Chinese in Vancouver: Western Tibetophilla = escaping disgust with modernity

Surfing the blogosphere about the idea of "Free Tibet", I found some well thought, well written articles that help me digest this complex issue. These are westerners who try to go beyond slogan yelling and take a deeper look of cultures. A big thank to these bloggers who help me understand the ideological "why" the West has become so obsessed by the Dalai Lama and the Free Tibet Campaign. These self-reflective writers try to link the unquestionable, sometimes irrational support for Tibet with a disgust with modernity in the West.

For instance, Martin in the Margins writes:

I also began to feel that westerners (including me) tended to see Buddhism refracted through their own religious history and were really looking for a version of Christianity with the difficult bits left out. At the same time, the credulousness of western Tibetophiles began to worry me: people who had rejected the 'myths' of their own religious traditions swallowed whole stories of reincarnation, levitation and so on.

During my Buddhist phase I warmly supported the Tibetan protest movement and was angry with western leftists like Clare Short who dismissed it as a fashionable Hollywood cause. Now that I've recovered my sceptical secularist bearings, my feelings are more conflicted.

I realise now that Tibet before the Chinese invasion was hardly the idyllic, spiritual and peace-loving paradise portrayed in films such as Martin Scorsese's emotionally powerful but hagiographic Kundun. Revelations about the sexual antics of supposedly saintly lamas have also taken some of the gloss off the Tibetan myth. And practices that to the devotee suggest a sacred spiritual tradition - such as lamas engaging in tantric rituals with young girls, or boys being taken from their families and raised in monasteries - in another light can be seen as clear examples of abuse.

I'm also aware of a double standard in myself, hostile as I am to the residual political power of religion in the Middle East and supportive of forces that seek to advance secular modernity in the Arab and Muslim world - but at the same time critical of Chinese attempts to modernise Tibet. I'm aware of the contradiction, but I'd defend myself by arguing that modernity can't be imposed by force, and that introducing the obvious benefits of modern communications, medicine and so on shouldn't be at the cost of annhilating a centuries-old culture.

And the form of modernity that China seeks to impose on Tibet is itself regressive: based on mass industrialisation, cultural homogeneity and political conformity. Western critics of China's policy in Tibet somehow need to find a way of opposing its harsh authoritarianism without idealising Tibetan culture or preventing it from evolving - and without seeing the East through the lens of their own post-industrial disillusionment with modernity and longing for an 'authentic' spiritual culture.

So yes, - 'Free Tibet' - but free it so that it can develop and modernise in its own way, not according to the centralised prescriptions of a discredited Maoist totalitarianism.

Flesh is Grass quotes author Philip Rawson on why Tibetophilla has a market in the West:

In his 1991 book Sacred Tibet, Philip Rawson wrote: “Tibetan culture offers powerful, untarnished and coherent alternatives to Western egotistical lifestyles, our short attention span, our gradually more pointless pursuit of material satisfactions…” In other words, the driving force behind Tibetophilia today is not political solidarity with the Tibetans, and certainly not any positive argument for full democratic equality for Tibetans, but rather a sense of disgust with western life. It is a deeply narcissistic project, where “the west perceives some lack within itself” and seeks to find fulfilment in the always-preserved “pure east”.

This is why pro-Tibet campaigning can so easily slip into ugly China-bashing. In the morality tale constructed around Tibet, China comes to be seen as the evil representative of modernity, a faceless, smog-producing people who are ruining western activists’ spiritual backyard in Tibet. As Donald S Lopez Jnr argues in his fascinating book Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West:

“The invasion of Tibet by [China] was and still is represented as an undifferentiated mass of godless Communists overrunning a peaceful land devoted only to ethereal pursuits… Tibet embodies the spiritual and the ancient, China the material and the modern. Tibetans are superhuman, Chinese are subhuman.”

