Individualism

I decided to write this post now because I’m currently sitting at work with nothing I need to do (it’s summer vacation) and can’t take leave because I need to wait until this afternoon to do some administrative thing. Although teaching classes can be exhausting, sitting at the computer with nothing to do all day is much worse and I end up leaving work with a headache – at least this gives me something fun to do.

Anyway, the topic I’d like to address in this post is individualism and collectivism, but I would like to note that these are not binary ways of thinking or being, and could be thought of as points on a spectrum, with some people existing at the extreme ends and some located more in the middle. This is not really something I spent much time thinking about in the past because I was constantly surrounded by people who have a similar way of thinking about things in the US. However, after moving to Taiwan I often experience friction between my natural way of seeing things and the way people here seem to see things, resulting in spending a lot of time thinking about the source of this friction.

At the most basic level, the main difference between individualistic and collectivistic cultures and ways of thinking is what each one prioritizes: the individual or the group. Of course, this is an oversimplification and things become much more complicated when looking at various facets of life under each ideology. However, I am neither qualified nor motivated to explain all of the ways these differences can manifest when they can be easily found elsewhere: Collectivist Cultures, Individualistic Cultures, Collectivism vs Individualism.

One of the most glaring differences between people back home and people I have met here so far is related to our ways of expressing ourselves. My friends back home are often willing and eager to share their interests with me, discuss various (sometimes controversial) topics, or help me analyze some kind of problems in our lives. I feel that people generally have a desire to make themselves known, whether that be through sharing opinions, thoughts, or interests with other people. On the other hand, I have found the opposite to be true here. I’m not sure if people are shy because I’m a foreigner, or if they are generally not willing to share with others, but my overall experience is that it’s very hard to get anyone to share anything personal, or even share any kind of insight or opinion in a discussion.

I often ask people what kind of interests they have or what they like to do in their free time, searching for some kind of commonality to talk about, but the normal response is that they just go home after work and watch TV, scroll social media, or sleep, and on weekends maybe just go to a restaurant with friends or rest. I am still confused as to whether these people are just private and unwilling to share their real interests with me, or if they do, in fact, have very few interests. Either way, having no interests (or being unwilling to share them) leaves little to talk about besides mundane everyday life things when getting to know someone.

I am able to tolerate small talk and chit-chat in moderation, and when first meeting people it’s necessary to start with this kind of basic conversation, but if it never progresses beyond that, I will feel painfully bored and avoid interaction with that person. Unfortunately, I find that the majority of my interactions with people here never progress beyond that, regardless of the length of time we have known each other. I often try to share my ideas or bring up some topics I’m interested in, but the responses I get in return often display a lack of criticality or unwillingness to actually think about the topic at hand.

It is worth noting that most of my friends in the US are those that I met in the army or in graduate school, so this perceived difference is likely affected by the inherent difference between people in any general society versus those within that society who join the military or attend graduate school.

While there are many other points of friction I’ve encountered here, the things I mentioned above are the ones that cause me the most discomfort because they essentially make it impossible for me to feel any sense of closeness to most people. Regardless of the amount of time I spend around people or how nice we are to each other, I will never particularly feel close to someone unless we have something in common to talk about or do together, or if we can have intellectually stimulating conversation.

This reminds me of one of my best friends, Jayson, who is an Assistant Professor in Hawaii. Although he and I come from different cultural backgrounds and had wildly different life experiences, the thing that originally led us to spend time together was that we both enjoy outdoor activities. Having that common interest made it easy to find activities to do together (hiking, going to the beach, etc.), and eventually we discovered we had many other things in common, such as an enjoyment of in-depth discussions (or heated debates as others who observed us would describe them) and an interest in language learning, among other things. He is actually also the reason I ended up applying for grad school in Hawaii. I had already planned to go to pursue a master’s degree, but wasn’t sure when or where. Jayson encouraged me to apply at University of Hawaii since we were both in the Language/Linguistics field and UH Manoa has one of the top Applied Linguistics departments. Our friendship started with a common interest and interesting conversation, gradually lead to us spending a lot of time together, and eventually to me thinking of him as one of my closest friends.

The reason I share this example is because it shows, in my mind, what is a natural progression of a friendship – start out with a good conversational dynamic and some kind of common interest that gives me something to do with a person, and gradually get to know them more deeply after that. Maybe I don’t understand how people think about friendships here or maybe there are different cultural expectations for how people become friends, but it’s usually difficult for me to maintain interest long enough to try to find out.

My hypothesis is that my difficulty in this regard is related to the general ideal in the US that people should be independent and unique in some way. I enjoy being what I perceive to be my own unique person and am not likely to do things that I don’t really want to do just because it’s popular or normal. I feel very strongly that people should think critically about their lives and determine their own direction, put in effort to achieve their goals (whatever they may be), pursue and cultivate their interests, and not seek a life of excessive comfort and ease. Due to this, I tend to view people in a negative light if they are not actively pursuing their personal growth or hobbies and interests. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with that, just that it is at odds with my own individual, enculturated ideals.

Thinking about people from an individualistic mindset, we often define others based on what someone’s personality is like, what their interests are, and what specific traits they have as an individual, not so much what groups they belong to or who they are related to. I don’t often think too much about who I am in relation to others because I tend to view relationships with others as possibly temporary, while my relationship with myself is the only one that I can be certain will last until I die, so those relationships can’t really be said to define me.

This raises another issue that I find interesting – the idea of self, which I briefly mentioned in my previous post (Thinking) when describing my experience being plagued with meaningless thoughts while trying to fall asleep. All of what I wrote above is based on my individual perception of things as I see them, which is all contextually and culturally dependent. I am the way I am and think the way I think for whatever reason, and will naturally look at things from that specific angle. When looking at anything from any angle, there will naturally be blind spots, but it is not possible to view anything from every angle. We all think differently, perceive things differently, and react differently. The result is that the world feels very different for different people, and it’s important to remember one’s own ignorance.

In the above paragraph I wrote, “I am the way I am.” I find this to be a problematic way of looking at things because it suggests that “I” exists and am in some way a concrete and unchangeable thing inside of my body/mind somewhere.

Western philosophy tends to describe people as having some sort of fixed and constant “self,” like you exist separately and are the one who is in charge of everything inside yourself. In contrast, Eastern philosophies such as Buddhism view the self as an illusion created by our thought processes. I read somewhere recently that modern neuroscience research has been finding more and more support for the Buddhist view of self, describing much of how we process information to be through the creation of narratives, which we then start to relate to. This is basically “the story” I talked about in Thinking.

While I am able to grasp the idea of the self being an illusory mental construct, I find that because of my background and habituated ways of thinking, it is easy to get caught up in all the bullshit that comes along with conflating “the story” with “myself.” Of course everyone has their tendencies, habits, personality, likes, dislikes, etc. It’s impossible to not have these and I don’t think this is problematic. It becomes problematic when we connect our concept of self and self-worth to these largely arbitrary personal differences. This causes us to stop being able to relate to others, close ourselves to new ideas, and get “triggered” by all kinds of things.

An example of this would be what I wrote above about all my ideals. I developed these ideals in some way or another, and while there is nothing wrong with having ideals, I think I have started to relate too strongly to to them and ultimately used them to close myself off from certain things and people in life.

Ironically, the next step in my process of personal growth may be letting go of my obsession with growth.