Loud. Arrogant. Rebellious. Asian. | Hacker News Reader

Loud. Arrogant. Rebellious. Asian.

jasonshen.com

43 pointsPStamatiou34 comments

It bothers me that as a generation, we are rejecting our parents way to play the game, when instead we should be rejecting the game.

Humility and willingness to work hard without complaint are the most valuable things my parents gave me.

Definition of success in terms of material wealth, academic prestige, and public recognition were the most damaging.

Our parents' generation sacrificed so much for us and emphasized these things so that we wouldn't know the poverty that they did. Maybe they didn't realize how well they would succeed and that in doing so they would leave us impoverished in much more deeply profound ways: intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. I can't blame them, but our generation's discourse needs to be about more than worldly success. It needs to shift from tactics to strategy.

Our parents gave us what they could; we need to give our children more.

Thanks for your comment joebadmo. I share your sentiments about our parents - they sacrificed so much so that we could have a good life here in America. My problem is that the many of things they taught us do not produce the results that we - this generation - are looking for (or perhaps more kindly, are necessary but not sufficient).

I want adventure in my life, an uncapped career trajectory and yes, I would like to have money. But other people might want other things too - like the writers and poets featured in the Paper Tigers article.

The important thing is recognizing what you really truly want and not letting other people's expectations stop you from going after those things.

My point is that the conversation still seems mostly to be about how to get the things we think we want. I want to talk about what we should want.

This passage in the article stood out to me:

Things that somehow come naturally to people who go to school in the suburbs and have parents who are culturally assimilated.? I pressed him for specifics, and he mentioned that he had visited his white girlfriend’s parents’ house the past Christmas, where the family had "sat around cooking together and playing Scrabble." This ordinary vision of suburban-American domesticity lingered with Mao: Here, at last, was the setting in which all that implicit knowledge--about social norms and propriety--had been transmitted. There was no cram school that taught these lessons.

What's beautiful about this "ordinary vision" is that it's a portrait of domestic tranquility and love, simple and unpretentious, not that it's some sort of cultural transmission conduit; and it's totallly perverse to even frame it that way.

Another:

One succinct evocation of the situation appeared in the comments section of a website called Yellowworld: "If you’re East Asian, you need to attend a top-tier university to land a good high-paying gig. Even if you land that good high-paying gig, the white guy with the pedigree from a mediocre state university will somehow move ahead of you in the ranks simply because he’s white."

The second, conditional sentence is the one that seems to get all the attention, but I've always felt that it's the first one, the premise, that deserves criticism. The article makes a head-fake toward it, but then lets it slide. This is the real problem with our culture: not that we aren't getting enough of the highest-paying or highest-status jobs, enough wealth, enough exposure, or enough recognition. The problem is that that's all we care about.

The tragic truth about putting everything into breaking through the "bamboo ceiling," I suspect, is that it doesn't actually look any different on the other side of it.

None of this is to say that wealth, exposure, or recognition are inherently bad or wrong. 1 Timothy 6:10 says "Love of money is the root of all evil." Not money; love of it. It's our preoccupation with wealth, exposure, and recognition, our search for these to the exclusion of all else that leaves us with nothing truly substantial inside.

Yes, the author briefly mentions artistic pursuits in passing, but it's still in the framework of external measures of success. What's the takeaway?

And though the debate she sparked about Asian-American life has been of questionable value, we will need more people with the same kind of defiance, willing to push themselves into the spotlight and to make some noise, to beat people up, to seduce women, to make mistakes, to become entrepreneurs, to stop doggedly pursuing official paper emblems attesting to their worthiness, to stop thinking those scraps of paper will secure anyone’s happiness, and to dare to be interesting.

"[Be] interesting," he says. Interesting to whom?

I have a different message: Be interested.

Yesterday's xkcd explicates it better than I can: http://xkcd.com/896/

I agree that people don't spend enough thinking about what they _ought_ to want and are overly programmed by consumer culture and advertising.

I include myself in this group.

