Learning what Win-Win Really Means from China

February 12, 2011


Living With Evolution or Dying Without It by K. D. Koratsky
Publisher: Sunscape Books
ISBN: 978-0-9826546-0-6
Reviewed by Lloyd Lofthouse

Koratsky’s book is a heavily researched, scholarly work that gathers what science has discovered since Darwin’s discoveries and fills in the gaps explaining why evolution has something to teach us if humanity is to survive.

The other choice is humanity going the way of the dinosaurs into extinction.

I started reading in early 2010 and took months to finish the 580 pages. The Flesch-Kincaid Readability level would probably show this book to be at a university graduate level leaving at last 90% of the population lost as to the importance of its message.

For months, it bothered me that so many in the United States do not have the literacy skills to understand an important work such as this (the average reader in the US reads at fifth grade level and millions are illiterate). This is certainly not a good foundation to learn how precarious life is if you do not understand how brutal the earth’s environment and evolution has been for billions of years.

As I finished reading Living With Evolution or Dying Without It, I realized that it would only take a few key people in positions of power to understand the warnings offered by Koratsky and bring about the needed changes in one or more countries so humanity would survive somewhere on the planet when the next great challenge to life arises.

On page one, Koratsky starts 13.7 billion years ago with the big bang then in a few pages ten billion years later, he introduces the reader to how certain bacteria discovered a new way to access the energy required to sustain an existence.

By the time we reach humanity’s first religion on page 157, we have discovered what caused so many species to die out and gained a better understanding of what survival of the fittest means.

To survive means adapting to environmental challenges no matter if they are delivered by the impact of a monster asteroid to the earth’s surface, global warming (no matter what the reason) or by competition with other cultures or animals competing for the earth’s resources.

In fact, competition is vital to the survival of a species for it is only through competition that a species will adapt to survive.

The book is divided into two parts.  The first 349 pages deals with where we have been and what we have learned, and the two hundred and eleven pages in Part Two deals with current ideas and policies from an evolutionary perspective.

I suspect that most devout Christians and Muslims would dismiss the warnings in this book out-of-hand since these people have invested their beliefs and the survival of humanity in books written millennia ago when humanity knew little to nothing about the laws of evolution and how important competition is to survival.

Koratsky is optimistic that the United States will eventually turn away from the political agenda of “Cultural Relativism” that has guided America since the 1960s toward total failure as a culture.

The popular term for “Cultural Relativism” in the US would be “Political Correctness”, which has spawned movements such as race-based quotas and entitlement programs that reward failure and punish success

Even America’s self-esteem movement is an example of “Cultural Relativism”, which encourages children to have fun and praises poor performance until it is impossible to recognize real success.

The current debate started by Amy Chua’s essay in The Wall Street Journal is another example of “Cultural Relativism” at work.

After reading Living with Evolution or Dying Without It, it is clear that Amy Chua’s Tiger Mother Methods of parenting are correct while the soft approach practiced by the average US parent is wrong and will lead to more failure than success.

Koratsky shows us that the key to survival for America is to severely curtail and eventually end most US entitlement programs. While “Cultural Relativism” is ending, competition that rewards merit at all levels of the culture (private and government) must be reinstituted.

He points out near the end of the book that this has been happening in China and is the reason for that country’s amazing growth and success the last thirty years.

In the 1980s, merit was reinstituted at the bottom and most who prosper in China today earned the right to be rewarded for success by being more competitive and adapting. Even China’s state owned industries were required to become profitable or perish.

The earth’s environment does not care about equality or the relativists’ belief that everyone has a right to happiness even if society must rob from the rich and give to the poor.

This book covers the evolution of the universe, the planet, all life on the planet including the reasons why most life that lived on the earth for hundreds of millions of years before humanity is now gone; the beginnings of the human species; religion in all of its costumes; the growth of civilizations and the competitions that led to the destruction and collapse of so many such as the Roman Empire and the Han Dynasty two millennia ago.

The environment and evolution says that all life on the planet is not equal and no one is born with a guaranteed right to success, happiness and fun. To survive means earning the right through competition and adaption.

If you don’t believe Koratsky’s warning, go talk to the dinosaurs and ask them why they are gone.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Tiger Mother Invades China

February 3, 2011

Amy Chua, the Chinese-American Tiger Mother has invaded China with her memoir.  Early results look promising in a market of 1.2 billion readers.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the book has been available online since mid-January and ranked No. 80 in sales as of Thursday on Joyo.com, a Chinese version of Amazon (its rank was 43 as I wrote this post).

The paper version of the book will be out after the Chinese New Year holiday.

However, keeping track of sales of the paper version may be difficult since the Chinese have a tradition of borrowing what someone else wrote, printing it without a contract and not paying the author for it while charging a more competitive price than the contracted publisher charges.

To many in the Middle Kingdom, printing a book you don’t have the rights to is not theft.

