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Ideological cleansing, I would note, exists not only under totalitarian regimes—it is present also, in a different form, in liberal Western democracies. Under the influence of politically correct extremism, individual thought and expression are too often curbed and too often replaced by empty political slogans. It is not hard to find examples today of people saying and doing things they don’t believe in, simply to fall in line with the prevailing narrative and make a superficial public statement.
“The bolder a man dares, the richer his land bears.”
“To express yourself needs a reason, but expressing yourself is the reason.”
It is hard to fully measure the internet’s impact on me—all I know is that I was like a jellyfish, and the internet had become my ocean. I began to see life no longer as an activity taking me in a single direction, but rather as a succession of countless instants and junctures, mine to reify—if I chose—in the posting of photos and videos, in this articulation of feeling or that sigh of dismay, in the lines of characters I wrote, in the pulses I sent along the optical fiber. Every instant could be presented as a complete world in itself, unpredictable and unrepeatable, dispelling classic
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Since then, literature and art had simply been reduced to cheap, utilitarian propaganda tools, and even now they had only the dimmest prospects. Here, in the twenty-first century, “foreign influences” were once more entering China with a swagger, no longer in the form of Marxism but as part of a new round of cultural imperialism and capitalist appropriation.
When I sent out the invitation, I had added a comment: “Your very act of writing to me will mean that you have already experienced a miracle, in that you are now looking at the world with a new set of eyes and have acquired a new way of thinking.”
“Love is a water bottle that’s easily broken, but if you drop it on the floor it doesn’t break.”
