
The Mao Mango Cult of 1968 and the Rise of China's Working Class - vvviolet
http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/the-mao-mango-cult-of-1968/
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rdtsc
This interesting.

There is a story of when people are given from "above" an item without an
explanation, they imbue all kinds of meanings to it. Perhaps like in the past
when a meteorite fell from the sky, all kinds of religious meanings and
explanations for it followed.

The second aspect is that Mao recognized this and quickly capitalized on it.
The lesson is, if you see a hype starting, regardless if it is irrational or
not, it can be taken advantage of easily.

Then there is a third aspect, and that is the "middle managers" if you wish
who also took this to a heart and punished and killed people over being
irreverent to the "mango". It might have never been about the mango but it was
a pretext who punish someone as a scapegoat to keep control and fear going, if
it wasn't the mango it could have been another thing (joke about the party for
ex).

As I read that I wondered what if you took one of the mango worshipers and ask
them why they are respecting this mango object so much? I wonder what they
would have said. You might get a different answer depending if they were
afraid of repercussion if they seemed irreverent and didn't say "It is a
symbol of Chairman Mao's Love or something.

One can draw a parallel here with cargo cult followers of technologies
(frameworks, langauges, api, operation systems, products) and so on. When
someone decides to pick a technology and you ask them "why did you pick this
framework?" or "what made you want to learn that language?" you can learn
quite bit by how they answer. Quite often you'll find they don't understand
how basics work and you find out they picked it because it a cargo cult. They
start repeating "canned" phrases they heard like "it is webscale" or "it is
non-blocking so it is better". Or they say "this is slow" and "this is fast".
And you ask "have you measured, how did you measure?". And they haven't, they
just repeat something a friend with a cool shoes and haircut told them.

Cargo cult and hype following is not always black and white. I can see some
validity at least on saying "a big company is sponsoring this toolkit, so I'll
pick it because it will probably have enough ecosystem support to move
forward". They might not understand the advantages or trade-offs so they use a
heuristic. It is not bad, but it tells you something about the person, too.

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dominotw
>It is not bad, but it tells you something about the person, too.

Isn't this basic human psychology to choose ( or fall into) an ideology
because it gives us security from the unknown. We choose to get educated, get
married and all that because that gives security from fear of unknown. If you
ask people why they go married or decided to have kids you would always get
"canned" answers, do you seriously expect everyone to deeply examine
everything they do?

Is it even possible to live without some kind of social/biological
conditioning?

~~~
rdtsc
It is and it is important to understand that aspect. We live and are dominated
by ideology, but is still possible to analyze it and understand how it works
at the same time.

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daltonlp
Strange coincidence, I just finished reading "The Private Life of Chairman
Mao", which also describes the mango incident. It's an incredible book.

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firstOrder
This article goes over much of what happens, but seems to have missed the
point of things.

It talks about how the mango went to some backwoods provinces of China -
probably not electrified, where a farmer would be considered well-off if they
owned a single animal - and how some had superstitious thoughts about it. How
is that any different than the uproar we see in the rural US about biology and
Darwin being taught in schools, since it contradicts some bizarre
superstitions they have out there? In 2009 one of these rural religious types
shot dead Dr. George Tiller in Kansas, as Bill O'Reilly and others were on the
radio and television talking about how Tiller was the tool of the Devil. 1960s
China is played up as being all crazy in this article, in contrast to what I
assume would be a sane, modern US. The reality is rural idiocy, class
resentments and so forth exist in both places at both times.

I also think the point about the mangoes is missed. It would be like saying an
American flag displayed in a political demonstration was worshipped, or some
doves let free during a peace demonstration were worshipped, or the CND peace
symbol displayed during an anti-war demonstration was worshipped. The mangoes
represented an end to much of the strife of the Cultural Revolution, and were
understood as such. Most of the militant students were sent off to live in the
countryside for a year or two, to cool them down and get them acquainted with
the realities of the country. The mangoes represented peace, an end of strife,
most people in Beijing understood it in this way, and did see them as a
positive symbol. This either escaped the writer, or they are writing the same
kind of propaganda they're accusing the Chinese of writing.

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slurry
To me, the article plays this as slightly humorous and kitschy, whereas your
comment makes it seem much darker, especially with the Dr. Tiller comparison.
One thing you get wrong is, this began among workers at Tsinghua University,
not rural dirt farmers. So if this be idiocy (and that seems uncharitable at
best to me) it is urban and not rural in character.

~~~
rdtsc
> To me, the article plays this as slightly humorous and kitschy,

It was all like that until you get to the end and find out that people (with
at least on specific example) were _killed_ over making a disparaging remark
about the "mango". Others were punished for not holding it "reverently"
enough.

It sounds funny now it wasn't funny then though.

Idiocy started as urban but it was then pushed and taken advantage of. They
built mugs and products with mangoes on it. It wasn't just a local fad.

