As with most things now, what most people know about Asia comes from television--which is very little--and from newspapers and magazines. Since little is seen on television, what is read in periodicals takes on more importance. I'm not sure if its because I'm taking this class or not, but I seem to be seeing more stories about Asia lately. In the L.A. Times there have been front page stories recently, and in the Opinion section there have also been several articles. For example, this past weekend, Dec. 5th, the Opinion section's main article was about changes taking place in cities across Asia. Inside, a companion piece describes the lifestyles of 20 something yuppies in several Asian cities. I am encouraged by this new interest in Asia, and in life outside of the U.S. The articles generally have the same angle, how modernization is breaking down the old Confucian cultural values of these Asian countries. The current Opinion piece talks about the aging populations and crowded cities have led to a declining birthrate. The author sees this as evidence that Asia is in decline and that the West with its "ample space" and still upward trending birthrate will "reemerge as exemplars of successful urbanism in the mid-21st century." I think the picture is a little more complicated than that, but at least we are looking beyond our borders now when we are describing what the world looks like today, and will look like in the future.

I wasn't quite sure where to put these ideas, but since this is about people's views of Asian culture I thought this might be okay. Though Clay might have felt guilty about not covering what he had planned (a familiar feeling for teachers,) I had an interesting thought that came from one of our side conversations. As we discussed what seemed like a superficial focus on material success in Asian families, I tried to understand how this could exist with the ideals expressed in Confucian, Buddhist, and Daoist thought. Thinking about this later, I realized that this was a key example of the difference between Western and Eastern thought.

While materialism is rampant in the West, since the Renaissance it has been largely an individualistic version that has focused on individual gain and self-satisfaction. Though there is a social componet as expressed in phrases such as "keeping up with the Joneses," and "living large," the emphasis has been primarily individual hedonistic pleasure. However, East Asian materialism is of a different nature. While Asian parents get pleasure from displaying the material success of their family, it is a pleasure derived principally from what others think of this success. So, they expect family members to sacrifice individual pleasures and desires to ensure the success of the family. Once again, it is ideal of the family and the larger community that shapes their values and actions. While there are a number of qualifications and possible diversions to this path, it seems from what was said in our discussion that this is still generally true. This explains what seemed to me a puzzling statement in one of the women's diaries that we read which, to paraphrase, said that a person's identity is largely a product of how others see you. Of course, much has been written about the social construction of identity and reality in the West, but I think Eastern cultures have a far greater and more pervasive influence of this factor than that which exists in modern Western cultures. I wonder if Asian advertising reflects this focus on familial rather than individual success, or if the Western form of materialism has started to take hold there also.