For a little background information about myself, my life experience consists of spending most of the time growing up in a coastal city in southern China, and comparatively little amount of time in North America and Europe. My life experience might so far be defined by only these three places: southern China, London, and upstate New York. I spent a very short amount of time in the latter two, but those experiences had brought me thoughts and ideas that I think are unconventional and stimulating enough in having an impact on my way of thinking about the world. Still, I am pretty convinced that my own perspectives and ways of looking at the world are very much limited to my past life experiences — where I sit has a limit on how I think.
Growing up in China, I heard things about different parts of the world disproportionately — mostly the U.S., western Europe, and Russia, some about Australia, Japan, South Korea, a little of the Middle East and our neighboring South and Southeast Asian countries, and nearly none of the South American and African continents. This information, with some not heard as much as others, with some being emphasized and some being left out, shaped how I perceive the world; similarly, those growing up in a different time might have a very different worldview than I do.
Some interesting discussions from the postcolonial studies have somehow shocked me in how deeply the way in which our society works can shape the way we think. One of them is the critique of the current global economic system as an institution, which imposes neo-imperialist order and perpetuates oppression after the formal end of “empires.” Today, we categorize countries and regions into “underdeveloped,” “developed,” and “developing.” While the “developed” side is often conceived of as “liberal” and “progressive,” the “underdeveloped” is often associated with a certain extent of backwardness and in need of the benevolent helping hands from those powerful.
While people who are growing up today with the U.S. and China engaging in a trade war might hear a slightly different story, I grew up listening to adults associate the West with a certain sense of “advancement” and the values that studying abroad brings to my future success. I naturally came to believe that for developing and underdeveloped states, integrating into part of the capitalist global economic system is necessarily positive for their domestic development. I held on to this view for a long time without considering this perspective might involve placing one way of thinking as superior to the other. Growing up, I formed the idea of what might be the universally best way of living based on what I heard and what I experienced. My way of looking at the world might not include those perspectives ignored or marginalized by my own environment.
As it was mentioned in my ESOL class, Etymology of American Social Movements, when we talked about human rights, “no one can make you a victim unless you choose to be one.” If the majority of people do not think to change the way they live is necessary, is it morally justifiable for outsiders to push for an order which they deem as “better” or right? Some voices and perspectives are intentionally or unintentionally made “invisible” in our societies. How could we manage to take them into account when fighting for a world we deem as “just”?
