From the time that you are a small
child you are told that sharing is good. Your mom forces you to share your toys
and cookies with snotty little siblings. Your teacher makes you share your
birthday cupcakes with all the other students. Even the revered holy sages of
the world like Buddha and Jesus advocate the importance of sharing. So I’ve
grown up knowing that sharing is supposed to make you a better person. But
Americans, Westerners and actually most of the world still don't really buy
into it. It seems like a moral thing to do, but there is this powerful presence
that resides within us that always whispers “mine, mine, mine.” No matter how
much we deny it, we are individualistic and want to hold on to what’s ours. Its
one of those things like going on a diet or donating to charity; it seems like
a good idea, but when the time comes for action we usually find a way to slip
away from the responsibility.
We may not have sharing down to a
science, but there are some people in the world who have it intrinsically built
into their psyche that sharing is good. Micronesians are those people. Sharing
is not a moral choice for them. It has nothing to do with right or wrong. It’s
not about creating a reputation or feeling good about yourself. Instead of
being seen as just an admirable personal characteristic, sharing is an integral
part of the function of society and the survival of the community. For
thousands of years, the practice of communal sharing has allowed these isolated
individuals to thrive. The ideas of personal property, rightful ownership and
individual possessions are foreign. These ideas are so engrained in the people
that it is difficult for them to grasp the obsession others have with personal
items and objects.
Kids in Chuuk don't have to be told
to share, it’s just natural. If I hand a piece of candy to a child, he will
immediately bite it in half and give a portion to a friend. No words are
exchanged, no begging or asking is required, the little boy just innately
shares whatever he has. The other day one of my American friends visited my
house and asked my father if he could have some of his coffee. My father
crinkled his eyebrows in confusion and replied instinctively, “it’s not my coffee, it’s our coffee”. This response was not simply an attempt to
be hospitable; it was actually how he viewed the coffee. Yes it was purchased
with his money, but in his personal view that doesn't give him any more right
to it than anybody else.
The most obvious form of sharing
can be further seen in a few examples of the distribution of food. A few weeks
ago I went out on a fishing trip with a few of my brothers and cousins. We
returned to land with two full ice chests of freshly caught fish. When we
arrived back at the house, my host father came out and told us to pour the
contents on the lawn in the front yard. He glanced over the piles of fish for a
moment and then started tossing the fish into different groups. He divided the
mound into about 8 different piles and then sent the little kids on errands to
deliver bags of fish to our neighbors. We caught a hundred fish that day, but
our family only held onto about 15 of them. This wasn't seen as a an act of
extreme generosity on my father’s behalf and none of the fisherman seemed upset
that they got zero compensation for their work. It was just the natural
reaction to having a lot of food. If you have something, you should share it
with everyone else.
Breadfruit is another good example
of the communal sharing of food items. About once a week my family pounds
breadfruit. The whole process from picking to packaging in leaves takes about 8
hours of intensive work. At the end of the day, we will have formed
approximately 20 loaves of this staple crop. Once again, we will send delivery
boys running around the village to drop off loaves to the other families. Our
day of backbreaking labor will only leave us with a handful of breadfruit
packages.
This seems frustrating right?
Always giving, giving giving. How do you expect to feed your family if you
always give everything away? Well there is a flipside to giving things away to
other people. Very often, they will return the favor. Obligation, karma,
kindness or whatever you want to call it will kick in and bring you back some
goods your way. So although we gave away our breadfruit and fish to others,
later in the week we will probably get some fish and breadfruit in return. It
is a cyclical system of sharing and collectivist community living.
These sample stories about local
food are easy to envision. Food goes rotten without refrigeration and
preservatives, so it makes natural sense to share it. There is no need to save
possessions, because they will just go to waste. These exchanges of food are
probably what first motivated the reliance on sharing, but the extent of
sharing goes far beyond food products. The raising of children is also done
with a sense of shared responsibility. This has begun to change in recent
times, but the communal upbringing of children is the norm rather than the
exception. Children get shuffled from auntie to grandma to cousin on such a
regular basis that many of them do not even know who their real mother is. The
name for all of these relations is inei, or
“my mama”. Any older woman in your life is called inei because they most likely played a very large part in
your growth and development. Until recent decades, more than 50% of the
children were adopted by relatives! In some cases this may cause psychological
problems of abandonment and isolation, but overall it fosters a communal love
amongst large family groups. The kids can walk to any house in the village and
be given a meal, or told to do a chore or take a nap. The community functions
as one big family.
