Mindful or Mindless: The Case of the Cellphone

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It is no secret that we are in the age of technology; new iPhones, coming out faster than it will take to complete this sentence, and cellphones in general allow social media, apps and emails consume and constitute a major part of our thoughts.

As much as cell phones have become an important and beneficial part of our lives, they can also cause a wide array of issues, ranging from cyber bullying to physical neck pain. The most popular outcry may be that cellphones are taking away from our present moment experiences. However, I think that we can challenge this culture of mindlessness and accept that cellphone usage can be a great arena to develop mindfulness.

Contemporary culture in the United States is marked by extraordinary advances in science and technology, and yet coupled with these advances is an increasing sense of pressure, complexity and information overload.[1] Additionally, as we get more connected to our wireless technology, we appear to run the risk of damaging our brains’ wiring, and disconnecting from the face-to-face interaction that our social and psychological systems need. Thus, mindfulness, with its emphasis on harnessing attention with intention —with all its scientifically-established health and well-being benefits—has the potential to keep us from drifting hopelessly away from one another.[2]

Mindful awareness can be defined as paying attention to present moment experiences with openness, curiosity, and a willingness to be with what is. It is an excellent antidote to the stresses of modern times. It invites us to stop, breathe, observe, and connect with one's inner experience. There are many ways to bring the quality of mindfulness into our life, such as in meditation, yoga, art, or time in nature.[3] Additionally, another way we can also bring the quality of mindfulness into our lives through the way we use our cellphones.

Many people will argue that cellphone usage as a completely mindless matter. Sometimes cellphones are used to avoid awkward conversations and people or as a tool to counter boredom. Some people are on the edge waiting for the next validation, whether in the form of a Like, View, or Retweet.  Some people pull their cell phones out, check the screen and put it back in their pockets, yet when asked what time it was they often could not tell.

We have the tendency to pull our cellphones when we feel vulnerable to a lull in the pace of our lives or to use it to improve our connection and experiences. For example, nowadays if people were at a concert, they would most likely take out their phones and record the show. Additionally, most of the time they would then proceed to watch the concert through the phone’s screen or turn around with their back facing the concert  to record a selfie video of the experience even though the real life experience and better view is right in front of them.

These seemingly mindless actions are fair cause for people to complain about the cell phone overuse and addictions. However, the quality of mindfulness can definitely be brought to cellphone usage. Sura, the founder of The Sura Center which is an online meditation company, says it isn’t just the plethora of tech offerings that keep us feeling preoccupied and divided, it is our relationship to these devices that keep us wanting more.  Thus, she asks what can we do to shift our relationship to the technology that surrounds us? How can we make technology work for us and not the other way around?[4] This is an important question and the beginning of an exploration to recognize the potential we have to change the mindless relationship we have with our cellphones.

To begin with, Mitch Abblet, a clinical psychologist delineates in Mindful Magazine an exercise where we can both practice mindfulness and connect said practice to our phones. The process is very similar to a regular meditation practice; he guides us to sit comfortably with our eyes open, in an upright posture, with the phone in the palm of the hand. He then asks us to explore our cell phones: to turn our phone on, but do not open any particular app. Just let our thumbs hover over top the screen.

Afterwards, take in a full, deep breath into the belly. We can allow ourselves to feel the nuances of how the breath enters and leaves the body. As we look at our phones, we simply place our attention on the feeling of the breath coming in and out. Moreover, similar to regular meditation practices, if our minds drift, just gently bring awareness back to the breath.

We can then notice how we feel about our cell phones, frustration, restlessness, fatigue, or a sense of doubt and then come back to being aware of how the breath feels. He also challenges us to be mindful of our impulses: desires to open an app, check email, or a sense of being pulled toward something. He also invites us to be curious as to what this desire, actually is in this moment. What are its components in our minds and bodily sensations? Can we notice the pull and see if we are willing to just ride the impulse without following it. Are we reminded of someone or something that feels worthy of blame? Are we feeling frustrated over not immediately opening and using the phone? Can we simply notice all that is showing up right now? We can be free in pondering over our relationship to this small object and how we allow it to manage our daily lives and demand our attention.

