Dear Brothers and Sisters,

“Developing our Vietnamese culture” builds upon a number of premises: (1) Culture is a living entity, growing every day, (2) Culture doesn’t develop by itself, (3) Many factors may affect the growth of the culture, and (4) We, the members of the culture living within the culture, have a major role in the development of culture – we can help the culture develop well and be healthy, strong and positive, or we may lead the culture to illness, weakness and negativity.

Our role in the development of our culture is the focus of this article.

We contribute automatically to the development of culture, whether we know it and want it or not. By the way we live, our behaviour and attitude, thoughts and actions, we affect and influence our culture and its development.

Once upon a time, most Vietnamese wear clothing with dark colours – black, brown and, occasionally, white. Today, we wear multicoloured clothing every day. That is a huge change in culture, giving the culture a greater feel of youth, happiness and enjoyment.

In the old days, in conversation, the older or socially-higher person talks, the younger or socially-lower person says “yes” almost throughout the entire conversation. That is the characteristic of a Confucian hierarchical society. Today, both parties in a conversation, regardless of age or social ranking, are very much equal and talk almost equally, although there is always the presence of respect and deference toward the elder. That is the characteristic of a democratic culture, with a trace of natural respect for seniority.

The Vietnamese today, though more democratic, still show serious respect for the aged in daily conversations. That is a characteristic of the Vietnamese culture, compared to, say, the American culture, in which parents and children are more equal, so much that when a child is 18 s/he is completely equal to the parents in many ways.

Here we see the major elements of cultural development: (1) the old culture, (2) the new element that changes the old culture, and (3) the old culture transforms gradually into a new culture with traces of both old and new values present.

In our example above, the old Vietnamese culture was highly hierarchical. Then, a new element – democratic ideas from the West – has entered, through the French, the American, and the world, and changed Vietnam, resulting in the current Vietnamese culture – relatively democratic with a clear deference to the elders.

That is cultural development, with continuity – old values, new values, and the resulting mix of both old and new values.

Understanding that process of cultural development, we will know exactly how we should affect and direct our cultural development the best way for ourselves and for the future generations.

Old values were there, usually because they were good then.

New values come in because they are new and, therefore, attractive. New usually means attractive. But new values do have two problems:

1) Some values may be attractive, but bad in the long term, for our culture or for many cultures, including ours. We must be able to distinguish gold from brass.

2) Some people have the tendency to throw out the old shirt once they have a new shirt. That is wasteful and dumb. Why do you have to throw away your old shirt just because you have got a new one? Keep both of them, new and old, to make your clothing collection richer and more versatile for all occasions.

The problem with Vietnam in the last one hundred years is that once a young intellectual learns something new, especially new things from studying overseas, s/he often becomes arrogant and anti-Vietnamese-culture, opposing to almost everything Vietnamese. Young intellectuals often become revolutionaries, razing down their old Vietnamese culture, to build a new Western culture in their home.

That is not really development. That is to destroy, in order to build.

And we know, destroying is the easy part, building is the hard part. Most of the time, in culture, the destroyers can’t build anything, because the foundation has been pulverized and the builders have no expertise in culture building. The result is a cultural mess that we can see in the Vietnamese culture in the last 100 years.

So, folks, wise up!

The old values had a reason to be there. Keep them there.

For the new values, make sure you think carefully to distinguish bad values from good values. Promote the good, prevent the bad.

And let the old values and the new good values live together. Let them adjust themselves over time, so that they will be harmonized into a new, rich and good culture for us and our future generations.

Wish that we always have a rich, strong and good culture.

With compassions,

Hoành

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