To be or not to be
Source: Google photo
Synopsis: This blog is about the immigrants who move to other countries where they become citizens, so they face the conundrum to be or not to be a Roman in Rome. The blog also shows how immigrants change to assimilate into their new country, job and the society where they live and gladly throw away all the good values of their parents' country. One thing that changes them quickly is the arrogance of money especially if they came from a poor country. This blog also elaborates the concept of showing respect to elders.
Many years ago, I saw a television ad that showed a young man wrapping his arm around the shoulder of a white-haired old man and urging him to drink whiskey. The young man was smiling while promoting the brand of whiskey for which he no doubt received a fat fee but the whole concept of the ad bothered me because it showed that the young man showed no respect to the old man and treated him like an equal. The old man could be his grandfather or someone who was as old as his grandfather.
I grew up in a culture where such an act could never be tolerated by anyone because we never took our father or grandfather as an equal. Such behavior is considered a show of disrespect toward an older person and such ad in the television would never be permitted because it goes against the culture of our country. It is disrespectful if you smoke in front of someone older than you like your parents let alone offering him whiskey.
But I have seen that a mother wants her children to call her by her first name and not as Ma or Mom while her husband protests because he grew up calling his parents Mom and Dad and never by their first name, so he admonished the child. But his wife said that it was OK, so her son never called her mom. The father could do nothing.
I have met people in many countries where they ask you to call them by their first name as soon as we meet and shake hand for the first time that surprised me. I could never call a judge or a professor by their first name even if they asked me to. They have studied and worked hard to get to be a judge or a senior professor in a prestigious university, so it is proper to address them as Sir or Dr. Smith to show proper respect.
I have also heard that in the Western culture, respect is not given to elders automatically because they have to earn it. So, tell me how does a senior judge or a professor earn it? My classmates in California called our esteemed professor Ray without an iota of hesitation while I was shocked at such behavior from a young student who had not even finished college.
We can chalk it up to cultural differences between countries but the issue of showing respect to elders remains an issue that are not taken seriously in the Western culture while it remains the backbone of our ancient culture that dates back several thousands of years. The new immigrants start following the locals and lose their own values in the process like that young man who wraps his arm around the shoulder of an old man and offers him whiskey in the TV ad. Read my blog called A pernicious influence that relates to this subject.
Some people even ask why you are called Doctor when you are not a medical doctor? To them only medical doctors should be addressed as doctor and not anyone else. These are uneducated people who do not even know that a Ph.D. degree holder also deserves to be called Doctor because he is highly educated and has passed many tough exams before he is honored with the Title Doctor.
I may be culturally biased in favor of showing respect to elders so I believe that people should show respect to their elders and to those who deserve it. Why only in a court room, one has to say Your honor and not anywhere else? We touch the feet of our parents or other elders to show respect because it means that the dust on their feet is worth putting on our head that is the prime part of our body to show ultimate respect. But this concept is very Indian and becomes a part of our DNA. Others do not understand this part of Indian culture so they may make fun of it instead of trying to understand the deep meaning of respect shown to elders this way.
We never call our brothers and sisters who may be just a few years older than us by their first name, so we address them as Dada meaning elder brother or Didi meaning elder sister. Others may be called uncle or aunty although they may not be our relatives. How we address them shows our respect for them, but this concept of respect is unknown in the West, so they laugh when an Indian graduating student touches the feet of the Dean after receiving his diploma in an American University to show his respect.
There are many cultural faux pas prevalent in the Western culture I could mention but I will give just an example here. When you visit someone in his office in America, he puts his legs on the desk to receive his visitor while you wonder if you should sit down or keep standing while the fellow ignores you and keeps chatting on his cell phone. This sort of behavior is common and reeks of inflated ego and artificial sense of self-importance without knowing anything about the visitor. He shows contempt if the visitor is not dressed in signature clothes, so he starts to feel superior and arrogant.