Abblet also probes us to wonder how this object makes us feel and explore our sense of control in relation to the cellphone. He explains that this practice is about opening up to our experience of how we make use of this piece of powerful technology. Instead of allowing ourselves to be mindless with our cell phones, he probes us to analyze the negative states it can draw out of us.

The point is, cellphones are not inherently “bad.” However, they can be dangerously addictive and we should be more wary and mindful of our usage. Therefore, every time we use the phone, it can act as reminder to be mindful rather than mindless. Even the act of noticing the way the head tilts or the body shifts to view the phone can be done mindfully.[5] We can also tune into our breath, our feelings and bodily sensations to explore how we relate to technology in that moment. Being mindful of our relationships to our cellphone can allow us to use our phones in healthy moderation and transform our mindless energy into a more mindful presence.

Even so, many people see cellphones as an aversion to mediation and being mindful. However, a part of mindfulness practice is to invite the aspects of our aversion into our the practice. Using our cellphones is a mundane and frequent part of our lives where we can stop and incorporate this stop in our practice. In addition, Jon Kabat-Zinn has said the quality of mindfulness is not something where we need to train at for years and years; the body has wisdom already. We do not have to cultivate awareness. All we have to learn is to find it and inhabit it.[6] We do not need to force ourselves to find awareness; rather we can bring awareness to the everyday activities, such as checking our phones and inhabit that awareness. 

Henepola Gunaratana, a reknown Buddhist monk, has said that one of the most memorable events in many meditation careers is the moment when one first realizes that they are meditating in the midst of some perfectly ordinary activity. It could be driving down the freeway or carrying out the trash, in our case using our cellphones, and it just turns on by itself. This unplanned outpouring of the skills that we so carefully foster is a genuine joy. It gives us a tiny window on the future. We catch a spontaneous glimpse of what the practice really means. This transformation of consciousness could possibly become a permanent feature of our experiences. We realize that we could actually stand aside from the debilitating clamoring of our own obsessions, no longer frantically hounded by our own needs and greed. And finally, we get a tiny taste of what it is like to just stand aside and watch it all flow past. It's a magic moment.[7] As a new way to challenge our mindless energy, this new way of relating to our cellphones can serve as one of the best opportunities to cultivate qualities of mindfulness.

Thus, it is no surprise that many people recognize or are beginning to recognize cellphone usage as a space where people can cultivate a quality of mindfulness. Despite complaints that cellphones stunt social, emotional, and cognitive development, and even Nobel-winning economist Herbert Simon’s warning that this information rich world consumes “the attention of its recipients…a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention,” I posit that we can potentially combat this so called decline and worry if we cultivate a mindfulness practice around how we handle our phones.

For example, the recent Pokémon Go app is an example of where we can integrate mindful practices in our cell phone usage. This app has already taken the world by storm and millions of people around the world have downloaded it and are, some obsessively, playing. Through this app, although there are still people with their heads bent, eyes squinting, and fingers frantic, more people have been mindfully going outside and getting exercise, boldly interacting with strangers or connecting with their friends and family because of this shared interest, and also approaching new areas in the neighborhood or reporting to notice things in the neighborhood that they have not previously noticed.These actions counter the assumption that cellphones are causing us to be inattentive and antisocial. Pokémon Go can increase our awareness of our physical environment…even as it virtually removes players from it.[8]

Although there are also downsides to being engrossed in any application, we have to admit cellphones bring incredible benefits and possibilities for sharing information and creating global interaction, All the same, we simply need to learn to hold our technology more lightly—with more awareness [9] and understand that in between the mindless and mindful actions regarding cellphone use, there is a space for choice. We can mindfully choose how we react to our cellphones in all aspects of our lives. Overall, cellphones invite a new playful approach to traditional meditation that is exciting and has great potential to energize our practices.

