Tariq K ✅ @tariqk@octodon.social

oh. i haven't done yoga in two days.

ehhhhh

Like I was having this conversation about how Sha Wujing was the straight man of the party in Journey to the West, and my friends was like, OMG, he's not?!?!?!?

And I was like, in comparison to Sun Wukong and Zhu Bajie? And Xuanzang doesn't count, he gets kidnapped to be eaten ALL THE TIME, I'm surprised he doesn't have PTSD.

I have enough knowledge of the story to write FANFIC. And that, honestly, is a LOT of knowledge.

You know, I wish I could say that this knowledge of Chinese philosophers, which included Mencius, Sun Zi, Lie Zi and books like the Journey to the West and Madam White Snake were from me reading these books in their original language.

LOL NOPE. I got them from COMICS TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH.

Specifically, this cartoonist, Tsai Chih Chung: https://www.amazon.com/Books-Tsai-Chih-Chung/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3ATsai%20Chih%20Chung

It's great. I have all these random anecdotes now.

Did he have to leave the Wei very quickly after that, you think?

Honestly that parable was like a very polite way of telling King Hui “DON'T HALF-ASS YOUR THINKING, YOU DENSE FUCK”.

Like literally King Hui was like, I bust my ass doing this busywork, see my virtue! And yet my people don't increase, why is that, Master Meng?

And Mencius was like, oh FFS how do I get it past this dude's thick skull that you need to change what the game before you start seeing results, diligence ain't gonna work, I know!

Your Majesty is fond of war, are you not?

Mencius did these dialogues with King Hui of Liang, I know that, and I was always impressed by the brass balls it took to sit down with a dude who had HIS OWN FUCKING ARMY during the age of WARRING STATES (so yeah, you KNOW this dude knew how to use those armies), and King Hui would be like, Master Meng, look at me humblebrag and Mencius would be like LOL, followed by shading the fuck out of King Hui.

Like that bit about the parable about the deserting soldiers? I'd have gone LOL r u srs u ass?

Mind you, I was always a Mencius guy. He was *salty*. One time someone asked him about the kings Jie and Zhou, and he was like, who the fuck are those guys? I only know two assholes named Jie and Zhou, not kings. And I was like, holy shit tho SICK BURN.

I'm now imagining Confucius dancing to himself and silently squeeing and in his head he's going “look at my smol bbs growin up”, which is honestly #sagegoals really.

Like, what I got from this when I first read it was, “What's important isn't having l33t sk1llz, what's important is being able to recognize l33t sk1llz”.

I was a teen then tho. Now I think the lesson is, “Find those people who have l33t sk1llz, take care of them, make them l33ter, and be their biggest fans until the end.”

Which is awesome advice.

Now I'm remembering that Confucius story about how some dude was asking him, so like your four fave disciples, what they like.

And Confucius was like, they're awesome. This one's more compassionate, this one's more generous, this one's smarter, this one's braver.

And the dude was like, then wtf are they following you?!?!

And Confucius was like, “Because I saw these qualities in them. Also those qualities I mentioned, these guys don't know how to fcuking moderate them.”

And dude went, “Bruh.”

LIKE THAT'S LITERALLY THE JOB DESCRIPTION INNIT

What am I saying don't get a political leader who can code, guise, get a political leader who can manage people, geez.

Actually I remember that one time Lee Hsien Loong (LKY's eldest boy, and current PM of 🇸🇬, okay, Majulah Singapura, can have dynasty no trouble liddat) posted that answer to that programming question and everyone was like, oooh ahhh what a statesman, so clever he, know C++ liddat fuyoo

And I'm like, bhai. I'd be more impressed if he demonstrated some PMP-level shit, because coding you can learn in days.

Actually if his answer was in Lisp I'd be impressed.

Let's not talk about Lee Kuan Yew, okay. He went to Cambridge.

(shudder)

I know so many Chinese uncles and boys who all secretly want to be him.

Also, anyone take a gander at who the founding fathers of 🇲🇾 are, and realized… holy shit, all of them are literally rich English public school boys or equivalents.

All of them. Tunku Abdul Rahman (Cambridge boy), HS Lee (read law in Cambridge), Tan Cheng Lock (couldn't go to Cambridge, decided to teach at Raffles), Leong Yew Koh (U of London) VT Sambanthan (okay, he didn't, he went to Annamalai)…

They were all rich boys. Rich, English-speaking boys.

I think honestly if you're from a honest-to-goodness colonized nation who overthrew their masters or gained their independence, you literally have, not only your lived experience, but also your history, to avoid actually misunderstanding what Audre Lorde said when she said: “The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House.”

And yet, I swear as I am sitting here, I've seen someone do that. Someone educated and supposedly well-read.

It's so embarrassing.