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March 20, 2005
Crisis = Danger + Bozos
I finally got around to reading the infamous report The Death of Environmentalism. I'll have to chew it over quite a bit before I figure out what I think about it. However. . .
One the funniest things about this report is found on the cover. As the authors state on the first page of the report
On the cover is the Chinese ideogram for “crisis,” which is comprised of the characters for “danger” and “opportunity.”What's funny about this is that the above statement is completely bogus. It's an urban myth. As Victor H. Mair, professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania points out
A whole industry of pundits and therapists has grown up around this one grossly inaccurate formulation. A casual search of the Web turns up more than a million references to this spurious proverb. It appears, often complete with Chinese characters, on the covers of books, on advertisements for seminars, on expensive courses for "thinking outside of the box," and practically everywhere one turns in the world of quick-buck business, pop psychology, and orientalist hocus-pocus. This catchy expression (Crisis = Danger + Opportunity) has rapidly become nearly as ubiquitous as The Tao of Pooh and Sun Zi's Art of War for the Board / Bed / Bath / Whichever Room.To me, this meme has become a marker which sets my bozometer softly pinging. And it's no coincidence - in my opinion - that Michael and Ted chose this whole "Crisis = Danger + Opportunity" meme as the touchstone of their 37 page report. The addition of zen koans just gives the whole report a "Toa of Physics", 1970's feel to the whole thing.
The jī of wēijī, in fact, means something like "incipient moment; crucial point (when something begins or changes)." Thus, a wēijī is indeed a genuine crisis, a dangerous moment, a time when things start to go awry. A wēijī indicates a perilous situation when one should be especially wary. It is not a juncture when one goes looking for advantages and benefits. In a crisis, one wants above all to save one's skin and neck! Any would-be guru who advocates opportunism in the face of crisis should be run out of town on a rail, for his / her advice will only compound the danger of the crisis.
Posted by Azael at March 20, 2005 8:55 AM
Comments
Good one, Hal. That pictogram story always smelled fishy to me, too, but I didn't know the facts.
Posted by: Winston Smith at March 23, 2005 2:27 PM
Gotta love the Internet. I would love to do a study about these type of memes (well, read one). Another type I love is the "their language doesn't have a word for X". It's always cracked me up and I've often marveled at how effective the meme is. I remember it being trotted out before the Iraq war. I think it was "they don't have a word for negotiation". It played into the whole cultural inferiority frame that's constantly being pushed. . .
Posted by: Hal at March 23, 2005 6:30 PM