Indeed, it is possible that cellphones can engender a greater sense of mindfulness. While there are plenty of complaints and fears about the rise of technology and its role in mindless behavior, the good news is that we can change our relationship with our technology, and more specifically our cellphones, and use it to raise our awareness and our level of presence.

Additionally, since so many mindfulness practitioners are preoccupied with enlightenment, in a roundabout way, releasing ourselves from the hold of technology can abet mindfulness practitioners on their search for enlightenment. Enlightenment is defined by Immanuel Kant as man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance.[10] And in a way, our cellphones serve as an inadvertent guardian; cellphones have the ability to direct our constant movements and reactions and block us from achieving an understanding while it serves as our constant guide. By understanding our relationship with our cellphones, we can begin to control the way technology affects us and begin to counter this nonage.

Or at the very least, by releasing ourselves from our phones, we can have more time at hand to turn our focus to the world or the mystery of metaphysics, or wherever the "solution" to Enlightment may be.

Lastly, the next time you are out to dinner with friends, I challenge you to have everyone put their phones in the center of the table; the first person to reach for their phone buys dessert. We can easily begin to cultivate a quality of mindfulness and you just might get free dessert.

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[1] http://marc.ucla.edu/body.cfm?id=16

[2] http://www.mindful.org/addicted-to-your-phone-try-this-practice-phone-in-hand/

[3] http://marc.ucla.edu/body.cfm?id=16

[4] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sura-flow/technology-meditation_b_2448157.html

[5]You can even so far as to download an app that will help with Text Neck to aid you in noticing your posture. http://text-neck.com/text-neck-indicator--a-mobile-app.html

[6] http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/gg_live/science_meaningful_life_videos/speaker/jon_kabat-zinn/shut_off_your_cell_phone/

[7] http://www.vipassana.com/meditation/mindfulness_in_plain_english_17.php

[8] https://www.headspace.com/blog/2016/07/14/were-addicted-to-pokemon-go-and-thats-ok/

[9] http://www.mindful.org/addicted-to-your-phone-try-this-practice-phone-in-hand/

[10] http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/etscc/kant.html

How the Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom Called for a Battle

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Asian Americans are the celebrated and equally envied minority of America. Their high levels of success and foreign ways are often fascinating topics.

When Amy Chua came out with Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom, many hailed it as the tell-all book to why Asians were so successful; thus the public eagerly read it, and gasped.

In the book, Chua’s intense and borderline abusive ways outlines the harsh realities behind success. Additionally, the subtext captures the narrative of fear when Chua pits Western ways against Asian ways and openly suggests that Asian ways are better.

However, her crude over generalizations and blatant lack of research is not just offensive to Westerners but also to the Asian American community. Chua’s narrative irresponsibly casts Asians and Asian Americans  as racialized stereotypes in mainstream society and undoes whatever headway Asians may have had in being more than a stereotype.

From the onset, the Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom was an instant phenomenon. Here was a book unapologetically explaining why Asians were so much better than the rest of the world, with plenty of proof delineating the insane and brutal tactics necessary to achieve this status. Relating to my own experience, at first I thought Chua was quite lax in her demands and requests. I, too, grew up in a strict Asian household, where my father who was the patriarch. My father had my siblings and I practice cursive, memorize multiplication tables, and learn both Spanish and Vietnamese, along with Chinese since kindergarten. We were not allowed to go bed until we could prove we finished studying certain workbooks or assignments, nor did he allow loud and unnecessary chattering and clamoring at the dinner table, unless we spoke in Chinese.

