Culture and the Divided Brain

One of the important themes on this blog is that the asymmetry and lateralization of the human brain influences broad patterns of culture; that while cultures always display characteristics of both hemispheres, at any given time a culture will lean left or right hemisphere; and, that major cultural change is often seen as a transition to one macro pattern to the other.  I discussed these issues here and here.  Following from Nietzsche, left hemisphere cultural patterns are called Apollonian and right hemisphere patterns are Dionysian.  Iain McGilchrist provides the best discussion of Nietzsche’s two patterns and the hemispheres, here.  Additionally, Apollonian is known as Low Context culture and Dionysian is High Context culture based on the work of Edward T Hall, here.  Cultural transitions from one emphasis to the other are called Awakenings, here & here.  In addition, don’t forget Levi Strauss and his two types, the Engineer and the bricoleur, here.

Human thought is mostly unconscious; and it is mostly metaphorical with a small amount of literalism.  Cultural patterns can also be thought of as complex metaphors.  Thus, to say that the brain influences culture it is through the creation of and perpetuation of metaphors.  One good example of broad complex metaphors is the contrast in American culture between the Strict Father metaphor and the Co-parenting metaphor that is also generally associated with republicans and democrats, here.  The strict father is an authoritarian orderly metaphor (left hemisphere) and the Co parenting metaphor is a right hemisphere one steeped in empathy.  Also, note the simple understanding of the bible; the Old Testament is left hemisphere and the New Testament is right hemisphere, authority versus empathy.

Every culture is a complex whole comprised of hundreds, maybe thousands, of complex metaphors that lean one way or the other, hemisphere wise.  One thing to remember is that complex metaphors can change over time, they can be made up of many sub complex metaphors that also change and maybe confound the issue by leaning the opposite way—the Strict Father pattern may have sub metaphors that lean right hemisphere because a touch of empathy is needed.

Awakenings are when a culture’s basic set of complex metaphors switch from one orientation to another, such as, in American history, from Romanticism to Modernism (from emphasizing the right hemisphere to the left one) during the Progressive Era, circa 1890-1920.  During the Awakening metaphors satisfying both hemispheres are stressed, thus the era is exceptionally energetic and cultural entropy increases, here.

This basically sums up one important idea that drives this blog.  The others are the Cultural seasons model, turnings, and the Generations model, both espoused by Strauss and Howe, here.

The Lameness of Otherness

I recently read the book Reversed Gaze:  An African Ethnography of American Anthropology by Mwenda Ntarangwi.  I encourage serious anthropologists to use it in graduate seminars as a discussion piece. 

Follow up essays

Book review, http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/cgi/showme.cgi?keycode=4013

Racism commentary, http://ageofintuition.blogspot.com/2011/05/anthropology-as-rotten-egg.html

The book describes Ntarangi’s maturation in Anthropology from graduate school to being an associate professor.  Along the way, he discusses racism, class, and power structures in Anthropology.  One of his main points is that American Anthropology is focused on studying the Other, or Alterity.  You learn much about Ntarangwi and that it must be hard to come to America from Africa and then write about Americans.  It makes one wonder about the validity of all ethnography.  It’s not that Ntarangwi is ‘wrong’ so much as his culture critique perspective misdirects his understanding of American anthropology.  I have several comments.

First, I’m not bothered by being reminded that racism exists in America and in Anthropology.  I was surprised that Ntarangwi seemed surprised (or disappointed) by this fact.  Did he buy into all the equality mumbo jumbo our culture throws out to the world?  I guess he had a rude awakening similar to Rabinow’s in Morocco (1977) who was told by a Muslim friend that Jews (i.e. Rabinow) will always be seen as inferior by Muslims.  Chinese born and raised Francis L. K. Hsu lived with it too (Hsu 1973; 1979; Claes 1996).  American history is incomplete without the racism discussion.  Our Civil War with 600k dead may have ended slavery but not racism.

In addition, it seems that Ntarangwi came to the US with an exalted view of American Anthropologists and scholars in general.  It seems he expected them to be pillars of collegiality and equality; and, that they, somehow, could be above it all.  Unfortunately, academic tribes (Adams 1988; Becher and Trawler 2001) are not paragons of virtue.  They can be as low as any other aspect of our culture.  Anthropologists, and all scholars, are human beings.  They have all the virtues and vices, all the grace and pettiness, of the class.  In typical human fashion, they make we/they distinctions that are not always fair or socially graceful.  It is nice to think well of others--but ethnography requires deeper insight than that.

