Re: CHAT: Multi-Lingos

On Tue, 22 Aug 2000, Oskar Gudlaugsson wrote:

> We, the people in the advanced West, consider ourselves well educated,
> critically thinking, and independent individuals. Fair enough, to an extent.
> When we see the people of autocratic populist countries (such as N-Korea)
> mass together to hail their great leader as their personal god, we are
> revolted and yet thankful that our minds are so free and independent. Yet we
> often exert a very similar behavior. No mass hailings, but Western people
> are no more able to think critically about certain concepts, than N-Koreans
> about their leaders; we have our gods too. "Democracy" and "Human Rights"
> are our principal ones, the common gods of the West. Another set of gods,
> relative to each country, is "Our Great Language", "Our Glorious Heritage",
> "Our Superior Culture", etc.
<wry g>  It's not just the West.  During my parents' generation, South
Koreans were practically indoctrinated to hold the North Korean
cult-of-personality in contempt, and yet were encouraged to hold similar
beliefs about their own regime.  I understand this has relaxed
considerably in recent years.  My mom was also looking at some map in
_Time_ magazine once--this was some years ago--which color-coded
countries by how democratic they were, and Korea was somewhere in the 2nd
or 3rd tier.  She remarked that this would once have been shocking to
her, because she'd been brought up to believe that Korea was a perfectly
democratic society (it's more so than it was--but in the past, it was
pretty darn authoritarian).

> Oh yeah, and my involvement of democracy and human rights is not to be
> misunderstood. I don't oppose those concepts, per se. I oppose the
> unquestioning belief in them in our society. Because I see unquestioning
> thinking as more of a threat than non-democratic government or
> lack/reduction of human rights (by Western definitions).
Definitely agreed.  I now object to the fact that I was made to recite
the pledge of allegiance in 1st and 2nd grade (I grant you this was at a
Dept. of Defense school on Yongsan Base, Seoul, Korea).  Not because
loyalty to a country that has much good (though not without fault) isn't
worthwhile, but because when you're in 2nd grade, all you're doing is
mouthing words.  What the heck do you know about all this abstract
freedom business?  You're probably thinking about bubble gum, interesting
things like Vesuvius (...well, I was--but my sense of chronology was
terribly underdeveloped, to the point where my 2nd grade teacher psyched
me out by claiming her family had escaped the eruption at Pompeii, and I
spent a couple years believing her!) and recess.

Or maybe I was just politically underdeveloped?

Or whatever that song is that goes "My country, 'tis of thee," etc. with
the line about "land where my fathers died."  I remember thinking in
elementary school, "None of *my* ancestors, 'fathers or mothers,' died in
the U.S.  Why do I have to sing this stupid song?"  Not to mention in 5th
grade where a foreign citizen/classmate--somewhere in the Middle East, I
don't remember now--was obliged to recite the pledge by the teacher,
which I thought was really silly.

I've known *some* Americans to deride the "propaganda" that goes on in
more authoritarian regimes, but as far as I can tell they didn't notice
the propaganda around them.  Insidious stuff.

Also why, the one time I went to a Boy Scout meeting for my boyfriend's
brother's Eagle ceremony or whatever you call it, I sat there in disgust,
and while everyone else pretended to recite the pledge, I didn't bother
trying.  This isn't to say that the Scouts are without their good points,
but I have some philosophical differences with the pledge and I'm not
going to fake it.  I hold nothing against those who do agree with the
sentiments behind the pledge as long as they don't try to make me recite
empty words.  (Boyfriend and I had a loooong talk about this
afterward...or rather, I talked *at* him.  *He* went through the whole
Eagle thing mainly because his mom made him!)

YHL