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Welcome to the A.D.Z. English podcast. My name is Jack and I'm here with my
co-host Sochel. And Sochel, I thought today we could read the names of a couple
of our patrons. And so the first one that I want to read is Isabel. Isabel
from Ireland. She's actually... Thank you Isabel. Yeah, thank you Isabel. She's not
from Ireland, but she lives in Ireland. And it's very exciting to have her as a
patron for the show. Another one of our patrons is Johnny from China. Thank you
Johnny. Yeah, thank you Johnny. Johnny's been on the show actually. I interviewed him.
Oh, great. Yeah, he was on the podcast and he's amazing. If you talk to him, he
sounds like he's got an American accent. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's amazing. Just perfect.
Next up, we've got Mei from Malaysia. Yeah. Thank you. A. Yeah. And Selema from Iran.
Thank you Selema. Yeah. And Layla from Saudi Arabia. Oh, thank you Layla. Love Layla.
Yeah, yeah. Layla has a very nice voice if anyone's ever heard her voice in the
chat. Yeah. I'm sensitive. Layla's voice. Yeah, she has a very, very sweet voice.
Very soft. Yeah, very soothing. Yeah. All mean voice. I really good. Good podcasting voice,
I think. Yeah. I think you would too. For sure. Anyway, thank you so much to our patrons
who are supporting our exclusive content. It really, really allows Jack and I to make
more content and higher quality content. So we really, really appreciate it. And thank
you so much. Hopefully we will get some more supporters here. And thanks to those who have
already began to support us. Yeah. So today's topic is things that you hate about your culture.
And I'm not going to talk about Korean culture. I'm going to stay away from that because
it is not my place or my position to critique Korean culture. I've lived here for 30 or
20 years. But when it comes to critiquing culture, I think you have to do it from your own
culture. You know, you have to because you're critiquing yourself too. And the things about
American culture, probably the number one problem that I have with American culture is that
we're very individualistic. My problems are my problems. Your problems are your problems.
Don't put your problems on me. You know, and I understand that attitude because in some
ways, I do hate when someone is in a interpersonal relationship where one person is always leaning
on another person for help all the time and never able to like, you know, separate hate themselves.
Yeah. Yeah. I think that is negative. But I think I think looking at the country as a
whole and seeing it all as just individuals, not as a group, you know, working together
to try to make the society better and more equitable and fair for all of the people
that live there. I think that's a bad thing. So I think it kind of shows up in like certain
aspects of the culture. For example, our obsession with guns, you know, stay off my property,
get off my yard. Get out of my yard. Yeah, or I'll shoot you. You know, this idea that
we need to, you know, I need to have a gun. There are multiple guns in my house to protect
all my stuff from, you know, my neighbor who is going to try to steal my stuff. And I
don't know, I just feel like there were hyper obsessed. We're very obsessed with ourselves.
And I think we're also obsessed with consuming things, you know, consumerism. That's another
one that I think we should mention is that we're always, we can't wait to buy the next
thing that's going to make our lives perfect. You know, finally, if I just buy this one
more thing, I'm going to be happy. Nobody's got to buy this one more thing, one more thing,
one more thing, you know, and it really has nothing to do with making ourselves happy.
A lot of times buying things is about showing other people how successful we are.
Right. Look what I got, you know, I have this, but you don't have this. And so I think
consumerism and individualism and obsession with guns is our issues that I really have
a problem with. But that just scratches the surface, you know, there's a lot more I could
go into, but I'm not going to. I'll jump to you and I'll kick it to you and let you
share yours.
Yeah. I think you pretty much covered things that are really dislike about the US, especially
our gun culture is another aspect that are really dislike about the US. We have a problem
with gun culture. We endanger the lives of children every single day. It's uncontrolled.
And it really just exists for no other purpose than for gun nuts to boost their egos.
Thinking they could start a militia that could rival the US military, which would never
happen. And it's just, it's ridiculous, honestly. And it's unfortunate because our inability
as a culture to condemn these rampant unsafe gun culture leads to so many tragedies, both
on a personal and a cultural level. And so it's something that I really, really dislike
about US culture. Another culture that I'm a part of is Mexican culture. And I have a
couple of critiques for Mexican culture as well. One is that older generations will push
around and demand things from the younger generation and the amount of control that they're
comfortable having over younger generations just feel so inappropriate from a Western
lens. And because I was raised in both cultures, it can be hard for me to swallow at times.
Yeah. And it's interesting to me because, for example, my mom or other older people will
often boss me around or expect a lot to, for me to do a lot for them, like a servant almost.
