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"Culture"
What is the meaning of that word we all use so freely -- culture? What does it make you think of?

Spring Festival? The mid-Autumn or Dragon Boat festivals? Dumplings and mooncakes? Or maybe Christmas; Santa Claus; turkey dinners on Thanksgiving Day?

Is that what culture is all about?

Of course, the important differences between Western and Chinese people do not center around a few festivals. The big differences between us are the different ways we think; our different reactions to events; our different attitudes to life, morality, friendships, and society. And we are quite different in these ways.

Americans are also different from Europeans. But most people would probably agree that the differences between Americans and Chinese are bigger.

So we're different. But why? Why are you Chinese so different from us? Is it biology? Is it some kind of genetic information that was transferred to each of you from your mothers and fathers? Is it because of your different Chinese eyes that you can read Chinese characters?

Of course, we all know that genes have nothing to do with it. What makes people different is the mental environment. Those of you who have met ABC's -- American-born Chinese -- will have seen that they are much more similar to other Americans than they are to the people of China.

That might put a question in your mind: how different would you be if you had been born in America? Would you be a completely different person?

If the answer is yes, you have to wonder: how much of you is you? Are you an individual -- a special, unique person? Or are you just a copy of the people around you as you grow up?

When you move to a foreign country and live there, especially if you're there as a teacher, you can learn a lot more than a tourist. Tourists can walk around and look at nice buildings. But when you live in a different country, you can meet and get to know the people. Students have a good chance to do this too, so if you plan to study outside China you should see this too.

If you go to America, you might feel what I have felt in China. People there are different, of course; but what's surprising is that in many respects they're all different in the same way. That's how I feel in China. In some respects, almost all the Chinese are different in the same way.

This kind of thing can really make you stop and think. I've begun to believe, personally, that maybe 90% of a typical person's personality is environment, and only 10% his or her own individuality.

It would be possible to explore such questions scientifically. Maybe it's been done, I don't know. But my feeling is that, to a surprising degree -- to a degree most people do not suspect --

our ideas;
our tastes;
our moods;
the way we behave;
our ambitions, and what we want in life;
our opinion of what it means to have a successful life;
what makes us happy;
our actual level of happiness;
our opinion about whether a particular food is delicious or disgusting;
our opinion about whether a person is beautiful or ugly;
our opinion about whether or not a person is a hero;
what we consider right and wrong;
what we consider physically dangerous;
our feeling as to whether we are sick or healthy

-- all these ideas, outlooks and opinions are, to a frightening degree, simply copied from the people around us. They are lessons learned from the people surrounding us as we grow up. But the lessons are learned uncritically. We don't think about it. We just copy it from the people around us by simple imitation.

That, I think, is what culture is.

Why do I say it's "frightening," the degree to which our personalities are mere copies of the people around us? Because individuality, at least in traditional Western thought, is supposed to be a good thing. If we are not independent individuals, it suggests that we do not have freedom.

One of the important Western values is the freedom of an individual to have his own ideas and opinions, to be his own independent person, irrespective of what everyone around him thinks.

If people who live in a culture are simply a copy of the other people in that culture, it's also frightening because it suggests that our ideas are arbitrary; it suggests that we believe what we believe simply because of where we were born; and that if we had been born elsewhere, we might believe the very opposite. It suggests that knowing the truth, or having smarter ideas, is simply a matter of luck-- being born in the right culture.

Examples of cultural differences
In most of America, it is unquestioned that America is a powerful force for good, and that its enemies are evil. In other communities in other parts of the world, ordinary civilians -- families, men, women, and children who are just as human as you and me, people who would be happy to extend their hospitality and invite you into their homes for a cup of tea -- strongly believe that America is the evil one.

In Beijing, I was quite surprised last year by what I saw in the subway trains, at least around pingguoyuan deetye. If a mother was with a 6-year-old child, and they could only find one seat to sit in, then the mother would make the child sit; and the mother would stand. If there was an 80-year-old woman nearby, standing wearily, looking bedraggled and miserable as she clutched one of the straps hanging from the ceiling ... would the mother and child show the traditional Chinese respect for older people? Would the child stand so the old lady could take the seat?

Forget it. Dream on, lady! The old woman would remain standing; and the little 6-year-old darling would sit and fidget in the seat.

Now, in other societies too, children will not stand up for old strangers. But nowhere else have I seen parents standing so their own child can take the seat. That seems really strange. It's much more natural for the parent to sit and children to stand.

But that's the power of culture. It seems the culture, today, in Beijing, makes people think that if you love your child you should stand so your child can sit. And I would guess that if you see a mother sit while her child is standing, you'll think the mother does not love her child.

Another cultural difference: I asked one of my university students how she spent her summer. She told me she loves her mother very much and misses her during the school year, so during the summers she goes home to spend time together with her.

