How does the community affect the individual?
Whether it is in a positive or negative way, the community has an impact on who we are as an individual. The community affects how we act, how we think, and how we identify ourselves. Oftentimes we don’t realize how we’re being influenced until we look back and focus on the choices we’ve made. Although this doesn’t apply to everyone, most people choose to follow and be a part of the community to fit in. This phenomenon, pack mentality, comes from wanting to be included and to be a part of something, anything. We’d rather be wrong together than right by ourselves.
In an essay written by student Martin Copeland, he describes the desperation people go through to join a fraternity or sorority. “The process that pledges have to endure to make it to the positive community environment can often humiliate them, bringing them down to the point that they feel that walking away from such a group would make the person less than the other,” writes Copeland. Students in college join a group to feel like they belong, to have a group they could depend on, but as Copeland says this can become a “crutch, which is anything but positive.” Belonging to a community should provide support rather than causing its members to become dependent on it, the individual should be greater than the community. This doesn’t make the community obsolete, it makes the community an essential part of a person, but it doesn’t give the community the power to control one’s lifestyle.
One of the biggest influences we can see of pack mentality is assimilation of immigrants. Immigrants come to American looking for a better future and more opportunities, but what they don’t expect is how they’d change themselves and their culture to fit in within their community. They look around and want that type of lifestyle for themselves, one where they could walk across the street without being looked at or asked where they were from.
In an article written by Peter Skerry, Skerry recalls meeting a young Mexican American man who couldn’t speak Spanish himself, but wanted to teach it to his children. In Skerry’s eyes he saw that Spanish was a “critical part of the Mexican culture [the young man] fervently wanted to hold onto.” The young man had grown up speaking only English due to his surroundings and the desperate need his family wanted to fit in with their community, but as he grew up he realized that his language was something to be cherished. It was a part of who they were and their culture which was why he wanted for his children to learn the language.
Catfish and Mandala by Andrew Pham narrates the journey of a Vietnamese American man who travels to Vietnam, his home country, to try to find his roots, to identify with his culture, and discover who he is as a person. Throughout the book, Pham describes his family, life, and background to give context to his readers.
In one of the beginning chapters, Pham writes about his mother who has had to culturally adapt and change her perspective on life to adjust to America. She’s someone who desperately tries to give her all to her family without looking for herself as Pham writes, “This simple woman who takes pleasure nickeling the grocers for bargains, deals for the family.” He gives examples of how this traditional Vietnamese woman has changed herself to fit in with American culture only to eat “cold leftovers standing in the kitchen alone because lunch in her American household is too lonely.” She’s tried and given her all, but adapting to American life has left Pham’s mother alone in a house filled with empty rooms.
People belong to many communities whether it’s a club, your culture or hobbies, we all belong to a certain group that can relate back to us. Being pulled in multiple directions, having people tell you you should act a certain way because of what you belong to affects who you are as a person. “Be yourself.” This is something that we’re told constantly throughout life, but I find myself questioning “Who am I?”. Should I be Vietnamese, American, a teenage girl, a student, or a daughter? The right answer would be all of the above and so much more, all of our different parts come together to make who we are as an individual. It can be easy to lose ourselves within our community and forget our individuality, but at the end of the day we are our own person.
Sources
Skerry, Peter. “Do We Really Want Immigrants to Assimilate?” Brookings, Brookings, 28 July 2016, www.brookings.edu/articles/do-we-really-want-immigrants-to-assimilate/.
Dries Buytaert. Balancing Makers and Takers to Scale and Sustain Open Source, Dries Buytaert, 6 Jan. 2021, dri.es/balancing-makers-and-takers-to-scale-and-sustain-open-source.
Pham, Andrew X. Catfish and Mandala: a Two-Wheeled Voyage through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam. Flamingo, 2001.
Shea Renée Hausmann, et al. The Language of Composition: Reading, Writing, Rhetoric. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2013.
