Hey America, Stop Imposing Your Ideas

“The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that’s wrong with the world.” This quote is by Paul Farmer, the founder of Partners In Health. As I read the three different articles talking about globalization and health, I kept thinking about the book I read awhile back, Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder, which explores the life of Paul Farmer and how Partners In Health got started. The mission of the organization is “To provide a preferential option for the poor in health care.” While this is a commendable mission and I fully support the efforts of Partners In Health, I started to wonder if providing health care to poor countries is a form of neocolonialism, and that we are Westernizing all health care and trying to claim the practice of health care as our own, by having our medicine be the only medicine. Perhaps it would be better to introduce ideas to other cultures, rather than impose them.

The article “The Americanization of Mental Illness” by Ethan Wattersjan discusses how American views of mental illness are being passed to other cultures. Wattersjan writes, “There is now good evidence to suggest that in the process of teaching the rest of the world to think like us, we’ve been exporting our Western “symptom repertoire” as well. That is, we’ve been changing not only the treatments but also the expression of mental illness in other cultures.” An example given in the article showed a teenage girl who died of anorexia, and how the media suddenly portrayed her death of being similar to that of American and European eating disorders, where the individual is striving to be thin. Throughout the world, Westernized culture has been imposed as being what is “best” and “right” and this is causing negative affects. We also saw this to be true in the article we read awhile back about how antidepressants were changing the way that people in Japan experienced sadness. Previously sadness had been seen as a normal part of life in Japanese culture, but when people caught wind of how those in the U.S. and Europe were treating depression, it became a disease. This is because Western cultures often have a way of expressing what they are doing as correct, rather than just one of many ways to do things.

The capitalist drive that is so common in the United States and other Westernized countries has caused big food companies to impose their practices of food consumption onto other cultures. This can be seen in Brazil, where “the strategies these corporations are employing to introduce their products undermine and displace long-established traditional food systems.” Once again, the United States has bombarded a place and imposed its ideals on an already existing culture, destabilizing what had previously been very healthy eating practices that focused on social meals and did not use sugary and salty snacks as meal replacements. Nestle ice cream products replaced healthy fruit juice pops, and pretty soon these products were being sold door-to-door in Brazil. Nestle didn’t simply introduce a new product, they imposed it. This shows that when Americans go into a culture guns blazing to try and “improve life” they end up doing more harm than good.

Americans have also done the opposite of imposing themselves on other cultures, and instead took another cultures practice and claimed it as their own. Ayahuasca, a sacred Amazonian medicinal plant, became popular in North America because of media reports of the experience that it provides. In typical American fashion, someone rushed to patent the product, attempting to claim an ancient tradition as their own. An American tried to take credit for something that was never his to take claim to, and in the process undermined the cultural traditions and history that Ayahuasca is focused around.

I’m not saying that within the world we shouldn’t share our ideas and inventions; I think it is important to do this and it leads to a greater understanding of other people. But I think that it is important to do this in a respectful way, and it doesn’t seem like the United States is doing that. The Partners In Health mission also states “At its root, our mission is both medical and moral. It is based on solidarity, rather than charity alone.” It is this point of solidarity, of working together, that has made Partners In Health successful. Unless the United States and other Euro-centric cultures want to alienate the rest of the world, we need to stop forcing our practices on them and realize that the way we do things is just one of many ways that things can be done.

Image credit: http://www.globalresearch.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/imperialism_usa.jpg