> So I bought a heart rate monitor and checked my resting heart rate. Right around 78. And when the professor said to me in class “Puzhong, I can see that story brought up some emotions in you,” I rolled up my sleeve and checked my heart rate. It was about 77. And so I said, “nope, no emotion.” The experiment seemed to confirm my prior belief: my heart rate hardly moved, even when I was criticized, though it did jump when I became excited or laughed.
Yikes.
> In Communist China, I was taught that hard work would bring success. In the land of the American dream, I learned that success comes through good luck, the right slogans, and monitoring your own—and others’—emotions.
I don't understand the value of this analogy. In Communist China, I was taught (something that is done to you) something false, but in the U.S. I learned (note: not taught, learned) something X.
Is it true or false? Because it matters whether or not something is true or false. I'm sure the author thinks what he is writing is true, otherwise, why write it? But he just directly compared something he decided on his own to something he was taught to be true that was actually false. This is really murky, and I don't care enough about his feelings about Cambridge or Stanford or Costco to try to make any more sense of it.
It's not an analogy, it's a juxtaposition. He agrees with Rubin, and has told anecdotes that support that position. You just don't want to believe his conclusion, and Rubin's. That's your right, but to say that he has no position, that it's all murky and there is no conclusion; therefore you can reject his conclusion, is literally absurd.
Basically, the author questions the American Dream.
"Hard work brings success" is paraphrasing the American Dream.
The author now says he learned that success does not depend on factors that can be controlled. He uses the verb learned in contrast to taught to emphasize that he thinks this is true.
Also worth noting that the author appears to have spent a long time learning the intricacies of how "business" and investment banking work, but seems to throw around the words "Capitalism" and "Communism" without any sort of acknowledgement that they don't really describe at all what goes on in the west or was going on in China when he was growing up.
Well from the beginning, the author only claims to offer "my candid observations" and not verifiable statements that are true or false. In fact, the whole article is clouded with ambiguity, probably because he doesn't want to come off as arrogant even though he secretly is, so he dials back on definite judgments.
I saw it as more of an expression of irony, that it was unexpected to learn the ideals of the "American Dream" in communist China, and essentially unlearn them while actually living in America. The whole "learned" rather than "taught" was the way he arrived independently at his personal beliefs contrary to what he was forced to learn in school or college.
Yikes.
> In Communist China, I was taught that hard work would bring success. In the land of the American dream, I learned that success comes through good luck, the right slogans, and monitoring your own—and others’—emotions.
I don't understand the value of this analogy. In Communist China, I was taught (something that is done to you) something false, but in the U.S. I learned (note: not taught, learned) something X.
Is it true or false? Because it matters whether or not something is true or false. I'm sure the author thinks what he is writing is true, otherwise, why write it? But he just directly compared something he decided on his own to something he was taught to be true that was actually false. This is really murky, and I don't care enough about his feelings about Cambridge or Stanford or Costco to try to make any more sense of it.