Apparently We’re Romanticizing Collectivism

Will you pick me up from the airport, or are you deeply and sickeningly wrong?

“Remember: The rules, like streets, can only take you to known places. Underneath the grid is a field—it was always there—where to be lost is never wrong, but simply more. As a rule, be more.” - Ocean Vuong, On Earth, We’re Briefly Gorgeous 

There was recent commotion in the town square (Twitter) some days ago. Someone decided to publicize their opinion that asking a friend to pick you up from the airport is a friendship faux pas, along with a screenshot showing that their friend agreed with that etiquette rule. Then came something so obvious and predictable that I don’t even have to say it. Discourse. Less than 200 RTs and over 9k Quote RTs. Scary. People sharing their own mostly dissenting opinions in various formats. My favorite type of opinion always comes up in times like this: people of color making general eulogy of eastern collectivism, usually alongside light mockery of white people’s nonexistent sense of community.   

Before going further, so that you don’t get confused or defensive I guess, I’ll state for the jury in plain English that I don’t personally agree that picking a friend up from the airport is an issue, at least not such a strong one. If you need help moving apartments, I can probably help you move. If you need to be picked up from the airport, well I don’t drive, but we can probably figure out a solution together. If we’re close friends, you can probably sleep in my apartment. Whatever. 

When these moments happen (let’s call them Airport, Moving, The Cut’s New Rules), they often land into the group chat to be discussed by the Board (your friends) because that’s what those moments are designed to do. The only reasonable moral of the story here is realizing that if you and your friends agree amongst each other that airport pickups are off the table or on the table or whatever, then there’s really no need to take it online, and if you do, you probably deserve whatever people say lol. God forbid the Internet makes harmless fun of you sometimes.

Okay back to the discourse. It kind of makes me laugh to see the takes from diaspora kids about how individualism equals bad/selfishness/white supremacy, and collectivism equals good/community/going to heaven. And in all fairness, it’s an easy trick to fall for, so I understand. (I mean, if you choose right, we’ll pick you up from the airport.) Back in the 2010’s, individualism was all the rage because the general idea was that capitalism and girlbossing and being our unique special selves was the answer to salvation, and a decade later, it’s almost a trite idea at this point to say that it’s not. 

We all know individualism is bad for us, bad for our health, bad for our lives, and now that we’re awake, we’re seeing it everywhere. But praising collectivism is the worst way to take down individualism. It’s a self-defeating argument. An individualist culture values the self, making personal achievement number one and personal relationships number two. As a result, there is anxiety. There is violence. There is necessarily a population left behind to fall through the cracks of society. But those things are true in collectivist societies too. Instead of individualism’s societal pressure to achieve, there is collectivism’s societal pressure to be eternally inoffensive, and choosing one edge of a sword over another will still leave you cut. 

Asian Americans will commonly talk about the way filial duty has left them burned and traumatized, whether it be pressure to marry or pressure to provide or pressure to be exactly who your elders request you be. So I don’t need to go on about how there’s no room for differences, no room to adopt a belief system that veers away from your community’s belief system. The people who are able to talk about their homeland experiences and the beauty of collectivism are not the ones who come from families disenfranchised by greed, religion, and status quo. If the goal is to create better communities, we’re never gonna get there by romanticizing our experiences with culture and painting false images of the places we come from. 

Critical thinking is an exercise in imagination. When you’re building your own community, one better than the one that failed you, what secret rules did you make without noticing? Consider that there’s an option outside of this dichotomy. Go somewhere new. Ideologies are treated like rules. Don’t fall for it. Treat them like playgrounds. If you must, take Ocean Vuong’s rule: be more

.