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Fragmentation vs Wholeness: Why ur lonely & insecure in USA

Posted: November 13th, 2009, 6:59 am
by Winston
Check out my new essays:

Interconnectedness vs. Separateness: Why Americans overinflate themselves and try to "fit in"

http://www.happierabroad.com/ebook/Page15.htm

Fragmentation vs Wholeness: Why you feel alone and insecure in America

http://www.happierabroad.com/ebook/Page15a.htm

Posted: November 13th, 2009, 1:04 pm
by jamesbond
WOW, very well said Winston! It's true, the ego thrives in lonely countries and doesn't thrive in countries where people are more inclusive (like the Philippines). Not many people get the chance to live and travel in different countries like you have and be able to see the difference between people and cultures.

At long last the truth has finally been set on the table

Posted: November 14th, 2009, 12:49 pm
by firethrower1000
Since i left america i realized that what america did to me and does to people in generale is spread fear through your mind....when i would walk up to a european chick i would still have this curse that America had put on me" the curse of fear" only when i put all my bad experiences i had in america behind me did i finally get my courage back and erase the fear thats been in me for far too long...And when someone experience what Winston and I experienced he will realise that life is not this dark hallow that America make it seem to be...The majority of the American population don't know what their real value is...Some might say theyre highest value is money or some might say theyre high status career or popularity and everything they expensive they might own...But in Asia,Africa and Europe and some latin countries as well our highest value is "our own existance" making us stay humble and enjoy our lives with one another to the fullest...Honestly even the poor are rich....We have a richness in cultur when we realise the luck and chance we have to even exist...And this importance of existance can quickly show up when one is exposed or witness the death of another human being right in front of them...Making them forced to be faced with their own mortality...and when faced with that all the superficial and materialistic matters that america may have set on you wont matter anymore...BUT what might cross your mind is "its not too late for me to live life to the fullest and forget about this US mentality of having to prove something in order to get anything in life...

Thats the reason why i have much respect for Bruce Lee the" founder of jeet kune do" because he lived in America in the sixties and seventies but was very good at expressing himeself which makes me wonder how america really was back then compared to now and how and when did it change into this isolated hell pit???? Now thats hard to explain isnt it?

Winston thanks for adding more details on why American immigrants dont feel whole because its a very important aspect of this subject...

Posted: November 14th, 2009, 3:06 pm
by momopi
I think every person's experience difffers, not only according to their environment, but also personality and needs.

I recall one of my ex-GF's who left home and went abroad. She had been living at home in the US for all 22 years of her life, surrounded by friends and family. She felt a desire to leave the comfort zone and go to another country where she would be living alone for the first time, and learn how to be stronger and more independent.

For many, living in America means being individualistic and self-reliant. But for her, she left the US to obtain that level of independence, away from all the people that she was closely connected to in America.

For me, I thought childhood to college in the US was awesome. Back in Taiwan I had to get up at 6:30am, walk to school, do light janitor work before class started, and go home in late afternoons. When I did poorly in math, I had to attend cram school for extra tutoring. In Taiwan, public education is grand 1-9, and you must take an entrance exam at 6th grade to determine which ranking secondary schol (jr high) you can attend. Keep in mind that I'm talking about the 1970s.

If you scored well and got into a good jr high, it will help you prepare for the high school entrance exam after grade 9. And if you got into a good high school (grade 10-12), it'd help you score better on the college entrance exam. If you graduated from a good college like NTU, you can get a job with a good company.

Things have changed today due to the low birth rate and de-regulation of colleges, but back when I was a kid, I got smacked around a lot for scoring poorly on exams. So when I immigranted to the US, it was like liberation. What, school starts at 9am and ends at 3pm? OMG! I went fishing almost every day after school.

After elementary school, instead of exam prep, Jr. high was like... playing balls tied to a string every day, attend school dances for the first time, and going to friend's houses to play video games or dungeons and dragons after school. I'm not even sure how I passed my classes through high school.

didn't read the whole thing yet but...

Posted: November 14th, 2009, 3:14 pm
by gits
Something popped into my head as I read the first few sentences. If you want to know me, think of Jim Carrey in the Cable Guy. Must kill the Baby Sitter!
I was an American male, raised by the television, so that ought to give you an idea of how f***ed up I possibly am, and the thing that popped in my head was the TV show CSI. When I was living in Taiwan (and I will go back), I downloaded the first seasons and watched them all in a few days.

