Studying in humanity through my own internationalization and worlds globalization

Introduction
Today, I will discuss the need of developing a well-rounded globalization that increases awareness of connections, commonalities, and differences, through my own multicultural background and readings that shows the different culture, value, and virtue.

Capitalism, materialism and globalization are prominent characteristic in todays society.  With capitalistic society that is solely pursing the interests and benefits of the individual, globalization has continued to reveal severe environmental and social problems, such as air/water pollution, depletion of natural resources, waste management, and exploitation.  I claim that todays human community is careless of respecting and caring each other because of its preoccupation with the capitalistic mentality.

Developing a well-rounded globalization requires nurturing the capitalistic mentality to be more respectful of the differences and understanding in order to obtain a higher level of human dignity.  A crucial element in learning respect for other people and the differences among us is the ability to experience feelings of what it is like to be others.  By knowing the outsiders experience, we can appreciate differences among people and have better understanding of one another.  This is the common ground with all humanity understanding to each other, and respecting differences among people and culture.

I examine well-rounded globalization through the concept of internationalization, the possession of many cultures within an individual created by living in countries other than his/her original country.

Personal History of Internationalization begin with my own international background. My internationalization begun at age one as my family moved from Japan to Brazil, and lived there for five years.  After Brazil, I lived in Japan for two years, and then moved to Paraguay for two years.  After Paraguay, I lived in Japan for 10 years, and then moved to Britain, and the U.S.

My first experience of isolation from community caused by carrying a different disposition than others started after my family came from Brazil.
I remember that some Japanese kids insulted me and my brother.  They shouted at us, “Pig, Pig, Butajiru” (Butajiru is a Japanese pork soup = calling us pork as a “Pig”) (sounding Butajiru as “Brazil”)
They even sometimes sprayed water at us, and chased us.
The five years’ living in Brazil must have made us appear different from other Japanese kids.  Perhaps, the differences made them feel strange about us.
The same thing happened after coming back from Paraguay.
I was told that I was somehow different, but I could not see what the difference was.
The kids’ reaction toward difference was tremendous.  As Japan is largely a monoculture, the kids were not used to seeing people who possessed a non-Japanese culture.  Each time I was treated like this, I was confused and certainly had a toned feeling.
This experience occurred not only in Japan, I had several more experiences in later year.  When I was in Britain, I was told by one of the customers at a restaurant, “You are lucky, you are allowed to stay in this restaurant tonight despite that you are Asian.”

Whenever I have moved to a new place, I have faced the struggle of adapting myself into the new culture.  Slowly I have learned how to cope with the struggle.

Mistakes and progress in a process of adapting myself into a new culture
In the beginning, I was completely trying to become like my own original Japanese, but I never succeeded.  Similar experience is shown in the story of Gatsby from the Great Gatsby.  He tries to become like his new elites neighbors whom he wanted to be, and he also fails to do so, as is seen in the lonely ending life of his life.

Between my own life and Gatsby’s lies a common mistake of lost self-identity.
In Gatsby’s case, he hid his originalstatus, so he made up lies that place himself in high-class society with a family of wealth.
The truth is that he came from the lower-middle-class society.

In my case, I lost my self-identity because I only thought after the portion of myself that I could share with my native culture.  Assuming the people of my original Japanese culture have experienced only their own culture, so I set them as 1/1 (one over one; one whole).  While I have experienced six cultures, I have the 1 out of 6 parts of me that can be shared with my own culture (1 out of 6 = 16%), and the rest of the 5 cultures are alien culture for the original Japanese.  So, the 5 out of 6 is excluded being shared.
As I travel more, I will absorb more cultures, from now to a possible future of 100.  If 100 cultures are gained, only one percent will be shared with my original Japanese culture.  As the number of gained cultures increases, one has a lesser portion of cultures to be shared with others.  The percentage of sharing could be ultimately zero as the number of cultures increases.  There is clearly something wrong with this idea.

However, I think this misconception often happens amongst people who live in a foreign country or foreign society, because of a rushing aspiration to find one’s own belonging to a community.  Often, this rushed desire can make one blind and cause the loss of self-identity.

Similar experience was exemplified by Helga from Quicksand.  Throughout Helga’s life, she gets confused and struggles to deal with her mixed racial heritage.  She seeks to belong within communities wherever she goes.  Her confusion is seen in her inconsistency in her attitude; she sometimes desires to be different, but she often has difficulties accepting the difference.  Her struggles are seen in her unwillingness to share the pain of her past that she was not accepted unconditionally as a child.  As she seeks to belong, she moves from place to place in search of that "something" that is missing in her life.

When examining Helga’s problems, she did not hesitate to share with her friends the pain of her past that entails her own identity, her pain might have been reduced, and that might have given her a better chance of having other’s good guidance.  Also, if she did not change in communities so often, she might realize the importance of accepting who she is within the people and community that knows her well.  This would give her a chance to realize the importance of maintaining and building self-identity.

Instead of seeking to become others, one should try to find ways of “relating to each other” while maintaining one’s self-identity in a new community.  In other words, one can grow a self-identity as one accepts and gains different cultures.  Because learning to “respect to each other”entails mainly two elements: the acceptance of difference and maintaining self-identity, to find ways of relating to each other is the formation of respecting one another.

Conclusion
Lastly, while I actively support the concept of a global community, as the world rapidly moves to capitalistic economies, I have been seeing more of the possible downside consequences of capitalism.  Since people tend to pursue their own interest, capitalist economies tend to create unfairness in our society.  Rapid movement toward capitalist economies can create the sociological fallout, such as, revolt, crime, violence, or riot.

These consequences are indeed predictable, and almost inevitable, as we have already seen the increase in criminal activities, especially our on going tragedies with ‘terrorism’, and the number of similar kinds of tragedies has increased remarkably over the last few years.  Our capitalistic society has evolved a broader concept that includes a basic understanding of humanity.  Capitalism and humanity are now permanently linked together; Capitalism cannot survive without the basic understanding of humanity.

Now, this humanity class provided me great opportunities to perceive experiences of individuals that inter-reflect the experiences of many in the world.  The characters and their experiences introduced by each story enabled me to understand the experiences and feelings of “the-other”.  Through the literature introduced in this class, and my own multicultural experiences, I found that if the human community is created by all of its members by accepting each other’s differences and self-identity, the creation of “respect for one another” is reachable for the common ground of humanity.  With this, eventually the evolution of capitalism that entails the concept of humanity will lead us to develop the well-rounded globalization.