The age-old comparison of individualistic Western culture and collectivist Eastern culture is something that I have been interested in for years and find myself thinking about a lot of the time. Ever since I was in my early teens, the whole collectivist paradigm seemed so interesting to me because of how different it was from my own culture. I guess a lot of that interest was sparked when I started watching anime, which is full of depictions and exaggerations of Japanese culture and tropes. The fact that most of the video games I play are produced in Japan and contain references to Japanese culture probably contributed to that too. But I suppose that fascination would be with Japanese culture rather than collectivist culture. In any case, it's interesting to look at how it differs from our own individualistic culture. On the surface, collectivist culture appears to be vastly superior than individualist culture when considering the contribution to the human species as a whole. I mean, for the good of the collective society rather than the individual makes sense when you consider that humans are a social species that depend on one another and the group for survival. Emphasize the group and we're bound to be happy and feel safe, right? But I can't help but think differently when I really try to analyze it, probably because of the biases Western culture imposed on me. Ironic, considering I tend to think of myself as outside of mainstream culture. I guess I'm outside mainstream Western culture, but still within some of the Western subcultures.
Putting so much emphasis on the collective and putting so little on the individual has the potential to be fraught with problems. When you're told from an early age that your own achievements and even your problems don't really matter and that you need to concentrate your efforts entirely on the good of the collective, you're bound to start feeling pretty crappy about yourself, aren't you? Of course, approaching this debate from a Western mindset may cause my opinions to be completely invalid. How can I really know what people in other cultures are thinking and feeling? Maybe I only think that Eastern people would feel negatively about themselves because that's how I would feel if I were in their position... But I was raised using Western cultural practices and beliefs. If you were raised using the collectivist ideology, wouldn't you be unaware or dismissive of individual importance? The whole idea of culture is so subjective and variable that it's so difficult to properly discuss and debate. Even the basic human idea of empathy is clouded and put in a grey area. But I suppose every realm of human thought is technically grey area; we only prefer to think of things in black and white because it's easier to conceive and requires less effort to process. Which is why culture is so difficult to really talk about at the level it should be. Sort of a vicious circle, I guess.
However, I do know that Japan has relatively poor mental health care, as is the focal point of the documentary Seishin (which translates to "Mental" in English). That particular documentary is known for breaking a major social taboo in Japan by discussing mental health of the individual. As I previously mentioned, individual problems are labeled as unimportant in collectivist societies, apparently to the point of being taboo topic of discussion. Japan is also known for having a very high suicide rate, among the highest in the world. Is it then really so far-fetched to think that perhaps people in Eastern cultures are feeling bad about their individual selves, despite never having been raised using Western ideas of individualism and that each person is special and unique? Maybe the whole thing is like a bad mixture of individualistic and collectivist ideas. Japan has been increasingly exposed to Western culture ever since the Meiji Restoration in the mid 1800's, when the Tokugawa Shogunate was overthrown, the democratic Meiji government took over, and Japan opened its borders to the outside world once again. Perhaps what is going on is that while families are traditionally structured around a collectivist mindset, the distinct Western flavour within Japanese society has people wanting more for themselves. They know that individuals are treated "better" in Western cultures but are forced to ignore themselves in favour of the collective. But again, who are we to pick apart their culture when we were raised completely differently ourselves?
I'd like to think that I was raised with Western philosophies with a hint of collectivism in mind. By hint, I mean family-oriented. I was raised to believe that the most important thing in the world was family and that family should be there for each other no matter what. That's something you tend see less and less of these days. People move away from home, often far away, get jobs, start their own families, and rarely stay connected with those back where they came from. People shove their parents in retirement homes instead of caring for them themselves, siblings lose touch for years at a time, and so on. It almost makes me shutter with disgust. I make a point to spend lots of time with my family. When I'm at home, I spend nearly every evening in the living room with Mom and Dad and when I'm away from home, I cal them every night and talk for about 30 minutes to an hour, sometimes longer. There's nothing I don't tell them and they tell me that I can talk to them about anything. I talk to my brothers whenever I can and always ask my parents how they're doing. Even recently, I can remember Dad getting us all together and telling us that nothing is more important than family and that we need to be there for each other no matter what. My parents never had the most supportive families themselves, so I guess they're trying to make sure that never happens with us. So I guess it's an individualistic collectivism, in a sense. The best way to ensure the proper functioning of the group is to take care of the individual. And that's the opinion I have of collectivist culture. As biased as it sounds, it really appears to me to be the best way of running things. If all the individuals are happy, the society as a whole will be happy. Seems like common sense. But I suppose there's a reason why collectivist academic test scores are significantly higher than individualistic test scores. Maybe our focus on the individual doesn't pressure us enough to succeed and that we seem to be comparatively lazy. But hey, it's just a theory.
