have to prepare for the talent show now, it's tomorrow preceded by a dress rehearsal...sigh.
We all have a language pledge, and it's fairly loose; we can speak English on the phone in our room, and write English; as long as no classmates or teachers hear, in theory it's okay, but we're also not supposed to use English to communicate in person with people who can speak Chinese. I stretched it to the limit (and broke my promise to myself, which was stricter than what I could technically be allowed) once when I went to meet Mom's friend by speaking English with /her/, because she barely speaks any Chinese, and I felt bad enough about that but I would've felt worse refusing to speak properly with her otherwise (we actually met again, but this time with her son who /does/ speak Chinese, so I just spoke Chinese). But three of my classmates--two whom I thought were almost certainly lazy enough to speak English whenever they felt like it (one of whom even burst into an English sentence today) and one whom I really didn't think would do so--were just out at the gate of our dorm, speaking pure English to each other. Never mind that we're all pretty fluid, and I even claim to be fluent (though I'm still missing some obvious vocabulary, like "elbow"), so Chinese is no problem at all.
It's kind of ironic, actually; I have a possibly bad tendency to judge certain kinds of people pretty quickly based on their clothing or behavior. Forgive my language, but if they dress like they want to sleep around (well, okay, maybe only like they want to be in a magazine) and they go no further than to find out my name (come to think of it, I still don't know the names of the two of them) before ignoring me, I'm not going to like them, and furthermore I'm not going to respect them. Now the problem with this kind of judgment is that I often think of them is dumb, which these days since I'm mostly meeting such people at Harvard or this high-level program is not true; in fact, they're not even unmotivated. But they /are/ dishonorable, often--by which I include lying. They also don't care about things like rules. I can even understand not wanting to follow rules; after all, they're not of one's own design. But the language pledge?? I can even understand realizing that at this point, using lots of English doesn't necessarily matter; at least for me, unless I'm speaking to a Chinese person there's not much improvement as long as I use Chinese most of the time, because switching is easy. But in truth, though the third girl doesn't seem to have a problem with Chinese, the other two /do/ have a problem leaving English words out of their speech. And we /promised!/ It's disgusting. No wonder the teachers want to treat us all like possibly mischievous (that's pronounced [mis-chi-vus] all vowels short, not [mis-chi-vi-us] middle two vowels long, by the way) children, if my classmates are going to act as such.
The girl whom I /did/ like was apparently coming in as the other two were going out, and when I ran into her I actually asked why she wanted to speak English. (Er, the meaning of that, despite use of the word "要，=want” is closer to "Why were you speaking English" in Chinese.) She just shrugged, and said something I couldn't hear after I pointed out that she had promised.
The worst of it is I am in the age-old goody-goody dilemma of whether or not to tell on them; I think not, obviously. They're only cheating themselves--well, that's not true, they're "polluting" me too, in theory, and to a more significant degree each other--and it's their own promise they're breaking. Furthermore, I don't like to tell on rule-breaking people, because rules aren't of my own design either. But this really seems different. Like Princeton's honor code, which I am in love with; did you know that at Princeton if you plagiarize or cheat you are expelled, not because you broke their rules but because when you came in you signed a code of honor promising you wouldn't cheat or plagiarize? So there's nothing to rebel against but the very concept of honor and promises, and "beating the system" (how I hate that phrase) doesn't make as much sense as it does at Harvard. You're also honor-bound to report cheating etc., though, with the result that at final exams, after staying a while to answer questions, the professor just leaves, and there's no proctor, but I've never seen anyone cheat. Of course I've only taken math exams there, but still.
So that's event number 2 of the day that has made me realized there are still real reasons why I'm not made for mainstream or at least "fashionable" society, at least in my age group. (The first was a Chinese table talk, with different people who /would/ have to talk about dating, and their "standards," and their "perfect men" whom they wouldn't deserve after maturing in mind for 20 years, and how "all guys cheat," etc. No, I'm not bitter, not at all.) I'd started to wonder about it--having a sense of pride in being different was something I started to think wasn't good for me, and maybe people were more like me than I thought--which is true, but there /are/ important gaps. I don't mean to imply that I think everyone is like this, nor that I can stereotype the entirety of American college students outside of me, my friends, HRSFA, and people I do respect (heh); note that I speak of two/three students out of us 27, and I attempt not to act on the jugments.
Phew. No,
timmypowg has not hacked my livejournal and posted this, I promise. Oh, and I keep my promises as best I can, dammit.At any rate, the aforementioned dinner with Anson and his mom's friend did happen, and was fun. I have to prepare for the talent show now, it's tomorrow preceded by a dress rehearsal...sigh.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 01:56 pm (UTC)> differential is smaller (as between students, or even between students and individual
> professors), agreements have more moral force.
I think so too, but I haven't been able to justify it logically, really. Why do you say that?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-15 06:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-16 07:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-16 03:55 pm (UTC)Put another way, I'm not totally hostile to pure democracy, but I have yet to see one.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-18 02:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-22 11:31 am (UTC)So this adds a complication, that of measuring how much of an entity's power over a person is just.
Power over someone is never justified except maybe in certain situations which I am having a hard time finding the word for; the only example I can think of is voluntary power exchanges of the BDSM sort (and even these have been known to go wrong).
and this could easily imply the decision always to treat a non-person entity as having less moral force.
This seems right to me, although almost independent of the power thing.