Both
the Chinese and Western perceptions of oneself have affected my life greatly.
The Chinese perceives that one should abide to the social hierarchy of the
society, whereby the individual listens to his father and others of the higher
authority than himself, and respect these people. In my life, I have been
always respectful of my father, who seems to be the strict and authoritative
person in the family, and thus I would invariably listen to his lectures and
instructions. I think that this is because my father had left a strong
impression that he was fierce and fearful when I was young, which made me respect him since young. Even though today, my father had long
stopped caning and changed from scolding to persuasion, and I had learnt to
understand that my father is not as strict as he presents himself, yet, I still
respect him, but this time, it is without the element of fear, with the knowledge that he
teaches me well and making me the person today.
I
am also rather respectful of my teachers, although it was more during my
primary school life. I always listened attentively to teachers, and rarely
rebut to them. I think this is also because since young, my father had told me
of the importance of having respect for teachers, and how the older generation
had respect for teachers. He told me that even if I did not like the teacher,
we should at least feel grateful for the simple fact that teachers teach us
knowledge, thus they rightfully earn our respect. Thus, I would say that I
never have been disrespectful to teachers before.
The
Chinese also emphasizes on respect and “li”,
which could be said as etiquette, courtesy and manners. I also uphold these
values, of which I think could be found in most traditional Chinese families.
In my family, we, as children, would always be polite and invite our parents to
eat first, and this, in turn, is also a way in which we children show respect
and gratitude to our parents. In Singapore, it is also emphasized in schools
that students greet teachers in classrooms when they enter, and also bow to
teachers when students see them in the school compound. We also address them
with proper manners by adding a mister, missus, miss or madam in front of their
surname. This is very unlike how schools function in some Western countries, whereby
students call their teachers by their name directly.
I
think that the Western perception of self only started to influence me, or
impacted me when I was more exposed to their ideas in the secondary school,
when I first heard words like human rights and democracy. It was during
this age when I started to question the reason for sticking to social norms, and
the Western philosophy greatly appealed to me since it advocated ideas related to liberty and freedom. As it
was also this age when I was becoming increasingly aware of Singapore and its
politics, I thus began to think about the policies implemented by the
government, whether is it good for us Singaporeans. I found out that many a
times, what the opposition party said about the downsides of any policy is very true,
and it is actually good to have opposing voices which serve as a
check-and-balance. Therefore, with the introduction of Western perception into
my life, I have begun to question myself more about governmental policies and
matters regarding human rights, especially those pertaining to Singapore. I
think that Singapore is generally more democratic as compared to other Asian
countries, of which quite a number are led by totalitarians, yet the degree of
democracy in Singapore is still incomparable with countries like America, since
in American, the citizens have more freedom, liberty and human rights, and they
easily voice their concerns to the government.
Another
way that the Western perception of self had greatly influenced me is the
stimulation of the question of what I wanted to do with my life. In the Chinese
society, I rarely thought of questions as such because we are told to do,
rather than we initiate it ourselves, since Chinese social structure is
generally more rigid. Hence, I am rarely led to do the simple notion of
thinking and questioning. The Western society, however, is greatly different.
It calls a lot upon self-initiative, and it advocates more on self-learning and
passion, such as Google’s 20 percent rule, which allows employees of Google to
pursue their passion in 20 percent of their work time instead of completing assigned
tasks and works. Of course, it is not only the Google’s 20 percent rule which
stimulated my thought of my future, but my general understanding of the Western
perception of what is expected of a person. Hence I have also benefitted a lot
from the Western perception, namely human rights, since it led me to think that
it not up to others to determine what we want to do, it is up to ourselves.
(827 words)
