When as a young boy I immigrated to the U.S. more than 50 years ago, I found that the Americans and the American society were very much different from the Chinese and the Chinese society in Mainland China and Hong Kong where I was brought up.\u00a0 Besides the language, there were differences in many areas, such as:<\/p>\n
In this article I will discuss the last difference only, i.e., view toward fate, fortune, destiny, etc.\u00a0 I couldn’t figure out a simple term to designate this difference.\u00a0 I considered terms such as superstition, feng shui, astrology, scientific versus non-scientific analysis, but discarded every one of these terms, because they are too limited and too binary for the purpose of my discussion.<\/p>\n
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What I am referring to is the Chinese tendency when making a decision to rely on external factors such as the calendar, dates of various events, relative arrangement of various objects, palm readings, burning incense or feeding of paper money or food to idols, and potential coincidences of events.\u00a0 For example, an engaged couple trying to choose a wedding date would consider the birthdates of the bride and groom, someone moving into a new office would consider the relative placements of various furniture and placement of mirrors on certain entrance ways or windows, offering paper money and food to idols at a burial ceremony, getting the blessing of a palm reader before starting a new business venture or personal relationship, being married to someone because fate destines you to marry that person, or expecting a third calamity when two calamities have occurred recently since bad things always come in threes.<\/p>\n
I am not saying that there is no scientific basis whatsoever related to the potential prosperity of a business depending on how furniture is selected and arranged in its new office.\u00a0 Proper selection and placement of furniture could create a more appealing atmosphere and therefore could attract more customers.\u00a0 Similarly, the orientation of certain rooms of a house toward the sun could make a house more comfortable.\u00a0 For example, a house whose major bedrooms with windows facing west, where the afternoon sun is, would be hotter, more uncomfortable, and would require more energy to keep the house cool during hot weather months.\u00a0 That was why I discarded a simple term like superstition or non-scientific to describe the Chinese tendency or behavior.<\/p>\n
I think that in the late 1950s and early 1960s there was a fairly large gap in the amount of belief in fate, fortune, destiny, etc. when comparing the behavior of Chinese and Americans.\u00a0 The Chinese definitely believed more in fate, fortune, destiny, etc.<\/p>\n
This however began to change in the late 1960s and early 1970s.\u00a0 Astrology came into vogue in America, so that by the late 1970s, most newspapers have astrological columns.\u00a0 For example, the Asbury Park Press in its “Jersey Life” section has a daily article (except on Sunday) called “Star Forecast” that provides the horoscope for persons born on that day; the horoscope uses the positions of the planets on that date to infer individual character and personality traits and to foretell events of that person’s life.\u00a0 Radio and TV talk shows would frequently mention the astrological signs of various personalities. \u00a0Sometimes it seems like that one is not part of the “in” crowd if one doesn’t pay any attention to his or her own astrological sign.<\/p>\n
Astrology by the mid 1970s already became so widespread in the U.S. that 186 leading scientists published an article entitled “Objections to Astrology” in the September\/October 1975 issue of The Humanist.\u00a0 The concluding statement of that article states “It should be apparent that those individuals who continue to have faith in astrology do so in spite of the fact there is no verified scientific basis for their beliefs, and indeed that there is strong evidence to the contrary.”\u00a0 Astrology probably reached its peak in political influence during President Reagan’s term of office when Nancy Reagan frequently consulted with her astrologer before any major White House decision.<\/p>\n
This shift in the American society to believe in fate, fortune, destiny, etc. goes beyond astrology.\u00a0 Evidence for this can be seen from the results of the Gallop poll conducted June 6-8, 2005 that found that 73% of Americans believe in the paranormal. \u00a0In the poll, believing in paranormal means that one believes in one or more of the following 10 phenomena:<\/p>\n
The percentage after each item is the percentage of respondents who believe in that particular phenomenon, and the percentage of respondents who believe in at least one of the above 10 phenomena was 73%.\u00a0 The results are statistically relevant across lines of “age, gender, education, race, and region of the country.”\u00a0 Interestingly, the scores for Christians and non-Christians were, respectively, 75% and 66%.<\/p>\n
I don’t know what the corresponding percentages for today’s Chinese Americans would be (or for today’s Chinese).\u00a0 My conjecture is that the percentages for today’s Chinese Americans (or for today’s Chinese who live in the cities) are either similar or even lower than 73%, whereas 50 years ago, based on my own observations, the percentages for new Chinese immigrants to the U.S. (or Chinese) who believe in fate, fortune, destiny, etc. could have been higher than 73%, and in any case, they would have been significantly higher than the corresponding percentages for Americans of that period.\u00a0 Thus, a “cultural reversal” seems to have occurred during the second half of the 20th century.<\/p>\n
What are the reasons for this cultural reversal?\u00a0 Let me offer a guess.\u00a0 There is probably not a single dominant reason, but several contributing reasons.<\/p>\n
Of course, the pendulum in belief in fate, fortune, destiny, etc. in the American society could swing backward.\u00a0 As the world becomes more flat (in the sense of Thomas L. Friedman’s book The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century) and there is much more serious economic competition from the rest of the world, Americans as a whole would need to work harder.\u00a0 They would need to rely more on themselves; fate and destiny will no longer bring their “fortune.”\u00a0 The required hard work will reduce their leisure time to engage in faddish activities.\u00a0 Furthermore, astrology in the U.S. may no longer be a faddish activity. \u00a0On the other hand, with emerging prosperity and with the explosion of mass media communication in China, I wonder whether the same factors that caused the pendulum to swing in one direction in the U.S. during the second half of the 20th century could cause the pendulum to swing similarly in China during the first half of the 21st century.\u00a0 In other words, could it be possible that there will be another cultural reversal in the future?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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