The writing of each episode always treated humor in a certain way. There are two kinds in that show, the clever comment that opens the show, Grissom or another wise CSI person would make a clever comment regarding the bloody crime. But later in the show, the lab tech, who has since been promoted to feild agent was always cracking jokes or saying humorous things, but unlike your typical sitcom where everyone laughs aloud, instead, all the agents would give the lab tech a blank stare, saying " I get it, but I don't think it's funny" or "I don't get it". Or perhaps because the crack is based on pun humor, the typical reaction is to cringe. In most of the other crime shows, like NCIS, they play the same thing. All the serious professional agents never laugh at jokes or outward spontaneous opinions.

Before you accuse me of rambling, I'm going to get to my point: In the USA, unless you are already known as a comedian or "talkative" or "opinionated", you better keep your mouth shut, because you risk being judged immediately. I grew up in a dysfuctional family, and whenever so-called "normal" people met my crazy friends or relatives, they were always quick to judge them for being "loud" and will say something like, "that's the last time I'm ever going around your mom" or "I'm never going to your house again". Because of something that was said.

Now, I'm the first one who will tell you my mother is crazy and should be avoided, but even in school, people woud be so quick to judge me for being humorous. In the army I noticed it too, around new (intelligent) people, they couldn't get my humor and would call me an asshole behind my back, when I was just trying to make a joke or be social and fun or if I made sarcastic complaints that were not serious. Then maybe later, after they got to know me, they would say "you're so funny" but I'd have tro earn the badge of humor.

Like I said, I need to go back and finish reading what winston wrote, but in Taiwan, I would suspect it wasn't a difference of humor, but of being able to have an opinion and be able to express without feeling they may be judged whole on that one thought, possible even esocially excommunicate like so many of the nerds become.

Anyways, I'll post this now and keep reading

Re: didn't read the whole thing yet but...

Posted: November 14th, 2009, 5:33 pm
by SNS
gits wrote:Something popped into my head as I read the first few sentences. If you want to know me, think of Jim Carrey in the Cable Guy.
The American population is completely glued to the mass media world. Been so since the idiot box took control back circa the 1950s. And yes you could say the same thing about me, sans killing the baby sitter though. Americans are living life partially and vicariously through a fictional world of TV shows and movies.

Re: didn't read the whole thing yet but...

Posted: November 14th, 2009, 5:41 pm
by gits
SaturdayNightSpecial wrote: The American population is completely glued to the mass media world.


Now there is a more efficient technology to keep me occupied: the internet.

Posted: November 14th, 2009, 5:52 pm
by jamesbond
SaturdayNightSpecial wrote: The American population is completely glued to the mass media world. Been so since the idiot box took control back circa the 1950s. And yes you could say the same thing about me, sans killing the baby sitter though. Americans are living life partially and vicariously through a fictional world of TV shows and movies.
This is not the "United states of America" this is the "United states of entertainment." LOL :lol:

ImageImageImage

Posted: November 16th, 2009, 5:18 pm
by Winston
This essay has just been revised with more points and sentences.

Posted: November 16th, 2009, 7:47 pm
by Grunt
The entire model of the American education system is to instil in children a sense of profound insecurity, plus the introduction of societal and emotional concepts kids are not capable of fully dealing with yet. Essentially tossing kids in an ocean of leeches hell bent on their enslavement and ultimate destruction, with no way out of the pool.

The net result are armies of kids with severe emotional problems they are unlikely to outgrow, and take to their grave. American kids are quite literally tortured into a state of perpetual dysfunction by a select corps of their peers. These fellow students are groomed from a very early age to be disruptors of a normal, cohesive social fabric.

These social parasites, mostly the sons of police officers, school administrators, and psychologists are carefully instructed to torment the unsuspecting students with complete immunity. They do so with complete immunity. They do things the average student would get expelled for. The sons of police officers sell the illegal drugs, the sons of administrators rat out those that do drugs. They create future job security for the police and school administrators.

The kids that get caught grow to become either prisoners, or informants for the kids of police that grow up and become police themselves. Thus, the enemies of freedom have every kid categorised and funnelled in to a pre-determined path long before they graduate high school. Every kid from Middle School on up most likely has a psychological dossier an inch thick.

