Immigration and Synthesis
ibsh...@gmail.com
on the supposed bad parenting of them by the hippies. This is the case
of misconstruing cause and effect. The root of the problem is that the
parents lived by one set of values while living in a society that ran
by another. The exact same problems have existed in other similar
situations - Hindu children who lived in America; children of the
people with American sympathies who lived in the Communist countries;
children of Mexican or black people who lived in racist societies;
children of liberals who lived in conservative parts of America. And
given dynamics involved such problems are inevitable.
What is loved at home, is hated outside the home. What is loved
outside the home, is hated at home. The child either tries to please
both at once, or goes entirely one way in either one or the other
direction. Both tug, pull, make all kinds of demands. And neither home
nor outside the home will completely accept, as the two worlds hate
each other and, when they are at war, both demand complete loyalty -
against the other world.
So the blame-the-hippies people got it all wrong. It's not the problem
with the hippies; it's the problem of living by one way in a society
that lives by another. And this is going to happen all over the world,
and all over America, both by people on one side or on the other.
And it is also going to happen through generations.
Banking on the illusion of world war II generation being right, a
speaker at Republican convention in 1992 said that right and wrong is
"what your grandmother taught you." Let's see. That would mean, for
the boomers, the flapper generation; for my children, the boomer
generation; and for me, my Stalinist grandmother. Then there was that
whole ridiculous "back-to-the-basics" or "back-to-the-roots" movement.
So that means, you want me to "go back to my roots." Really? You want
me to become a Stalinist? One word for such attitudes: Idiocy. Two
words: Complete idiocy.
These one-size-fits-all solutions are wrong because one size does not
fit all at all. And far greater knowledge, wisdom and understanding is
achieved by people using their minds proactively and arriving at their
own solutions than is achieved by having one ill-fitting mold imposed
by one or another band of thugs.
When raised among conflicting worldviews, systems and beliefs, the
person has claims laid on him or her by everyone. The home wants
complete loyalty and claims betrayal if one goes with what's outside
the home. What's outside the home wants complete loyalty and claims
betrayal (of country, "values", whatever) if one goes with the home.
Then there's more idiots who claim that such people "lack integrity"
or "are at sea." There is a good reason for that. We are dealing with
people who've been raised in many worldviews and who therefore cannot
have single mind about things unless their minds are completely
locked. The only form of integrity
that is available to someone who's experienced many worldviews is what
I call dynamic integrity - the integrity of mind as created
dynamically through insight and cross-examination of the perspectives
among one another. Which, in many ways, is a process that leads to far
greater knowledge and understanding than does static integrity of
sticking with whatever "roots" one is supposed to have.
The intercultural flux accomplishes this: expose people to different
mindsets. That means that people are removed from false comforting
myths of one or another worldview and must use their brains. That is
for the better. The more poeple have to use intelligence, the stronger
it gets, the greater the knowledge of the population. And the greater
its capacity of making truly responsible choices that actually have a
chance of being informed enough to create worthwhile outcomes.
On the way, are found all kinds of dangers. One woman I've known about
had been a respected professional in the Soviet Union. In America, she
was nothing, and she kept saying such things as "I used to be a person
once." An older writer who had been vice-president of the Soviet Union
Writer's Guild was reduced to going to restaurants in his Soviet-style
suit and glasses selling people his book. His input: "We are Russian,
and that's all we will ever be." In both cases, immigration was most
likely the wrong decision - another evidence against one-size-fits-all
solutions, whatever the ideology of the day may be.
To be completely American is to betray Russia. To be completely
Russian is to betray America. But to see the right and the wrong in
both, and to combine the rights while eliminating the wrongs - that,
is a way to serve, embody, and improve both at the same time.
The mindsets can be combined in all kinds of ways, from optimal to
worst to all between. One negative combination can be seen in my UVA
classmate and fellow Russian immigrant Sam Vaknin, author of book on
"Narcissistic personality disorder," who is using the Soviet tactic of
pathologizing dissent to pathologize all potential sources of dissent
from the party line of his profession - and in the process pathologize
also all potential sources of innovation, ingenuity, entrepreneurship,
drive, passion, creative thinking, and risk-taking to which America
owes all it has. Another negative combination is found in those who've
brought to America the Russian social authoritarianism and are using
Russian-style dogmatism to empower oppressive agendas like Christian
Right. Seeking a pareto-optimal state of affairs, I am taking a
different path of integration, and using American can-do spirit,
enthusiasm, and entrepreneurial mentality to bring into America the
Russian passion, poetry, romanticism and intellectual thought.
Too many in America have no value for the poetic, the romantic, the
intellectual and the philosophical. With people lacking value for
these, those naturally inclined toward such pursuits run into all
kinds of nastiness, which leads many people to see the wrong attitudes
responsible for such affects as rightful. They are not. The Soviet
Union (and many in Russia before that) equated capitalism with evil
and business with crime. The people naturally entrepreneurial became
criminals - black marketeers, "speculators" (illegal resellers),
"prohodimets's" (system manupulators), and later bandit capitalists.
This likewise led many to believe the attitudes responsible for these
affects as rightful. They are not. The problem is not with poetry,
romanticism, arts or philosophical thinking any more than it is with
business. The problem is with societies that have no value for these
legitimate, worthwhile endeavors, and thus not only injure and
criminalize those capable of these things, but also
fail to tap into the potential of these people and employ it for the
benefit of the country and its people.
Russia will benefit from seeing the value of entrepreneurship and
giving legitimacy to the process, allowing it to be done in legitimate
ways and raise Russian material standards of living. America will
benefit from seeing the value of passion, poetry, and conceptual
thinking, and using these things to enrich people's minds, selves,
relationships, and experience of life and one another. There is no
unfixable flaw with either Russia or America.
The problem is with wrong attitudes traditionally held by both
populations. Replace those false limiting traditional attitudes with
attitudes that see and apply instead of hindering human potential, and
both places will bloom.
Ilya Shambat
http://www.myspace.com/ibshambat