However where my parents differed was at the helm of this novel, Amy Chua insisted that these successes were achieved by virtue of Chinese virtues. This is indeed an ironic picture; whereas Asian history has usually been told and exoticized by outsiders, here is Amy Chua posing as an expert on Asians, her only credential on the subject being that she herself is Asian, giving credence to and ultimately confirming these exaggerated Asian stereotypes. She depicts her own character as some one who embodies many of the negative personalities that  Asians are often paralyzed by such as being: condescending, intense, unrelenting, organ eating, insensitive, or all of the above.[i]

In the stroke of a pen, Chua reduces Asians and Asian Americans and their diversity, successes, and struggles into an unimpressive stereotype. The fact is that her experience, and likewise her parenting and methods, does not speak for all Asians or even all Chinese people.

Throughout her book, while there are some aspects in her parenting that are found in many Asian households, not all of her tactics result specifically because she is Chinese. Chua relentlessly states that her parenting methods were rooted in Chinese values. She slings around Chinese cultural references to abet this conjecture quite frequently and tactlessly. For example, she proudly boasts that she was born in the year of the tiger, Tiger people are noble, fearless, powerful, authoritative, and magnetic,[ii] and she talks about how the Chinese model turns on success. That’s how the virtuous circle of confidence, hard work, and more success is generated.[iii] Yet Chau states that anyone could be a "Chinese mother," a Ghanaian father can show attributes of a Chinese mother and some ethnically Chinese mothers are not at all "Chinese mothers."

In a study by Anna S. Lau and Joey Fung, this article argues that Chua’s perspective is grossly essentialist, ignoring how the extremes in child rearing recounted are related more to class privilege than ethnicity or culture. For example, Chua’s investments in her daughters’ success are afforded by human and financial capital enabling such driven devotion to child achievement. Thus, Chua’s assertion of tiger parenting as a product of static cultural mores fails to take into account the power of broad ecological, economic, and social conditions that shape what is important in the everyday world of families that drives choices and habits in parenting.[iv]

Additionally, as her argument is that she is raising her child to “Chinese” methods, she fails to connect to present day Chinese contemporary culture. If anything, societal developments toward urbanization in China tend to shift cultural values in an individualistic direction and developmental pathways toward more independent social behavior and values which are contrary to the generalized notions Chua presented.

Furthermore, as migrants, such as Chua’s own family, incorporates into the complexities of American social and economic contexts, the cultural framework they bring with them necessarily take new forms and meanings.[v] For example, in my own experience in being raised by ethnically Chinese parents, my parents, were so strict not only because there were a lot of “Chinese virtues” to abide by, but because America was so new to them and they had to struggle to understand their new way of life. The confluence of fear and confusion in a new social construct is daunting to many new immigrants; and thus, my parents were strict so we could try to understand and navigate America together. Their Chinese values may have been combined with the shared immigrant experience of hardships, and general fear and wonder at the new American lifestyles. The notion of culture becomes a fluid entity. Similarly, the culture Chua was raised in and claims to be purely Chinese was not particularly so. Chua’s upbringing may have been a result of societal pressure, rather than Chinese practices and values.

In addition, Chua may be inadvertently racializing her own methods. Her views on the extent of her own “Chineseness” may also be directly as a result of her own stereotypical view of Asians and extending this stereotype to her own subconscious. Overall, strict parenting is not a solely Chinese or Asian virtue.

Nonetheless, there are assertions that perhaps tiger parenting is an exclusively Chinese American style of child rearing. Therefore, studies have identified an expanded model of parenting dimensions that may better reflect the parenting practices of a sample of Chinese Americans. Contrary to the common perception, tiger parenting was not the most typical parenting profile in Chinese American families. Supportive parenting profile, on the other hand, was the largest group, constituting a half or more of the parents sampled. The studies collectively suggest that Asian parenting is much more dynamic and multifaceted than suggested by the tiger mother brand.

