One of the hardest things about being an immigrant is I don’t know what to do with ‘rugged individualism’.

One of the hardest things about being an immigrant is I don’t know what to do with ‘rugged individualism’.

I am considered one of the most ‘westernized’ and ‘independent’ people in the society I come from (people think it’s too much.. moving to a whole other country? Too independent) but

Even I really struggle with some of the daily manifestations of hyper individualism that surrounds me.

A friend had just visited a developed Asian country and wondered why it wasn’t full of homeless people. I said well it’s probably that East Asian homelessness looks different, but there’s probably an element of.. you don’t want to be the person who people say let your second cousin die and starve on the streets. The social shame, I tried to explain. Also, if it’s a warm or religious place, they have food.

I felt it was very similar to what I saw my parents grasping with when they visited me. On BART, kids were making loud sounds. My parents glared at them. Nothing happened. They were confused. I had to explain to them that.. there is just no social shame. Glaring at them doesn’t mean anything, they just think you’re weirdos. It isn’t anyone’s business that they’re making loud sounds.

So while I think there are pros to some community consciousness, I also think the people who want to sell a vision of ‘collectivist societies are better’ are also failing to account for the patriarchal bs that comes with it. We take care of our elderly because we are shamed by it, but it is largely the mothers and grandmothers doing the work.

But what I’ll never, ever get used to is this: the idea that in some places, poor people, sick people, elderly people, deserve to be cast aside and deserve no help. That’s a level of cruelty I do not wish to understand.

I’m very thankful that I like and adore my parents, because I know it is my ‘duty’ to return and provide elder care in a decade or so. There is just no other way around it.

At the same time, I also feel for my friends, who feel the similar call of ‘duty’, except far more heavily and unhappily, because their parents were awful to them.