Summary Of David Brooks Harmony And The Dream

On August 11, 2008 David Brooks post his article “Harmony and the Dream” in The New York Times. Brooks intended to reach out to those people who are interested about economic that collectivist can create a harmonious society as well. Brooks uses logical experiment of fish tank, experiment of the psychologist Richard Nisbett and the opening ceremony of Beijing Olympic event that collective society may overtake the individualist society.
Harmony and the Dream discusses the differences between the societies with individualist and collectivist mentalities. There are many ways how people see things, every society sees thing depending on their environment. American see individuals and Asians see contexts. Individualistic society have their privacy
first to support their individualism. Collective societies have more harmony and duty to support the group efforts more. Collective societies develop unity teamwork and relationship are the key to success.
The fish tank experiment is just logical view point of two different race of people base on their environment.
Brook’s logical statement on how American and Chinese think about the fish tank relates to their society. Brooks states, “If you show an American an image of a fish tank, the American will usually describe the biggest fish in the tank and what it is doing. If you ask a Chinese person to describe a fish tank, the Chinese will usually describe the context in which the fish swim.” Brook scenario is that American people thinks more as individuals and Chinese people thinks more as collective. “Americans usually see individuals; Chinese and other Asians see contexts. Brooks logical way of putting American as individualistic is because American tend to see what thing might be going on rather than like Chinese seeing the context. The individualistic and collective has different importance in life and how they value the difference. “The individualistic countries tend to put rights and privacy first.” The Chinese “people in collective societies tend to value harmony and duty.” Brooks didn’t only use own logical experiment but a psychologist logical experiment on
people.
Brooks also maintain the experiment of psychologist Richard Nisbett on American and Asian people to find out whether they are individualistic or collectivistic. Nisbett showed a picture of a chicken, a cow and hay. He asked American people to pick out the subject that goes along with each other. The American people picked a chicken and cow. “American are more likely to see categories.” Since chicken and cow are animal, American are more likely to see alike thing rather than context of the subject. The Asian people picked a cow and hay because cow depends on hay. “Asian are more likely to see relationship.” The Asian people see subjects that depends on another subject rather than categorizing, Asian see the connection or relationship of the subjects. The individualistic society see subjects in categories and collectivistic society see the relationship between the subjects. This experiment show the influence of collectivist society tend to understand the relationship and connection between subject. For the Asian people harmony among each other are more important than American people who overestimate of themselves. They tend to underestimate their own skills and are more self-effacing when describing their contributions to group efforts.
Brooks use the opening ceremony of Beijing to make logical statement that collectivistic is rising and people tend to prefer collectivistic.
The logical statement made by Brooks at the end saying, “The rise of China isn’t only an economic event. It’s a cultural one. The ideal of a harmonious collective may turn out to be as attractive as the ideal of the American Dream.” The unity of Chinese in Beijing was “thousands of Chinese moving as one — drumming as one, dancing as one, sprinting on precise formations without ever stumbling or colliding.” Brooks use logical understanding made inference that collectivist is on the rise. “If Asia’s success reopens the debate between individualism and collectivism (which seemed closed after the cold war), then it’s unlikely that the forces of individualism will sweep the field or even gain an edge.” All the Chinese having unity on the performance and working as one in harmony shows logical inference collectivists is more attractive that
individuals.
In Brooks article, he tries to convince that collectivist society may takeover individualistic society. To accomplish this, he uses the logical experiment he did, the psychologist, and the Beijing ceremony where thousands of Chinese perform as one spirit.