Ga-jung-kyo-yuk methods in Korean parenting positively associated with both the Western concepts of authoritative and authoritarian styles[vi] and support the fact the Asian American parenting can involve directive control as well as reasoning and a close parent– child bond. Parents of Asian descent in America and in Asia seem to combine both East Asian heritage cultures and migration and globalization influences. Moreover, data also suggests that most Asian parents appear to have relinquished certain domains or types of control, seeking to cultivate emotional closeness with their children and foster their independence and autonomy in contexts that increasingly demand individuation and self-expression.[vii]

Lau and Fung go on to affirm this data and suggest that while parents do indeed want their children to succeed academically, parents are increasingly understanding and aware of negative consequences that stem from academic pressures and are subsequently lessening their own pressures to mitigate the situation. It is important to note consequently, Asian American parents’ concerns about their children’s academic or career future is often balanced (or at times substituted) by a concern for their personal happiness and well-being. This research portrays Asian American families that are in stark contrast to Chua’s jarring stereotypical portrayal of Asian families.

Lau and Fung argue while all mothers believed in the importance of academic success, they all placed equal if not greater emphasis in raising children to be socially skilled, happy, healthy, and autonomous. The mothers spoke about the need for their children to have good communication skills, demonstrate independence, take initiative, and assume leadership. Almost all of these skills and traits of Asian American parents are ignored due to Chua’s pedantic sermons of success at the cost of social skills. If anything, the Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom is Chua posits an extremely inaccurate picture of Chinese parenting.

On the other hand, there are many values that are the same across many Asian American families. These values vary in meaning and weight across different generations. Asian parents often are more exacting of their children than American parents.[viii] Often times many Asian parents have sacrificed a lot to start over in America. In most immigrant households, there is no other alternative to trying to succeed.

In my own experience, my parents sacrificed and worked extremely hard to provide for my family. To pay for Chinese school, my family did not have the luxury to sacrifice “next summer’s vacation” as Chua’s family; instead we were sacrificing a few bills. In Louie’s article, Jeffrey Yao, a young 2nd generation immigrant who was raised in a “bad neighborhood,” cited the role of the family, in imposing strict rules against going out and cutting school and also emphasizing the importance of education, as his reasoning to why he was able to succeed, a support system which his Hispanic friends from the same neighborhood, who did not do as well in school, did not have. Additionally, Brenda Hsieh, a freshman at Columbia, who grew up in the comfortable suburbs of New Jersey, cited the same familial support system as the reason she was able to be successful. Asian Americans, though they inhabit different worlds in the United States, they share the same ethnic cultures whereby their families value education and the desire to do well in school. These values of education, hard work, success, and determination usually coupled by strict parenting styles were emphasized to ensure their children attain a level of success that may not be available to them.

Amy Chua notes that when she was growing up, her parents, as early immigrants, could not afford to pay for the best of lessons. In contrast, Lulu and Sophia’s childhood is very different from their mothers. They are 3rd generation immigrants from a dual professional income household. She said that the 3rd generation is often the most privileged and does not have to work as hard which is why she was determined to raise them as a Chinese mother. However, by this generation, Chua is without societal pressures of financial security, assimilation, language barriers, and her children do not live under these pressures. Thus, even the “Asian” values of hard work, education, and success have a different weight and meaning. For other immigrants these values are the gateway to survival; for Chua, these values are a blockade to laziness.

To be fair, Chua’s tiger mom ways were justified with remarkable achievements. For example, her daughters achieved musical accomplishments at very impressive young ages. Furthermore, many readers will ask at what cost success comes. Is success at the cost of time and effort dedicated to discipline and mental health worth it?  Perhaps it comes at a cost to the way people view the entire community?

Chua declares Chinese mothers feel that “academic achievement reflects successful parenting” and if their children did not excel, the parents “were not doing their job.”[ix] According to Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou, Chinese and Vietnamese immigrant parents reinforce success by using cross-cultural networks to acquire educationally information, and they also employ another strategy: parental bragging rights. Chinese and Vietnamese immigrant parents brag to other coethnic parents about their children’s accomplishments. Yet they selectively include only the narratives of exceptional achievement and cases of success. Conversely, the more numerous disconfirming cases are kept silent. I often heard parents gathered at my Chinese school casually yet no less vigorously swapping stories of their absolutely intelligent kids. So and so was doing a million and one extracurricular activities for example. My mother definitely repeated these stories as well as used these conversations to glean what other children were doing. In choosing to solely circulate positive stories, parents reinforce the perception that all 1.5 and second generation immigrants are exceptional achievers.

