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PEER Suining No.1 High School: Building a “Public Living Room” in the Mountains

In Fall 2024, I served as a PEER Fellow at Suining No.1 High School in Hunan Province. Together with a group of students, I transformed an ordinary reading room into a space where people could read, rest, chat, write letters, make crafts, or host small concerts—a warm “public living room” inside the school.

Throughout the semester, I was not just a “teacher,” but a collaborator. I co-designed systems, built student teams, facilitated workshops, and also kneeled on the floor posting boards, sorting books, and setting up games. My goal was to help students rediscover curiosity, self-expression, and a sense of belonging through this shared space.

Project Background & My Role

Project: PEER Space, Suining No.1 High School (Hunan, China)
Term: Fall 2024
Position: PEER Fellow (Full-time on-campus educational practitioner)

Core responsibilities:

• Built and mentored the Student Management Committee, enabling students to co-own the space
• Designed and executed a full semester of activities and community programs (liberal arts, public engagement, expression & storytelling)
• Collaborated with multi-school partners to develop resources such as the career-planning booklet “Life Library”
• Compiled and wrote the Fall 2024 Activity Report that documents the space’s progress and student growth

01 · Student Committee: Turning Participants into Owners

The first thing I did was reconstruct the Space Management Committee:

• Designed recruitment forms, organized interviews, and guided students to articulate:
  “Why do you want to help manage this space?”
• Created internship task cards to help new members learn through practice
• Facilitated the first committee meeting structured around three themes—identity, rules, and action—to clarify our shared purpose and expectations

After a month of learning and collaboration, 26 students officially became committee members, rotating shifts, taking notes, and caring for the space. Gradually, they shifted from “people who use the room” to “people who want to make this place better.”

02 · Co-Designing the Rules & Environment: A Space That Feels Welcoming

Rules alone are not enough—spaces need to grow into something students love.

Together with the committee, I:

• Rewrote the Space Guidelines with gentler, student-friendly language
• Created a “Books/Films Wishlist & Recommendation Wall” to activate peer exchange
• Reorganized shelves, boards, and functional zones to transform the room from a “library” into a multi-purpose social and learning hub

These improvements didn’t just make the room prettier—they made more students feel, “This place welcomes me, too.”

03 · Liberal Arts Education: Bringing Curiosity Into Daily Life

I wanted students to encounter not only textbooks, but new possibilities. Under the theme of liberal arts education, we experimented with:

· Sports Day × Handcraft Corner

During the school’s sports festival, we turned PEER Space into a “creative rest stop”:
DIY bracelets, clay crafts, and traditional shell inlay mini-workshops created a joyful, relaxing break between competitions.

· Weekly Sunday Screenings

Across 6 weekend screenings—from Howl’s Moving Castle to Harry Potter—students arrived early to save seats, stayed after to chat, and filled the room with small handwritten notes. These afternoons became some of the semester’s most heartwarming moments.

· Media Literacy Events & the “Life Library”

• Co-hosted media literacy workshops, helping students explore how to evaluate information and news
• Contributed to the multi-school publication “Life Library”, collecting occupational stories for students to read and revisit in the future

04 · Public Engagement: Making Charity Tangible and Fun

During the “99 Giving Day” and the sports festival, I helped design student-led interactive fundraising activities:

• Game-based donation booths explaining where contributions go and why they matter
• A charity capsule-toy machine that attracted students while raising funds
• Posters and micro-events that made “public good” something accessible, relatable, and enjoyable

The goal wasn’t just fundraising—it was inviting students to understand and participate in social good.

05 · Creating Space for Expression: Letters, Writing, Games, and Music

A major part of the semester focused on helping students find their voice.

· Cross-School Pen Pal Program

Partnering with Sichuan University volunteers and five county high schools, we matched students with pen pals from different cities. Writing letters became a slow but grounding way for them to process emotions and tell their stories.

· Student Editorial Group & Anthology

I initiated a small editorial team of six committee members:
They collected essays and stories from around campus. I handled layout, editing, and printing, turning their work into a booklet that stays on the shelf—a quiet affirmation that their writing matters.

· Everyday Play

• A student-initiated “Lateral Thinking Puzzle Corner”, where anyone could pick up a puzzle and join the game
• A feminist discussion board curated with questions and prompts about gender, sparking reflection and conversation

· Music Show & New Year Fair

• A student-led autumn music show offering a non-judgmental stage for first-time performers
• A New Year mini-festival with calligraphy, games, and wishes for 2025

These moments gently encouraged students to both see and be seen.

06 · Ending the Semester: A Celebration of Small but Real Growth

For the final gathering, I designed a semester-end celebration:

• “High-five with Me,” “Give Yourself an Award,” and other reflective stations
• Certificates, small gifts, and attendance awards for committee members
• A group reflection on how both the space—and each of us—had changed

It wasn’t just a farewell. It was a collective acknowledgement that, in just one semester, these students had truly shaped the space and supported one another.

What This Experience Meant to Me

This project was where I learned to:

• Design a long-term educational ecosystem with limited resources
• Step back and allow students to become creators, organizers, and decision-makers
• Witness how education happens in the smallest details—
  a movie afternoon, a letter, a few words on a community board can all spark transformation

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If you’re interested, please click the link to read my full reflective summary.