After all, Confucius considered all information and entertainment in the public domain even if it is against today’s Chinese law.

The Huffington Post was correct when it said the Chinese edition has a new title and a new cover, which I find more colorful than the drab US version.

The China Daily, which is China’s state owned English language newspaper/Website, quoted a Middle Kingdom mother saying, “I can’t imagine a mother in China so frankly revealing the embarrassment and brutal confrontation she went through while trying to tap her kids’ potential to succeed.”

This matches what my wife said about Chua’s memoir being very non-Chinese. It isn’t acceptable in China to talk publicly about White Elephants in the family and this story, to most mainland Chinese, is a White Elephant better kept as a family secret.

China Daily said, “Many Chinese parents see themselves in Chua, not only in terms of the strict parenting, but the desire to help their children excel. But few hope to be the next Tiger Mother.”

The best quote of the China Daily piece was from Zhang Yiwu, A Chinese literature professor and deputy director of the Cultural Research Center of Peking University: “If anything is worth introspection, I think the Tiger Mother has reminded both Chinese and American parents of the necessity to ditch stereotypical thinking and unrealistic fantasies about ideal parenting models.”

I wonder how many SAP parents (Self-esteem arm of Political Correctness in the US) will read those words and take them seriously–to question fantasy parenting models.

Discover Amy Chua Debates Former White House “Court Jester” Larry Summers

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Amy Chua Debates Former White House “Court Jester” Larry Summers

January 31, 2011

A friend of mine forwarded a link to Larry Summers vs. Tiger Mom, which was published in The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on January 27, 2011.

Larry Summers, who has billed himself as a “hard ass”, was President Barack Obama’s top economic advisor for the last few years. Summers recently left the White House to return to Harvard as a professor then had a debate with Chinese-American “Tiger Mom,” Amy Chua, who wrote an essay that appeared in the WSJ with a headline (she didn’t write), which said, Why Chinese Mothers are Superior.

Summers said why go through all the trouble to earn a university education when computers are eventually going to do the work that requires discipline.

He also said, “People on average live a quarter of their lives as children. That’s a lot. It’s important that they be as happy as possible during those 18 years. That counts too.”

Summers isn’t alone in his belief that children should focus on being happy instead of academic excellence.

The average American parent belonging to the Self-esteem arm of Political Correctness (SAPs) spends less than five minutes a day encouraging  his or her child to be happy which explains why the average American child enjoys ten hours a day watching TV, socializing on Facebook, playing video games, and/or sending hundreds of text messages.

Summers cites in his debate with Chua that Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard. Look at what those “two” achieved without a university education.


“Asian countries value education more than other countries.”

While Gates was building Microsoft and Zuckerberg Facebook, do you believe these two billionaires spent ten hours a day doing what the average American child raised by SAPs such as Summers does to enjoy the first quarter of his or her life?

Summers doesn’t mention that Warren Buffet, one of the richest men on the planet, attended the Wharton Business school at the University of Pennsylvania for two years then transferred to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Working part time, he managed to graduate in only three years.

Summers doesn’t mention that it is common that the top one percent of executives with annual incomes of $500,000 or more often have Ivy league educations from universities such as Stanford, Harvard, Yale or Princeton.

Summers doesn’t mention that the top 15% of the upper middle class are highly educated and often have graduate degrees while earning a high 5-figure annual income commonly above $100,000.

To be specific, the median personal income for a high school drop out in the US with less than a 9th grade education is $17,422, and with some college that medium income jumps to $31,054, while a person with a professional university degree earns an annual medium income of $82,473.  Source: Wiki Academic Models (this source was citing US Census data).

It’s okay if Summers and his fellow SAPs let their children and teens have fun the first eighteen years of life, but don’t forget, the average life span in the US is 78.3 years. 

What are those children going to do for enjoyment while working to earn a living the next 60.3 years as an adult?

Most children raised by Tiger Moms such as Amy Chua shouldn’t have to worry. Those children as adults will probably be in the top 15% of income earners and enjoy life much more than those earning less than $18 thousand annually.

Discover In Defense of Tiger Mothers Everywhere

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Trouble from China — Is Amy Chua Chinese or Chinese-America?

January 27, 2011

In China, Amy Chua is being criticized for writing that Chinese parenting is superior to soft Western methods.

The criticism from China comes from the deep cultural roots of Confucianism and Taoism that one does not force his or her beliefs, opinions and lifestyle on someone else as being better. It is considered improper to preach. It doesn’t mean most Chinese disagree with her.

However, Chinese parents may preach to their children.

Have you ever met a Confucian or a Taoist going door to door touting his philosophy and warning you are doomed if you do not convert?

In her memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Chua proudly says, “My family comes from southern China’s Fujian Province, which is famous for producing scholars and scientists.”