Consequently, parents and children come to believe the success frame is not only attainable but normative. Those who do not meet this frame of success are the outliers with regard to Asian American exceptionalism.[x] Those that do deviate from the success cite problems with intergenerational conflicts, rejection of their ethnic identity, and their community. For example when Lulu she fails to meet the demands of success, not only does she and her mother often argue and fight relentlessly, she also screamed “I’m not Chinese! I don’t want to be Chinese. Why can’t you get that through your head?”[xi] She rejects the very part of her identity that she associates with the mounting pressure of success.  In this heated rage, she equates being Chinese to being obsessed with success.

According to many studies, most Asian Americans do not attain the success frame, but the ones who do, such as Chua’s family, are noticed and thereby reinforce the model minority stereotype.  They begin to represent the typical Asian, unfairly blanketing the vast majority of narratives and evidence that suggests Asian Americans are not fairing as well as they seem. Moreover, Asian Americans that are not doing well are heralded as the exception when it is more common than publicly acknowledged. Stereotypes then become cemented, abetted by the Chua family’s extremist antics, despite evidence and research. The circulation of positive Asian American success stories reaffirms the belief in Asian American exceptionalism, the model minority stereotype, and ultimately the American Dream. These narratives give specious support to the perceived link between ethnoracial status and achievement.[xii]

Ultimately, while I appreciate Chua’s candor and mild humor and humility while reflecting on her actions, Amy Chua has done little for the Asian American community especially in terms of positive visibility. Her flawed logic and gross generalizations overshadowed her message about believing in her daughters’ abilities.

In mainstream media, the public always latches on to one Asian narrative, and then uses this person as a window to the rest of the Asian world. Therefore, all Asians must be this way; all Asians must subscribe to this level of crazy. This is an issue of racialization of minorities and the public acting on their micro aggressions. Chua’s story is not representative of all the diversity in Asian American experiences, especially in parenting.

Ironically, though her book ignited a conversation about race and identity, Chua’s daughters may experience a lesser degree or no racialization because their mixed race and racially "white" exterior traits affords them the privilege to selectively “be Asian.” Unlike many minorities, society may not expect them to ascribe to certain ethnic affiliations and its subsequent stereotypes.

What I find most interesting is that her daughters continue to insist that they are individuals throughout the narrative and are worried that the audience will see them as mere robots of their mother’s fashion. Through Chua’s insistence and curated use of anecdotes, she convinces readers that her daughters are not mechanical, yet her daughters’ reaction subtly foreshadows the reaction the public might have on so many Asian Americans. Their, and my, narratives are indirectly influenced by Chua’s stereotypical story and the way it shapes public perception of Asian Americans. This book has, unintentionally, added another layer of foreigner racialization to contemporary American culture.

Lastly, my hope is that readers will realize that there is no one way to describe all Asian American personalities. While we do have shared values and interests, as we all have a sense of shared humanity, we are all distinctly unique people, each with our own backgrounds, immigration history, child rearing styles, values, struggles and successes. If anything, I think Chua’s intention to add shock value and incite and stir controversy is not Chinese or American in nature; it’s human.

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[i] I came to these descriptions by events that she described in the books that revealed much about her personality. For example, on p. 86 she asks he daughter Lulu, “Do you know where those people are now? They’re janitors, that’s where.”

[ii] Chua, Amy. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom. P. 11

[iii] Chua, Amy. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom. P. 146

[iv] Lau and Fung. Understanding Parenting. 2013

[v] Louie. Compelled to Excel. 2004

[vi] Lau and Fung. Understanding Parenting. 2013

[vii] Lau and Fung. Understanding Parenting. 2013

[viii] Louie. Compelled to Excel. 2004

[ix] Chua, