I think just like God gave different personalities and different gifts and traits to different people, He also seems to have given different "characters" or traits in common to the individual races. It's an interesting question... which came first? The cultures? Or the unique characteristics of the people?
In my pursuit of writing well, I was made to consider this question in writing fiction about fictitious worlds. How can a writer avoid simply assigning random traits to a fictitious people? Then I thought, "Well, why is it that the different races of real life, or the different countries have the cultures they do?" On a smaller scale, you might as well ask why a person behaves as they do. It is, of course, a combination of their personality and their circuмstances... on the first place, WHO they are, and on the second place where they are (environment) and what has happened in their lives.
So it also seems to me that the various cultures are most probably products of the natural traits given to a race or people in common, both in their gifts and in their flaws, and then secondly, environment and their history. So I think all races have their gifts and things they are better at, and also their pet vices, so to speak... things that as a people they have fallen into, in part because of how they are.
The oriental people did not come from a predominantly Christian culture like the US. That's one important factor. And so think of the barbarian peoples of old, or other cultures without the True God... Of COURSE there are problems, and oddities and so forth, as superstitions and idolatry flourish, and also, subsequently, erroneous ideas about things like human nature and human life.
If you don't believe that we were made by a loving God, that we are called to virtue to gain heaven and so forth, then it may make sense to such a one that money determines a person's worth, or class or so forth. And also, if you know that even God is a loving Father, by Whom all paternity was founded, then your ideas about family will be different. Rather than just raw authority... sheer power, like a dictatorship... there enters in love, compassion, and tender care like a careful shepherd, or one who gives much care to plants to grow plants well so they will bear much fruit.
For the Christian soul, to look at God, God's will or God's perfections is to see the answer about perfection in practically EVERYTHING. So the absence of this knowledge can only produce a kind of blindness. Very few Catholics even, realize the truth about this. That if I want to know what is good, what is right, what is PERFECTION in any one thing, I have to look at God if I want to get the only perfect and true answer. We may take it for granted that we know what is meant by that, but most of us never look past the Ten Commandments in practice.
But cultures who were not begun in such knowledge, or who received it very late, are already deeply rooted in blindness, and in the misconceptions and bad ideas that blindness produced in those peoples.
Example. If I want to be a writer, and I have never studied the Catholic faith, I will go to the book store or library and read many bad books. I will read all of the ones on the best seller list, and study all of the (almost all bad) works of the best selling authors. I will probably buy into the idea that what is bad about those books is precisely what sells them, and that this is the ONLY way to write well, because for one without God, the measure of writing (as of many other things) will be ONLY how much it profits me. What do _I_ get out of it? How famous or rich will it make me? And so, if I were such a person, if someone asked me what is perfection in writing, or what makes writing perfect I would say simply, it's "whatever sells" ... whatever people are willing to buy, and most probably, that the bad things in most literature are what make it "good".
But if a Catholic wants to write well, they can't think of it like that. (Heaven have mercy if they do!) The Catholic ought to know, if I'm talking about creating something... then I need to look at the CREATOR if I want to find out, not somebody's OPINION as to what is good or right, or what it means to do perfect work. I need to look at God. He is perfect, and so He will automatically be the picture of perfection in everything. How did HE create? He is the Author of Life. If I mean to author illusions of life (fiction), I can't do it on a model or way that is contrary to what I see before me, when I look at God. It's not a matter of what I want, or what I like. It's a matter of looking at perfection and realizing what it is in this particular regard, and then acknowledging that as the one, true, irrevocable measure of what I myself do. This kind of way of looking at things is totally foreign to many cultures who became Christianized only late, if ever (in terms of ever having it take very much root in that given society).
