Life of an INTJ

I would recommend that you read this series in order, but each piece should be relatively self-contained.

Part I (History) | Part II (I am Taiwanese American) | Part III (The Game of Politics…)

Despite the fact that I wrote a section on the game of politics, I don’t believe that it is the Taiwanese American (TA)’s place to meddle in Taiwanese politics. I think we should care about election results, but because most of us live in the United States, we should take a little bit of a step back and let the people of Taiwan decide. Instead of bitching and moaning about politics, why don’t we take action?

If not politics, then what?

In the United States, Taiwanese often gets lumped into the categories “Chinese” or “Other Asian”. If you keep your mind open, this grouping isn’t unfair – the question we must ask ourselves is, “have we really given people a significant reason to make the distinction?” While there are many influential Taiwanese-American people, we’ve only made a small dent on the world. It’s like physics – think of the basic equation F=m*a. The two pieces work together and having a huge amount of one doesn’t really matter that much if you have very little of the other. Perhaps from a cultural point of view, Force = Members * Accomplishments.

A corollary? If we want to increase F, we must:

1. Make apathetic Taiwanese Americans… well, less apathetic – that is, have them become a member of the community. It’s also great to have people who aren’t of Taiwanese heritage be advocates of Taiwan - They deserve a lot of respect for being able to open up and accept a different culture. They also certainly are members of our community.
2. Empower the TA community and train servant leaders who will make a positive impact on the world – that is, help the community make an impact through philanthropy, idea generation, media production, whatever we have to offer. It is important to note here that we don’t just give back to the TA community, as tempting as that may be. Other groups are similarly trying to increase their F, and if we have the resources, we should help others achieve their missions as well.

I think what ends up happening is a snowball effect as well. As people see TAs doing big things, those who used to be apathetic about being TA will bandwagon – an excellent example of this, though I’m hesitant to use it, is Jeremy Lin’s recent ascent to stardom.

Why should this route be taken? People (both Taiwanese and non-Taiwanese) must care about Taiwan, before you can expect them to think long and hard on the tough decisions and their implications for the island’s future. Check out ITASA and TaiwaneseAmerican.org - two organizations that seem to share this vision of developing the TA community instead of meddling with politics.

Politics turn people off. Actions speak louder than words.

As always, I welcome any comments / thoughts!