Psychological Flexibility & Strength of Cultures

Came across this interesting report from the Flipboard the other day and have been thinking about it ever since. The original finding was that high psychological flexibility (roughly the opposite of a “My way or highway” mindset) could help maintain good relationships and make families happier. My thoughts went beyond mental flexibility and linked it with willpowers. “Psychological flexibility” then becomes a term for a low-key (moderate or non-dominant) attitude with a weak willpower toward changing others. From there I jump to the power comparison of cultures and ended up in one particular culture that I believe is the most powerful. Anyway, this blog takes several turns and is best seen as a gathering of several strings of thoughts. What I really want to say is to comment on the racial equality and international relations, although I ended up saying it more implicitly.

Willpowers Toward Oneself vs Others

Every human being possesses willpowers governing oneself (e.g., self discipline) and relationships with others. The two are related but not always in sync. I for example possess strong willpower toward myself (e.g., sticking to a fixed schedule of activities), but a much weaker one toward influencing others. There are exceptions, but in general I would not tell people how I do things in order to change them. I would much rather learn their ways, their preferences and their behavioral patterns. The only times I would reveal my preferences are when I sensed the person held similar preferences in the first place, and when I wrote blogs, which are for myself more than for anyone else.

Sharing Preferences Creates Social Goods

My case raises a question: Is it good to voice and share our preferences?

To begin with, most people have little trouble letting others know their preferences. But the key question is whether sharing private preferences is good for the society or not. I believe it is. Some collective “goods” will be created when people are voicing, sharing or even fighting for their preferences to prevail, especially when diverse ones exist. Doing so helps promote a cultural bond to tie members of the society together. We tend to have a stronger emotional bond with competitors than with strangers or bystanders.

Comparing Japanese with American Cultures

America is the best country when it comes to the number of well-meaning citizens willing to help others. To make the point clearer, look over at Japan and you probably will be shocked to find out that so many people committed suicide since the pandemic, way more than the deaths caused by the coronavirus itself.

One big reason is the so called “shame” culture that makes people feeling shameful from revealing problems in their lives. Of course, sometimes the thing happened to them, like being raped by a father (as reported by the aforementioned news), is indeed criminally shameful. But an average Japanese feels “shame” more frequent than an average American does. What they do instead to avoid shame? They hide their feelings and sufferings and never share with anyone else — until it becomes too much for each individual to bear in life.

To make things worse, Japanese believe it is a virtue not to cause troubles to others. Therefore, it is uncommon (I can only imagine it as I have never been to that country other than the airport) for an average Japanese to ask questions like “Is everything OK?” or “How can I help?” because that may strike others as intruding (or even rude?). Without asking questions, one can not know if anything went wrong with someone. Meanwhile, the shame culture prevents one from revealing troubles. The end result is a disconnected society.

Cultures Differ in Strength

We have been saying it for too long that there is no right or wrong culture, and we seem to forget that some cultures are stronger or more powerful than others. Cultural strength is determined by the game resources each culture possesses, including owned and shared resources like I have been saying all along. Stronger culture has a higher chance of survival and tends to influence others more than the other way around, voluntarily or coercively.

Consider blacks vs. Chinese in this country. Blacks have strong connections, while Chinese only have strong ties within family but not between families. There is little doubt that blacks are doing much better in terms of having their voices heard by the mainstream of the society.

Resources are distributed over different domains, so cultural strength is defined by categories of resources. African Americans — not people from or born in Africa — are the strongest group in self defense. They can mobilize big crowds the fastest to protest against mistreatments. They are also strong in sports and entertainment and contribute to the society in those fields. However, they do not excel in the overall strength, because they lack resources in other domains that other cultures possess.

Not Taking the Mainstream Culture for Granted

It is interesting that Asian Americans have been called the “Model minority,” but the real model group is the culture lived by European Americans, as this group possesses more owned and shared resources than anyone else. Being the majority however has a disadvantage of being taken for granted.

For example, I wonder how many people in China ever recognized — or cared about — that the traffic lights, the postage stamps, the banks, the stock markets, the limited liability firms and the schooling system were all imported from abroad, either Europe or the US. True, modern innovations arise from multiple sources or cultures, but the roles of the pioneers should not be denied. After all, going from 0 to 1 (i.e., genuine innovations) is much harder than going from 1 to 10 (i.e., duplications or perfection).

Perhaps when the majority becomes a minority one day, when the group size drops down to one third or less of the population, they will be more appreciated. But no culture should be taken for granted, so it pays to honor this group that collectively has made the biggest and more contributions to humankind than others, even at a per capita basis, which takes away the effect of having a bigger base than minorities.

Why European Americans Stood Out

As an immigrant I can perhaps evaluate cultures more objectively than people born in this country. What make the European Americans (EA for short) unique and special, standing out in a crowd of many cultures, are multiple things: justice, fundamental human rights, rule of law, equality and liberty. The easiest way to put it: What made EA unique and special are exactly what make this country unique and special. This makes sense if we remember the US constitution was drafted by all the people from the EA group, so it reflected the prevailing values of this group back then, despite the early impurities and even self-contradictions (for a good example of such impurities in the early days, see the Three-fifths compromise, which counted three out of every five slaves as people, an interesting way of cutting in the middle to make the constitution acceptable by both the South and the North). By the way, overcoming the impurities has to be done in a dynamic game process, not determined by static and self-possessed group resources.

Putting Justice Above Group Interests

I want to point out that EA is the first group putting social justice above its own group identify and group interests. This is a big deal and is the key driver for moving the society forward. This does not mean that everyone within the group followed that idea (many Trump followers for example obvious have problem with that), nor that no one else will do the same later. It does acknowledge the historical fact that EA started it. The civil rights movement in the 1960s could not have achieved nearly as much as it did if there were no participation of people from the EA group. Some EA members simply have a big heart to cover not just their own group but people in other groups. They were willing to give up their white privileges to make the society more equal.

We observe the same pattern from the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, although this time members from other cultural groups also supported the movement, despite its goal, as its name has suggested, is to protect the blacks.