I used to be more thoughtful about it, and even wrote a series on "finding yourself" - http://www.jasonshen.com/2006/finding-yourself-in-7-days/ as well as a manifesto on creating your own life philosophy: http://changethis.com/manifesto/show/48.05.SuccessPhilosophy

Thanks for reminding us about what really matters.

> It bothers me that as a generation, we are rejecting our parents way to play the game, when instead we should be rejecting the game.

I think this is the initial reaction to many 1st gen asians struggling to work out the paths to success. But I think in reality we don't need to reject our parents methods or the game itself - we just need to adjust our way of thinking.

If I use the analogy of building accommodation - if you lived in New York, you would learn how to build a high rise apartment block, if you lived in Montana, you might learn how to build a single story farm house. If your New York builder parents moved to Montana, your high rise building skills would not be as successful in Montana - it doesn't mean that your parents are at fault, or that the fundamentals of building theory are incorrect or bad. Nor is the 'game' (in this case, how to build accommodation) in itself at fault.

Most people will not experience the move from 'NYC' to 'Montana' and won't understand the challenges that it entails. For those that do, we don't need to reject our parents methods or rail against 'the system' - we just need to recognise that things are different and that we need to adapt.

The whinyness and narcissism of these guys completely astounds me. Boo hoo I went to stanford but I don't get to date hot girls. Or FU Im so angry because my parents suck and look I date hot girls.

Here is some advice - everyone's parents suck in one way or another and you were lucky you werent born in Africa where 30,000 babies die every single day.

True happiness comes from within. Not from achievements and not from material possessions.

If you're astounded that people who have been given much want more, you haven't been following the trend of CEO pay or the activity on Wall Street or history of human conquest. It is part of human nature to always be wanting more.

Leaving the snarkiness aside, you make a great point. It is always worth thinking about how lucky you are and how much worse things could have turned out.

There wasn't a place for me to note my appreciation for what I've been given in the article, but know that it exists. My statement about getting after what you want still stands.

My point is that you want the wrong things and when you get them you still wont be happy.

Did you even read the article (the OP and the nymag article)? Those articles were nothing about whining or narcissim - it was all about the sense of displacement and confusion that many 1st gen Asian-americans feel.

If you have ever travelled into a foreign place (and preferably some non-Western place - assuming you are from the US), you will get a feel for what displacement feels like. Things look similar to your home, but people behave and act differently in obvious and subtle ways. The things you learnt you could do in the US don't always work in these foreign places.

But when you travel, you know it's temporary and you can always go home. For the asian-americans in the article, it's not temporary and they can't go home - they are home, yet 'home' (as they view it through the lens of their parents upbringing) can feel like a 'foreign place'.

"Error Establishing Database Connection"

Way to fight racial stereotypes dude. My prejudiced view of asians as people that know how to build websites has totally been challenged.

Hahaha - thank you. Glad to help.

What always strikes me when reading articles/entries like this or the Paper Tigers article itself is how opaque the unique difficulties people in subcultures or minority cultures face. Not only that they exist, but why they exist: Usually, the issue is so nuanced as to be seemingly unalterable.

Take, for example, incarceration rates and the likelihood of incarceration by race. At face value it's absurd that being born a black male means you are more likely to go to jail than a white male born at the same exact instant. It's just as absurd that other minority populations are seemingly systemically disallowed from positions of executive authority in businesses.

Obviously the reasons for these difference are incredibly difficult to parse and weight; how do you go about correcting this aberration?

I guess learning things like this make me frustrated and confused.

I think it's hard to talk about because it's often systemic, invisible, and cultural simultaenously. Even when it becomes visible, it's easy for one side to blame the culture and the other side to blame the system, when both are probably to blame, and there's a symbiosis between the two.

You're kind of like an asian Charlie Sheen.

"Yes, it is about attracting those women whose hair is the color of the midday sun and eyes are the color of the ocean, and it is about having sex with them. "

No-no-no. That's the wrong attitude.

