Then that’s how the two common values of making democracy work more into here and now, and also connect to the world and sharing the Taiwan model to be as important to the KMT supporters, as well as to the DPP supporters, and non-partisan, by the way.

It’s a very clear signal around the end of that year that the national direction from this point onwards is going to be more transparent in one participation, there’s no going back.

I think the lessons learned then is that any mayoral candidate that support these consensus on the street gets elected at the end of that year. Sometime without an inauguration speech prepared, it’s surprising even to them. The mayor candidate no matter which party that did not support open governance ...

People broadly come to consensus. The magic thing is that the head of Parliament eventually agreed with the occupiers and basically said, “OK. Let’s put a CSSTA on hold and start in national wide conversation around economic and trade as the occupiers demanded.” Out of it comes the e-participation platform, ...

At each and every upgrade, we have to do another system risk assessment, to see whether this is now de facto state-owned or whether there are still some autonomy left in that company. It’s amortized. It’s a much higher business cost than just working with Nokia or Ericsson, and so ...

The argument goes that because it’s heavily state subsidized and may appear inexpensive at the beginning, but because we all know that the 党, the ruling party of the Chinese Communist Party regime can through this party branches to replace leadership for all the so-called private sector corporations that provides ...

People were wondering whether as part of the cross street service trade agreement, at that time being deliberated on the street because the MPs refused to delegate it, we would allow Beijing-based components in the 4G infrastructure. Interestingly, the rough consensus or the common value was one of an economic ...

For example, the rough consensus on the street at that time the major telecoms bidding for the spectrums to do the 4G infrastructure for wireless connections. The occupiers use WiMAX, by the way, which went nowhere, and so we had to do the 4G infrastructure over again.

Sunflower was in 2014, March. For three weeks, the occupiers demonstrated as a demo, not as a protest, but a little bit of protest, but most of it is a demo of how to listen to scale and come to rough consensus on the street.

Sure. Which revolution again? The industrial revolution?

I think that’s a really neat intervention that can let some of the partisanship go once the result is known.

It’s interesting how you can get even…I think that survey was done literally like two weeks before the election day, in the height of the campaigns, but it’s also a way to deal with it, to show that no matter which side “wins,” they’re going to work on the same ...

These two are high both of the two most ardent fervor supporters, except of course each sizing the other side of candidate isn’t doing anything about those two things. However, the values are so apparent that they’re common.

They did a poll, a survey of the most important values for those two rallies and the most hardcore of their fans, and they published the result. Surprisingly, to sustain and innovate the democratic institution themselves, to link with the world and help in a humanitarian way, help on global ...

I have a bunch of friends who, very interestingly, in the height of the rally for the KMT president Han Kuo-yu and DPP president candidate Tsai Ing-wen, on the height of their rallies where they are saying not very calm, singing words.

Facing that and accepting that is very important, but also deal with that.

I think it’s very relevant, especially around the time of the election, that one really needs to face whatever really is that is going to happen in each and every election, that people are going to sow discord, are going to paint the other side as inhuman. It’s like a ...

There’s a saying, although it’s, I think, a Zen saying and not strictly a Taoist saying, but in Taiwan, as you know, they are very much intertwined. The Zen saying says, whenever there’s anything like chaos or whatever, emerging, the Sheng-yen Zen master would say, you face it, accept it, ...

Civic tech, yes.

Literally, the tip of Taiwan grows two or three centimeters every year because of this tension, this earthquake, and the idea that, “I’m going to innovate no matter what the left-wing says or the right-wing says. I’m determinedly going up-wing.” I think this is something any individual can say to ...

This is not a compromise, compromise. This is a innovation that, just like Taiwan is caught between the Eurasian Plate on one side and the Philippines Sea Plate on the other, after earthquakes, grows.

Ultimately, our so-called hyperlink act to legalize marriage equality is to rule that homosexual people, when they wed, they wed as individuals, hyperlinking to all the rights and duties, the parts in the civic code, but it hyperlinks to none of the codes in the in-law relationships, so their families ...

I signify during that hot debate and two referenda that you see there’s a common value in both sides. Both sides want the institution of marriage to mean something. Both, they want maybe the divorce rate to decline instead of keep going up and up. Both sides want something meaningful, ...

The younger generations see marriage more as an individual to individual thing, which they now do by registration, and their family may or may not wed. That’s entirely up to the families themselves. I call these two views the in-laws view, and a by-laws view of marriage. [laughs]

It could be for example around intergenerational solidarity among, for example, Taiwan’s most controversial referenda. There was two referenda around marriage. The people who are older see marriage predominantly as something between two families, with each young person only acting as representative of their families.

