After spending the last four weeks in SE Asia, I found myself waiting for five hours in the Seoul-Incheon airport for my flight to Chicago. It's a super-modern and highly efficient airport that offers wonderful amenities for travelers like free wi-fi, free showers and quiet spaces where travelers can rest while in transit. While waiting I reflected on some of the stories I had heard on this trip and also on a trend of American culture over the last thirty years.
During this trip, and our previous one to Cambodia, I heard horrific and sad stories of the "Cultural Revolution" that swept China, Cambodia and to some extent Vietnam during the late 60's to 70's. Stories of the abuse so many experienced. Stories of people who were killed and of families broken apart. Stories of people who couldn't follow their dreams and make use of their educations and training because the government or party ordered them to do something else. Stories of what happens when a society gets unbalanced and emphasizes the "good of the group" (i.e. nation, party, etc.) to an extreme.
But I also found myself wondering, as I sat in Seoul-Incheon, why it is that the great cities of the US don't have an airport like Seoul's? Why is it that Europe and Japan have highly developed networks of superfast trains for transporting people, but the US doesn't? Why does the US have one of the most powerful economies in the world and yet our roads and bridges are crumbling? Why does the US have such a high standard of medical innovations and yet so many people who can't receive the most basic kinds of health care?
I know that there are many causes for each of these differences between the US and other countries, but I can't help but feel that underlying them is the shadow side of what makes the US such a great and vibrant culture. Probably more than any other culture in history we have been able to empower individuals to pursue their dreams. The result has been a high level of individual satisfaction and the innovation and the vibrancy of our culture. But when we only see the individual, when we fail to see the ways that we are interconnected and the ways that we are responsible for each other, we go to the opposite extreme of the Asian countries I mentioned earlier. We neglect the common good for what is only good for me, me, me. It seems to me that this has been a strong trend in the US since the 70's or 80's and the result has been a growing disparity between the richest and the poorest, a distrust of the mechanisms of government that support us and a failure to invest or re-invest in the infrastructure that made us strong.
Some may wonder what these comments have to do with the Dharma, with awakening. But awakening is about seeing things as they are. It is about seeing the views, beliefs and assumptions that are outside of awareness and yet influence our behavior. So it seems to me that it is important for us to notice when our emphasis on the social group or on individualism is out of balance otherwise we'll get caught sacrificing individual welfare or the common good for a perfectionistic ideal.
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1 comment:
This is agreat entry.
It makes me reflect back to Jared Diamond's book "Collapse", in which he talks about "the tragedy of the commons". This refers people's tendency to exploit shared natural resources, such as ocean fisheries, to the point of total exhaustion. The justification is the thought that "if I don't use all this up right now, someone else surely will." It's the psychology of desperation, and it's one of the dark places our valued rugged individualism takes us.
Both of Diamond's books, "Collapse" and "Guns, Germs and Steel" are very worthwhile.
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