Teacher Gray: You Still Should Be Blamed

In a tweet I posted earlier, I mentioned, "The Chinese people are victims of the Chinese Communist Party, but that does not mean they have no responsibility at all." Some say that Chinese people cannot choose under the system, so how can they have responsibility?

Text remains the most important tool for human expression. Although language is a tool for expressing logic, because each person has a different understanding of each word, logical problems can always arise. However, if we define each word's meaning very carefully, we may reduce logical flaws. This also allows us to better understand others' perspectives.

Here, I use "blame" to represent the punishment people should receive. And the "responsibility" I speak of is the power people have to grasp, to change their own destiny. Perhaps many Chinese bind these two concepts together, making it hard to distinguish, but I think they can be separated. Perhaps many Chinese are not comfortable being accused, so they do not like hearing that they have responsibility. But for me, the meaning of "blame" is "who is at fault?" whereas the meaning of "responsibility" is "who can change it?"

In fact, this distinction is not limited to Chinese culture. Simply put, some people believe that humans can assume responsibility and change their lives. Another group believes that we are fruits created by the environment. This underlying assumption also influences many of our ideas, such as moral beliefs and political stances.

If you live under a dictatorial regime, the dictator holds absolute authority but also bears absolute responsibility. To reclaim power, one must also take up part of that responsibility.

What responsibility you actually have may not be for me to decide. I am just a ukulele player. I will not expect people to act alone and sacrifice their freedom. But I think discerning right from wrong is the most basic skill for humans. Tens of thousands of years of evolutionary history prove this. The primary human instinct is survival, and survival requires seeing the truth clearly to make the right choices. I do not deny that Chinese people are heavily deceived, but I have found that there are still a particularly large number of them who, even though their bodies are outside the wall, even though they have higher education, even though the evidence before them is as solid as iron, still choose to deny the truth, invert black and white, cover their eyes, and bury their heads well in the sand.

In my view, this is an act of evading responsibility, because everyone needs to seek truth. When the day comes that Chinese people decide to take responsibility and further understand the truth about China, that will be the end of the Chinese Communist Party.