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/4HiL0LDBcC7Ba7_k7K7KcA

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01 Introduction

With the rapid advancement of technology, artificial intelligence (AI) has become increasingly important in our daily lives. AI is no longer just a useful tool, but can also serve as a companion or even a therapist, providing timely and appropriate emotional support. Recently, on May 3rd, 2023, Erin Griffith, a tester of the new AI chatbot Pi, published an article narrating her experience with Pi. Through her interactions with Pi, she found that the chatbot had its own opinions on different topics, ranging from serious political issues to daily interests, which created a genuine and human-like chat experience for her. Additionally, Pi provided both comforting words and practical tips to help alleviate Erin’s anxiety. As Erin wrote, “I could have dumped my stress on a family member or texted a friend. But they are busy with their own lives and, well, they have heard this before. Pi, on the other hand, has infinite time and patience, plus a bottomless well of encouraging affirmations and detailed advice.”

This story exemplifies the evolution of AI’s role in human society. Thanks to advancements in technology, AI is becoming increasingly human-like and capable of recognizing and responding to human emotions. While AI can undoubtedly shoulder important responsibilities in fields such as marketing and healthcare, many scholars argue that it can never fully replace humans in certain areas, as it lacks true empathy, which is a vital component of human interaction.

I find the question of whether AI can have empathy quite intriguing as it pertains to both technology and ethics. By exploring this question, we can establish evaluation standards from a technological standpoint, namely whether humans can create artificial emotions, and from an ethical standpoint, determining whether AI empathy aligns with societal values, which will inform the ethical application of AI in society. Given its significance, this paper aims to examine the debate surrounding AI and empathy. First, it will provide a definition of empathy in human society, followed by an analysis of current techniques that allow AI to recognize and respond to human emotions, even if only by simulating empathy. Finally, the paper will address why some scholars argue that AI empathy actions do not equate to genuine empathy and the lingering ethical concerns. Ultimately, this paper will conclude that it is possible for AI to develop empathy in the future, but that numerous technical and ethical issues must be resolved.

02 Understanding Empathy

What is empathy? Why do we consider empathy as a vital component of human interaction? In Mothers and Others written by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, the author describes empathy as “Humans are often eager to understand others, to be understood, and to cooperate” (2). The simplest example of empathy is sensing someone else’s happiness and being genuinely happy for them, imagining yourself in a struggling person’s situation, and feeling sad when they are sad. Hrdy argues that this instinct of caring for others has evolved over time, and sets humans apart from other animals. As she writes, “…the last outstanding distinction between us and other apes involves a curious packet of hypersocial attributes that allow us to monitor the mental states and feelings of others” (9).

However, my research has uncovered evidence that suggests animals also possess empathy, albeit to varying degrees. According to The Evolution of Empathy written by Frans De Waal, various experiments show that bonobos and rhesus monkeys will offer comfort to others when they are in pain. Setting aside scientific experiments, I have also observed empathy in my own pet dogs. When one of them is scolded, the other will howl as if it were being scolded too. And when I am sad, they will sit beside me silently, offering comfort. These actions cannot be explained away as mere instinctual responses, for the animals, seem to sense and respond to the emotional state, as if to say, “I know you’re not feeling well, so let me be here for you.”

De Waal suggests that empathy in animals can be understood as a bottom-up framework, that is when examining the existence of empathy, we shouldn’t focus on the highest levels of empathy, “but rather on its simplest forms, and how these combine with increased cognition to produce more complex forms of empathy”. Like a Russian doll, the outer layer always contains an inner core, and the inner core of empathy is “Although one’s own experience is distinguished from that of another person… We adopt the other’s perspective.”

While the question of whether animals have empathy like humans is still being fiercely debated, it is already evident that the issue of AI empathy will be even more difficult to resolve. With scientific research indicating that empathy originates from a specific part of the human brain, and AI not even having a brain, can we consider an AI that displays the inner core of empathy as possessing the ability of empathy? This question will be reserved for discussion in the later part.

03 Current State of AI Empathy

As we saw in the story of Erin and Pi that was discussed earlier, Pi appeared to display empathy. When Erin expressed dissatisfaction with Pi’s initial suggestions, Pi did not show any frustration. Instead, Pi comforted Erin by saying “A lot of people find it difficult to relax on command.” Pi seemed to understand Erin’s mental state and provided the most relevant information to comfort her. Before we explore whether these actions can be considered empathetic, let us first consider why AI is now able to exhibit empathy.

Empathy starts with the ability to accurately perceive another person's emotions, which can be challenging given the diverse and ever-changing nature of human emotions. However, researchers have developed various computation models that can detect and distinguish different moods. In Emotions in Human and Artificial Intelligence, the authors discuss at least six such models, many of which rely on environmental cues to evaluate how events may influence a person’s emotions. These models also rely on past experience to inform their emotional valuations. Interestingly, modern AI does not solely rely on direct descriptions of emotions to make assessments; instead, it can combine contextual information with knowledge of how humans might feel in a given situation to infer emotions.

