Collectivism: The New Black

So nursing school homework is back in full swing.  I am excited to be learning again, believe it or not.  I am dreading leaving summer; but, I am excited to be returning to moving in the direction of which I see the shimmer of light that is my degree, however tiny. I am fascinated by the way God designed our bodies and feel beyond privileged to be able to eventually be a part of helping to love and care for His masterpieces.

As part of one of our summer reading assignments, we were to read Chapter 1 in a book by Larry D. Purnell entitled, "Transcultural Health Care: A Culturally Competent Approach". Now picture this: lounging on the couch in my "fat" clothes (you know what those are: we all have them), past midnight (I am a night owl, and an early riser... not enough hours, not enough), clean house (have I mentioned my kids are amazing?), sleeping babies (looooving back to school bedtime!!), having worked that day so feeling good about adding to the much-needed paycheck (every dollar counts, right?), and thrilled to be working toward getting some check-marks next to my homework assignments (so what if I got the assignments in the mail a month ago... I would have forgotten everything by the time school started if I started that early (that's what I am telling myself anyhow)).  So now the picture is set. Then I read this on page 7:

"For example, the dominant U.S. culture places high value on youth, technology, and money."

 I should have warned you not to have any food or water in your mouth.  Cause you SHOULD have spit it all over your monitor after that sentence.  It gets worse. Want to know what this statement was an example of?  Ethnocentrism. Are you in tears now?

It is that glaringly obvious that our once proud country's focus has become about staying/looking young, having the best gadgets and the most money, so much so that they teach it as a fact without so much as a stutter? Did I already say it gets worse? Well then, it gets worser. Same paragraph:

"The extent to which one's cultural values are internalized influences the tendency toward ethnocentrism. The more one's values are internalized, the more difficult it is to avoid the tendency toward ethnocentrism."

Basically, stop sweeping this sad fact under the rug.  Stop thinking just because we don't talk about it it's going to go away, cause it's not... according to that paragraph it will only get worse because it will be so internalized that feeling superior based on that yardstick will become autonomous; it will be natural. Naturally and internally feeling superior to other people based on one's ability to appear young in addition to their accumulation of electronics and money. I'm sorry, say again?!?! This is what we've been reduced to? This is the description that countless people are reading by which they are measuring our culture.

But there is hope. Fast forward to page 9, 1st top right paragraph, right after America is referred to as a individualistic country:

"Moreover, individualism and collectivism fall along a continuum, and some people from an individualistic culture will, to some degree, align themselves toward the collectivist end of the sale. Some people from a collectivist culture will, to some degree, hold values along the individualistic end of the scale."

Now let me set the record straight: I don't think he's wrong.  I think, sadly, this is an accurate portrait of what a typical American looks like.  Ironically though, that goes against his information on generalizations of worldviews.  Don't let us be correctly stereotyped as aforementioned.

Choose to create a collective culture out of America. Let's desire, behave, and choose our way into a culture that collectively looks out for each other and strives to value family, trustworthiness, hard work, sacrifice, and kindness.  Lift up your rugs, do a little housekeeping, and pick today to start allowing this new set of values to be public so that we might serve as an encouragement to other to be/do the same. Better late than never, I always say.  ;)