Americans can be very judgmental of each other and hard on themselves.  I never bought into the in-your-face “Anthropology as culture critique” perspective that began in the mid 1980s (Marcus and Fisher 1986).  My judgment then was that it seemed overly judgmental rather than constructively critical.  In my ethnography of archaeologists (Moore 1986) I rejected culture critique because I viewed it as “self flagellation,” something I was not then, or now, interested in doing.  Trencher (2002) views it as having been obstructive as well.

Today, I view culture critique as one expression of Baby Boomer henpecking and politicking that is so divisive.  This style of communication did appear in American popular culture in the 1980s.  The best example is in comedy.  When the Johnny Carson show was running the humor was always about Carson (Silent generation) making fun of himself, and there was a classiness about it.  He made his guests look good.  Then came the David Letterman and Jay Leno shows, both of which provided Boomer henpecking, with guests verbally slapped around and made to look stupid.  Culture critique demeans and damages what it studies.  It also forces people to take sides.

Ntarangwi plays this too.  On page 42 he describes how he enjoys having his students read Horace Minor’s 1956 essay on the body rituals of the Nacirema (American spelled backwards).  He doesn’t tell them until afterwards that the study is about 1950s America.  So, he gets frustrated comments from his class.  This is him playing a gotcha moment and putting the class at a psychological disadvantage.  I would rather have seen him tell the class what the essay is about up front and that they should write an essay on how they think things have changed.  This would send the message that America has culture that can be studied, and you also make the students engage it.  

The culture critique folks acted like Anthropologists had not done enough research on American culture.  I suspect that Marcus and Fisher underestimated, or ignored, the depth and breadth of anthropological research into self and American culture.  Mead (1942) and Gorer (1964) had already provided idealized versions of Middlebrow culture, and Henry (1965) provided heavy hitting constructive criticism.  By the early 1980s there were excellent readers available on the Anthropology of American culture (Spradley and Rynkiewich 1975; Messerschmidt 1981).  In 1992 Moffett was able to review over 160 anthropological monographs that had been done the previous decade about American culture.  The process continues:  Gusterson (1997) updated the idea of Studying Up and today we have Karen Ho (2009) writing about Wall Street.  By having bought into the culture critique perspective, I suspect that Ntarangwi also underestimates or ignores the vastness and quality of this literature.

When I was in grad school in the early 1980s some of us joked about the “we have met the Others and they are us” phrase that was then popular.  Everyone knew it was a spin-off of the old saying “we have met the enemy and they are us.”  Unfortunately, the culture critique crowd fell hard for it.  They are the ones who escalated Otherness into a poplar term in Anthropology.  They missed the joke and took it seriously—we are the enemy, shame on us, take sides.

Table 1:  Google Ngram for “Otherness” in American English, 1900-2008. Click on image for bigger view.

Otherness and anthropology come together in American Anthropology with the work of Levi Strauss.  In 1963 his Structural Anthropology was released in English and by the 1970s structuralism was the new fad in the social sciences and literary circles.  In 1983 Fabian published his famous Time and the Other and many went gaga about it [I suspect he would take some of it back if he could (Fabian 2006, 2011)].  Next, came Marcus and Fisher (1986) and the pump was primed much further.  On Table 1 it’s clear that Otherness takes off as a popular idea in the 1980s and then peaks in the late 1990s with a subsequent fall off.

Culture critique and its obsession with self/otherness is not a good foundation from which to study another culture or even some aspect of one’s own culture because it is demeaning to those studied.  Culture critique is always a “gotcha” mentality, a game of one-upmanship.  The culture critique crowd love to say “gotcha America” and “gotcha anthropologists” for being the hypocrites you are.  The title of the book says “gotcha” from my “reversed gaze.”  One should never fall in love with a phrase.

The duality "Reflexivity/Otherness" is the post modern version of the old "we/they" duality.   American Anthropology is interested in it because all of Western Civilization debates it.  The culture critique crowd use the we/they binary to demean American culture and it institutions; they criticize to tear down.  The professional stranger (Agar 1996) approach offers constructive criticism with the intent of no further action (a take it or leave it attitude) or seeks to improve American culture.  As they used to say:  "America-love it or leave it".   The cc crowd won't leave.

