Daniel A. Bell > Quotes

“I short, the government tried to tame people's selfish nature by means of education and ritual, and when that didn't work, it tried harsh punishments to enforce norms that people knew, deep down, had social benefits. Eventually, the punishments closed the gap between the norm and the practice and the government could rely mainly on moral self-regulation instead of harsh punishment, but without completely doing away with laws that served as last-resort checks on selfish and dangerous behavior. More or less as Xunzi would have recommended: Best to rely on informal means of regulation that transform people's selfish tendencies, and if that doesn't work, use the strong arm of the law.”
― Daniel A. Bell, The Dean of Shandong: Confessions of a Minor Bureaucrat at a Chinese University

“Remorse is alien to me. I have a penchant for deceit. I am generally free of entangling and irrational emotions. I am strategic and canny, intelligent and confident…. Yet I am not motivated or constrained by the same things that most good people are…. [As a child], I envisioned the people in my life as robots that turned off when I wasn’t directly interacting with them…. I have never killed anyone, but I have certainly wanted to. I may have a disorder, but I am not crazy. In a world filled with gloomy, mediocre nothings populating a go-nowhere rat race, people are attracted to my exceptionalism like moths to a flame.142”
― Daniel A. Bell, The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy