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| Summer in London 2012 (Personal collection) |
First of all, I think it is necessary to describe what I have observed from my own experience socializing with people in my own culture (it is to be noted that I live an urban life). Despite the fact that we keep the collectivistic culture alive, from a simple observation like what kind of music the radio play and what kind of clothes people wear, I can conclude that Western culture is welcomed here. At the same time however, it seems that people hold a negative view toward it, especially in terms of socializing. This ambivalent attitude is actually an okay situation; for we can show respect to a certain person, idea, or object in one aspect, but not the other. However, what bothers me is the fact that people often make judgments out of an incomplete understanding, or as I can say, impulsively, which lead them to have false assumptions about the individualistic culture. Fortunately, despite the fact that I was struggling to incorporate so many new information during my summer experience in London, I was able to keep an open attitude, and therefore was able to gain some positive insights from it.
A while ago a friend of mine posted a Facebook status expressing his concern on what he called "care for other people"; yet underlying his use of the term "care" is not exactly the same as the literal meaning attached to it. He was actually referring to the tendency of minding other people's lives. Explicitly he talked about religion and beliefs, on which he thought that regardless of what people often say that we should take "care" for other people, the world would feel more beautiful if people kept their mouths shut (about other people's lives) and mind their own businesses. The first comment on that status explicitly mentioned the "individualistic" nature of Western culture, on which such particular person equate it with "selfish" culture. Of course, I don't have to say what comes next from this kind of view the people here hold about Western culture, for I believe nobody in this world would appreciate selfishness, regardless of what kind of culture they came from. As far as I have observed myself from interacting with people around me, it seems that this view of individualistic culture as a selfish culture has been held by quite so many people in this culture I live in. At some points in my life I probably have assimilated the same view, for I remembered clearly how surprised I was as I actually experienced the culture during my summer in London for real.
Responding to that Facebook status I tried to articulate my own views regarding the matter while mentioning some examples of my own experience experiencing the individualistic culture for approximately one month; an experience I am quite sure the people who still have the view of individualistic culture as a selfish culture do not have. First of all, I would like to highlight the issue of human rights which I believe are essential in order for all people not to eat each other and ultimately able to cooperate. Regarding this it has been my concern to point out that human rights are not without proper grounding, but instead are formed by what every human being in this world strives for: goodness in life.We don't want other people to cross our lines, therefore we don't cross their lines. Who does not protest when people cross our lines, when they do not knock on our apartment doors before coming in or when they peek us while showering in the bathroom. What about people who get pleasures from hurting other people? I believe that it is a different issue; a special case concerned with mental illness, where I might want to consider discussing later. But the point is, human rights are not just a rule that we have to follow, but a rule that we have to follow to have a good life. From here, we come to the individualistic culture.
What is an individualistic culture anyway? For this question, in order to support my argument based on my personal experience I felt the need to include one reliable source I believe everyone would easily accept: textbook. I draw an explanation about both individualism and collectivism from the nearest sources physically available as I wrote this post, my Social Psychology textbook by Baron, Branscombe, and Byrne (2009).
"Groups can powerfully affect the behavior of their members via norms - implicit rules that inform us about how we ought to behave. ...In collectivist groups, the norm is to maintain harmony among group members, even if doing so might entail some personal costs; in such groups, disagreement and conflict among members are to be avoided. In contrast, in individualistic groups, the norm is to value standing out from the group and being different from others; individual variability is to be expected and disagreeing with the group is often seen as courageous. Therefore greater tolerance might be expected for those who deviate from group norms in individualist groups than in collectivist groups." (Baron, Branscombe, & Byrne, p. 387)
From this description it can be seen that the difference between the two cultures lies on what behavior each cultures rewards: maintaining harmony or standing out. This can be traced back to the values each culture is built on, but what I am more concerned about the passage above is the issue of tolerance. Here the issue is shifted from a matter of reward to another matter concerned about the consequence one has to take when he /she deviates from the group. Drawing this specifically to the context of reward and punishment, it can be implied that the characteristic of the culture is not only concerned about what behavior is rewarded but also the intensity of punishment one has to take from the group when one member deviates from it, whereby in individualistic culture, it can be said that the punishment would be less severe. Overall, we can see that it makes sense for the individualistic culture to tolerate deviations, because it gives reward to standing out. However, from my own perspective, it is important to see this relation of reward-and-punishment, as logical as it may seem, as separate from each other. Why then does it become the case? The answer is simply because both talk about a qualitatively different matter. Consider this: I stand out in my group because I am the only one brave enough to help a woman being mugged down the street. If my group holds a collectivist culture, would I be kicked out from it? If people and society are still sane, nobody would punish someone who does a good deed, even if it is the group where one deviates from. So, it all comes down to what is different from the group, and what is the behavior the person shows. Is it in align with the basic human rights, or is it not?
Speaking of basic human rights, I think we all agree that among them are privacy and adopting their own beliefs (a widely adopted understanding of human rights derived from Immanuel Kant's work which assumes that in moral universe, every person has certain basic rights; one of them is the right of privacy, which refers to the right to do as they wish in their private lives, and they have the right to control what they reveal about private activities, and related to that is the right of freedom of conscience which is understood as the right to refuse to do what violates their moral beliefs, as long as these beliefs reflect commonly accepted norms), and I think one of the clearest ones is concerned about treating other people in a way that we want them to treat us in return. Validating all these rights then I guess it has become clearer that no matter what kind of culture you are in, collectivistic or individualistic, any behavior that are in accordance to them is at least acceptable or not punishable.
