What is Wrong with Burmese Culture?
As I informed you before, I was born in Rangoon, Burma and therefore I was Burmese at least technically. I had therapy sessions with a psychologist named Dr. Nina Berman in waning years of the decade of 00’s and I told her one thing which was significant. I said to her I felt spiritually that I was not Burmese but German. What I meant by that was simply that I valued the power and importance of rational reasoning and my personality was much more German than Burmese. Then, it was no surprise that I could not accept many traditions of Burmese culture which I saw throughout my whole life. Furthermore, I could not approve of them and I will explain why I could not approve them. On the other hand, as I asserted before, I believe that I am a Prophet of God; maybe even the most important and the last one. In God’s scheme, everybody belongs in his Universe. I know that because he told me. Therefore, on behalf of God, I would like to welcome everyone to his Universe.
When I was a teenage boy growing up in Burma, I had a girlfriend named Kyi Kyi Myint and she was a few years younger than me. I hope that she would not mind me disclosing her name. I am not going to say anything disparaging about her anyway and therefore I hope that she wouldn’t mind. She was a friend and she was also a girl and that was all I meant by saying she was my girlfriend.
She had a soft personality, she was always polite and gentle and she would often haven a ready smile. I always liked her for the way she was although we were both too young to be in love with each other. When I was 14, my family moved to Canberra, Australia and later to New York City, United States. In Western countries, I read iterature written about Burma by Western writers. One interesting thing for me in those writings was they always remarked about demure Burmese women. Then, I recalled my old friend Kyi Kyi Myint and I had a sense of recognition. If life were a College, Kyi Kyi Myint majored in Demure Studies. I met her again when I went back to Burma to live there briefly in the early years of 00’s decade. I saw that she did very well socially and she was married to a very desirable man. That was no surprise because girls like that were universally appreciated in Burma.
But there was a problem for me with demure Burmese people in other ways. The Westerners who went to Burma, at least in old days, were mostly men and they were of course only interested in Burmese women. But in Burmese dating market, there was also market for demure men. Westerners may be surprised by that but then you are not Burmese.
When we moved to Canberra in 1975, my parents brought along some Burmese books and one of them was biography of a man named Journal-Kyaw Chit Maung which was lovingly written by his wife, Journal-Kyaw Ma Ma Lay. As you might have guessed, Journal-Kyaw just meant Outstanding Journalist. When I read that book, I saw for the first time how Burmese women’s taste for demure men worked. But the concept of demure man was so alien to me that at first, I just didn’t get it. But eventually, I understood.
The problem for me was where you drew the line between demure man and inadequate man. Journal-Kyaw Ma Ma Lay lovingly enumerated her husband’s demure qualities. For example, he had absolutely no clue, how to talk to a person of opposite sex, a woman. That was one thing. Another item of praise was when he was using the toilet attached to the living room, if someone came into the living room, he couldn’t continue to move his bowel. After she saw those qualities in her future husband, her aunt asked her if she loved him and she said “Yes, from my intestines. From the bottom of my liver”.
Yes, I liked Kyi Kyi Myint but even she was not that bad. But the question we have to ask is how that sort of extreme inadequacy was attractive. It is of course true that Burmese culture was very different from Western culture. But they were at least guilty of extreme bad taste. I think I should also say what was obvious. Burmese culture was a perverted culture. Another problem was absolute refusal to think even a little before one decided if something was good or bad.
It is true that I am in an attacking mode against Burmese culture. But I think I should do it because I think Burmese culture is perverted. What I hope for is they would consider carefully if what I am saying has any truth value.
Now I want to write about another very evil trait of Burmese culture. Surprisingly, or maybe I should only say not surprisingly, such a trait was also there in culture of Soviet Union. In early 1980’s, after I moved to New York City, United States from Sydney, Australia, I saw an article in New York Times about a peculiar trait in Soviet life. In American version, we call it keeping up with Joneses. If your neighbor bought a Honda Accord, you might also buy a Honda Accord to keep up with them. If you had some extra money, you might even buy a BMW to really outdo them. Everybody in USA knows how that concept works.
