Image credits: https://usa.stockfood.com/images/00865379-Rice-in-Asian-bowl-with-chopsticks

This all started with checking aout another introvertedmadness youtube video:

I can relate to parts of this, except being successful and getting into a top school like Stanford 🥲. Things like when the man said that his parents started to let off his shit around high school because he had a breakdown in front of them at like 9th grade, realizing they had succeeded in making the child automatically push themself hard, I related to that experience.

The video contains a common criticism of the asian american parenting techniques. Often there will be a heavy emphasis on academics, actions/behaviors that align with the social good / high social status, and perfectionism, and I think these aren’t necessarily bad. It only becomes bad if it exists at the cost of neglecting growth in the other aspects of the human experience (e.g. hobbies and interests, social life, significant partnerships, etc.). I think for most people, it’s not actually neglect since most people just naturally do those things without their parents knowing because they want to live a fulfilling life; a better way to describe it is a persistent dismissal and rejection of the desire / need to pursue those “non important” things in life. Yes you can just ignore what your parents say and do things against their wishes, but in a culture of authority and filial piety soaked into the very essence of your subconscious, it kind of sucks. Some people don’t give a damn, and maybe good for them! For others, it breeds a sense of resentment and unresolved feelings. Another thing to criticize is the emotional valence involved in the push for greatness. It is always negative. The celebrations of success will always be overshadowed and dominated by the extreme negative backlash when failure occurs, and if you’re going to be doing anything hard at all, failure is inevitable!

I would like to think that I’ve come to terms with understanding why these asian immigrant parents played the game the way they did with their kids in this world we live in. I can understand and forgive, because I just don’t care anymore…got bigger problems on my hands…like employment, and the rest of my life brah. No but seriously, it is a two way street. I’ve been able to be chill about things, because not only do I understand them better, but they too have changed. I guess that’s only because all the years of pushing have instilled a forever anxiety pushing force inside of me now. Their work is done. They don’t need to push anymore, because we push ourselves. I think ultimately that is what this strategy of parenting is. To instill ambition and industriousness into kids, to be good at whatever they do, they need these things.

Of course, this is only the texture of a grain of sand on a beach; they’re all kind of the same but not really. Many people just aren’t as ambitious and let their kids do whatever they want. This is what it is because it is a self-selecting experience. What I mean by that is immigrants move to a different place because they are ambitious and are actively seeking a better life from wherever they were before. They carry this ambition and obviously want and hope their children to carry it forward. The less ambitious people would just stay in their home countries. If they are from ambitious and competitive societies, they’ll probably instill those feelings and way of life into their children there.

Generalizing, you could say this is the experience of children born from ambitious parents instead. Or maybe it’s just any parent who wishes their children succeeds in our world, as it is constructed with its current value structures.

There is another part 2 video where he talks about his experiences of learning not to hate himself, struggling with the feeling of trying to avoid and construct an identity outside of the “chinese asian sphere”. Man, I felt that. It’s almost as if I truly am just another copy and paste with some slight data corruption.

One of the comments on that video struck me:

I haven’t been able to verbalize this feeling, and I’m glad I read this. A feeling that you need to prove that you have a personality when you’re with “non asian” people. I felt that sometimes, but it is only the strongest when there is no “glue” to hold people together y’know. If there is no shared humor, shared food tastes, shared hobbies, shared interests, shared consumerism, shared work responsibilities, shared life experiences, or any kind of human attraction, be it sexual, romantic, aesthetic, emotional, anything at all, then it just ain’t gonna work.

Other videos that I find interesting, that is related to the experience of Asian Americans, is something like this

Acts as a healthy reminder, if you’re obtuse like me sometimes, that people show what they feel in different ways. And especially in asian cultures, actions speak louder than words.

Communication is hard. I wish I had seen a video like this when I was younger, to teach me how to actually communicate in high context cultures (where my parents came from) so that things would’ve been easier. But alas, growing up in America, you learn to communicate in low context.

For more humorous media on this subject you can watch idk skits from Two Set Violin like this

Or I guess everyone already knows Steven He, we all feel emotional damage from time to time…, anyways pretty funny if you ask me

One last thing before I end this one, notice how all the links I’ve shared are youtube videos! Yes, even I once aspired to make entertaining youtube videos, but I think that ship has sailed for now. Video+Audio takes a lot more effort than writing a simple blog, so yea…I’m just lazy. Hats off to these people, who either do it all solo or work in teams. While a lot of these are just silly and funny, I think it’s really cool that they can convey a lot of information about people’s lived experiences in a short, condensed manner. Quality stereotypes are averages of lived experiences after all; bad stereotypes are misleading and fraudulent, usually constructed with a malicious intent.

Anyways, at the end of the day I have two living parents who aren’t doing any physical abuse to anyone, the cycle of verbal abuse is normalized, unfortunately, but hopefully I will end it. Unless my kids are fucking brats…I mean adorable angels. I’m grateful to be given a pretty good starting point, if compared to many others less fortunate. Thrive people, thrive.