Too much of today’s pro-Tibet campaigning is underpinned by two things: self-loathing for our own, apparently over-modernised societies, and a semi-colonialist view of Tibetans as spiritual children and the Chinese as evil automatons. No wonder it can attract the support of such an archaic, illiberal figure as Prince Charles. Tibetophilia will do nothing whatsoever to increase the freedom of the people of Tibet, or the people of China.

Brendan O'Neil posts on The Guardian's Comment is Free:

If Bjork’s squealing of the T-word is anything to go by, these protests will confirm what lies behind the adoption of the Tibetan cause by many in the West today: not a passion for freedom, but a distaste for modernity. Tibetophilia is driven less by solidarity with Tibetans than by disdain for the old ‘yellow peril’ - the Chinese - who are seen as too modern, too calculating and too materialistic.

The people of Tibet, like the people of China itself, should be free to determine their own destinies and affairs. They need democracy and full and unfettered freedom of speech, rather than to be controlled and ‘looked after’ by China’s authoritarian Stalinist regime. However, anyone who wants, truly, to see more freedom in both Tibet and China should steer clear of the celebrity-fronted, Prince Charles-endorsed pro-Tibet lobby - for, ironically, this campaign is underpinned by its own deeply patronising, borderline colonialist view of Tibetans as innocent, child-like creatures, and by a desire to preserve Tibet as a pure, green, mystical land for the benefit of wealthy Westerners disillusioned by Western modernity.

O'Neil's argument about the idolization of the Dalai Lama is itself obstructing Tibet from democratization interests me most:

The Dalai Lama was never elected by anybody; rather, in a process that makes Britain’s House of Lords seem almost modern and democratic (I said almost), he was handpicked by a tiny sect of monks who believed that he represents one of innumerable incarnations of the Buddhist entity Avalokitesvara.

Indeed, some writers on Tibet have pointed out that the idolisation of the Dalai Lama by Western activists and officials, and of course by some Tibetans, might actually undermine the development of democracy in Tibet. In her book The Tibetan Independence Movement: Political, Religious and Gandhian Perspectives, Jane Ardley writes: ‘[It] is apparent that it is the Dalai Lama’s role as ultimate spiritual authority that is holding back the political process of democratisation. The assumption that he occupies the correct moral ground from a spiritual perspective means that any challenge to his political authority may be interpreted as anti-religious.’

In elevating the Dalai Lama to the position of unquestionable representative of the Tibetan people, pro-Tibet activists are helping to stifle ‘the opportunity for opposition and the expression of different views’ - the very lifeblood of democracy. Indeed, some Tibetan Buddhist groups that have challenged or questioned the authority of the Dalai Lama have found themselves denounced and suppressed by the Dalai Lama’s people (my note: it's all about politics and power). Western activists’ celebration of the Dalai Lama as a ‘saviour’ of Tibet is akin to Britain being under occupation and campaigners around the world hailing Prince Charles, or worse, Dr Rowan Williams, as our true, brave, godlike spokesperson.

Tibet has long been the plaything of people disillusioned by the modern world. Since James Hilton wrote Lost Horizon in 1933, in which Tibet was depicted as ‘Shangri-la’, Tibet has been used and abused, turned into an idealised land of goodness and purity by aristocratic and artistic elements in the West who despise the pace of change over here, and who like the idea of a completely natural, archaic, politics-free land ‘over there’.

The New Centrist, who claims to be once a radical political activist turns centrist in recent years, argues:

While living in the Bay Area I occasionally found myself in ~~arguments~~ discussions with white Tibetan Buddhists who mentioned how the Tibetan people had known only peace prior to the Chinese occupation. While certainly against the conduct of the communists, I was quick to point out that in antiquity the Tibetans were known for their fighting abilities and were feared as dangerous warriors by the Han Chinese. The Buddhist presence in Tibet was not the result of entirely peaceful relations either. Far from it. The Buddhists took over a vast territory dominated by the Bon religion.