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Where East Meets West
by Libby Zinman-Schwartz, Ed. D., Member, PPSEAWA NY
Recently returned from Vietnam where I studied traditional medicine and the healers of Southeast Asia, I have been wondering about the effects of Westernization on this small country (the size of California) of 75 million deeply religious followers of Buddhism, Ancestor Worship, Christianity, Taoism and Confucianism.
As Western, particularly American, values begin to seep into Asian cultures, changes are already being noted. In Taiwan and Hong Kong, for example, substance abuse and addictions among juveniles are increasing. Affluent families indulging their offspring with costly objects and permissive attitudes are producing troubled, anti-social youth. Already, pollution from industrialization is a serious problem in many developing countries which do not have the wealth to purchase and use anti-pollution mechanisms as they develop their infrastructures. A visitor to these countries can see people "dying" prematurely as they struggle to create a more comfortable material world for themselves: in Vietnam, women on the streets and in construction gangs wear six to seven layers of tightly wrapped gauze as face masks to protect their beauty and their health. Dirt and dust are everywhere, and grime erodes surfaces of buildings and the countryside, destroying the primal beauty of the terrain.
The nations of the globe are fast becoming industrialized to compete with each other for rapidly shrinking resources, wealth and power. What will happen when Asian countries, whose impoverished millions have lived together in a fragile harmony or respect, tolerance and endurance for thousands of years, gradually alter their traditional beliefs to accommodate the pleasures of Western materialism? If, as in Buddhism, ego-ness is viewed as a source of unhappiness, will egoism, a scourge of Western cultures, destroy the delicate balance of Eastern societies?
Again, the answer seems to lie in "balance" the universal Asian response to life. If Asia, and other developing continents, can maintain the value systems that have sustained them for thousands of years, while absorbing the benefits of increased productivity, billions in abject poverty may find their new lives easier. Hopefully, without losing their survival system - one traditionally dependent upon the familiar and communal bonds of human affection, obligation and mutual respect.
American politicians and media kings have added the term "family values" to the Western lexicon, but having visited countries in Asia, the former Soviet Union, Africa, Latin America and even Western Europe, where familial values still cushion the exigencies of life, I find it difficult to believe that Americans can even agree on a common definition of this phrase. In the United States, where divorce claims fifty percent of marriages, people struggle to maintain nuclear and extended families - if they are lucky to have them. Even more difficult to manage are single-parent and blended families which frequently produce a disproportionate number of youthful criminals and addicts. In Southeast Asia, I am told, divorce, as we know it, does not even exist.
On the other hand, in Asian, African, and Latin American countries, a family means "extended family" and includes all of the relatives and much of the community as well, perhaps because these have been traditionally the poorer "underdeveloped" countries of the globe, whose most precious natural resource is people. Poorer, perhaps, but never underdeveloped in their understanding of the significance of family and community as the foundation of a society's survival. Moreover, Asians, Africans and Latinos have learned how to establish attitudes, values, and behaviors that sustain their extended families and communal societies. Nuclear families are hardly viable in these tough terrains: one lives in a dangerous world if the community, as well as a family's relatives, are not on their side. Kindness, tolerance, respect; the understanding that anger, jealousy and envy must be restrained to create peace and harmony: all contribute to maintaining coherence in the extended family.
In a global society rapidly becoming a small village, if the East and the West can share the best of their social systems, healing concepts and modalities, then I suspect that the West, particularly the United States, will eventually assimilate some of Asian traditional wisdom to construct more meaningful frameworks for living and reshaping tattered families and communities. Selected Asian healing practices, such as acupuncture, herbal medicine, meditation and massage, are already popular in the United States and continue to provide relief from the stresses of competition and escalating technology.
In a global society where East meets West, the American middle class, whose material wealth is declining for the first time in history, may begin to see relationships as more precious than things; and as more Americans travel for business and pleasure, they may look to the East for enlightenment in other ways. For example, Asian families adore their children and spend considerable time with them. Their offspring are well mannered, polite and respectful, especially to the elderly, whom they are taught to revere for their wisdom. Moreover, when their families can afford to send them to school, Asian children are serious and frequently excellent students. Can most Americans say the same of their children?
Best of all, as more information flows between East and West, Americans may learn that they can't have everything they want, now. Patience, silence and learning from observation are Eastern behaviors, rooted in years of social learning. Letting the other person speak first and respecting other points of view with grace are Asian characteristics, which can enhance the lives of Americans and encourage them to listen to "the sound of one hand clapping."
In Asia, on the other hand, particularly in Southeast Asia, Western psychotherapy, when it becomes accepted and affordable, may be able to help persons for whom repression as a social survival mechanism does not always work and who are riddled with anger, anxiety and guilt. Communication skills, which have become part of the lexicon of psychotherapy, may provide relief for individuals whose repressive defenses have advanced to the level of reaction conversion and dissociation. Once accepted, psychotherapy may enable patients, tormented with inexpressible anger, to find alternative ways to release their frustration constructively, safely. Finally, Asians already work hard, but assimilation of American optimism and self-initiative may eventually bring more creature comforts to millions who have suffered long without them.
If such exchanges can occur in the global village of the future, I believe both East and West can benefit significantly. In the process ,however, belief systems and familiar ways of doing and acting will have to prove flexible. Change will come, not often with ease and comfort, but, always, out of necessity.