Fortunately, as Table 1 suggests, the study of Otherness, and by extension the culture critique approach, is a dying trend.  When you have researchers comparing the elderly to others (Hazan 2009) you know that the silly point has been reached.  Also, it never became universal across the profession or across cultural anthropology.  Marvin Harris and Otherness don’t go together and historical archaeologists would give you a blank stare if you asked them about it.  Otherness is just a weird contemporary Western idea and many non-Western cultures would not understand it (cf. Gruen 2010).  There are other ways to conceive of anthropology and ethnography.  I prefer the ethnographer as professional stranger  concept.

Table 1 actually reveals more than I have suggested.  It is a depiction of word usage in American English not just anthropological works.  Prior to 1960 Otherness was mostly a theological, philosophical and ethical concept.  It remains so today.  The most common usage of Otherness is in theology, usually with reference to the Otherness of God.  American Christians are very interested in discovering the Otherness of God and they know that you find God in other people.  The best example of this is Martin Buber's (1923) I and Thou.  It plays out as I/you, we/they, and civilized/savage in Western culture.  In 1979 Giles Gunn published The Interpretation of otherness:  Literature, Religion, and the American Imagination, a nice analysis of how Americans are focused on identity issues, especially the self/society conflict, as portrayed in fiction.  But, it’s not just that they want to be rugged individuals in society they also want fellowship with others.  The quest for fellowship is the quest for God.  Finding God in another culture is no different (Headley 1983; priest and anthropologist).  Any theologian or mystic would recognize that the post modern Anthropologists studying Otherness are basically looking for some version of God.  Very few are reflexive enough to know that they are.

As an observer of all this I have to say that American culture is pervaded by Christian beliefs and values.  Americans who become Anthropologists also carry with them these basic perspectives even if they themselves are atheists.  Christianity is embedded in American Anthropology at a meta level.  The big bubble on Table 1 indicates that Americans used the term Otherness as they lived out the Fourth Great Awakening (here) that spanned 1960 to 1990.  Certainly, there was some hangover that made it last a little longer.  This is what one should expect as the fundamentalist mentality of modernist Anthropological scientism was replaced by the fundamentalist post modern democratic Anthropology during those same years.  Now that post modernism is the norm in Anthropology the aggressive henpecking of the culture critique-ers need not continue; Table 1 suggests it is waning.

As one who lives at the intersection of agnosticism and mysticism, I was never looking for God.  To me the whole Otherness issue is lame.

Ntarangwi is lucky.  America is a land of people reinventing themselves all the time.  He can do this too; he can have a Do Over.  It's part of his personal evolution.  I suggest he restart the project from a different perspective.  He said many times that he is interested in the holistic approach of Anthropology.  Therefore, he should actually take such an approach because the part he is most familiar with, cultural critique as anthropology, is not the whole.  He’ll also find that the “ethnography of archaeology” literature (Edgeworth 2006; Sandlin and Bey 2006) is useful, providing parallel discussions.  Further, he needs to embrace Applied Anthropology because 70 percent of all newly minted PhDs end up working outside of academia.  The profession is not really an academic one when most of its students end up doing applied work.  He should also read the basic references in the anthropology of anthropology genre that he ignored (Herzfeld, 1989; Khare 1990; Kim 2002; Sangren, 2007; & Trencher 1993, 2000).

Lastly, I do think that Ntarangwi is on a good path.  He seems inquisitive and willing to persevere as he struggles to define his own identity.  Good ethnographers are always monitoring the cultural landscape, they have situational awareness, and they know when to take a break from it all.  Reminiscent of Nash’s (1964) idea that ethnographers are always strangers Robert Murphy (1980:11) wrote

…the agonizing process of ethnography is always incomplete; we skim off the top and come away, if we have done our jobs properly, with a sense of loss and unfulfilment.

You will never find yourself if ethnography is your sole means of searching, and, your identity is greater than the part called Anthropologist.

Happy Easter

References

Adams, H.

 1988  The Academic Tribes.  Second edition.  Champaign: University of Illinois Press.

Agar, Michael H.

1996  The Professional Stranger: An Informal Introduction to Ethnography.  Second edition.  Academic Press.

Becher, T. and P. Trowler

2001  Academic Tribes and Territories: Intellectual Enquiry and the Cultures of Discipline.  Second edition.  Open University Press.

Claes, Tom

1996  Theorizing the West:  A Second Look at Francis L.K. Hsu.  Cultural Dynamics 8: 79-99.

Edgeworth, Matt, ed.

