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The "Triple Package" Explains Why Some Cultural Groups Are More Successful
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Yale Law School professors Amy Chua, the self-proclaimed 'Tiger Mom,' and her husband Jed Rubenfeld write in the NYT that it may be taboo to say it, but certain ethnic, religious and national-origin groups are doing strikingly better than Americans overall and Chua and Rubenfeld claim to have identified the three factors that account some group's upward mobility. 'It turns out that for all their diversity, the strikingly successful groups in America today share three traits that, together, propel success,' write Chua and Rubenfeld. 'The first is a superiority complex — a deep-seated belief in their exceptionality. The second appears to be the opposite — insecurity, a feeling that you or what you've done is not good enough. The third is impulse control.' Ironically, each element of the Triple Package violates a core tenet of contemporary American thinking. For example, that insecurity should be a lever of success is anathema in American culture. Feelings of inadequacy are cause for concern or even therapy and parents deliberately instilling insecurity in their children is almost unthinkable. Yet insecurity runs deep in every one of America's rising groups; and consciously or unconsciously, they tend to instill it in their children. Being an outsider in a society — and America's most successful groups are all outsiders in one way or another — is a source of insecurity in itself. Immigrants worry about whether they can survive in a strange land, often communicating a sense of life's precariousness to their children. Hence the common credo: They can take away your home or business, but never your education, so study harder. 'The United States itself was born a Triple Package nation, with an outsized belief in its own exceptionality, a goading desire to prove itself to aristocratic Europe and a Puritan inheritance of impulse control,' conclude Chua and Rubenfeld adding that prosperity and power had their predictable effect, eroding the insecurity and self-restraint that led to them. 'Thus the trials of recent years — the unwon wars, the financial collapse, the rise of China — have, perversely, had a beneficial effect: the return of insecurity...America has always been at its best when it has had to overcome adversity and prove its mettle on the world stage. For better and worse, it has that opportunity again today.'"
...in that some feeling of superiority or supremacy for either the group that one hails from, be it family, community, race, whatever, gives one the belief that one can achieve, or can achieve more than others.
Feeling of inadequacy guilts one into taking action, to actually attempt to strive to meet that perceived superiority.
Impulse control prevents one from going for instant short-term benefits when those benefits are small, when one can see longer-term benefits by being willing to settle for something lesser now.
I'm not going to get into the racism and other unfortunate points of the argument, but it's not that surprising to me that those that feel that they can achieve will achieve, while those that don't feel that they can achieve won't, by the averages.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
This piece of "outrage journalism" was "news" two weeks ago. /. regurgitating it? And why after waiting two weeks?
Why is
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
really the older one since he is the only one in school
tell him if he doesn't study and put an effort in that he is going to be kicked back to day care
This explains why my manager is a psycho :D
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Talent and damn hard work.
Its all very well being some extrovert but insecure snake oil salesman , but if you really have nothing behind the shiny smile and/or you're lazy then the odds are you're not going to get very far.
On the other hand I'm come across plenty of shy retiring types who may not have all the smart ass patter and have no more insecurity than anyone else - but they have brains and they do well.
I am a very successful (by most metrics. education, job security, networth, income, family, status/respect among the peers) Indian American. Any statistics about Indian Americans suffers from terrible sample bias. Almost all the Indian immigrants to USA fall into exactly two categories. 1. Highly educated (post grad + in India from top Indian universities, IITs, IIMs, IISc, AIIMSs, NITs, RECs, etc). 2. Emigres from Gujrat business communities. Both groups would be very successful wherever they go, not because of any of this triple package.
The Gujarati business community is world wide and they thrive in every corner of the world. A huge percentage of grocery stores, motels, retail stores and pawn shops in Africa, Caribbean and Pacific islands are owned by them, and they are making big inroads into USA, UK, Canada, New Zeland, Australia etc as their immigration polices are getting relaxed .
The educated Indians were bottled up in India, when it was pursuing socialistic policies. A small trickle of engineers and doctors from India in 1960s became a veritable torrent during 1990s. Stated with F1 student visa, and then H1B work visas. They are all college educated.
The achievements of Indian children in academics in the USA is not very much out place compared to the Whites, Jews, the African Americans or Chinese, if you draw a sample with same level of education/wealth from these communities.
This triple package theory does not explain why, despite being endowed with the triple package in the dyed in wool pristine form, India and Nigeria are so corrupt and so mired in poverty.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Wouldn't that fall under the "impulse control" heading?
Seems like a blinding flash of the obvious, in a lot of ways
You haven't read their follow up paper, wherein we learn that spending all your time stoned on pot and alcohol correlates with low achievement in life.
