Recently my 75 years father fell down and fractured one
piece of his backbone. That required treatment in a private hospital because
the government’s hospital didn’t offer the latest treatment. My 70 years old
mother will start to have dialysis soon because her kidneys have failed. My
spinster 73 years old aunty has Parkinsons and requires care. These events have
expectedly placed not only financial demand but also substantial demand of time
and effort on me. Apart from putting up money I have to also consistently tear
myself away from work to attend to my folks 300 km away. They live in Penang
and I in K.L. and I am the only child. It’s a vicious cycle, the more I go away
from work, the less money I would have for them. Like most old Malaysians they
don’t have medical insurance policies.
In contrast, my about 70 years old aunt in the USA has
dementia and suffers from age related frailties as well. I hear that the
medical van comes to get her from her house, takes her to the hospital for her
regular checkups and after that send her home without any fuss on her children.
Someone has to pay for all this care and I suspect it is a form of government
organised national medical insurance scheme or private medical insurance from a
company.
All these got me thinking, that we the children of Asia
seems to have a lot of obligations to old people. It’s usually 4 parents
(parents of yourself and the spouse) and some occasional aunt or uncle in
addition to your own spouse and children.
I think the governments of Asia under the guise of
filial-piety have abdicated their responsibility to care for their old people
on a wholesale level. I think the Asian people under the unquestioning respect
for filial-piety have neglected to set up organised systems to care for their
elderly in Asia (with the exception of Japan I think). In fact in the Chinese
and Indian cultures, filial-piety is such a sacred word, that to be accused of
having none would be blasphemy. To put it simply, Asian governments generally
think because of the culture of filial-piety, old people are the responsibility
of their children and the state can wash its hands off the problem. And the
Asian children don’t dare demand from their governments, systems such as
national medical insurance policies and nursing facilities to care for their
old because they would then be accused of not having filial-piety. In fact, the
first thing an Asian child would be accused of if he dares put his aged parents
in a nursing home would be abandonment. In fact if you have read till here I
would have committed blasphemy in writing this.
However my point is, there is a tremendous hidden cost to
Asia itself with all this celebrated filial-piety. Asian children often can’t
work because they have to have to run around like a headless chicken to care
for so many old people. They often have to take leave from work to care for so
many old people. They can’t stop making money at a frenetic pace to care for so
many old people. They often have to hold down double or triple jobs to provide
for so many old people. They are often drawn to the fastest money making
enterprises possible, without much consideration for ethics. They can’t go work
at a faraway but well paying job. They don’t train properly for a long time for
a job. In some extreme cases children become prostitutes so that parents can
have a better life and they think this is a good deed. The 1-2-4 problem in
China will soon be epidemic.
In fact creativity and new scientific discoveries which need
an environment of unhurried concentration are hard to come by for the Asians,
because they have no time to ponder a problem. I put it to you, this is why
Asians particularly China have emerged as a great nation of hasty copycats
instead of inventor of new things. It takes much less thinking and effort to
copy where else it would take years of no financial return to make a new thing.
Asian children are so stretched-out under pressure to constantly make money to
care for so many old people that they don’t have the luxury to concentrate and
make new things. They struggle from hand to mouth, day in day out and all
become mediocre, all become traders and business people – professions that
don’t need much concentration and dedication. I further say that, this is one
of the main reasons why thinkers like Adam Smith, Charles Darwin, Nikola Tesla,
Thomas Edison, Marie Curie have not been Asian. If they had been Asians, they
would be frantically earning money to support everybody and have no time for
new discovery.
So the next time you want to like a heart-wrenching photo of
a labourer at a China train station carrying his frail sick mother on his back
for a whole day and night while waiting for the train to come, don’t. Know that
the system has failed. Know that they both have no choice. Know that they both
are victims of circumstances. Know that they are
the end result of state neglect camouflaged as filial piety. Know that it is performed at a high cost to the productivity of the nation's prime workforce.
