Cherish traditional values

(Baonghean) - The emotional bond and responsibility between the old and young generations is one of the differences between Eastern and Western cultures. If Westerners put personal interests at the center of society, connecting with the community simply through obligations and responsibilities, we Easterners especially value filial piety, love and gratitude, taking them as social standards. Nowadays, with the massive invasion of foreign cultures, the gap between the young generation and the previous generations is getting wider and wider, causing moral values ​​such as gratitude and appreciation for ancestors to gradually fade away.

I still remember the early nineties, like many young people of that era, I got married right after graduating from university. After getting married, my husband and I had almost no assets, no stable jobs and even less a house. My husband and I moved in with my grandparents, taking turns managing their video rental store. Even now, when our small family is well-off and fulfilled, I often tell my children about my hard-working, miserable life, partly to let them appreciate the value of labor and money, partly to instill in them gratitude and filial piety towards their grandparents, who gave birth to them, raised them and nurtured their parents' first steps in life.

Our era is like that, it is also the most authentic reflection of the traditional lifestyle and concept of the East Asian people. In the West, the relationship between parents and children is a completely democratic and time-limited relationship, parents are responsible for their children until adulthood, after the age of 18, parents no longer have the obligation to raise and educate, nor the authority to decide and control the lives of their children. From now on, parents and children are citizens with equal rights and obligations, the relationship between them is perhaps a blood relationship and more or less kinship. Because it is an obligation, how can children have the concept of repaying their parents' birth and upbringing?

One thing I find difficult to understand in Western countries is the issue of social welfare for retirees. The problem is: With the remarkable development of medicine, human life expectancy is being extended, becoming a burden on the welfare system paid for by the State and the tax money of the working-age population. Young people in Western countries are dissatisfied because they have to pay higher taxes to ensure a stable social security regime for the aging population. Surprised, I asked a foreign friend: "Why is the care of the elderly the sole responsibility of social welfare, while their children still have jobs, earn money and provide for their families? If children take on (and they have full responsibility to do so, in my very Asian perspective) the responsibility of taking care of their parents, then wouldn't your Western problems be baseless?" My foreign friend replied, equally surprised: "We are still lacking in providing for our own families, so how can we take care of the elderly without government intervention?" Surprisingly and ironically, in countries where the average income per capita and standard of living are much better than ours, people live so hard that they have to turn their backs on their parents!? I really wanted to ask my friend: Why is it that in my country, the lives of the majority of people are still difficult, but gratitude and filial piety are still the top values ​​in human ethics, why can we do it, but you can't? A different point of view, lifestyle, and way of thinking between two cultures, but it also makes me proud of the ethics of valuing affection of the Vietnamese people. But that was me ten or twenty years ago. Now, if I met my old friend again, I probably wouldn't know what to do but silently laugh at the Westernization of today's youth's views on the way of life of gratitude and repayment to previous generations.

Young people today are active and have early access to the outside society. Making money, being independent in spending and not depending on parental support is no longer something too strange. Compared to us in the past, young people today really make money and know how to spend money much earlier. But is that why they take their parents' upbringing for granted, thinking that the money they earn is somewhat easy and abundant? Many young people are complacent that they are completely capable of being self-sufficient, buying themselves branded clothes, a new car, an expensive phone or computer without having to ask their parents for money. But let me ask, let's not talk about those frivolous and distant things, where do the food they eat and the water they drink every day come from? Where do the roofs, rooms and amenities they enjoy come from? Who created the conditions for them to enjoy education for the knowledge and degrees they use to earn money? And finally, please look in the mirror and ask yourself, who gave birth to them, raised them, and cared for them today, from the day they cried in their cradle, took their first steps, until they grew up and became adults? From a more distant perspective, instead of criticizing the backwardness and obsolescence of our ancestors, please remember that in that backwardness and deprivation, our ancestors fought with sweat, blood, and tears so that we could live in a peaceful, beautiful, and modern country like today.

So many things seem small and simple, but how many things are there that without the elders, do we know if the youth can move on their own? I say this not to criticize the dynamism and enthusiasm of today's youth on the path to finding themselves, but to warn them that we cannot exist without the protection and care of those who came before us. That is why nature created time so that we know before and after, and created heaven and earth so that we know above and below. Forgetting that natural order is to deny the past, deny history and the foundation to build a better today and tomorrow.

Einstein pointed out the errors of Newton's theory to create his own new theory, which laid the foundation for the long-term development of physics. But if there were no Newton, would Einstein have seen the errors and avoided them, thought differently, thought further, and more broadly? Just like today's young people are talented and energetic in the sprint of the modern world, but if we had not taken the first difficult steps, do you think about it, would you have left the starting line by now?

Hai Trieu (Mail from Paris)