The concern now is what I have considered as an error to quickly judge individualistic culture as a selfish culture. From what I have written it is supposed to be clear that there is no relationship between them, and thus considering them to be the same is simply a mistake. What I would like deliver next is that it goes the same for the other culture, the collectivism. There is also no relationship between it and selfishness and therefore there is also no relationship between it and selflessness (considering selflessness as the opposite of selfishness). Thus, drawing from literature and a bit of analysis it can be concluded that there is no relationship between what kind of culture you have and selfishness/selflessness, for being selfish is the violation of human rights, and respecting them doesn't have to do with what kind of culture you have. We can all imagine how we would feel if people cross our lines.
Now, it has been brought to my attention that people who reply to my friend's Facebook status and who see individualistic culture as a selfish culture would consider individualistic culture as bad, for nothing good comes from being selfish (honestly it has been validated by further elaboration of the argument; explicitly it says that such culture brings destruction). While this is the case, further support of the argument was also made by seemingly equate collectivistic culture with selflessness, so now I guess there is not one, but two errors that were made. Yet, what the commentators show throughout the post, a form of rejection toward the idea of not minding other people's privacy/private businesses (in this case: religion and spiritual life), show that they have actually violated the human rights, and therefore show themselves as being selfish instead. I personally think that in large part, this irony can also be attributed to their own concept of religion and spiritual life as being private or public, with their concept of religion being public. Regarding this matter, honestly I can see why that is the case, for religion is indeed a necessary attribute that must appear in the people's identities card (and not only appear, but what kind of it is also a concern). I am not going to say this policy as stupid or simply wrong, for it is not my concern to criticize or give my opinion on that. This writing concerns about errors people made in believing an individualistic culture to be selfish or bad while ironically being unintentionally selfish themselves from the rejection of the fact that people have different beliefs or views or there are people who are different from them which ultimately lead to disrespect. Why am I so concerned on this is simply because failure to see the reality will eventually lead to damage, at least hindering ourselves from growth that one can benefit from getting things right. But what is important is that there is nothing good comes from holding such negative yet false beliefs about other people. Moreover it does not stop there. It is also accompanied by the thoughts that we are good while we are actually exercising bad things everyday by not respecting other people's rights in form of differences. I guess it is fair to say that not only that nothing good comes from it, something that is not healthy also comes from it: a delusion.
Perhaps, the term "individualistic" as a culture is closely related to the concept of individuation, which refers to the need to be distinguishable from others in some respects (Baron et al., 2009). If you ever wondered why we are created different, then based on this, it can be said that because we have such need to be different. In general, we want to be like others (especially others we like or respect), but we don't want to be exactly like them. Why is that may be related to our own need of personal control. I believe we all have at least one or two experiences being overwhelmed by what people tell us to do. At that time somehow we felt helpless and all we wanted to do is to have a break and go to our own private space (bedroom, bathroom, maybe home if we're outside). That privacy gives us a good feeling, and therefore it can be said that we all have the need for that. Being a culture that has more tolerance on differences (as what the textbook says), this individualistic culture may be based on the realization that people have this need of personal control, and therefore the people are more aware in the matter of respecting other people's need for personal control; it does not mean that there is no such thing in the collectivistic culture (perhaps we just missed, that's all), and this is exactly what I felt during my time in London.
So what exactly happened? Basically, in group, talking about what we have in common was what we spend most of the time talking about (for example: How's your high school life? What do you think about Olympics, global recession, London, etc), while talking casually about personal things such as family life, sexual life, religious/spiritual life or beliefs, or simply things that other people cannot relate to are not rewarded, if not being ignored (some would explicitly say: "I don't want to hear about it", or just left the group and did something else that they felt more useful other than unnecessary pleasures from hearing things they think they do not deserve to hear). These are the things which are considered private; part of people's rights to exercise their personal control over.Why did they prefer not to talk about it? First, speaking sensibly, it is a waste of time. Why would you talk about something that other people cannot relate themselves to if there is nothing good comes from it? If we did happen talk about differences between us (in fact it did happen a lot), it was brought to an open discussion with one positive goal: learning from each other and thus promote our own personal growth with our knowledge being expanded as a result of the conversation/ dialogue. Second, bluntly speaking it is annoying; it gives a feeling of uneasiness because by exaggerating differences between the members the group out of the context of learning from each other would be the same as exaggerating the fact that we cannot fit together as a group. People happened to get together because they have a common goal, and this kind of act may make them forget that such goal exists. Just as people feel respected for their membership of the group because they realized that they can fit in, people will exactly feel the opposite if they start to realize they are not accepted because of the differences that are part of their own rights as humans.
As you can see, there is no relationship between individualistic culture and being selfish. In fact, by being aware of privacy and tolerance of differences respect is easily formed in this culture and it is this kind of respect that actually bring people from different backgrounds and countries come together in harmony, something which is actually encouraged in the collectivistic culture.This seemingly overlapped quality between the two kinds of culture has led me to think that the root cause of the false belief people here often hold about Western people is not whether people are exercising collectivistic or individualistic culture, but because those people exercise collectivistic culture in a way that does not promote harmony, which is actually the goal of the culture. As Baron et al. (2009) has described, cultures are norms; implicit rule about what we ought to do, and the function of norms are to get people together in harmony. If what we ought to do is to have the same personal beliefs then the norm itself as lost its way to the final goal (bring people together), because personal beliefs are in themselves part of people's privacy and more importantly it is not something that is actually possible to have in common (that is why they are called "personal" beliefs). If our goal is to get along with people, we just have to be unselfish. It is as simple as that. It is not about the culture, it is about willingness to exercise an act of selflessness, appreciation of differences and privacy.
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| - The real unity in diversity - Doesn't matter what kind of culture you came from, and what kind of culture you are in, we can always get along, when we want to (unless of course, you have no idea on how to get along) |
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