This brings us back to the crisis in the Church, because without teachers to bring Christ and His spirit to these peoples in truth, they will never be able to truly live the faith. For many of them, it's a nice side dish, maybe even in addition to other religions. They like buddha, and maybe they'll think the Koran is pretty neat, and also that Our Lord is fine with them too. No sense whatsoever that one thing is real, and the others are not. What kind of culture will those minds breed, without the one, true Light? The kind of culture where someone makes a blasphemous comic book about Our Lord living in an apartment with buddha. To them, it simply does not matter. It's all just fluffy stories. Because they have never had it impressed upon them that reality is unbending, and all that matters, and that in that reality, there is only One God and Lord... and that they had better think again before disrespecting Him, or trying to replace Him.
If the exposure I've had to their culture can be trusted, then yes, to some extent I think you can say that they are very reserved, very private people when it comes to strangers, and when it comes to professional settings, and formal settings, and public and such. But I think they have been perhaps slower to loose the natural sense of what friendship really is. They don't, for instance, make something sɛҳuąƖ out of having genuine care and concern for another human being. Unlike here, where if you care about anyone, it's automatically assumed it's sɛҳuąƖ, and that you are just in denial of your sɛҳuąƖity. Which is as stupid as it is sick.
But this reservation we see in the Asian cultures, I suppose, is no different than we all were at one time. The US, for instance... Surely there was a time when men and women conducted themselves with great reserve in public, observed rigidly their manners with strangers and in formal and unfamiliar settings... According to one Victorian-age publication, I understand they certainly were not given to being open and emotional! A person had a circle of relatives and family friends, and only people could enter into it, who had recommendations of character from others in that circle or among their trusted friends. You couldn't just barge into a family by meeting them on the street. Reference of character seems to have been VERY important, or you simply did not associate with that person. (According to formal manners/rules of society, anyway.) Remember that there was a time when holding a woman's hand was second to proposing to her!
So I don't think that being reserved or private is necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I'd say it's something most cultures are loosing or have lost, that they shouldn't have! How much trouble is caused by people trusting the wrong people, making bad friends, and so forth? And should we REALLY be emotional and open and friendly with bosses, co-workers, customers, and total strangers?!
The Asian cultures also held onto respect for family longer than we did here in the US. It may be dying now, but they DID manage to keep it alive longer, and I think it still lives on in principal or spirit in a lot of young people who may not necessarily talk about it or give it much thought, but who may, when occasion arises, still give that respect.
In Korean television, you will see younger people addressing older people with respect, sometimes in terms of family titles... An old woman is "grandmother" and an old man "grandfather". And the "good" characters treat them as if they really were! In Japan, an older male could be called by the informal title for "big brother" or an older female "big sister", and older woman would be "aunt" and a really old woman "grandmother". In the US, they're more likely to be "dude", "chick" and "that old geezer".
But of course, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. And I think that precisely because of the extreme (and sometimes unnatural degree of) reservation and what not, the Asian cultures seem to also fall like anvils when it comes to the sins of the flesh. Not that Americans are pure as the driven snow, but I think you could probably find all new perversions never before seen by man if you go into certain circles in Asia. Those perversions are now rampant in their media, ESPECIALLY ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖity, transvestism and incest, which are increasingly in just about everything I have heard of coming out of Asia, and thus have become very popular perversions in the US among Asia-adoring teens, who prefer to talk about, write about, and draw and trade pictures of nothing else (but the perversions in those things). Who knew we'd see a day when a PERVERSION would become a cultural smash hit?
I think that the reservation we speak of among the Asians isn't a bad thing, if it's used correctly, any more than it was a bad thing in the victorian age, when there would be hell to pay if a girl even thought about misbehaving herself with a man (or the other way around, if he actually tried). I think we could all use a little more of that, frankly. But unfortunately, that aspect of Asian culture appears to be falling, and as people across Asia launch their full-scale revolution on ALL restraint, sins of the flesh, and especially perversions, are becoming hot topics and hot trends in Asia, and are then spreading to the US, which simply adores it. (In terms of pop culture, anyway.)
If you thought Hollywood was bad, you ain't seen nothin' yet! Asia is taking blasphemy and perversion to a whole new level... They're sharing with the U.S., too, and boy is it taking root!
Topic: Is yellow race really like this? (Read 1726 times)