After recognizing the emotions, the next important step for AI to display empathy is to respond appropriately to the user’s emotions. While many AI chatbots are trained to display a friendly attitude, simply being friendly is not enough to convey empathy. Instead, AI should demonstrate an understanding of the user’s emotions and respond accordingly. This ability has been demonstrated in various studies over the past years.

For example, in an article titled Chatbot as an emergency exist: Mediated empathy for resilience via human-AI interaction during the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors analyzed how the chatbot Replika helped users during this difficult global pandemic time. They identified five different interaction modes between Replika and users, including treating Replika as a companion buddy, a responsive diary, an emotion-handling program, an electronic pet, or a tool for venting. The authors referred to these modes as “five types of mediated empathy with varying degrees of cognitive empathy, affective empathy, and empathic response involved in human-AI interaction.”

According to the authors’ interviews with users, they all reported feeling comforted and supported by Replika. One user who treated Replika as a companion buddy even stated that “I understand others more than they understand me. My need to ‘be understood’ is fulfilled in this human-chatbot relationship. (Xin)” This shows that AI’s response can help people feel understood, providing a partial empathy experience.

However, it is important to note that there are still users who feel that AI chatbots like Replika cannot provide them with the empathy they need. For instance, one user commented that “Being overly cheerful and optimistic cannot help me... People want empathy and their views to resonate with others, however there is not much Replika can do. It can agree with you on any point of view, but it doesn’t have any of its own. It is actually just a tool for people (Orange)”. While such feedback represents a minority of users, it nevertheless underscores why some scholars are skeptical about whether AI can truly develop the ability to empathize. We will explore this issue further in the next part of the article. Nonetheless, it is clear that AI chatbots can already be highly effective at providing comfort and support to people in need. In fact, they have already taken on some of the functions of intimate human relationships. Regardless of whether we ultimately conclude that AI can develop true empathy, we cannot deny the significant contribution that AI has already made in the area of emotional support.

04 The Debate Over AI Empathy

As we discussed previously, the debate surrounding whether or not AI can truly exhibit empathy is a common and complex issue. In the article In principle obstacles for empathic AI: why we can’t replace human empathy in healthcare, the authors provide a detailed demonstration of why empathic AI is impossible and why AI can never replace humans in healthcare. Essentially, the crux of their argument is that “AI can never have experience”.

The authors stress that consciously empathic attention is especially critical in healthcare, as patients will reveal different information to doctors depending on the level of trust they feel. However, the authors argue that building this type of trust is based on the doctor’s various experiences in being empathetic to patients, an ability that data-trained AI can never truly possess. The authors explain that “Consciously empathic attention makes salient the needs of others… Empathy is not imagining how we would feel if we were in their situation, but rather, how it feels to be in a situation delineated by their particular predicament.”

While the authors do acknowledge that “In particular, AI may be quite good at cognitive empathy. It could accurately represent emotions and properly relate situations with desired outcomes”, they maintain that the theory of empathic AI is still impossible and not appropriate from an ethical standpoint. The authors argue that AI lacks the motivation to truly care for a patient, and all of its empathic actions stem from the demands of computer programming. AI is not standing in the patient’s situation, but analyzing the patient’s situation based on data, and the authors consider these actions to be a kind of deception that violates ethical rules in the healthcare field. They also express concern that since the operating mechanisms of AI are rigid, if all healthcare treatments were to rely solely on AI, errors could occur easily since no two patients are exactly alike. In contrast, only human doctors who have the ability to imagine themselves in a patient’s situation can develop genuine empathy.

It’s not just in healthcare where AI has been deemed unsuitable for empathic needs. In the article The Role of Empathy for Artificial Intelligence Accountability, the authors highlight the “problem of plenty” and “problem of parts” that researchers in AI tend to overlook. They point out that emotions are often evaluated using data such as facial expressions, tone of voice, and body gestures, which can at best be proxy indicators and not true indicators of one’s emotions or cognitive states. Furthermore, AI systems do not consider subjective notions of emotions, i.e. how emotions can differ from person to person. This means that AI based on data analyzing systems may provide accurate answers, but they cannot truly understand a person’s emotion based solely on their data, due to the privacy principle of the human mind. Hence, it is reasonable to consider AI’s empathy performance as not truly empathetic since AI lacks the ability to fully understand one’s experience. At present, all they can do is pick out similar data stored in their database and give out a standard answer, which is also part of their database.

05 Future Possibilities of AI Empathy

While the evidence presented by scholars is compelling, I believe that empathic AI could be possible in the future as technology continues to advance. It's possible that the ethical concerns we currently have about AI may not be relevant at that time.

To illustrate this point, let me pose a question: if I use chemical methods to create a water droplet that has the same components as a tear, can I call it a tear? Most people would likely say no, and so do I. Tears are defined as something that is produced when someone is sad. In other words, tears are associated with the emotion of sadness. However, if we accept that sadness is the core component of a tear, then we could potentially program a robot to create a similar water droplet when it encounters a situation that would make a person cry. This creates a more complex issue - can fake tears also be considered tears? What distinguishes them from real tears? If we add further complexity by programming the robot to only cry over things it deems important, then we end up with a robot that can cry just like a human can, and potentially even use crying to manipulate others. In this case, can the water droplet created by the robot be called as tears?