But in Soviet and Burmese versions, it worked in a very different way. New York Times called it stopping the Joneses from keeping up with you. But we cannot say it was only a cultural thing because it was not moral-value neutral. I saw first-hand how Burmese version worked and it was very evil.
When I got back to New York City in Summer of 1983, my parents, Nyi Nyi and Sein Yi had a Burmese servant woman. I was 22 years old then and she was about a year or so older than me. Her looks didn’t do anything for me and I wasn’t really interested in her. But I knew she had very good qualities as a young woman. First, she was very intelligent. After living in NYC for about a year or so, she picked up a lot of English and she spoke it fluently. She was also very audacious. One evening, when Nyi Nyi and Sein Yi were not at home, she made a sexual pass at me. As I already informed you, I didn’t like her looks that much but I certainly appreciated her interest.
Now, please do not ask me how much Nyi Nyi and Sein Yi paid her because it was embarrassing. But she also worked as a cleaner for my parents’ neighbors who were Americans and of course they paid her a lot more. Not surprisingly, they liked her because of her intelligence and audacity. Then, one day, the American couple who was one of her employers, told her that they would get a lawyer to help her to get Green Card and after that she can go to college and get a good job.
When Sein Yi heard about it, she was enraged. Dear Reader, I ask you, was there any reasonable way to understand her anger. I said to Sein Yi “Mom, it is not really your business. Why not let her do what she wants to do?”. Sein Yi said to me with great anger “I insist that you don’t utter another word about it”. Sein Yi then picked on a minor technical issue with the young woman’s visa and forced her to go back to Burma. Our neighbors were so angry with Nyi Nyi and Sein Yi that they would not speak to them again.
The point I want to make is that kind of thing was not just a cultural thing. It was evil people committing evil in evil society. That is all I can say about it
Now I want to write about the issue of being hospitable and generosity. In Burmese culture, they were considered to be good things for people to do. That was not unique to Burma. A lot of societies have that kind of concept including societies in United States. When I was in my late 20’s, I visited the home of American family in North Carolina and stayed there for a few days. The Lady of the house said to me that there was a tradition of hospitality in the South and they were proud of it. She also said that she hoped that she was being a good hostess to me. I just simply said to her “Thank you. I understand”. What I want to say is there was nothing wrong with that kind of concept if you can afford it. But what about if you can’t.
When I was growing up in Rangoon, Burma n 1960’s, my grandmother had a very tight friendship with a woman named Daw Win May (not her real name) and we would visit them quite often. One day we happened to be there around lunchtime and they invited us to eat lunch there. My grandmother, like everybody else Burma, knew how expensive food was in Burma and she refused emphatically. But Daw Win May insisted equally emphatically that we ate lunch there. My grandmother knew then that it would be more embarrassing and worse if she continued to refuse and she said OK and we had lunch there. On our lunch table, there were only small amounts of curries. Still, my grandmother whispered to us “There goes the curries they set aside for their dinner”. But there was simply not enough food. In Burma, there was a tradition that when there were not enough curries, they would supplement it with fried eggs. There were four of us that day: my grandmother, me and my 2 younger sisters. I don’t remember exactly how old I was but less than 10 because my youngest brother who was 10 years younger than me was not born yet. One would expect that they would fry 4 eggs for us but that was simply impossible because there were just no funds for them. So, they fried 1 egg. I always liked fried eggs, that is true even now and I lost control that afternoon and grabbed that one lone fried egg. Daw Win May had a few daughters who were about 10 years or so older than me and they laughed when I grabbed the fried egg implying that it was a cute boy being cute. But I think they also felt some pain because I didn’t share the fried egg with my sisters. My question is simply how did it make sense to be hospitable when you yourself had nothing.
