Dear Brothers & Sisters,

For at least half of a century that I have observed with my own eyes, people in the world have taught each other to break up relationships faster and faster every day.

When I was little, no one talked about divorce in Vietnam – once in awhile you heard about someones in USA or Europe divorcing, like a strange activity that strange people in the West did because they had too much leisure time on their hand. Even when I got to the US in 1975, few Americans were divorcing, though a lot compared with innocent Vietnam.

But people have been divorcing more and more, faster and faster, in the West and everywhere, including VN, though VN is still behind the West. And the reason for devorce is that “If you don’t love each other anymore (or can’t get along anymore), don’t stay in misery, break up so both can find peace and happiness.”

That is husband and wife. The same is in all other human relationships. Friends break up friendships even faster than married couples do, and with more reasons too – fighting for position, conflict of interest, fighting for one woman (or man), jealousy, ego, different views in socio-politico-religious issues… you name it. Today most people don’t even know that human civilization has a word called “loyalty.” What is that? Ugandan language? Or Tibetan?

And not just in personal relationship, the collapse of loyalty can also be seen clearly in social life, especially in politics. Look at the US, 50 years ago, politicians, regardless of what party, were polite, friendly, and respectful to one another. Now the Repulicans and Democrats are practically at war against each other, violently and lawlessly. And we are taking about the beacon of democracy of the world, folks! Well, the beacon has broken.

And you see so much war in many smaller countries, from Africa, to Central America, South America, Central Asia, South Asia. Many European countries also have been unstabe and chaotic politically and socially…

There has been a total collapse of trust and loyalty in the human heart worldwide.

I think the real reason is the glorification of individualism and the corresponding decline of collectivism.

With collectivism of the old days, people tried to think together and act together, with the common norms on how to think, how to act and how to treat one another. Peope behaved according to the social norms they learned, therefore conflicts rarely arose. Moreover, the social norms focused heavily on society’s order and peace. People learned to minimize conflicts, and when a conflict arose, they tried immediately to solve the conflict and maintain peace. In such a collecive way of living, loyalty was always the focus of the relationship, acting as the glue that kept the relationship stable and unbroken.

Today, with individualism, each person thinks about him/herself first – my happiness, my want, my wish… Communal life is no longer the goal, but rather a limitation or restraint on the individual. With individualism reigning supreme, loyalty becomes unemployed and forgotten.

The serious problem is that when the “restraining” effects of loyalty is lost, we don’t have anything left to help us fix and maintain a relationship – why fix something that limits your individual freedom? Folks, that is the giving-up attitude.

The other side of the coin is that, when you want to break up with someone (for your freedom), your mind always finds “good reasons” to break up. But that is your stupid mind fooling you, because instead of trying to find reasons to maintain the relationhip as in the old days, now the mind merely searches for the reasons to split up. It is your desire – a breakup – that tells your mind to find reasons to convince you that you are correct – you mind simply fools you.

Or put it succinctly, your fool yourself by simply finding the reasons to support your desire to break up, and not the reasons to maintain the reationship.

The result, as we can see, ís chaos in the social orders and the collapse of social structures all over the world.

So, we need to slow down on individualism and go back to the traditional values that have upheld human societies of the world for thousands of years. Among those values, loyalty is one of the highest.

When you are in a relationship, be it parent-child, sister-brother, frienship, or teacher-student, value it and maintain it. Treat all your relationships as higher than yourself, because your relationships are your world. Keep your world strong and sustainable. You don’t want to be in a broken world with so many broken relationships.

When your world is strong, you are happy and strong. Moreover, people respect you more when they see your strong world, and that respect is a plus for your success in life, however you define success.

Wish we all be loyal to one another.

With compassion.

Hoành

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Trần Đình Hoành
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