What’s interesting about this post by psychologist Kaidi Wu is, that in debunking the myth that American are solely independent and eastern cultures are solely communal, she exposes the reality that people in general act with both types of action in mind.
So the trick to organizing our actions really revolves around acknowledging which endeavors generate the best results through competition, and which ones sort more readily to a communal response.
Some of these are easy to spot. The sales of a tangible widget is best left to competition. Once the market is saturated and the object is no longer of use, resources will stop flowing in that direction. Services which save people from harm, like firefighters, are best provided by a community.
But Kaidi Wu is absolutely correct that the historically popular criticism that Americans are solely interested in the self is simply in err.
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