Then sometime around 1925 as China descended into Civil War, World War II, chaos and anarchy for the next fifty years, her grandparents moved to the Philippines where her father was born. Chua’s mother was born in China in 1936.

In 1960, her parents met in Boston, which means Amy Chua’s mother was really Chinese.

Amy Chua learned from her parents how to be strict and demanding, which explains why she wrote, “Chinese parenting is better at raising kids than Western ones.”

Parents I call SAPs (the Self-esteem arm of Political Correctness) believe that any effort to control a child, burden her with rules and guide him toward a goal is child abuse. The SAP method is to encourage children to follow his or her dreams and be happy all the time.

This is how the “average” American parent has been raising children in the US for decades.

Since I was criticized for writing the average American parent is a SAP as if I meant, “all” Americans, Princeton.edu clearly says, “average people”; “the ordinary (or common) man in the street”. Another site says, “around the middle of a scale of evaluation“.

The word “average” doesn’t mean “all”. Unexceptional and exceptional people don’t count in the average, but studies say SAP parenting is average (common) in America.

The SAPs of America have evangelized this soft parenting method for the last fifty years converting many to this religion.

If Chua had written, “Chinese-American parents are better at raising children,” she wouldn’t have been criticized in China — just in America from the common SAP.

After all, Amy Chua is Chinese-American and has been influenced by America’s evangelical atmosphere of preaching and converting others. The competition is fierce since there are thousands of Christian sects, Islam, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, neoconservatives, Republicans, Democrats, SAPs and now Tough Love parents — unless the SAP mob forms an alliance with one of the other religions and lobbies for a law to make Tough Love illegal.

SAPs have already been very successful in the SAP war against spanking children as a last effort to correct an unacceptable behavior. Instead, parents are required to bribe kids the SAP way with a TV, video games, a Facebook page, sugary foods, toys and trips to Disneyland.

Discover my Review for Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother where I got in trouble for writing “average”.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Explaining China and Defining the Value of Tough Love

January 26, 2011

China is the polar opposite of America in many ways.  In China, as a collective culture, the child is an extension of the parent and is not seen as an individual.

China has been this way for thousands of years where the family is more important than the individual is and the country is more important than the family and the individual.

The rules of Confucianism emphasized this cultural structure and these behaviors were practiced, endorsed and enforced by the Han Dynasty centuries before the birth of Christ.

In contrast, the American brand of individualism, which is represented by the rudeness and rebellion we see in America today has only been in practice for about fifty years.

Contrary to popular opinion, Americans have not always been rebels. That image was born and reinforced by 20th century Hollywood films that often depict rebellious children and criminals as clever, popular heroes while turning hard working authority figures such as the police, teachers and parents into idiots and oppressors.

In fact, if you read the history of child labor in the United States, you would discover that forms of child labor, including indentured servitude and child slavery, have existed throughout American history.

It wasn’t until the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, which set federal standards for child labor that the US moved toward providing a free, compulsory education for all children instead of children working in factories or coalmines or on farms as young as five.

Before 1938, instead of going to school, most American children went to work at a very early age and often labored twelve or more hours a day six days a week with only the Sabbath off.

The cultural concept that earning an education is worth the sacrifice of hard work that it demands has never existed in America.

However, China has a long history of providing an education to children of all classes as far back as the Han Dynasty since that is what Confucius taught.

In China for more than two thousand years, teachers and parents have been the heroes and are respected for the sacrifices they make to better a child’s future, which does not translate into encouraging a child to chase his or her dreams since, in reality, fantasies seldom come true and only a “few” achieve such dreams

After all, not “everyone” can become the next Bill Gates, Oprah or Selene Dion.

The collective concept of Confucianism has no room for an individual’s rights or dreams. What an American sees in China as oppression, most Chinese don’t even think about because that way of thought doesn’t exist in China’s Confucian dominated collective culture.

Hence, a Tiger Mother, such as Amy Chua, is respected for doing her duty as a Chinese parent. Being a SAP (the Self-esteem arm of Political Correctness) parent would be unthinkable.

I suspect that even if Amy Chua doesn’t sell the Chinese rights to her book, a publisher in China will steal the book, translate it and it will be a massive bestseller as Chinese parents buy and read her book to discover tougher methods of parenting.

That means Chinese mothers will be reading Chua’s book to learn what it takes to raise a child that performs in Carnegie Hall, while those mothers criticize Chua in public instead of praising her while secretly trying out what she learned from Chua.

That sort of behavior to say one thing while doing another is also common in China since Taoism is the other side of the Chinese character.

Bragging is also not acceptable until you have earned the right to brag by achieving the goals you set for yourself that no one else has ever heard of since bragging that you will be the next Bill Gates when you are a child is considered stupid and maybe a sign of a mental illness.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Leave a Comment » | America, American culture, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Chinese women, Confucianism, cultural differences, education, family values, parenting | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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