And I just saw, you know, people older than my mom and my aunt who were also family treat
my mom and my aunt the same way. And they really didn't like it. They had kind of forgotten
that staple of Mexican culture in a way. And they had remembered to do it to me, but they had
kind of forgotten what it was like for it to be done to them. And so it, I think it's an aspect
of culture that you see in a lot of cultures. I know that this is a staple in some East Asian
cultures. I know that this can happen. African cultures as well. But it's definitely a difficult
aspect of a culture to grapple with. And it's something that makes me uncomfortable. I really
hope when I'm older that I don't push around or boss around the younger generation or feel
that I'm superior just because I have more experience. There's benefits to having more experience.
I think that there's things we can respect from someone who is older than us and has more
experience. But I do believe in mutual respect and mutual appreciation. Appreciating things,
those people do for you, appreciating things that, and them appreciate things you do for them as
well. It's like you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. It's like, yes,
yes. Treat them lovingly and they'll want to take care of you. It's not, instead of just saying,
like, you will take care of me. I'm, you know, bossing around telling you what to do.
You could do it in a much nicer way. It's like, it's kind of an interesting thing because I think
in Korea, maybe they have the same situation where when you're younger, you get abused,
you know, by the older people. But then once you're the older people, then you get to abuse,
you know, somebody needs to stop this cycle of abuse, you know, like let's just cut it off
and just be nice to each other, you know, but it's just, it's not, it's very hard to change culture.
Culture is, it's very instilled. It's like a bullet train, you know, like it's got so much
weight and power behind it. It's very hard to stop it and slow it down. Yeah.
Another thing that I dislike about Mexican cultures that I feel that we can be released
in a phobic and it's strange because we have, we're a multicultural country. We have Jewish people.
We have people of African descent that came across on the slave ships. We have people of East
Asian descent. We have people of Southeast Asian descent of South Asian descent. Of course,
we're a nation of Native Americans and we have European ancestry as well due to colonization.
But we sometimes in Mexican culture take a hostile attitude towards people who are from
different cultures. There's a lot of hostility sometimes towards immigrants in a way and
it's weird. It's kind of weird behavior. It reminds me a little bit of how
Korea isn't my culture. So I'm not trying to get docks here, but I do remember when I went there,
there was a completely different treatment how I was treated versus how my black coworker was treated.
It was painful to watch her go to the bank and then get rejected versus I basically got VIP
treatment when I walked into the bank. I feel that sometimes we're similar in Mexico. There's a
huge aspect of colorism that comes from the colonial hierarchy because of course the Spanish
who are white were at the top indigenous people were kind of in the mid range and then black people
were at the bottom of the cultural hierarchy and there was a hierarchy for every single different
mix and a name for every single different mix that you could get from any of those.
I think unfortunately that caste system does bleed through in colorism that we see in modern
day Mexico and in how we think and perceive foreigners and I also think another part that's
similar with Korean culture as well is that we were a colonized nation so sometimes we
value the preservation of our culture very strongly but that can come out in the wrong way too.
And it's a beautiful thing but it's something that
we need to recognize our influences from other cultures in every aspect of any culture in the world.
Yeah, too much patriotism can be a little bit yeah I don't know what you would call it. Ethno
centristism or something like that. Yeah like ethnocentrism and it's kind of invented because
you can hear African beats in traditional Mexican music. Sure.
Yeah. So the tacos that we eat some of them are fashioned after Middle Eastern immigrants food.
Chinese immigrants made a lot of cultural impact. They were the second biggest immigrant
immigrant group after the Spanish to Mexico. And so yeah I think we need to appreciate all
that diversity and a respect to way. Yeah yeah it's interesting. They hear you talk like that because
you know as an American we we you know have obviously recently in the news heard about
the immigrants coming across the Mexican border into America being treated really really poorly.
Yeah. And and and judged and and considered lower class citizens and all this sort of stuff right.
And and to hear that that same thing occurs in Mexico as well. Yeah it's kind of it's kind of
surprising you know because you think like oh if you're the victim of it then you'll never be the
perpetrator of the same behavior but it's that's not true you know. Yeah. I think and also
I mean for being honest like a lot of gun violence in Mexico is a symptom of all the guns that we
make in America. Yep. And you know and the and the if you're talking about cartel money or things
like that a lot of that money comes from drugs they sell in America because Americans have an
insatiable need and and lust for drugs. So yeah it's like you know it's a very toxic relationship
you know between the two countries and so those are the aspects of the the culture that I really
I I agree with you 100% I wish that we could somehow solve these problems. Yeah. Yeah all right
listeners well if you have something that you would like to share that you hate about your own
culture or strongly dislike make sure to leave a comment down below at a disease podcast.com
shoot us an email at a disease podcast at gmail.com we love to read listener emails we can read
them on the podcast without mentioning your name if that's something that you would like or you
would be interested in. So don't be shy about sending emails we really do enjoy reading them here
on the pod and reading a listener mail join the lead chat and what's up groups to join the
conversation and we will see you guys next time bye bye. Bye bye.