This collectivist attitude and
compulsion to share (along with the rich natural resources of the ocean and
jungle) is the reason why I place Micronesia on a slightly different plane than
most developing countries. Unless motivated by stubborn personal choice or
rejection of culture, nobody in Micronesia is starving. Not everyone has an
abundant amount of healthy food to eat every day, but nobody is withering away
into an emaciated coma of starvation. I don't think that could be said about
any other supposedly “third world” country in the world. That cant even be said
about America. The FSM might be stricken by extreme poverty and lack of
material wealth, but nobody is suffering. That is an amazing fact, and through
my personal experience it is entirely true. There are a few deranged,
gas-sniffing crazy guys that wander around Weno during the day; but I’m willing
to bet that they still have a place to sleep and eat every night. Even if you are a total shithead and
your immediate family and friends have cast you out, there is always an uncle
or cousin or neighbor that will give you a meal and a roof. Social services
aren’t needed to lend a helping hand to homeless people or the unemployed; the
community structure takes care of that. Sharing is universal.
The value of sharing together without
hesitation is one of the most important things that I have learned from
integrating into this island culture, but as the modern age of consumerism
bleeds into these remote locations I am worried that these societal standards
will start to waver. Dollar bills cannot be shared in the same way that fish
can be shared. You can’t cut a penny into 8 difference pieces to share with
your cousins. Borrowing an Ipod is different than borrowing a coconut. If you
break a coconut then you lose a sip of water, if you break an Ipod then you
lose hundreds of dollars. Sharing will become increasingly difficult as a
universal practice when money dominates the scene. The model of a cash economy
is based on individual gain and personal accumulation. The mental associations
of things and people begin to change when money is used to purchase those
items.
In the past every family was
equally able to catch fish, so an even balance of exchange could be expected.
But not everyone can have equally paying jobs in a modern economy. This throws
off the balance of possessions and creates tension amongst families and
communities. My host family has a few people with incomes; as a result they are
expected to give a huge portion of their money to their family and community. I
don't know exact numbers, but I can estimate that more than 50% of their money
goes directly to other people in the form of sharing and is never used to
support the 16 people that live in our household. They give a lot because they
have a lot to give, but they only receive very little because others only have
a little to give. This stratification in economic status entirely changes the
system of sharing and throws a monkey wrench into the smooth flow in a
collectivist society.
It is unclear how the values of the
culture will continue to change as time wears on. Capitalist ideology has
brought businesses that count profits and losses, governments that collect
taxes and offer services, banks that offer the chance to save rather than
spend, and families that strive for prosperity and wealth. These things are all
wonderful in many ways and have allowed for success in numerous places around
the planet, but they are also detrimental to the traditional lifestyle that has
thrived here. It’s worth considering the possibility that our recipe for
success may not fit into this tiny world of isolated islands in Micronesia.
Plopping a system of beliefs and ideology on a people that have a different
worldview might not work out as smoothly as expected. Western civilization has
built itself upon a foundation of individualism and the tools of commerce,
wealth and competition have allowed it flourish. But the Pacific civilization
has built itself upon a foundation of collectivism that stresses sharing,
community and relaxation. Importing our tools to fix their problems just
doesn't fit. It’s like trying to hammer a nail with a screwdriver or put a
square block in a round hole.
Progress is inevitable and
globalizing forces will continue to flow into this formerly isolated area.
Things and ideas should be freely accessible to everyone and it would be
foolish to prevent their influence in Micronesia. Nonetheless, I think it
possible for the islanders to hold on to some of their values and choose which
ideals to accept into their society. I believe that keeping sharing and
equality as common practices is imperative for Micronesians as they move into
the future. Sharing is what defines the identity of these people, but in an
exponentially modernizing world their identity might have to change along with
the times.
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