All these, except impulse control, are strong indicators of an imbalanced and immature personality. These people are a problem. Their "success" is essentially of negative worth to society, and, I suspect, to themselves.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I was a young boy, it was 4th grade and I was living in Taiwan. (no I was not a military brat)
Our "American" school took us on a field trip to a Taiwanese school to see what it was like for local kids our age. At my school we did math problems such as 23 x 65 = ?, yes... that's all the more difficult it was.
At the Taiwanese school they did problems such as 34251 x 67453 = ?, but that wasn't all they did, a lot of what was on their board I didn't even understand.
It's been suggested that a lot of the kids at the "American" school were military, and that's why the bar was set low, the truth is I don't know why there were such low expectations.
What I do know is that expectations were much higher in Taiwan and else where for the same age group.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Everything else is just a matter of time. Impulse control + desire to achieve -> success in the long run, unless you get beaten up by people without impulse control who find you annoying.
When I arrived on the shore of America I had nothing.
I didn't even speak English.
To make the long story short - two of the three factors were very vital for my survival, and ultimately put me to where I am - except for the "superiority" factor, because I was less than a nothing back then.
As I grow more accustomed to the American lives, I get to know people from different cultures - for one reason or another, I find one group very very interesting - the Jews.
They are in so many ways so similar to the Chinese - and yet, they are far superior to the Chinese (yes, insecurity complex at play here) in that the Jews have a purpose in their own private lives and also for their community lives - on the other hand, most Chinese do not.
At the end of the day, the success of the Jews is not a fluke - their culture is structured in such a way that death of one member is nothing - even a massacre of millions to the Jews is nothing - as long as their culture gets to live on.
BBC has a very interesting program on the revival of Jewish culture in Krakow, Poland -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programme...
What the Chinese have is number. What the Jews have is determination.
But other than that, in many other aspect in lives, what the Jews are can very much be found in the Chinese.
And I am not the only one who is saying this - read the following article (written by a Jew) to find out what he says ---
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/C...
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Sadly, whatever it is is blocked where I am. The first guess I'd level out the gate is that it's an extension of "scientific racism" wherein "racial traits" are determined at a broad-based statistical level, and used for inferences about individuals in a way that only justifies biases and doesn't really inform.
Is that what it was?
Would you rather be successful and miserable, or a happy failure?
I'm told that Hawaii, for example, has an odd vibe where a lot of people lead frugal lives with clapped out cars and McJobs, but they're there because it's a wonderful place to live. Do they deserve contempt for their lack of ambition? Praise for their ability to value the things that really matter? Respect despite having chosen a path we might not choose for ourselves?
I love that they made impulse control one of the three important characteristics. I think it's an important factor to be sure and one that really sets different people apart from each other.
Teenagers are famous for their lack of impulse control. Either it is my age showing or there really does seem to be an decrease of impulse control among American teens. It might be convenient to blame race for some of this... no, it really is easy when you look at the whole world instead of just what goes on in the U.S. But we're all human and we have a component of what we learn and are taught. Impulse control is 'behavior' and it comes largely from parenting.
The article highlights asian success who are also pretty famous for their parenting. Most people in the US find the style a bit restrictive to say the least and even distasteful. But the result speak for themselves do they not? And over the last few decades or more, there has been a constant stream of complaints by older people who keep talking about kids today and "family values" and parenting and all that. Mostly, this all falls on deaf ears of people who think they know better or that the old ways are no longer valid in "today's world."
And when you look at trending among different ethnicities in the US, where you see an increase in fatherless families or otherwise single parents you see more and more of these problems we call "impulse control" issues. (Back in the day, we said "criminal tendencies") But it's a bit sad and also gratifying that this story is not about what makes the white man in America successful. After all, the white man in America is the target of blame for other ethnicities' shortcomings. But I am glad this study points out that other non-white people can do better than white people and white people don't seem to be resentful or trying to take them down, let alone "keeping them down." (In fact, I would go so far as to say the white man is generally in awe of and are looking up to the successful asians.) So isn't it about time we stop listening to the complaints which even today continue to sound about the white man in America?
At he end of the day, each of us only have ourselves to blame for what we can and cannot do. (Within some reason of course.) But impulse control is huge. It's what affects the decisions and courses we take in life. I once or twice explained to my sons that life is a series of forks and paths. Some are mutually exclusive. When you make one choice, many other choices disappear. For example, getting a facial tattoo would close a LOT of doors in a person's future. (And those damned gauged earrings? Who, outside of a cannibalistic clan, would think that is acceptable in society?)
