Dear America,
Like most people, I have been doing some seasonal shopping over the past two weeks or so, and I had occasion to go into Walmart, which I avoid assiduously most times. The stores seem so understaffed, and the people who work there always seem unhappy, but on that occasion I was looking for something that I had been told only they had. I was in the store for approximately fifteen minutes, and during the entire time, a child was screaming...not a series of children, but one particular child. I never heard a remonstration with an adult to the effect that the child should cease and desist, nor was there ever an abatement of his or her top-of-the-lungs screeching. It was an unmistakable temper tantrum replete with the variegations of tone and volume that go with such things, but again, there was never a sign of an adult intervening. I thought to find the child and intervene myself, but of course, I was acutely aware that it was not my prerogative, thought the headache I was getting did seem to make it my business. Still, I hurried to finish my unsuccessful quest for that thing that Walmart purportedly, but not in fact, sold and I got out of there as quickly as I could. It will be a long time before I go into Walmart again.
Coincidently, a few days later while reading the paper, I came across an article that was capped by a half-page photo of a woman standing erect with her hands together, arms hanging at full length holding her purse in front of her, with her head bowed in obvious deference to something. Next to her, and slightly behind her, was a smaller--the woman looked to be probably six feet tall given the surrounding people and things--dignified man standing solemnly in his dark suit with his head unbowed but with a grave expression on his face...the kind we in The West associate with a loss of face in eastern cultures. The picture depicted the CEO of Korean Airlines, part of a family-run conglomerate of apparently considerable size, with his daughter, by then only a former executive at the airline since he had stripped her of her title and station within the company. She had thrown a tantrum just before the takeoff of her recent flight on the airline she helped run over the fact that the macadamia nuts she had been served came in the bag rather than being poured out onto a plate...forcing the plane back to the gate so she could discharge the head steward on the spot. The article went on to explain that the father had felt that his daughter's arrogance and self-importance was a disgrace, and as a consequence, not only did he require his daughter to stand there with him while he did it, he was compelled to apologize deeply and profoundly to the government of South Korea for his child's transgression, but to plead to take the blame himself because, he said, "I failed to raise my child properly." He did this on national television, that's how seriously he took the matter of his child's abuse of an employee and blatant demand for recognition of her privileged status, though there is more to the incident in that there has been public opprobrium for the proprietary family lately for reasons similar to those prevailing in this country. The conglomerate is apparently blamed for some of the income inequality and disparities of wealth between working people and the plutocracy that now prevail in Korea. Still, the public mortification and supplication of two powerful people, one a parent and the other his child, demonstrate a kind of investment in child rearing that is emblematic of eastern culture, and the absence of which is emblematic of parenting here in The West.
Thus, while at first blush the incident in Walmart and that in Korea might have seemed unrelated when I first brought them up, it seems to me that they point to failings in both cultures. Here, we allow our children to run roughshod not only over us, but over everyone else as well, and we do nothing to prevent it or to deal with it when it happens. It seems to be a kind of privilege that is asserted in our culture based on the lack of any feeling of collectivism and mutual responsibility. Even in my family of origin there is among some of my siblings and their spouses the belief that if their children want something they should have it without reservation. And the notion that a child should be disciplined for creating a scene over being denied is thus completely foreign to them. On the other hand, the strict constraints that parents apparently impose on their children in The East--and I admit that I have drawn the conclusion that strict constraint is a wide-spread cultural phenomenon in the orient based only on assumptions I derived from the airline executives' story and from my limited experience with my children's oriental friends when they were in school--may yield a different kind of solipsistic conceit, that is no less solipsistic and conceited. And both reveal a great deal about the cultures in which they occur.
We live in a country in which Hiltons and Kardashians get television shows of their own--oxymoronically called "reality tv"--simply because they are famous, and in spite of the fact that being famous is all they are famous for. Our children all have cell phones and they have the audacity not only to indulge themselves on them while we are trying to talk to them, but to ignore us when we try to contact them by call or text. We and our children take all of our creature comfort for granted and thus consider it more or less an entitlement while some children in this country go to bed hungry and wear nothing but clothes they are given by those who have more than they need and who give them not out of genuine compassion but rather for the tax break they represent and because they can then pat themselves on the back and profit at the same time. There are terrible things happening in the world, so to some extent concerning myself with parenting skills and the impact they have had on our society seems a trivialization of our problems. But at the same time, I feel compelled to observe that much of the trouble I am referring to is a function of that solipsism and conceit that these two anecdotes denote. Adam Lanza was an indulged, albeit pathologically impaired, child. The Taliban and ISIL have allowed themselves to think that they have the right to impose their beliefs on everyone else without reservation, demonstrating that same kind of self-absorption and callousness to the wants and needs of others that Lanza and all the others who kill because they feel abused demonstrate. The plutocratic class in this country is never sated by the excesses of wealth in which it indulges, and as a consequence begrudges the working people who have helped them get and stay rich as much as a reasonable minimum wage and universal health care.
The way I see it is that all these things are connected in a way that I used to characterize to my children as a deficiency of evolution at his time in human history that keeps us from being all that we should be, and I made sure they didn't think that I excused myself for my own selfish tendencies by pointing that out. We have to do more to make ourselves aware of the roles we play in each other's lives if we are to become what we sometimes claim to be both as a nation and as individuals. Going to church isn't enough. We have to mean it when we pray, and we have to think about what is happening around us when we are not praying.
Your friend,
Mike
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