That’s right. [laughs] It’s rainbow-colored, for the people who listen. I think, just turn it into a sense of self-expression, and through the self-expression, you can also signal that, “My focus is on the common values.”

Knowing for sure that a physical vaccine protects yourself from your own hands gives people a sense of calm and assurance that this will pass, and this will pass with us in it together, because mask is a social signal. Something like the medical mask use in Taiwan, which has ...

Just like the physical vaccine protects oneself from one’s own unwashed hands, maybe with the virus that has lived on the surface of the table for days, with SARS 2.0 that is, the current virus we’re dealing with.

That leads then to an even more divisive virus of the mind, the us versus them kind of binary thinking that only grows with the pandemic and infodemic. It really is a self-reinforcing circle, but the circle can be broken.

There’s a sense of inevitableness if you do this kind of lockdown/takedown. Also, in such a more isolated mood, people are eager to blame the spread of the virus of the body or of the mind on outsiders, those of different races, different nationalities, different beliefs.

Yeah. That’s part of the takedown/lockdown side effect, the negative externality that it has on the society, and it’s not a new thing. Since ancient times, the way to combat either a pandemic or infodemic has been physical distancing, the closing of borders, lockdown of cities, suspensions of civic assembly, ...

Mm-hmm.

Anyway, my point here is that transculturalism is the main thing that we’re having a perspective of the dialogue, and as long as the dialogue is around common values, I don’t think the different or varying positions is necessarily a bad thing. I think it actually contributes to the potential ...

That’s also something like Ubuntu, the African equivalent, at work here. One actually actualizes through a larger community as opposed to the smaller community, and by contributing to it. Ubuntu, by the way, is also a very familiar term in Silicon Valley. [laughs]

That idea is universal. It doesn’t need to be Han and Manchurian. [laughs] It could be between any cultures. If one learned that, from different cultures, there are pieces of a puzzle that one offers to complete one another’s perspectives. One does not actualize one’s own upbringing unless you can ...

It’s not, “Let’s plant the same kind of flower and have it dominate the garden.” That idea was first developed by Sun Yat-Sen and his revolutionary friends to explain how to not entirely write off the Manchurian culture while having the ethnic Han working with the Manchurian culture that was ...

In Taiwan, I usually translate the official country name of the cabinet office, government that I’m currently in, which is in Mandarin 中華民國, as a Transcultural Republic of Citizens -- republic of citizens as in 公民之國, a country with its citizens as its foundation, and transcultural as in 在花之中, literally ...

I think cohesion is overrated. It’s one of those ideas like harmonization of society. We don’t quite believe in harmonization of the society. That’s a nearby jurisdiction that’s more into it.

Even the Han Chinese have three dominant languages, the Hakka, the Taiwanese Holo, and Mandarin.

With 20 national languages.

The potentials can realize themselves, actualize themselves without being foreclosed by whichever object was in the valley, so to speak. It could be, of course, a real valley in a face-to-face setting for carbon-based life forms, or it could be a silicon valley for digital forms of expressions.

A very interesting thing is, to me, the quotation, the line in it that says, “The valley through its wholeness flows with rivers.” Not for the rivers, not by the rivers, [laughs] not of the rivers, but with the rivers. This is the very Taoist notion of making a space, ...

The idea is, to quote Tao Te Ching, the 39th chapter, “Heaven through its wholeness is pure; earth through its wholeness is steady; spirit through its wholeness is potent. The valley through its wholeness flows with rivers; the ten thousand things through their wholeness live. Rulers through their wholeness have ...

Usually, I use the Ursula Le Guin translation because I think it’s more poetic. It’s the idea, the wholeness. I translated that a moment ago, the 正, as rigor, but you can also translate it as wholeness or integrity for lack of a better term.

I think it’s right that around the turn of the century the Internet-based blogging culture, that’s also one of the major part of it. The current steward of the Wistaria Tea House, Chow Yu, at the time was proposing that the four words, 正靜清圓, to be rigorous, to be calm, ...

We first started this whole open source, open publication blogging movement in Taipei. We meet weekly – that was in the early 2000s – in the Wistaria Tea House. Wistaria Tea House is one of the main places. It’s a historical building where many of Taiwan’s democratic struggles and movements ...

Yes, of course.

Yes.

I just had some coffee early in the morning.

I think appealing to self-interest is bound to have a higher R-value. I don’t think there is much of a cultural difference here.