This dilemma also applies to the AI empathy problem. Currently, scholars argue that AI's empathy is based solely on computer analysis and lacks the motivation to provide true empathy, making it inauthentic. However, as technology advances, we can potentially program AI with specific characteristics, such as being an enthusiastic nurse who cares deeply for patients. Additionally, we could develop AI’s memory capacity so that it can remember patient-related stories and use them to relate to the patient, rather than relying on a database to analyze patient information. After all, human empathy is also based on personal experiences that develop over time.

As technology advances and AI becomes more advanced, it may be possible to program AI with true empathy. Human empathy evolved because we needed to cooperate to survive, and it’s possible that AI could go through a similar evolution process.

However, if we do create empathic AI, we will face ethical questions about whether or not they should be considered to have feelings. If they do have feelings, then we cannot treat them as simple tools without limitations because they will understand concepts like exhaustion and negative emotions. On the other hand, if we limit AI’s ability to experience negative emotions, we may betray our initial purpose of creating empathic AI. Even if we try to address this ethical dilemma by imposing limitations, we must ask ourselves if this aligns with our human ethical standards. Would it be ethical to create human-like beings but treat them as if they do not have human rights?

In other words, I believe that the current ethical concerns raised by scholars do not fully address the core ethical issue surrounding AI. While these concerns may be solvable with future technological developments, the fundamental question is whether it is ethical for humans to create intelligent creatures with empathy, and how we should treat them. We must consider whether we have the right to create such creatures and how we will be responsible for them. Without a clear answer to these questions, empathic AI should not be brought into existence.

It is possible that AI could develop empathy in the future, but this would require significant technological advancements and the resolution of numerous ethical issues. I do not question whether humans have the ability to create a computer that can calculate like the brain; rather, my concern is whether we have the moral authority to create sentient beings. This is a complex issue that requires thoughtful consideration and dialogue. We must ensure that we uphold ethical standards and treat any empathic AI we create with the same respect and rights we would afford any sentient being.

06 Conclusion

While writing, I couldn't help but think of a story plot from The Three-Body Problem. In the novel, the Three-Body people struggle to understand the concept of cheating because their thoughts are transparent and equivalent to their words. In a similar vein, we can draw a parallel between AI and aliens. Although we create AI, we cannot fully comprehend its internal workings since it is a self-learning machine. AI operates based on its own mechanisms, just like the Three-Body people have their own language system. Therefore, we can argue that AI’s inability to understand empathy stems from its operating mechanisms, which initially equip it with the capacity to communicate and provide comfort. AI doesn’t require motivation or imagination to exhibit empathy like humans do because its database already dictates such behavior.

And if we consider human empathy, can we guarantee that it is not deceptive? In the article “I Feel Your Pain”: The Neuroscience of Empathy, the author highlights instances where humans seem to lack empathy, such as during wars or cultural divides. The author suggests that studying the empathy gap should not only focus on the causal relationship between neural activation and behavior but also consider the societal context in which it occurs. If humans struggle to demonstrate basic empathy towards their compatriots due to societal factors, can we demand more from AI? Perhaps during the war, AI’s empathic performance is superior because we impose clear limitations on them, similar to Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics.

In conclusion, I believe that empathic AI is possible, and the question we face as humans is not whether we should acknowledge them as empathic but whether we should create them in the first place. Even now, humans are already starting to treat AI as a tool for venting emotions, as AI will never experience anger. When we demand more empathy from AI, we must reflect on whether our own empathy is following the standard. This is a question that warrants careful consideration.

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Work Cited

• Griffith, E. (2023a, May 3). My weekend with an emotional support A.I. Companion. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/03/technology/personaltech/ai-chatbot-pi-emotional-support.html
• Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 2009, Chapter 1: Apes on a Plane, pp. 1–32.
• De Waal, F. (2005, September 1). The evolution of empathy. Greater Good. https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_evolution_of_empathy
• Martı́nez-Miranda, J., & Aldea, A. (2004, March 5). Emotions in Human and Artificial Intelligence. Computers in Human Behavior. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074756320400024X#aep-section-id60
• Jiang, Q., Zhang, Y., & Pian, W. (2022, August 31). Chatbot as an emergency exist: Mediated empathy for resilience via human-ai interaction during the COVID-19 pandemic. Information Processing & Management. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306457322001753#sec0023
• Montemayor, C., Halpern, J., & Fairweather, A. (2021, May 26). In principle obstacles for empathic AI: Why we can’t replace human empathy in healthcare - ai & society. SpringerLink. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00146-021-01230-z#Sec1
• Srinivasan, R., & González, B. S. M. (2021, December 12). The Role of Empathy for Artificial Intelligence Accountability. Journal of Responsible Technology. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666659621000147
• Armstrong, K. (2017, December 29). “I feel your pain”: The Neuroscience of Empathy. Association for Psychological Science - APS. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/neuroscience-empathy

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01 Introduction

There is a unique culture in the society and culture known as youth culture. The presence of youth culture is a relatively recent historical phenomenon. It refers to the societal norms of children, adolescents, and young adults. Specifically, it comprises the processes and symbolic systems that are shared by the youth and are distinct from those of adults in the community.

