I'll throw light on another linked article from the same website https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1006391/how-one-obscure-word-... . Reading it is just blowing my mind, as someone from SouthEast Asia (not China) the conversation on competition and societal pressure rings very true.
> Therefore, the winners demand the losers to admit that they are a failure: Not only that they have less money and fewer material possessions; they must bow down morally and admit that they’re useless and have failed. If you don’t admit it and simply quietly walk away from the competition, you’ll face a lot of criticism. It’s not allowed.
This passage was pretty hair-raising. I think the freedom to fail gracefully is something we take for granted in "the west".
There is plenty of this in The West, too. It's often just couched in different terms, or in different ways. The continued dog-pile on the poor or homeless comes to mind.
To quote some dude from The West:
“It is not enough merely to win; others must lose.”
― Gore Vidal
Something of a tangent but I've found it really helpful in a bunch of situations to force myself to talk/think about "what's the success condition?" rather than "what's the win condition?" to make it harder to accidentally fall into the trap of assuming there needs to be a loser. Positive sum games are a wonderful thing if you can arrange them.
Not sure it's the same point but ultimately you're responsible for yourself. Even if you were born into bad circumstances or had bad luck. Forcing others to be responsible for you is morally and ethically wrong. That doesn't mean we shouldn't help the poor or homeless, often out of our own self interest, who wants to live in a world of poor and homeless people? But, as soon as you claim I'm obligated to help them you've made me a slave instead of a volunteer.
Paying taxes isn't voluntary, so by your definition we are all already slaves. And if I am forced to pay taxes, should I not have a vote in how they are spent? Some people say we should build roads and bridges, others want warships, and some want to help the homeless. Why are any of these choices "ethically wrong"?
It's funny how I highlighted it as well, along with the guy applying to mcdonald's story. The kind of social pressure and moral shaming it describes is absolutely real
This passage was pretty hair-raising. I think the freedom to fail gracefully is something we take for granted in "the west".