AFAIK wrote:The Soviet Union gave us Chenobyl, modern China, Corona.
The authorities are trying to boast about how great they are- building a hospital in a week even though the army could have set up a field hospital in a day. Locking down large cities to prevent the spread of the disease after allowing the disease to take hold by locking down the doctors who tried to warn us about it.
They tried to scapegoat the local leaders but replaced them with a tone death party loyalist who wants to teach people to give praise to Xi Jinping. It didn't occur to him that maybe now is the time for humility and reflection.
The Chinese may be willing to put up with the CCP. That doesn't mean the rest of us should.
The title of this thread and this post is very interesting.
I had always thought of "Open" and "Closed" societies actually in a sociological context, and I felt that this was most applicable when talking about the early 20th century attitudes and traditions even in the West versus the post WWII culture in the West.
I think that this is not entirely wrong, and neither is the OP...
The French philosopher Henri Bergson coined the term open society in 1932.[1][2] The idea was further developed during World War II by the Austrian-born British philosopher Karl Popper.[3][4]
Bergson describes a closed society as a closed system of law or religion. It is static, like a closed mind.[5] Bergson suggests that if all traces of civilization were to disappear, the instincts of the closed society for including or excluding others would remain.[6] In contrast, an open society is dynamic and inclined to moral universalism.[5]
Popper saw the open society as part of a historical continuum reaching from the organic, tribal, or closed society, through the open society - marked by a critical attitude to tradition - to the abstract or depersonalized society lacking all face-to-face interaction transactions.[7]
In open societies, the government is expected[by whom?] to be responsive and tolerant, and its political mechanisms transparent and flexible. It can be characterized[by whom?] as opposed to authoritarianism.[citation needed]
WikipediaI think from the perspective of China as a closed society in terms of it not being transparent and beign authoritarian, it makes sense, but in another sense, China is open...
As Dugin analyzed it, there is the modern (western liberalism), and then the hypermodern (Communism), and all of the third position movements were
alternative modernities. Communism provides a great criticism of tradition, of religion, and also promotes the collective synthesis into a single modern culture...
Which, in a sense, makes it a moral universalist society, and one that fills the demands of what Karl Popper is suggesting here concerning no longer believing in magical thinking, desiring its members to have degrees of anonymity, literacy, etc., and moreover, the Chinese government and people are very humanitarian conscious. Every major corporation has some interface with humanitarian outreach.
It just simply isn't democratic.
The characteristics of the "open society" versus the "closed society" do not really match up with the expected governmental results.
I guess it is just more proof that Popper and other thinkers from that time were very far from hitting the mark and seem even shortsighted in their analysis.
I'd shy away from using the words -- except to criticize these guys.