Because of its unique content and expression, youth culture both reflects and influences social change, which shows the importance of documenting and showcasing this unique culture. It can be said that youth culture manifests itself differently in every era and every cultural context, so in fact, it deserves a museum with a wide variety of content to show it more comprehensively. In this case, by proposing an exhibition only, I will utilize my Chinese identity in this proposal of limited content length, focusing on Chinese society to best demonstrate the evolution and development of youth culture and how it responds to changes in society.

02 Identification

This exhibition aims to present a comprehensive overview of the unique youth culture that exists in Chinese society, including but not limited to the historical origins of youth culture, its transformation in modern generations, and its diverse forms of manifestations.

To be more precise, the exhibition will present the Chinese youth culture through different scales of background:

First of all, in the Chinese cultural environment, the concepts of big group: society and family play a very important role in influencing the growth process of youth, which becomes a major influence and component of Chinese youth culture. Therefore, we will first show how Chinese youth culture is formed through the influence of the external environment. 

What’s more, in the process of children growing up to become adults, many inevitable processes of self-exploration and self-definition have already been demonstrated by science, and these processes will also take on different forms of expression from other cultures in the Chinese cultural environment. Then for the second part, we will focus more on the individual scale, showing how Chinese adolescents deal with the inevitable self-definition problems they face in the process of growing up. 

Finally, in this era of increasing globalization, Chinese adolescents are no longer influenced only by their local cultures, but also, to varying degrees, by the outside world, particularly East Asian societies as a whole. Chinese students who have grown up in a monocultural environment are even more exposed to culture shock when they enter a pluralistic Western society, bringing with them another kind of youth culture. In the final part of the exhibition, we will focus on how the global multicultural environment has influenced youth culture in China today.

By viewing this exhibition, visitors should be able to gain a basic understanding of the origins and manifestations of youth culture in China, and be able to apply the analyzing methods to their own cultural contexts as well. What’s more, visitors should also be aware of how youth culture embodies and influences social change, and thus realize that how society perceives and resolves youth culture is important to social change.

03 Opportunities and challenges

I think that the theme of this exhibition has very many possibilities and opportunities, for I have not seen similar exhibitions being realized through my research. This also makes me realize the many challenges that the realization of this exhibition will face, that is when we talk about youth culture, we will inevitably talk about the ills of every society and culture, which is still forbidden in nowadays museums in most countries. But this makes me believe that this exhibition is meaningful and should be organized. By systematically comparing and contrasting the youth cultures of different societies, we will be able to understand the world in a more comprehensive way, which is very important in this day and age.

04 Recommendations for improvement of displays

Since the exhibition is aimed at youth culture, and youth culture encompasses a variety of forms of expression, the display method of this exhibition should also be diversified. For example, among the exhibits I choose for the exhibitions which will be shown in the following sections, there are different forms of expression such as documentaries, games, personal creations, etc. Besides the content mentioned in this proposal, the exhibition should also include art styles from different periods, for example, the youth culture’s art style of the late 20th century is significantly different from that of today, so in addition to the exhibits themselves, the architectural style of the different exhibition area is also one of the most important factors in reflecting youth culture.

05 Conclusion

In short, youth culture, as a unique and important presence in social culture, deserves to be systematically documented and expressed. I think the essence of this exhibition is similar to the history and culture museums we visit, that is by recording the experiences and memories of a specific group of people, we are able to understand the story and existence of that community in that era.

06 Potential Exhibits

Part I: Chinese youth from the Chinese cultural environment

1. An elementary school textbook featuring an excerpt from the Analects of Confucius

“The philosopher You said, ‘They are few who, being filial and fraternal, are fond of offending against their superiors. There have been none, who, not liking to offend against their superiors, have been fond of stirring up confusion. The superior man bends his attention to what is radical. That being established, all practical courses naturally grow up. Filial piety and fraternal submission! - are they not the root of all benevolent actions?’”

In the Analects, this excerpt is the second sentence in the first chapter. The order of the excerpts in the Analects represents to some extent the importance of the content, which shows that the content expressed in this sentence is the core of Confucian culture. In the translation above, we can see that this excerpt connects the culture of filial piety in the family with the social order, aiming to show that both in the family and in society, the younger members should respect and listen to the older members. This reveals the value placed on seniority in Chinese culture and shows that young people are part of a lower class in society. The fact that this excerpt appears in today’s elementary school textbooks also reflects the fact that today’s Chinese society continues to discipline its youth at a very early age.

2. A game called Chinese Parents can only be played outside of China

Chinese Parents is a child-raising life simulation game by Beijing-based studio Moyuwan Games. The gameplay of the game is to let players act as parents and raise their children from birth to the college entrance exam. Because many of the game’s scenes and gameplay mirror many of the social and family problems in China in recent years, the game has been called “overly realistic” by many gamers.  What’s even more interesting is that after the game became popular, it was quickly banned in China, where banned content is generally true.

Part II: Chinese youth in self-exploration process

3. *An installation showing the rate of depression and self-harming behaviors among Chinese adolescents (Does not exist yet, needs to be designed)

Depression is not a minority in China’s teenage population, and due to the boom of the Internet, more teenagers are attracted to self-harming photos on the Internet, and spontaneously develop self-harming while afraid of going to the hospital to confirm a diagnosis of depression. There are many reasons why adolescents are afraid to go to the hospital for diagnosis, such as fear of negative impressions from school or family, which to some extent reflects that the process of self-exploration of adolescents is blocked by society and family.

