Westworld And China Comparisons

Published April 29, 2020 · Updated July 6, 2022

Hi this is Zee-Jay emailing from China. I am not Chinese but I’m a westerner living and working here in China. Observing the faux human utopian society that is depicted outside of the park in westworld, sort of reminds me of living here in China for the past few years. The idea of justifying the obsession with having absolute control and manipulation because of a desired harmonious outcome is what Rehoboam/Serac and the Chinese government share in common. I’m writing this email to draw up the starking similarities between the world outside of the park and China.

After looking at episode 7, I started to question what exactly the definition of an outlier is. The show has not concretely stated but it seems to suggest that it is someone that the system, Rehoboam, cannot manipulate or predict. Solomon said that every human relationship can be adjusted by the right amount of money. I guess if you don’t fit into that category then you are cast as an outlier. If you begin to ask questions about your reality, like the man Caleb and Francis captures, then you are also categorized as an outlier. It’s frightening how this is exactly the same in China. I attended a Chinese university and now I am a teacher in china and it is fascinating how at a very early age kids there are discouraged from being creative, being different and thinking independently. From home-work to exams and even the copy, paste, recite/regurgitate way they are taught how to learn English, Maosim and many other subjects enforce the homogenous collectivism uniformity. As you may or may not know, China is filled with facial recognition cameras in every nook and cranny which captures public behavior and then a system adds or subtracts from a citizens ‘social credit score’ which can affect what amenities and services they might be able to receive in life. Scary, right?

Earlier in the season when you guys were debating the nuance of whether Serac is the bad or good guy I desperately wanted to email in but I allowed things to play out. Living in china has exposed me more than a westerner living in a bubble of democracy. The Chinese government, like Serac, clads on a cloak of ‘harmonious society’ and dons a hat of ‘public safety’ (just look at how China were ‘seemingly’ effective in dealing with the corona virus for example, or the general low ‘reported’ crime rate in China) but behind all of this functional society is a basement full of outliers who are out of sight from the public eye. Just like outliers being put in life threatening military situations, getting lobotomized/re-educated, crypto-stored or getting RICOed out to capture outliers and none of it is getting reported to the public, outliers here in China get disappeared literally and figuratively from society often without any media coverage. In China, whether you’re a foreigner or Chinese, becoming famous on social media sort of like an influencer is one of the riskiest things. At that point you are seen as a potential outlier and you either have to start posting pro Chinese government rhetoric on your social media (being a RICO soldier) or just risk being shut down, arbitrarily, investigated or disappeared (in more serious cases). Personal data is freely handed to Rehoboam in order to make better world decisions, and here in China, privacy laws are sorely lacking. In fact, it is quite common and socially acceptable to hand over personal data of individuals to other companies and the government and it was surprising to me how none of the citizens here was outraged about this. Questioning particular government policies or just digging to find out more information will get you in hot water.

Talk about being on a loop, then come down here to China and find people with access to only ‘government-approved’ websites, games, entertainment, media and being educated in Marxism theory from the womb is what I call being on a loop.

Free will is often discussed on your pod and is one of the themes of this show. To Serac and Rehoboam, a functional society is more important than truth or free will. Isn’t it ironic that the only ones left with true free will are the outliers? Serac and Rehoboam represents everything which is wrong with a Marxism-Leninsm, socialist collectivist driven society. Serac is a dictator and to me the definite villain in this show. It looks touching when his sad Paris back-story as a little boy is shown, but look at what he has become today. Whenever the cruelty and failings of past communist regimes are pointed out to dictators, they always respond with ‘but MY dictatorship will be the right one’.

Zee-Jay in China

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