Things Mark Reads

Last weekend, a few hours after getting off the plane from Shanghai, I made my way to Conquest Gaming Convention, where I would staff the RPG Review Cooperative stall for two-and-a-half days. In the midst of this, however, I had previously been slotted to give a lecture at The Existentialist Society on "The Decline of French Philosophy". So for a couple of hours in the midst of the convention, I snuck backstage, and with soundproofing provided by heavy stage curtains, delivered the presentation. It was well attended, well received, and is viewable on YouTube , including the questions and answers session. A transcript is available in English and in French, albeit the latter hasn't been double-checked. The basic summary is that the French did some excellent philosophy to the phenomenologists and existentialists in the 1950s and 1960s, went downhill with the post-modernists and post-structuralists from the 1970s to the early 2000s (albeit with some good insights, especially relating to setting, and a definite improvement in artistry), but following the "science wars" of the late 90s and early 00s, there has been some new French philosophers who are a somewhat more useful.

At the end of the meeting I was asked by the convener what future talk I would like to deliver; I immediately suggested Jurgen Habermas, who died at age 96 whilst I was overseas. Habermas is a "second-generation" Frankfurt School whose major contribution to philosophy includes combining linguistic pragmatics with ordinary language philosophy, "the theory of communicative action". Habermas was a very important influence on my own political thinking since the early nineties when I first read "Legitimation Crisis", a careful study of potential areas of break-points in societies. Whilst I wasn't expecting to give this presentation for some months, I received an email from the convenor of the Society that the next allocated speaker for May was unavailable, and whether I could step in and give my talk on Habermas. I agreed and then realised (after a bit of suspicion) that I would be the first person in the history of the Existentialist Society, which has been delivering monthly lectures since Feb 1974 to be the speaker for two month's in succession. It is a significant, if accidental, honour, and hopefully I'll give credit not only to the Society, but also to the subject.

With the conclusion of the formal ACFS trip, our party of thirteen ventured in their own directions from Chengdu. For me, it was an early morning trip to Wuxi, which I'll do by train in the future. Wuxi is a city I have been to four times now, and I chose a modest local hotel where people spoke less English than I speak Chinese, and that's saying something. I was a 30-minute walk to the Tai Lake (the more common anglophone name, "Taihu Lake", translates as "Great Lake Lake"). The designated scenic and ecological area is quite beautiful and large enough to spend several days exploring. By chance, I had arrived for a weekend of the Cherry Blossom Festival (not just a Japanese thing), and the parklands were alive with visitors and entertainment. The real purpose of my visit to this city, however, came on the Monday when I was given the opportunity to visit the National Supercomputing Centre and the Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer, which held the world's no 1 position for an unprecedented two years in succession. This was a bit of a personal dream come true for me and, as a result, I have written a few notes about it on my main website along with some earlier comments about the Guizhou data centre and radio telescope.

From Wuxi, I took a high-speed train to Shanghai, which peaked at 298km/h. Arriving at Shanghai, I had a leisurely morning with Melbourne people, Nadia and Michael, visiting the Buddhist Jing'an Temple before going our separate ways. I moved into my small (one room) refurbished apartment in a block inhabited since the 1920s, inhabited almost exclusively by older locals. The following day I met with the local Friendship Association who took me on a tour of the Shanghai library, a gleaming seven-story building that is mostly library, part museum, and part community centre. The building is so designed that it appears to float over water and overlooks extensive parkland. After that, I was taken on a visit to the Shanghai Art and Design Academy (SADA), which included various media workshops and a museum-like showcase of the best examples from former students. That evening, I went on a lengthy walk along The Bund with its famous colonial buildings (the imperialists left something worthwhile), and then spent much of the following day at the extensive History Museum, before heading to the airport for the overnight flight back to Australia.

Thus ends my fifth trip to China in the last 2.5 years. If one has the means, I certainly recommend a visit to culture, history, and the environment. At each visit, I become increasingly confident in my own capacity to get around independently, and I am absolutely delighted at how organised and efficient the Chinese intercity fast-train system is, but also their various intracity metro systems that are all clean, quiet, safe, frequent, extensive, and inexpensive, making them absolutely the preferred way to travel. In the long run, I hope to arrange a cultural exchange between the Shanghai Municipality and Victoria based on UNESCO-level cultural cities, as well as an operatic exchange between Sichuan and Victoria. However, it's early days on both of these projects. In the meantime, it's time for a brief repose from international journeys.