Embracing Chaos

Hoefstede identified several axes on which cultures differ.  One of them relates to whether people in a culture tend to think more about rights or responsibilities.  In the US we talk a lot about people’s rights, and relatively little about people’s responsibilities.  Civil rights.  Bill of rights.  Right to life.  etc. Europeans tend to swing towards the other side of that spectrum.  For example, a sense of responsibility for impact on future generations tends to leads to valuing environmental issues more greatly.

The communist party line in China is also very concerned with responsibilities, but in a somewhat different way.  When a Chinese person gets put in jail for speaking out against the government, Americans cry human rights abuses.  The Chinese might respond by saying that the stability of the government is more important for the entire population than the welfare of any individual.  The jailed person was not fulfilling their responsibility to the rest of the population.  A little twisted, a little tautological, but an interesting perspective nonetheless.

Individuals also vary along this same spectrum.  Some people are much more duty-driven than others.  I’m thinking of Frederick, the "slave of duty" in The Pirates of Penzance, probably because of the fabulous performance I just saw.  But I digress.  Other people have very little regard for how their actions affect others, and are consumed with themselves.

Over the decades, I have swung back and forth on this spectrum without realizing it.  Now that I understand what’s going on a bit more, I am consciously choosing to think about the world more in terms of responsibilities — my responsibilities to my friends, my family, my community and to the world at large.  I also have a responsibility to myself, but I try to consider it in balance with the other responsibilities I have.

This is not to say that I support human rights abuses in China.  But I do think that American collective psychology is fairly conceited, and greedy in a short-sited kind of way.    I should really gather all that paperwork together and turn in my application for an EU passport.  Not that I think I could ever really escape from my fabulous community here in Seattle, but it never hurts to have options.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 15th, 2006 at 11:36 AM and is filed under Personal Growth, Societal Values. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.