I have a sense of responsibility. I have this dark inner feeling that the things my family and especially my children do are a reflection on me. So I do what I can to ensure they reflect as well as possible. I hope my sons feel the same way as they go through life. It's a driving factor in family values. We need a lot more of this. No more single parents. No more running away from responsibility. Life isn't about whether or not you're happy any more. That's on you, but it's not on you to make another person's life worse because you're unhappy. That's a violation.
It's just a coincidence of course, but this insane couple happens to be Jewish and Chinese, two of the 'superior' minorities they mention. Wow, who'da thunk it. Ridiculous individuals.
The "chosen people" are "chosen" in the sense they have extra requirements, not superiority. They are expected to lead by example, by adhering to 613 commandments while the rest of the world is only expected to adhere to 7 commandments: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
All this is to say, anyone who believes they are superior because they were born X or Y is missing the point. People of any ethnic or religious background can achieve the same "level" by helping to make the world a better place. You are judged by your deeds, not your words. That's all that matters.
Hard to say. In his first sentence, Jim Goad used a four-letter word for female genitalia to describe Amy Chu. That may be his opinion, but it's not important outside his head. Starting the article that way did not create the impression that an insightful and well-reasoned analysis will follow. I quit reading.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
This is some serious racial/ethnic flame war fuel right here.
I would hazard a guess that many of the immigrants who come here are already motivated to do better, why else would they leave their home to come here? They aren't going to let their kids sit in front of a video game for hours when they busted their ass to relocate to another country and build a better future. They also want to make sure their kids are pushed into prestigious, high income jobs like business management, lawyers and doctors. You can't blame them for trying to ensure their kids are successful.
"Native" kids and their parents don't know the hardships such as poverty, disease or oppressive governments their immigrant parents experienced in their homeland. They take their comfortable life for granted and don't have the same motivation to succeed because they already feel successful. As long as they get to play video games, go out on a weekend to party and have enough money to pay rent and bills, they are satisfied. This usually happens around the second or third generation born here.
And as a side note:
You want to know the secret to success? Risk. Immigrants took a big risk to come here. Their kids will also take risks like starting a business or changing jobs at the drop of a hat for more pay. Of all the people I know, the ones who are successful are the ones who took risks career wise and went into business or made major job/career changes.
Another factor perhaps? From The Economist magazine:
"That personality, along with intelligence, is at least partly heritable is becoming increasingly clear; so, presumably, the tendency to be happy or miserable is, to some extent, passed on through DNA. To try to establish just what that extent is, a group of scientists from University College, London; Harvard Medical School; the University of California, San Diego; and the University of Zurich examined over 1,000 pairs of twins from a huge study on the health of American adolescents.
The adolescents in Dr De Neve's study were asked to grade themselves from very satisfied to very dissatisfied. Dr De Neve found that those with one long allele were 8% more likely than those with none to describe themselves as very satisfied; those with two long alleles were 17% more likely.
Where the story could become controversial is when the ethnic origins of the volunteers are taken into account. All were Americans, but they were asked to classify themselves by race as well. On average, the Asian Americans in the sample had 0.69 long genes, the black Americans had 1.47 and the white Americans had 1.12."
-- "The Genetics of Happiness", The Economist, 15 Oct 2011
The wording of the first two traits is strong, and easily misinterpreted, like mistaking humility with being a pushover. "Superiority complex" might be better rendered as "the knowledge one can do better than this"; "insecurity" is crippling compared to "the sense that the present condition is unttnable")
I'll add one last one to the trio though: "fails often" or rather, being able to recognize that failure is a milestone in an endeavour, not a gravestone; failure is a better teacher than success. This concept is alive and well amongst entrepreneurs of all cultures, and is essential to not erode the forward drive offered by the "superiority complex."
The ability to digest one's own failure is also an essential trait to continue to foster curiosity and experimentation - an ability easily lost in our obsession of being right first time, embodied by our acceptance of "do or do not, there is no try."
-- "Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability." --Dijkstra
The maturity of the article, combined with the vulgar name calling and his own admission that he did not read the book, makes me question anything he has to say. A quick search shows his penchant for beating people up and getting himself incarcerated, none of which particularly helps his case.
In contrast, Amy and Jed are both Yale professors, and if nothing else, their hypotheses are backed up by some semblance of data.
He also employs sheer hyperbole in interpreting the piece:
If he had read the piece, he'd have read the following:
So yeah, I don't think the word "salient" really applies here. He's nothing more than a dimwit troll, and his language, demeanor, and reading skills only highlight that.
Jewish people in the US have not received anything close to the oppression that black people have
I can pick up your keyword even with my eyes closed:
Oppression
Now, sir, lemme ask you this:
Who hasn't been oppressed before ?
The one difference between the Jews and the so-called "black people" is that the Jews do not dwell on how oppressed they were, in the hand of the others.