2006  Ethnographies of Archaeological Practice: Cultural Encounters, Material Transformations.  Lanham: Alta Mira Press.

Fabian, Johannes

1983  Time and the other:  How Anthropology makes Its Object.  New York:  Columbia University Press.

2006  The other revisited: Critical afterthoughts.  Anthropological Theory 6 (2):139-152.

2011  Cultural Anthropology and the Question of knowledge.  Royal Anthropological Institute, London, The Huxley Memorial Lecture, here. Listen to it.

Gorer, Geoffrey

1964  The American People:  A study in national character.  Revised edition.  New York: Norton.

Gruen, Erich S.

2010  Rethinking the Other in Antiquity.  Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.

Gunn, Giles B.

1979  The Interpretation of otherness:  Literature, Religion, and the American Imagination. Oxford University Press.

Gusterson, Hugh

1997  Studying Up Revisited.  Political and Legal Anthropology Review 20 (1):114-119.

Hazan, Haim

2009  Essential others: anthropology and the return of the old savage.  International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 29(1-2):60-72.  

Headley, Stephen C.

1983  Recognizing God in Another Culture. International Review of Mission 72(285):75-80.

Henry, Jules

1965  Culture Against Man.  New York: Vintage Books.

Herzfeld, Michael

1989  Anthropology Through the Looking-Glass: Critical Ethnography in the Margins of Europe.  Cambridge University Press

Ho, Karen

2009  Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street.  Duke University Press.

Hsu, Francis L. K.

1973  Prejudice and Its Intellectual Effect in American Anthropology:  An Ethnographic Report.  American Anthropologist 75(1): 1-19,

1979  The Cultural Problem of the Cultural Anthropologist.  American Anthropologist 81(3): 517-532.

Levi-Strauss, Claude

1963  Structural Anthropology. Translated by Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books.

Khare, R. S.

1990  Indian Sociology and the Cultural Other.  Contributions to Indian Sociology 24(2): 177-199. 

Kim, Choong Soon

2002  One Anthropologist Two Worlds:  Three Decades Of Reflexive Fieldwork In North America.  University of Tennessee Press.

Marcus, George E. and Michael M. J. Fischer

1986  Anthropology as Culture Critique:  An experimental moment in the human sciences.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Mead, Margaret

1942  And Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at America.  Berghahn Books.

Messerschmidt, Donald A., ed.

1981  Anthropologists at Home in North America.  New York:  Cambridge University Press.

Minor, Horace

1956  Body Ritual among the Nacirema.  American Anthropologist 58(3):  507-507.

Moffatt, Michael

1992  Ethnographic Writing About American culture.  Annual Review of Anthropology 21: 205-229.

Moore, L. E.

1986  Patterns Without Rhythm: Social Structure Ambiguity in an Archaeological Field Camp.  Master’s Thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Montana, Missoula.

Murphy, Robert

1980  The Dialectics of Social Life: Alarms and excursions in anthropological theory.  New York: Columbia University Press.

Nash, Dennison

1963  The Ethnologist as stranger:  An essay in the sociology of knowledge.  Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 19:149-167.

Rabinow, Paul

1977  Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco.  Berkeley: University of California Press.

Sandlin, Jennifer A. and George J. Bey III

2006  Trowels, trenches and transformation:  A case study of archaeologists learning a more critical practice of archaeology.  Journal of Social Archaeology 6:255-276.

Sangren, P. Steven

2007  Anthropology of anthropology? Further reflections on reflexivity.  Anthropology Today 23(4):13-16.

Spradley, James P. and Michael A Rynkiewich, eds

1975  The Nacirema: Readings on American Culture. New York: Little Brown & Company

Trencher, Susan R

1993  Toward an anthropology of American anthropology: an analysis of fieldworker ethnographies.  PhD Dissertation, Catholic University of America.

2000  Mirrored images: American anthropology and American culture, 1960-1980.  Westport: Bergin & Garvey. 

2002  The Literary Project and Representations of Anthropology.  Anthropological Theory 2(2):211-231.

The Crisis Escalates

Blogging has been slow due to my being under the weather and another professional writing obligation to finish.

I’ve been following the protests these last few weeks. Fascinating how fast change can come.  Yes, there is evidence for both gradual and punctuated evolutionary change.

