Older and Younger
(Indonesia vs. Western Counties)
How Indonesia respect its elders? It’s not only Indonesian to have customs
respected people who’s older or oldest. It’s easy to make harsh comparisons between the East and West when it comes to the issue of elderly care. Values of Western cultures tend to celebrate youth, self reliance and individualism. Eastern cultures place enormous value on family and the elderly, often adhering to traditional age hierarchies. A traditional Asian household is far more likely to include a grandparent, whereas nursing homes in the United States, Australia and many parts of the West are increasingly overcrowded.
The Confucian doctrine of ‘filial piety’ continues to have a strong presence in Chinese and Asian culture. It simply means showing obedience, respect and deference to your elders. It’s considered a privilege to be in the enlightened company of an elder, and ancestral reverence remains vitally important today. In these and other cultures, it is considered utterly shameful not to take care of your aging parents. The same goes for Mediterranean cultures, where multi-generational families live together in the same house.
In stark contrast, Western culture encourages families to strike a balance between allegiance to the elderly and individual freedom. Quite often, the pursuit of individual freedom assumes priority, resulting in a meltdown of harmony and any reasonable sense of family dependence and unity. Routinely, seniors do not live with their children and it’s often considered a big hassle to take care of your parents, even if you really want to do so. For example In Korea, elders are highly respected
Much of the Korean regard for aging is rooted in the Confucian principle of filial piety, a fundamental value dictating that one must respect one's parents (although Confucius was Chinese, Confucianism has a long history in Korea). Younger members of the family have a duty to care for the aging members of the family. And even outside the family unit, Koreans are socialized to respect and show deference to older individuals as well as authority figures. Few of those who are filial sons and respectful brothers will show disrespect to superiors, and there has never been a man who is respectful to superiors and yet creates disorder, Confucius wrote in Analects. A superior man is devoted to the fundamental. When the root is firmly established, the moral law will grow. Filial piety and brotherly respect are the root of humanity.