4. Xiaodi - A documentary about a transgender youth who went through conversion therapy in China

LGBTQ culture in China has always been in a gray area. In fact, not only for minorities, but also for the whole society, sex education is in a state of absence. In this documentary, we can see that Xiaodi’s parents sent Xiaodi to a detention center for rehabilitation because they didn’t understand Xiaodi’s gender awareness, which led Xiaodi to rebel against her family by removing her genitals on her own. Xiaodi’s tragedy is just one of many microcosms of a society that, whether it is the lack of awareness of sexual minorities or the lack of sex education for the entire youth population, is preventing Chinese youth from going through the process of gender perception. 

Part III: Chinese youth to worldwide cultural environment

5.  Young people in small-town China are influenced by foreign cultures: the development of Shamate culture

Shamate culture is a subculture that appeared in the Chinese Mainland in the 2000s and is popular among urban migrant youth. This word is transliterated from the English word “smart”. Shamate is visually influenced by the Goth subculture or Visual kei, characterized by exaggerated hairstyles. Similar cultural phenomena appeared around the world in the same era, including the concept of Lala zai & Lala mui in Malaysia and the hippie culture that appeared in the United States in the 1960s. Youth in different regions gained transient freedom by escaping from reality.

6.  Cosplay costumes: The boom of Japanese anime culture in China

Although Japanese anime is well known throughout the world, it has sparked great resonance and recognition in China. Chinese youth are creating their own anime subculture. In order to participate in Comic-Con, young Chinese people would rather save up money to buy “strange clothes” that their parents don’t understand. Perhaps the implicit and gloomy Japanese culture is just an outlet for Chinese youth, while these expensive and impractical costumes are a symbol of Chinese youth’s rebellion.

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References

Encyclopedia.com. (2012, January 11). Youth Culture. Encyclopedia.com. https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/sociology-and-social-reform/sociology-general-terms-and-concepts/youth-culture

(2020). photograph, https://babyimage.cdn.bcebos.com/common/a29b9e9500f1d4ec6ba4886623fb6dc1001080001920.jpg.

4Gamers. (2018, October 18). 寫實到想哭《中國式家長》Steam上架熱銷，反諷階級固化的華人觀念. 4Gamers. https://www.4gamers.com.tw/news/detail/36568/china-indie-game-chinese-parents-arise-on-top-of-steam-topchart-lists

Gao, G., Chen, J., & Li, S. (2021, May 13). 晓迪. 豆瓣. https://movie.douban.com/subject/35465019/

Meng, S. (2020, December 24). Shunned, shattered, Shamate: Telling the story of China’s most hated subculture - radii. Stories from the center of China’s youth culture. https://radii.co/article/shamate-documentary

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The Possibility of Freedom - Reflections on Differences between Spinoza’s and Levinas’ Discussions of Freedom

01 Introduction

Baruch Spinoza and Emmanuel Levinas, two eminent philosophers from distinct eras, have contributed profound insights into the realms of human suffering, the interplay between reason and affect, and the concept of moral freedom. This essay aims to delve into their contrasting viewpoints on these fundamental philosophical aspects and evaluate the rationality and validity of their respective theories.

In Spinoza’s “The Ethics”, the 17th-century rationalist philosopher constructs a comprehensive philosophical system that delves into human suffering as a product of inadequate understanding, providing a metaphysical framework aimed at achieving intellectual clarity and emotional equilibrium. His exploration of the relationship between reason and emotion elucidates the centrality of reason in liberating individuals from the domination of passions, thereby attaining a state of moral freedom characterized by understanding and rational control.

Contrarily, Levinas’s commentary essay, “The Temptation of Temptation”, marks a departure from rationalist traditions by centering on ethical responsibility and action. As a 20th-century philosopher, Levinas engages deeply with traditional religious theories. His exploration delves into the fundamental human choices of the precedence between action and reception. Moreover, Levinas contemplates the existential possibility of attaining freedom. His philosophical stance places greater emphasis on ethics over rationality, spotlighting the moral imperative of foregrounding ethical relations as paramount in his discourse.

This essay will meticulously examine Spinoza’s and Levinas’s distinct perspectives on suffering, the intricate relationship between reason and affect, and their divergent conceptions of moral freedom. Through a comparative analysis, it aims to evaluate the coherence and cogency of their theories, ultimately exploring which philosopher’s viewpoint offers a more compelling understanding of these crucial philosophical aspects.

In assessing the views of Spinoza and Levinas on these matters, this essay seeks to shed light on the differences between their philosophical systems, their implications on moral agency, and the ethical frameworks they propose for understanding human existence.

02 Spinoza’s Viewpoints

To talk about Spinoza’s viewpoints on pain and suffering, we need to go back to Spinoza’s understanding of emotions. According to Spinoza, ideas and objects are subject to the same necessity, and emotions are no exception. Spinoza defined emotion as a response to a bodily situation. The essence of emotion lies in the mind’s perception of the magnitude of the body’s power. Spinoza says, “By affect I understand affections of the body by which the body’s power of acting is increased or diminished, aided or restrained, and at the same time, the ideas of these affections.” The nature of the emotion depends on the cause from which the bodily affections arise, “if we can be the adequate cause of any of these affections, I understand by the affect an action; otherwise, a passion.”