I spent first 14 years of my life in Burma and that extreme poverty of Burma had its impact on me which resulted in very embarrassing situation for me when I was living in Sydney, Australia a number of years later. In 1981, I was in the senior year at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. College in Australia was much more affordable than in USA. Dormitories in colleges were so cheap that if I told the cost of them to an American student, they would not be able to believe it. For students in the senior year at Macquarie University, we were given a privilege of living in University apartments. They were very attractive apartments and the cost was much less than cost of dorms which were already very low. They were practically free and rent was pretty much more or less pretend. The only thing was you had to know how to cook.
I had a room in an apartment with 5 other students. We decided to share the cooking and food among six of us so that each person had to cook only once a week. One late afternoon, one of my friends came to visit me at our apartment. Then dinner time rolled around and I knew that I should invite my friend to eat dinner with us. Food prices in Australia were more than in USA but they were nothing like astronomical prices in Burma. In any case, because of my experience in Burma, I felt I couldn’t invite my friend for dinner because it was not only my money but also my apartment-mates’ money. Eventually, most embarrassingly, my friend just went back to his apartment. Then one of my apartment-mates said to me “Paw, why didn’t you invite your friend for dinner. I thought you were going to invite him. That’s why I didn’t invite him. It is OK for your friend to eat with us”. At that point, I had a burst of joy and I went to my friend’s apartment and brought him back to our apartment to eat dinner with us.
The point was I was a German soul and Daw Win May was a Burmese soul. We were in the same culture but how we responded to it was very different.
Now I have to write about the biggest issue among all the biggie issues in Burma and that was Buddhism. I read a book about Burma that was written by an American anthropologist. He spent a number of years in Burma and he knew Burma quite well. He wrote about a conversation he had with a Burmese man. He said to the Burmese man “A Burmese man considers that he is better than a Chinese man and also an Indian man. What makes a Burmese man that good” and the Burmese man replied “It is our faith in Buddhism”.
Before I tackle that question, I want to describe a vulgar Burmese expression and that was “Where is the cunt rice?’ I translated the expression literally and although it is not a common expression in English, I think one can easily guess what it means. Its meaning was like the question Walter Mondale asked Gary Hart in 1984 Primary Elections and it was “Where is the beef?.
I can ask the same question to Gautama Buddha and ask him “Where was the cunt rice in his teachings?”. The essential message of Buddha had to be his “Four Noble Truths”. He basically said life was no good (First Noble Truth) and the solution was to end it permanently (Fourth Noble Truth). How was it that anybody can take that kind of stuff seriously? But most of Asia is Buddhist, starting at China and ending at South East Asian countries. But why? or what for?
If someone asks me “what is your most precious possession?”, the answer is so easy that I don’t even have to think too much. It is my soul which was given to me by God. What else would it be? But for Gautama Buddha, life was so bad that he wanted to end it. It was like this. A wealthy man gives a poor man $100 USD bill. Because of his pride, he throws it to the ground and tramples it with his foot. He preferred not to thank God than spend that money.
Now I want to go back to the American anthropologist’s book about Burma. He described a few Economics problems with Burmese-style of Buddhism. Buddha said the best way to acquire good Karma was to build a pagoda or make an offering to a pagoda. Burmese people believed it literally. Suppose a businessman had a good year. The smart thing to do would be to invest the profits back into his business so that it can grow. But in Burma, the first priority was to make the offering to a pagoda. The consequence was easy to see. Burmese economy had a big leak automatically and the economic growth was stunted.
Now let us consider Shwe Dagon Pagoda in Rangoon which was considered to be the most sacred Buddhis monument in Burma. People make offering of gold leaves to the Pagoda and there was massive amount of pure gold present on the Pagoda. The problem was Rangoon received more than 100 inches of rain in the rainy season which lasted about 5 months and it washed away the gold. When I was a child in Burma, I read in a newspaper that volunteers worked to recover the pure gold from the drains and at the end of rainy season, they recovered quite a few pounds of pure gold. But how many pounds of gold were lost? I just ask the question if the idea of Shwe Dagon Pagoda is sane. Burmese people can attempt to answer that question.
This writing was completed on May 22, 2024 Wednesday.
Edited on May 25, 2024 Saturday.