Non-conformists, those that despise dope dealing cops, back stabbing rat snitches, and corrupt pedophile administrators, are targeted for destruction early on. Any parent that sends their kids to public school is a certified lunatic.

Posted: November 16th, 2009, 8:45 pm
by jamesbond
I agree that the public school system in the US is a joke! Send your kids to a private school or do home schooling. I went to a catholic grade school and then a public high school and the difference was frighting! The kids in my catholic grade school were polite, nice and easy to get along with. The kids in my public high school were mean, unfriendly and hated any new comers to the area. Not to mention the drop out rate for some public high schools in US cities is 50%!

Avoid the US public school system like the plague! LOL :D

Posted: November 17th, 2009, 9:17 am
by momopi
When I grew in the US as a kid, my fondest memories were mostly outdoor activities. I spent a considerable amount of time fishing, and my cousins taught me how to shoot his .22 rifle and took me on trips for small game hunting. Every year, my elementary school would have a field trip to the mountains where we stayed in cabins and got to learn how to collect acorns, row a canoe, build a camp fire, and various boyscout kind of stuff.

In secondary school we had an archer range and some students even got to raise hogs. Here in Irvine, we had a Wild Animal Safari that you could drive through (closed in 1984):
http://www.yesterland.com/lioncountry.html

Image


Moving forward to 2009, today the Safari park is in ruins, the Santa Ana River where I fished as a youth is mostly closed to public access. The archery range at local schools are closed, county fairs have to import animals from elsewhere, and most of the local outdoor gun ranges near here have closed.

To add salt to injury, when I drove all the way to an outdoor range in Chino Hills, I'm forced to use the friggin pistol range for my muzzle loader rifle, because the rifle range is now closed to the public -- the police had taken it over because they lost their own outdoor rifle range. >_<

I heard that local elementary schools no longer send kids on camping trips now due to cost and liability reasons. It's really sad. If I had kids today, I'd have to pay to send them on summer camps, and I probably can't give them their first .22 rifle as a birthday gift anymore.

===

Jamesbond: absolutely! I'd choose private Catholic schools over public schools these days.

Posted: November 18th, 2009, 1:57 pm
by Winston
My dad admits that he now sees truth in my essays. Referring to this latest one, "Fragmentation vs. Wholeness" he said:
Dear Win,

I feel you have some good points. When I was in US long enough, I could not see your points. But, after staying out of US for a while, I started to realize the other side of US.

Posted: November 18th, 2009, 7:39 pm
by Winston
One important point I'd like to add to this essay:

Its not that other countries have to do anything in particular to make people feel connected and whole. They dont have to. People are NATURALLY whole and connected to one another. The difference is that most countries ALLOW the natural wholeness and connectedness of human beings to take place, whereas somehow the USA doesnt. Instead, America engineers its people to think that they are individuals who are segregated from each other and that "no one cares about you; only you can take care of yourself; its every man for himself" under the name of individualism. In other words, America divides its people, fragments them, and makes them feel empty on the inside, so they will be weak, controllable and over-consume to fill that emptiness that they dont even consciously recognize. Its not a jurisdictional control, more like a psychological form of control, which the public is unaware of.

I've added the above point already and revised the essay by inserting more key points. The new version is now updated at the top of the thread.

I've added quotes from both Grunt and SaturdayNightSpecial. Kudos to them for their excellent and insightful quotes.

On the deliberate "engineering" of fragmentation

Posted: November 20th, 2009, 7:19 am
by Shokkers
"Instead, America engineers its people to think that they are selfish individuals in competition with one another who are segregated by their "individual freedom". And it's beaten into them that "no one cares about you; only you can take care of yourself; it's every man for himself" under the name of individualism. In other words, America divides its people, fragments them, and makes them feel empty on the inside, so they will be weak, controllable and over-consume to fill that emptiness that they don't even consciously recognize."

Can you give an example of this?
Because I don't see this. I do see where Americans compete with each other, and I think it's a shame, but I really doubt that we're the only culture that does that. But I've never felt 'engineered' to feel selfish, empty or whatever. The gnomes of Madison Avenue obviously broadcast the message that "You Need More Stuff Or You're Not A Success" but that's meant to sell things, not segregate people.