When immigrants from Asia become citizens of the country, get jobs with good salary, they too start to behave like other arrogant people and put up their feet on their desk because they want to imitate this sort of insensitive behavior to feel that they belong here and are well on their way to assimilate. Their children who are born there try to imitate their schoolmates and pick up many bad habits from them because their parents fail to teach them good Asian values. We taught our children how to count up to 20 using their fingers while the American children can only count up to 10 so their teacher laughed at our children because it was not the American way. This pressure to follow the local culture and traditions is relentless so people just accept it and get on with their life, but they lose something precious of their own in the process that is called good manners and right conduct.
I understand that all immigrants try hard to assimilate into their new neighborhood, their school, their workplace and elsewhere to feel a part of the American culture so they absorb all the negative aspect of their society while forgetting their ancient culture, their values and their heritage because they try to be the Romans in Rome. Others are confused and cannot decide to be or not to be in order to preserve a part of the culture they come from. It does not take a long time to change into their new persona because they try hard to imitate others.
Children depend on their parents to teach them values that they have brought from their former country. When the parents fail to raise their children with proper values and good manners, they start to believe that they and their children must adapt as best as they can and as fast as they can so that no one can look at them as different because of their skin color and their accent. Children can be brutal to such kids of new immigrants starting in grade school and even in high school, so kids start to imitate them starting with the accent.
They watch a great deal of TV where they pick up the accent through imitation. They are not told anything about their parent's country because the parents do not want them to know so that their kids can assimilate easily and faster. No one wants to be lonely just because they fail to assimilate in their new society where they have to live.
In countries where the immigrants want to keep their culture, religion and language alive, they do not assimilate even after several generations of living in their adapted country, that creates tremendous problems like in France and many European countries that gave them education, job and even housing. Religion and their own culture they brought with them prevents them to fully assimilate so they feel lonely and become hard core fundamentalists. They have the same conundrum -to be or not to be - so they prefer to keep their identity separate from the rest and insist upon it that has led to violence in the streets of England, France and other countries recently.
I know that all cultures have some unpleasant characteristics. It may be how they talk to someone while chewing kat or Paan like in India where such behavior is common but repugnant just the same. Women may scan you with their eyes from head to toe to form an opinion of you silently. They notice everything. They notice your jewelry, your clothes and even the shoes to come to a positive or negative conclusion about you that may be wrong.
They rarely say thank you when you help them in some way. They will bluntly ask you how much your suitcase costs and where you bought it. Some will insist on knowing how much you earn and will not leave you alone until they get the answer. If you give them a gift, they want to know how much it costs. If they know that it is costly then they are impressed otherwise they will snigger. These are all the negative side of their culture that people in other countries do not appreciate.
Another thing the new immigrants have to put up with in their new country is the food. They may not be able to find their native food they are used to so they have to adapt to the food most people eat like junk food that are unhealthy and can cause serious medical issues later. Eating out in fancy restaurants serving your native food can be very expensive so most people cook at home or go for cheaper fast food. Again, they face the dilemma what to eat and what not to eat. More importantly what to offer your guests if you invite them. One fellow tried to impress me with his tasteless African food that I could not swallow so these are some of the issues you will face if you choose to live in a different country as immigrant.
One American said that beef stakes are good so why the Indians do not eat beef or pork? She was ignorant of India and its food habits, so I tried to educate her by saying that food is what people eat. What they do not eat is not food to them. How can anyone educate a dumb woman?
I know that reading this blog may rub some people the wrong way because they like their culture and defend it even if some aspects of it cannot be defended. They do not like to learn from superior cultures that have great values where children are taught good manners and right conduct so that they can grow up as decent human beings.
One can assimilate or try to in a new country to a great extent and still retain some of the good values that the next generation learns. So, the choice of to be or not to be a Roman in Rome is yours. Mindless imitation of other cultures may not be a perfect solution if it forces you to lose your own identity in a foreign country that is a shame.
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