You probably think this is a fairly common feeling. But if a young American said that, people might think she had some kind of problem. They might think she's mentally sick, that maybe she needs to see a psychiatrist.

Another difference: one of the things that's so nice here is that you always see lots of children walking and running around -- laughing, happy, carefree. I don't think the dangers to children in the West are much greater than in China, and I don't think Western parents love their children more than Chinese parents, but in Western cities you almost never see children out alone without adults. Parents are afraid that their children would be attacked or kidnapped.

The most immediately striking difference one sees in China is how terribly dangerous your roads are; how unbelievably badly drivers drive their cars. In the West people driving the way they do here would be put in jail. Every time I take a taxi here I am terrified that the car I am in is going to kill somebody. When I see people limping around the campus, I know why. Being hit by a car seems to be common here.

But there is something much more surprising, and utterly different from the West: the people walking or bicycling along the streets are not afraid! They are not afraid of being killed. In America, anyone walking on the street who saw a car move the way they do here would run -- run for his life screaming. But here, people seem to be completely unworried even as death comes within inches. They walk on the road, with their backs to traffic. Sometimes they walk into the road -- without looking at the cars. I am still trying to understand this.

Another thing I've observed, on the Tsinghua campus, is that when two bicycles nearly collide, the two riders simply recover, adjust, and go along their way with no comment, without speaking any words. In the West, a near-collision normally makes people angry. You might hear: "Would you watch where you're going, you goddamn bloody idiot?!"

Another thing: friends here hold each other's hands. That's very nice; friendly and innocent. But in America that's the same as holding up a sign saying: "I am a homosexual."

How about at restaurants? Here, people are pushed to drink alcohol even if they don't want to drink. In America at least we know that's not very smart. And let's not forget cigarette smoking -- a foolish habit that is much more common in China than in America.

I'll also mention the shocking litter in your beautiful parks. I was climbing down the Xiangshan mountain recently and it seemed the whole mountain was covered with garbage: candy wrappers, potato chip bags, drink containers, napkins. The parks and lakes of Tsinghua also have this problem (though it's not as bad). In the West, this is considered a great social offense; as a result, you almost never see garbage in parks.

These are some of the differences between the Chinese and Americans that are superficial -- easy to see. There are other differences too. I feel that more of the young people in China are mentally alive. That's one of the main reasons why, at least for now, I feel life is better for me here than in the West.

The people I've met in English corners here don't just want to learn English so they can have better jobs and make more money. They are interested in conversation and ideas; they are awake -- they pay attention when I speak to them; they have a natural, healthy desire to understand more about the world; they find conversation fun, and they are curious. That is what life is actually all about.

Real conversation, the exploration of ideas, rarely happens in America. People are too busy. People sense that something is wrong if they spend more than a few minutes simply exploring ideas for nothing. It won't help them get ahead in life. It won't add to their list of accomplishments. It won't bring them closer to the "American Dream" -- which really just means to get rich. And besides, they are tired; they don't have the mental energy to think very hard. Conversation about ideas is regarded as a waste of time.

The need to be busy really comes from a deep restlessness that is widespread among young Americans. A writer called Bill McKibben has written that this restlessness is a disease that comes from never-ending exposure to propaganda.

What kind of propaganda?

Advertising -- business propaganda.

McKibben wrote that advertising is always teaching Americans false lessons about how to live happily. Americans search endlessly but cannot find happiness -- because they are looking in all the wrong places. Americans no longer trust their own human instincts.

Does anyone know Marxist theory? What are the two inputs needed to produce things?

Capital and Labor.

But there's also a different kind of capital.

A few years ago Robert Putnam, a professor of government at Harvard, was trying to understand what makes some governments successful and others unsuccessful. He compared 20 local governments in Italy and found that the most important factor in making society work well is social capital. By "social capital" he meant how socially connected people are; how much they join voluntary groups; how involved they are with their communities; how much they trust each other.

Prof. Putnam wrote: "Good government in Italy comes from singing groups and football clubs." When people join groups and are socially active with each other, they build trust and cooperation. And that makes everything else go well.

Then Putnam began studying social capital in America. How did he do his research? He used statistics.

What's a statistic? It's a number that tells you something about the world. For example, the number of public meetings that were held in America last year. That number -- the number of public meetings that occurred -- provides some information about society. Another statistic would be the percent of homes that have a telephone.

Putnam got mountains of statistics about almost everything in American life: how many picnics Americans go to; how often they play baseball; how much they join clubs; how many public meetings they attend; how many petitions they sign. He had 50 assistants, people working for him, to help with his research, and millions of dollars for his study. What did he find?

Anyone know bowling?

The result of Putnam's research was a 1995 book called Bowling Alone.