You know, if the Jews want to play this game, they could !
There was a ship load of Jewish refugees from Europe that arrived at an American port. That was during Hitler's extermination campaign against the Jews were in full force. That ship was turned back.
When the ship finally reached Europe, all the Jewish passengers ended up in the ovens.
How many times the Jews play that "oppression song" ? How many times the Jews had to remind the world that "you owe us and you must pay back what you owe us" ?
No doubt. There are some Jews (mostly the losers) who have a liking to that kind of tune, but the vast majority of the Jews - what happened, happened, and they took that as a valuable lessen to remind themselves that they will never let themselves to be in that kind of situation again.
On the other hand ... how long has slavery been ended in America ? Please tell us, how long,. Sir ?
I am not denying that many blacks are impoverished and disenfranchised. But before they continue their "I am dying because you ain't coming to help me" moaning, why don't they look at the "boat people" - the Vietnamese who arrived in the 1970's to the 1990's ?
Those Vietnamese arrived with practically _nothing_, and initially they were in a much dire strait than those blacks.
10, 20, 30, 40 years have passed, those Vietnamese climbed up the social ladder, while the blacks still remained at the bottom.
Why don't you ask yourself "Why ?" ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I just raised my kids to work hard, have manners, and respect others.
Seems to work pretty damn well. All their lives we have been complimented on how polite and well behaved they are. As young adults, they are doing well in life.
Disclaimer- We were very poor for most of their young lives. We are comfortable middle class now. They have never been hungry like I grew up. Their needs were met (food, shelter, clothing), but they seldom had things they wanted until the oldest was about 16.
I'm really tired of hearing about these narcissistic masturbatory fantasies that this bitch advocates. First you try to say that Chinese tiger moms are superior. Well guess what, Ms Chua, That's the mentality that produced the culture of your ancestral homeland, an overpopulated pile of shit, where the ultra rich shit on the poor and the poor shit on each other, serve each other poisoned milk, and rat meat cooked in arsenic laced recycled ditch oil, and let two year old babies die in the street because they couldn't be bothered to pick up the phone. Wow, what a superior culture, I'm so envious. You married an American, who was likely a much higher caliber guy than you could have even dreamed of getting had you married a Chinese man, no doubt making you the envy of all your relatives and friends. But now you want to play both sides of the fence and tell Americans that it's your superior cultural heritage that will make you and your children great successes in life. Seriously? Oh, I see now... He's not just a regular American, he's _Jewish_ American, so he is superior too. Sorry honey, you're just an overachieving narcissist. Your brand of child rearing is just what comes naturally to narcissist, and your attempts to dress it up are pathetic. Once your kids realize what an unempathetic selfish bitch you are, and they realize that your love for them is directly proportional to the amount of glory that they bring you, while other kids' parents just loved them as they were, then they'll just abandon you when you're old, as they should.
Normally I'd avoid doing the feeding -- but what the hey - it's a Monday.
You'd like a satisfactory explanation -- okay. Fair enough. From 1791 to 1965, the statement "The Man is keeping me down" was actually true. It was the law of the land for things like "Separate but Equal", "No You Can't Ride Here", "No You Can't Have This Job" - etc. Second Class citizenship and all the trappings that go with it. Those that were successful in spite of things (Arthur Ashe, Bill Cosby, Diana Ross) were the exception to the rule. Since 1965, the official government rules were changed but things didn't change in the job market for another decade or so. Look up Red Lining. It is hard to get a house somewhere else if you can't get a loan for it, or if you do get a loan, the interest rate is so far above and beyond what the market rate is... And there are still places where the color of your skin will determine a multitude of thing.
Now we all know that networking helps to provide opportunity, and a lot of networking is done during the college years. If you can't get into the colleges to network in the first place it is hard to get the networking...
In any event, to match the comparison between the Vietnamese immigrants and Black Americans - the Black Americans are about a generation behind - the kids that are coming up now are being exposed to the same opportunities and are starting to be able to prosper. There is a lot of institutional backlog that is only now going away. Give it about another 3 or 4 generations.
Also this stupid idea that "success" is some kind of binary thing where you either work really hard all the time and make a lot of money, and thus are successful, or you are a failure, not worth mention. If you don't have the right kind of job in the right field that pays the right amount of money and has the right kind of prestige then you just suck, your life sucks, and you are useless.
I think that is an exceedingly unhealthy and narrow minded outlook. This, really overtly material attitude at its core where success is equated to jobs that pay a lot. I think it is much healthier to worry about what makes you happy. Stop comparing your life to others, stop worrying about how much you make so long as what you make is enough to let you have a good life. Work to live, don't live to work.