I think the key is this -- women are animals, just like men, with slightly different genitals. And they should be treated like men, not put on a higher pedestal.

I'm sorry, girls, but if you think that just because you have a vagina you're somehow better than the rest of the world -- you are wrong. The worst possible legal thing you can do to a man is not have sex with him. And if you think having sex with you is the best and indescribable pleasure one can have -- you are wrong. Sex is not as fun as it sounds, it's a physical workout, it gets tiring, there's sweat and weird noises and everything. It's overrated. Get over it, not everyone is dreaming of you everyday of their life and you are not the fantastically beautiful cute cuddly thing you'd like to think you are.

You wanted equal rights, have fun.

Now, this is a question you want to ask yourself "Would I treat her differently if she had a penis?" If you say yes, you are biased and you need deep introspection into yourself and your life-values.

I'm tired of all this miserable bullshit where people take things like color of the skin, or genitalia, or height, or whatever into account to justify their own laziness, incompetence, mental illnesses and whatever personal problems they have.

You missed the central point of the statement:

This is what he prefers, what he stands for, and what he is selling: the courage to pursue anyone you want, and the skills to make the person you desire desire you back.

It's not wrong at all to put what you want on a pedestal. It seems pretty obvious to me that when you desire something it's because you value it.

I think his outlook on achieving his goal interferes with every reasonable pick-up theory in the world, is offensive to women of other color, and is borderline fascist.

I also think he is using his race as an excuse for his problems.

Not wrong, just backwards and ineffective. It's often when you stop caring that the object of your desire arrives at your door.

How is that the wrong attitude?

I think you should read the original article that quote is from (http://nymag.com/news/features/asian-americans-2011-5/) because the remainder of your comment makes it clear you didn't understand what you've quoted. It certainly has nothing to do with putting women on a pedestal, in fact, it's quite the opposite.

It's a wrong attitude because it implies that having sex with a white woman is somehow an achievement in life worth respect from others. I disagree.

It implies that having the skills to pick up any woman you want (in his specific case, he wants blonde haired white women) is an achievement in life worth respect. You may disagree with that, but I can assure you those skills translate to all aspects of social interaction. In the context of the original article, this is one of the ways that people can radically improve their social skills and positively impact all areas of their life.

Not necessarily and depends on many variables. Counter-example: I would respect a guy who slept with few girls and has a stable relationship much more than someone who goes to a bar every night, takes advantage of half-conscious, drunk women and somehow boasts that as an achievement.. I think that's what most "pick-up artists" try to do.

It's more than just the plumbing. Emotionally/hormonally women are different. Everyone should be treated _fairly_ but not interchangeably.

After a deep (albeit brief) introspection, I am quite happy to pull out chairs, open doors, offer an arm on the stairs, and date women.

[note the submitted link seems to be down I have yet to read the article]

It's slightly different. Opening doors is a sign of politeness. Politeness has nothing to do with putting people on a pedestal.

Politeness can be done in a way that indicates disgust, similarly to passive aggression.

Meh, after reading the article this seems OT.

or genitalia

Sounds a tad defensive, only proving the point of the New York Magazine article.

As a first generation of Chinese immigrant, I personally experienced bamboo ceiling in a government agency. While I am still not very comfortable and skillful to raise my voice at my workplace, I totally agree that young Asian generation should raise your voice and demand what you deserve in a meritocratic society. Go ahead, be a real Asian tiger!

This made me chuckle:

    [warning, this post contains graphic language]

Kind of undercuts what goes after. Good piece though.

My first post with a lot of swearing... You gotta start somewhere, right?

Apologies about the site being down intermittently - I'm leaving my webhost (Bluehost) as the uptime has been atrocious as of late.

site seems to be down, cached version:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

Why are Asians to race oriented?

Why can't non-Asians form sentences and why do they generalize so much?

This all seems really shallow and superficial. "Money!" "Women!" "Pushups!" "Fuck yeah!"

I don't like loud douchebags of any race. I'm not saying you're a douchebag, but what you wrote here says to me that strive to be one.

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