Water Margin: Searching for the sources of China’s great rivers
laphamsquarterly.org
laphamsquarterly.org
> The source of the Yangtze is disputed even now. An expedition in the 1970s identified it as the Tuotuo, the “tearful” river in Qinghai, but several years later it was assigned to the Damqu instead. There’s ultimately something arbitrary in conferring primacy on one of a river’s several headwater sources, but for the Yangtze the symbolic significance of this choice is too strongly felt for the protagonists to brook any compromise.
I think this is the most salient point in the entire piece. It seems like we, as people, spend a lot of time trying to classify things that don't matter. Debating what the true source of a river seems like it could be mildly important, but it's not much more important than determining whether height or weight is the more important criteria for determining the worlds largest ball of twine.
Someone told me that the many of the confounding and illogical human behaviors can basically be understood as tribalism being expressed in a modern context. Ever since then I've seen tribalism everywhere. And not only are there tribes, but those tribes have sub-tribes.
One of the things I really like about the internet is that it can allow us to concentrate on things that we actually care about, rather than getting caught up on stupid things like where somebody lives, or what they look like. We still have our prejudices and tribes (VIM vs EMACS, Apple vs PC), happens, but when it comes down to it, he have an unprecedented ability to connect with other people and form positive communities that advance the world as a whole.