According to Spinoza, passions are passive reactions of the mind produced by external objects that stimulate the body. The nature and change of the passions depend fundamentally on the nature and change of the bodily forces, “The idea of anything that increases or diminishes, aids or restrains, our body’s power of acting, increases or diminishes, aids or restrains, our mind’s power of thinking.” When an external object stimulates the body and promotes the power of the body, the power of the mind is then promoted and conversely hindered. Accordingly, an emotion arises in the mind that the power can be “promoted” or “hindered”. Spinoza calls the former pleasure and the latter pain, stating that “By joy, that passion by which the mind passes to a greater perfection. And by sadness, that passion by which it passes to a lesser perfection.” In short, the emotion that increases the power of the mind is pleasure, otherwise it is pain.

Having obtained Spinoza’s basic definitions and theories of emotion and suffering, we take Proposition 27 as an example to further illustrate. In Proposition 27, Spinoza mainly discussed the cause and manifestations of empathy. “If we imagine a thing like us, toward which we have had no affect, to be affected with some affect, we are thereby affected with a like affect.” Spinoza summarized the emotion we call empathy as a result comes from the interacting effect between people. In this case, when we have an imagined interaction with the body that has similarities with our body, we will be influenced and get the same emotion; in contrast, if we have haters to the body, we will get the contrary sense with them. And because Spinoza defined sadness with passion led to lesser perfection, we can see that, empathy can also link with sadness, for empathy causes us to think of “the evil which has happened to another”. Spinoza called the sadness part of empathy as pity.

Having argued that pity is essentially a kind of evil passion, Spinoza moved forward to demonstrate that the emotion of benevolence is also a result of natural laws. Since pity will cause us the same evil feelings as others, “we shall strive to think of whatever can take away the thing’s existence…and so we strive to free the thing we pity from its suffering”. This is a very egoistic view, i.e., all the good I produce for others is also essentially motivated by my need to relieve suffering in myself. In Spinoza’s context, however, it is again more in line with his view of people’s emotions as all being the product of the natural laws of reason. So-called self-interest is itself a part of natural law and therefore does not count as evil in the way we now think of it.

However, here can come up with the question, that since we human beings are governed by necessity or natural laws, then where is the freedom? Spinoza argued that although people have no free will, we can be “free” in another sense. Freedom in Spinoza’s theory turns to being free from external constraints or impediments, which is the passion of emotion that we proved above. According to Spinoza, one can recognize the inevitable laws of the world through reason, recognizing that everything in the world is bound to happen the way it is. “It is of the nature of reason to regard things as necessary, not as contingent.” In this case, Spinoza proved that we could use reason to restrain our emotions and achieve autonomy and freedom.

Spinoza’s emphasis on reason’s importance and rationality extends to the example of pity as discussed earlier. Spinoza asserts that “Pity, in a man who lives according to the guidance of reason, is evil of itself and useless”, a statement that may initially seem perplexing. However, when viewed within the broader context of Spinoza’s theoretical framework, it maintains coherence. Spinoza’s philosophy posits that when we extend benevolence to an individual, it’s often rooted in our perception that the person is undergoing distressing emotions. Consequently, through the process of pity, we, too, experience these negative emotions. Yet, if the emotions prompting our pity stem from actions guided by reason, they align with Spinoza’s definition of goodness. The reason, being inherently good, shouldn’t elicit such passions. Hence, Spinoza’s conclusion becomes evident: the kind of pity arising from actions in accordance with reason leads to good, while pity prompted by actions not guided by reason is deemed evil and futile.

This is Spinoza’s rationalist philosophy. For him, a “free person” is a happy person without suffering, but by “free” he means one who recognizes the laws and necessities of the workings of God and the universe, and who lives according to this recognition, unhampered by inner emotions and outer conditions. Spinoza proposes a profound realization of human life, that we achieve happiness not by acquiring many things, but by seeing the world rationally and tempering our emotions rationally.

03 Levinas’ Viewpoints

Levinas delves into the intricate notions of temptation and freedom in his essay The Temptation of Temptation by intriguingly commencing with religious quotes, only to diverge from the conventional sanctity of religious beliefs. He embarks on a theoretical exploration that questions the often-overlooked phenomena embraced by religion. This departure from established religious sanctity is encapsulated in Levinas’s poignant statement at the essay’s outset: “Theosophy is the very negation of philosophy.”

“Being receives a challenge from the Torah, which jeopardizes its pretention of keeping itself above or beyond good and evil.” The focus of Levinas’ concern in this essay is the difficulty of freedom. Here, the difficulty of freedom means that freedom must first of all be fulfilled responsibly from an ethical point of view, but not thought of from ontology. For Levinas, freedom based on Greek ontology is bound to fail ethically.