First there was Tunisia.  It's Jasmine revolution is an Awakening.  The nation got its independence in 1957, and that started a cultural high. Now, we see the result of an awakening, where a grass roots rebellion overthrows a corrupt regime. I guess the next step in the analysis is to determine when the awakening began; the revolution is the end result.  They will now enter into an era of cultural conflict.

Today we have Egypt, Jordan and Albania.  The Arabic ones seem to be awakenings.  Next, maybe Syria and the Suez Canal

Meanwhile, our US capital markets are rebelling too, against the PPT (plunge protection team).

The crisis climax will be here sooner than you think.  Much food and water are needed.  Awakenings in North Africa will escalate the secular crises elsewhere.

Good luck.

2012: Year of the Dragon

If you want some nostalgia for the American cultural high see here and scroll down to the videos.

I’ll try not to make this one too gloomy.  If such things bother you then skip this one.  Remember, I am working a sociological model to its conclusion.  The model can be wrong.

Previously I discussed American cultural eras (here, and here) and indicated where I think we are in the cultural cycle.  In this essay I compare the US cycle to the Chinese (PRC) one to see how they line up.  The patterns are fairly close.  We are both in secular crisis, with the PRC having started a little later than the US.  

Secular crises are identity crises.  The US has to decide of it will continue to be The Super Power that it has been.  For the PRC, the question is: do they become The New Super Power, or, maybe we could have two super powers. I don’t think other nations are viable challengers, unless they partner up.

When I look back at the large events of American history the episodes of total war within crises always stand out:  King Philips War during the Glorious Revolution, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and WWII.  History book series tend to be defined around those benchmarks. Since American Awakenings have been relatively nonviolent they haven’t gotten much attention.  You have to go back to the Puritan Awakening of the early 17^th century and the rise of Cromwell to find a violent one. Awakenings are generally ignored in US history (this blog aims to change that).

In other countries Awakenings have been violent and have led to the overthrow of governments or monarchies, such as the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution. Awakening rebellions tend to have grass roots leadership intent on correcting the abuses of those in formal power, although they may also have help from high level factions.  They can also lead to long term intermittent warlord like infighting.  Culture War eras start as extensions of the Awakenings and then escalate into the secular crisis.

Total wars with significant genocidal behavior are fought in secular crises; they are either state sponsored wars of complete destruction, or, they are civil wars.  While, in theory, secular crises don’t have to have episodes of genocidal warfare, I have yet to find one that does not (I also haven’t looked far and wide).

Chinese history is bench marked on both secular crises and awakenings.  Every 45 to 50 years they seem to have a significant outbreak of violence.  The Cultural Revolution began in 1966 and here we are 45 years later in secular crisis.  Also, since 1850, benchmark events have always centered on the influences of Western Civilization penetrating into Chinese culture, as if there is a need to resist or purge something Western out of Chinese culture.  It seems that a new purge could come at any time.  I offer some idea of what that might look like.

First and foremost the Chinese are 90% Han ethnicity.  They are a proud culture that believes they are the center of the world [1].  All things are defined in relation to them.  Han chauvinism is renowned.  They are the Middle Kingdom.  The further you go away from the center the greater a barbarian you are.  The ruler leads due to the Mandate of Heaven and all others kowtow and pay tribute to him. Three hundred years of Westerners meddling in Chinese politics and one hundred years of sustained Western influence since the collapse of the Qing Dynasty does not erase 2000 years of sino-centrism.  As Christ is central to the identity of a devout Christian so is Han chauvinism to the Han people.  And they have hidden it very well these last few decades under the blanket of “communism” [2].

In traditional China all non-family relations were of a patron-client form (the Asian version, not the European one).  One side always had the upper hand but also had to be protective of the other side because the relation would eventually fail if they did not. While both are dependent on each other the patron works to ensure that the client becomes asymmetrically more dependent.  Since 1978, when China began opening up again to outside influences and trade, it has worked hard to establish patron-client relationships.

Americans typically think of partnerships as being one of equals working toward a common goal. The Chinese do not. One side always gets the upper hand.

The US is now heavily in debt to the Chinese and we are dependent on their cheep goods.  To the Chinese, we are the client.  Obama has bowed to their ruler.  The next step is to kowtow.  (They will accept a symbolic kowtow; it doesn't have to be a real prostration).

China is ripe for a re-expression of its core identity.  The great purge that is coming will be the abandonment of any pretext that they are communists. Communism is a Western idea. Purge it.