The data -- the numbers, the statistics -- showed a very great, shocking drop in social capital in America, between the 1960's and 1990's. Bowling, of course, is not important, but what happened with bowling is the same thing that happened everywhere else in American society during that time: Today, when an American goes bowling, it is more common than before for him to go alone, without friends. In the past, it was more common to go bowling with friends.

The drop in social capital, Putnam said, is bad for society in many ways. It harms education; it makes people less honest; it makes them less happy and healthy; and it hurts democracy by leading to governments that do not represent the people as much.

What had amazed Putnam when he studied Italian society was how slowly social capital changes. He found that the low social capital in southern Italy, and the high social capital in the northern Italy, came from the 1100s. Nine hundred years ago, the Normans set up a system of bosses and servants in the south; but in the north people were more equal and had to work with each other. That created trust between people that still exists in the north today, but not in the south. And that's why the northern societies are more successful.

But that made his findings in America even more shocking and puzzling. The question was not only how could social capital fall so much; he also could not understand how it fell so fast. How could such a big decline occur in only 30 years, from the 1960's to the 1990's?

Putnam used the numbers, and statistical analysis methods, and he thought about many possible explanations. Education, for example. The average educational level of people went up a lot from the 60's to the 90's. But that only made the mystery bigger: social capital normally goes up when educational levels go up. So why did social capital go down?

Putnam also thought maybe the changed role of women might explain the drop in social capital. In the 90's women worked, while in the 60's they stayed at home. But he found this could not explain the large drop in social capital either.

We'll get back to Putnam later.

Take what's good
As you think about the differences I mentioned earlier between the American and Chinese cultures, you may feel that American culture is better in some ways; and Chinese culture is better in other ways. I agree with you. It's perfectly reasonable to make judgments. Of course, you have to be smart enough to be fair in comparing your own culture to other cultures. Smart people should learn from other cultures. Take what's good; reject what's bad.

Many Chinese I've spoken to seem to think capitalism is wonderful. And I know China has become more capitalistic, especially as it enters the WTO. It seems to me there is a likelihood that China will take what's good ... and also take what's bad ... as it moves closer to American-style capitalism. It seems to me the Chinese people don't know much about the problems of capitalism -- even though they are on public display all over America.

What shapes young people in West?
Think about what you know of Western culture. Think about young people growing up in the West and tell me: What shapes their attitudes and personalities? Where do they get their ideas?

What is the strongest force that affects youth culture? Parents? Schools?

TV, movies, popular music, video games. Media entertainment is the strongest influence on youth culture by far.

TV is everywhere. It is the first teacher for young people. TV teaches them lessons on how to behave socially -- how to interact with other people. If you have grown up in America, you have already seen everything on TV before you experience it in your own life. If there is someone that a young person admires, a hero whose lessons he tries to follow in life, that person is probably a TV character.

Our species -- modern man -- evolved ...

How many years ago?

... about 200,000 years ago. That's when we first appeared on Earth.

Now, TV appeared relatively late during those 200,000 years.

How long ago?

About 50 years ago. And that was when something very important changed forever.

From 200,000 years ago until 50 years ago -- throughout history, throughout pre-history -- children growing up, in every human society, have been socialized by the people around them. They learned their lessons, their culture, from human beings.

Not any more. Since 50 years ago, the social world of young people is made up of many people who are not natural human beings.

Now remember, people copy the thinking around them. They copy it blindly -- without thinking. That's why friends don't touch each other's hands in America; that's why men in China smoke cigarettes more than they do in America; that's why parents are afraid to let their children play outside alone in America. That's why people walking on your roads aren't afraid they will be killed.

The habits, customs, behaviors that young people are learning today come from artificial (man-made) beings -- fictional characters they see on TV. Typically those lessons begin before the children are old enough to speak.

In what ways are TV people, and movie people, different from natural people? The main difference is that they are corporate products -- created by business corporations -- and the reason they are created is money and profit. Natural humans can have many different wishes and goals in life. TV people have one goal. They are single-minded. Their only purpose, their only reason for existing, is to make more money for their creators.

Understand the nature of TV and movie people
How many people do you feel you know in your life? How many people do you feel connected to? Count them. Now, you know TV and movie people are all around us in our societies. How many of the people in your life are TV and movie people?

I want to help you understand the true nature of these artificial people.

To understand TV and movie people better, it is useful to think of a character from a popular American action movie. The character is not a man, but a kind of robot -- made of a very strong steel. So it is artificial, man-made, just like the many TV people in our own lives. Also, like TV people, it is single-minded. It does not have wishes, feelings, fears, emotions. Its mind is a computer.

This machine, this robot, has been programmed with a single objective. The only purpose of that robot's existence is to murder a specific target ... a particular woman.

There is an actor ... he's a superstar now ... who made that robot so wonderfully un-lifelike, that robot became world-famous and won many more fans than most human actors.

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