Is compassion and conscience missing from Asian values?

[Guest guest]

Dear Family,

 

Below is an article on a growing trend - one that i personally

experienced in the past - is cause for concern. However, i feel that

South and West Asia should not have been painted with so broad a

brush.

 

Is it the West that leads the rest of the world in compassion and

conscience? Living in Canada for the past 15 years i have to

joyously declare a resounding YES!

 

Now, can we SYs spread this Collective Consciousness to the rest of

the world? Definitely!

 

jagbir

 

 

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" Before the economic crisis, Lee lectured the world about what he

called Asian values. At the center of these Asia values was the

appealing notion that Asians - except some very special ones named

Lee, for example - sacrificed individual aspirations for the greater

good of society. After drinking some of this Kool-Aid before I moved

to Hong Kong a decade ago, my discovery of real Asian values was a

great disappointment.

 

Rather than a heightened sense of responsibility to society at

large, I've noticed precisely the opposite. East Asians generally

show little consideration for people around them, whether it's

rampant spitting in Hong Kong, complete disregard for other vehicles

by motorists, bicyclists and even pedestrians in Bali, or simply the

unwillingness to help a bewildered visitor without a product or

service to sell him. Asians raise indifference - as opposed to

outright rudeness, as practiced in my native New York - to an art

form.

 

This bewildered visitor couldn't understand the contradiction

between Lee's Asian values and Asian behavior until an Indonesian

friend came to the rescue. Of course we sacrifice for the greater

good, she explained, but that greater good extends no farther than

our own clan. The closer the connection, the more we'll sacrifice,

so we'll do the most for our families, then perhaps our friends. But

without some personal connection, we couldn't care less.

 

That understanding of Asian values makes Asian behavior much

clearer. For example, it puts the Asian economic crisis of the late

1990s and the ineffectiveness of subsequent reforms into a sensible

perspective. Crony capitalism wasn't the result of some structural

or legal deficiency that can be fixed through restructuring or

stricter regulation, it was, and is, a natural consequence of the

government and its business supporters becoming a clan unto

themselves. Until governments stop playing a leading role in

national economies, the problems underlying the crisis will persist.

 

Asian values explain the widespread acceptance of Indonesia's

disgraced former president Suharto turning his children into

business tycoons, and why families loll down a crowded sidewalk as

if they own it. Most of all, Asian values explain why, even with a

population that he declared was prepared to sacrifice for the

greater good, Lee Kuan Yew fashioned Singapore into a restrictive

society that proscribes choices narrowly. "

 

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/FH10Ae02.html