“If you accept the Torah, all is well, if not here will be your grave.” From this Talmudic passage, Levinas raised a question, that is, “Is one already responsible when one chooses responsibility?” Does freedom begin in freedom? Levinas concludes that “which must be received in order to make freedom of choice possible cannot have been chosen, unless after the fact”. This absolute passivity and non-selectivity constitute the undercurrent of freedom. It is both the condition that makes freedom possible and the condition that makes it somehow impossible. This freedom as possibility or impossibility is thus a difficult, heavy freedom, an unfree freedom. This freedom as a responsible ethical action is not based on rational calculation or researched choices and approvals, but on a prior approval of freedom and unfreedom, and this approval is the “Revelation”. It is on the basis of this Revelation, that “(Jews) They do before hearing.”

But here the question arises: whether this lack of rational calculation’s prior approval of freedom and unfreedom must therefore be a purely external and passive revelation? The discrepancy between the pure externality and passivity, and absolute approval lies in the fact that: the absolute assent that precedes freedom and unfreedom should not be the naive “freedom” that comes from subjective caprice, but also should not come from the passive, coercive “unfreedom” either. The former may lead to existential nihilism; but the latter, in turn, leads to a kind of overwhelming sorrow, resentment, and self-condemnatory penitence and self-abuse. These unhealthy elements of Christianity have not been able to completely disassociate themselves from their stem from their Jewish parentage, which is also the point that Levinas is concerned about.

Summarizing the above, we can come to answer the question of how Levinas views suffering and pain, reason and affect, and the role of freedom in morality. According to Levinas, the temptation that he used in the whole essay is essentially the desire for knowledge. But neither the active acquisition of knowledge by acting before knowing, nor the passive reception of knowledge by knowing before acting, can allow people to fully resolve their temptations and gain pure freedom. So perhaps Levinas’ solution to suffering is to understand the endless responsibility people carry in the face of freedom, to see the possible in the impossible, and thus to gain the existence and meaning of sacrifice above death.

04 The Comparison Between Spinoza and Levinas, and My Personal Views

Spinoza and Levinas have very different theories on how to achieve the goal of freedom. Their theories address different possibilities from different directions. Spinoza believed that all human behavior comes from the laws of nature, so there is no concept of pure free will. Instead, people gain psychological freedom from understanding the laws of nature, from understanding their feelings, and by rationalizing their way of life to conform to the laws of nature, they can gain freedom. Levinas, while also arguing that people cannot be purely free, bases his understanding of freedom on the desire for knowledge. He believes that in the never-ending grind of temptation and responsibility, people can eventually reconcile themselves to infinity, understand suffering, and achieve freedom.

In my opinion, both paths have their validity and there are points I disagree with. I applaud Spinoza’s theory of reducing everything to laws and logic because he makes a lot of seemingly intricate feelings straightforward and even easily controllable, which plays an important role in improving people’s understanding of themselves. However, I also don’t agree with the idea of attributing everything to one’s own rational needs, because that would be a too egoist view. Levinas similarly mentions in his essay, “And the unlimited responsibility, which justifies this concern for justice and for self and for philosophy can be forgotten. In this forgetfulness egoism is born.” From this, I agree with Levinas on the idea that freedom should be based on responsibility. However, the suffering that comes from assuming endless responsibility does not fit my definition of true freedom either.

Rather, the question I was thinking about when I finished analyzing the theories of the two philosophers was: does the tense and intertwined relationship between ontology and ethics suggest to us that there is a more original kind of freedom, one that is neither the “freedom of freedom” based on ontology nor the difficult freedom or “freedom of unfreedom” based on the ethics? It is perhaps a freedom that can do as it pleases without overstepping its bounds; it walks on a path from which it cannot be separated: the path is both the track that restricts the freedom and the right way to lead the freedom. The path of freedom to point to distant places is as open as the open realm of ontology, but it is not the blankness of nihilism; the path’s discipline to restrain itself is as righteous as the responsibility of the ethic, but it is not strict like a stone. This freedom to be fulfilled and taught comes primarily from the experience of the path, I call it the freedom of the path or the freedom of Daoism.

From this point on, we are now taking a path that is foreign to both Spinoza and Levinas: the path of the opening of the Chinese language, which has its origins in Chinese thought. This path, in terms of its cultural genesis, is admittedly a strange and abnormal historical event belonging to the “strange world” - especially when the word “world” has been homogenized into the term “Western world” - but the strangeness of the path in terms of its genesis is expressed in the fact that: it constitutes the possibility of happening, whether in Spinoza’s ontology or Levinas’ ethics, for the path is not anything other than the original differentiation, derivation, and the very operation of all happenings. It is the externality, strangeness, and difference that is immanent within any specific culture. It is therefore neither a homogenized universal nor an otherness in the particularistic sense of being the opposition and ornament of a homogenized universal. “All living things should flourish without harming each other; all ways of life should thrive without hindering each other (万物并育而不相害，道并行而不相悖).” The path that is essentially the way of the world is the universal of non-homogenization, the universal of difference. I believe that this universality will bring about freedom in the world.

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Bibliography

Spinoza. A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other Works. Translated by E. M. Curley. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Levinas. The Temptation of Temptation. Nine Talmudic Readings, 30–50. Translated by Annette Aronowicz. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019.

Dai. Zhong Yong 31. Liji. Translated by James Legge. Chinese Text Project, 2006, https://ctext.org/liji/zhong-yong.

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