Hegel Hegel Hegel

Europe represents a creative civilization, China a conserving one. Europeans invent, the Chinese copy.

(Quite. For example silk. And porcelain. And lacquerware. And paper. And movable type. And waterclocks. And gunpowder.)

This is how it happens: the professor says something he has no idea about, but which he read in a book. The student listens, his mouth agape. He has no idea why the professor says that, but it sounds good. We Europeans are creative, they Chinese copy us. Good.

Nevermind that the student has not invented a thing in his life, and probably couldn’t copy one if it came to it, either. He is creative. The Chinese are just knock offs. The professor said so.

It is a comfortable theory to adopt, especially if one is poor and can’t compete with the Chinese in business and has no prospects in life beyond slaving away at some dull job to make enough for a package holiday on Crete. At least one can feel superior that their success is only a result of slavish copying. Untenmenschen.