generalizations and subjectivity

My father always...er often told me, "never say never" and "never say always." What a paradox in itself, eh? From time to time he recounted some Chinese folktales, emphasizing the concept that rare is the thing that is completely good or completely bad. Like the yin and yang, black will have a speck of white; white will have a speck of black. Despite his best attempts at such 'gray matter' training, I am only human and often tend to go revert to black and white thinking.

It is so easy to make vague broad statements, ESPECIALLY when living in another country. I find it so much easier to live here when I have 'defined' something and put it in its correct category box. Especially when I first came to Japan - things were very much black and white, experiences I encountered were categorized and boxed like a pretty gift. Some were generalizations of my own, whereas others were age-old stereotypes about Japanese that I'd picked up in the past. To give an example of a few: "Japanese people are all so polite. Japanese people are all shy. Japanese people speak English really poorly. The men are all workaholics. The women in Japan all love and own at least one Louis Vuitton item." At the same time I suppose one could say the same about Americans, like: "Americans are fat and lazy. Americans are loud, crass, and rude. Americans only know one language - English. All Americans smile and are incredibly friendly Americans are blindingly ethnocentric."

While some stereotypes may be partly true, beyond them are many exceptions and aberrations. I suppose we like to judge and categorize for survival, an animal instinct. As much as we try not to, it is our tendency to do so. So I must admit, on various occasions I blast this or blast that, complain about this or that, spew out verbose declarations on how the Japanese are...all without reservation and definitely with plenty of subjective juices.

Though please keep in mind that many of the views (in my blog) are often borderline radical and written out of sheer emotion or need to vent frustration. There are by no means meant to be judgmental, racist, pig-headed, or anything of that kind. When I say men are like this and women are like that, I only mean it with a grain of salt. There are plenty of exceptions in this world and people with an ounce of a brain know that people, places, things...nothing can be truly categorized into neat boxes.

So sorry if I have offended you by any blog posts. But I am quite unlikely to change my thinking pattern or personality. It is engrained in my personality and if you hear me say something judgmental or extreme, feel free to acknowledge my view and then express your own, perhaps very different opinion or just entertain me by the default 'nodding and smiling.' If I were objective, this would not be a very interesting blog, at all...bland is boring - YUCK.