The Cultural Revolution gives great insight on this.  That Awakening was a conflict between communism and Han chauvinism as Mao had tried to stamp it out from the beginning (here) but failed. In 1966 Mao tried to make communism a heavier blanket over the culture, it backfires against him, starting a successful resistance. The communists destroyed artifacts and libraries of Chinese culture, they put intellectuals into communes, but they couldn’t change the core culture of the Han.  After Mao’s death in 1976 the Chinese, under Deng, made three decisions:  honor Mao for being the savior of the nation [3], ignore his failure in the Cultural Revolution, and allow communism to wane.  Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism all rebounded quickly.  Traditionally having been a trading culture, they slowly opened to the world and slowly gained economic power using the patron-client relationship.

Today, China is ripe to reveal itself as the Dragon it is and always has been.  And on the Chinese calendar, 2012 is the Year of the Dragon, a time when dragons roam freely in the world and take what they want.  Taiwan and South Korea are emeralds worthy of their taking [4].

When the time comes Americans will have to stand tall, not kowtow, and say “the Mandate of Heaven is revoked.”

Game on.

Table 1:  Comparison of American and Chinese cultural eras. Some Chinese events will link to Wikipedia.

Cultural Era	US	China	Others
Secular Crisis	2001- Crisis of Confidence	2007- Global Economic Crisis
Culture Wars/Unraveling	1984-2007  Post Scientism	1979-2007 Opening of PRC to Western influences and trade; one child policy erodes demographics; SARS; human rights
Awakening	1960-1990 4th; Consciousness Revolution	1966-1989 Cultural Revolution to Tiananmen Square; 1 to 20 million dead
Cultural High	1946-1968  American High	1950-1976 PRC under Mao; PRC mostly closed to outside world; ROC
Secular Crisis	1929-1946  Depression & WWII	1927-1950 Chinese Civil War, Second Sino-Japanese War; 20 million dead	Spanish Civil War
Culture Wars/Unraveling	1911-1936  WWI & Prohibition	1911-1937 Republic of China; Second Revolution, Warlord Era, Chinese Civil War (first half)
Awakening	1890-1920 3rd Awakening	1880s-1911 Western Imperialism ends Qing Dynasty: Boxer Rebellion, 1898-1901, a Chinese  nationalist revival against western ideas (many thousands dead); Xinhai Revolution 1911	Russian Revolution, Mexican Revolution, Philippine Insurrection
Cultural High	1866-1889  Gilded Age	1861-1895 Self-Strengthening Movement, Qing Dynasty builds against Western influences.
Secular Crisis	1854-1876  slavery Compromise fails	1850-1864 Taiping Rebellion; a Chinese Christian movement against the Qing Dynasty; 20 million dead; other rebellions
Awakening	1800-1830 2nd Great Awakening	1796-1804 White Lotus Rebellion; 16 million dead	French Revolution South American Revolutions
Secular crisis	1763-1794 American Revolution	1755-1757 Dzungars ethnic genocide

Update 16 Feb. 2011: Daniel Bell discussed the possibility of revolution in China.  The worst threat is from the 'Nationalists,' a nice way to refer to Han Chauvinism.  This is something worth watching closely.


Notes:
1.  I am aware that China is a diverse population, so don't get hung up on generalizations here. I've known many Chinese nationals (from PRC and ROC) and yes they are all individuals.  However, you can't get anywhere in a cultural study with useless generalizations such as "everyone is unique."  In grad school I dated a gal from Taiwan.  I once 'complemented' her on a wave in her hair.  She slapped me so hard I had no idea what was wrong.  She said that "Chinese have straight hair." So, I had actually insulted her.  And she had quite a slap.  That was Han chauvinism, and, it is very apparent in the PRC leadership.
2. An old saying in China is that every black-haired child of Han wears a Confucian hat, a Taoist robe, and Buddhist sandals.  To this, add a communist blanket. It's still a Han underneath.
3. During the 1940s Chinese Civil War two strong Western influences were penetrating China. Communism under Mao and capitalism under Chiang Kai-shek.  Mao "saves" China from one western influence, by using another. Now, the remnants of the second one must go away.

4. The positive qualities of the symbolic Chinese Dragon don't suggest that the Chinese leadership would do something rash.  However, the negative qualities do suggest that overreaching for something is possible.  The temptations of power may be too great to resist. China, from 1950-present--what do we call this new dynasty? The PRC Dynasty?