But the purpose of these visits isn’t a good time. It’s to cement business and personal ties, binding men together through the power of taboo and mutual self-exposure, or at least the pretense of it. It lets them judge that the others involved in a potential deal are men of the same stripe.
.. In part, the power of the experience comes from the mutual pleasure of shared transgression, the feeling of a shared secret. Like schoolboys’ playing hooky, being bad together moves a relationship along fast. As one saying that went rapidly around the Chinese Internet in 2011 put it, “It’s better to do one bad thing with your boss than a hundred good things for your boss.”
.. But vice serves as a kind of screen, weeding out the rare few who might have moral qualms about future dealings. It tells both sides that they’re playing by the same rules.
.. Businessmen who convert to evangelical Christianity and make a commitment to avoid vice or bribery describe sharp business losses as a result, as former partners turn away from them, fearful of their newfound probity.
.. His companion, heavily tattooed and with the build of a thuggish Buddha, nodded. “I wouldn’t trust a man I didn’t drink with,” he said.
.. In a society where trust of strangers is minimal, contract law is fragile, contracts themselves regarded more as guidelines than binding commitments, and the civil courts largely swayed by personal influence rather than legal right, the shared fraternity of the night out is one route to trust between partners.
.. Many institutions, especially State-owned enterprises, maintain staff whose job is effectively to be professional drinkers, sacrificing their livers for the sake of the firm.
.. As Zheng details in her book, getting overly sentimental or romantic toward women is seen as a sign of weakness and lack of masculinity. If a businessman is unfortunate enough to love his wife or girlfriend, using it as an excuse to avoid sex is a massive faux pas.
.. But in China colluding with officials is a necessity, not an anomaly. For local businesses, a connection with the government is vital to protect themselves from predatory officials exploiting the country’s haze of regulations. Regular pay-offs are as ubiquitous as income tax elsewhere.
Jeopardy Champ Arthur Chu On Nerds, Entitlement And Elliot Rodger
A lot of guys who for whatever reason have not had much success in dating, don’t have a girlfriend, you know, The term on the Internet is “Incel” – involuntarily celibate
.. We’re not the victims anymore, right? One of the things you say and I need to edit, a little bit the language, but you say, what did Elliott Roger need? He didn’t need to get laid. None of us nerdy frustrated guys need to get laid. When I was a, and you use a word here, a – hole, with rants full of self pity and entitlement, getting laid would not have helped me. He needed to grow up.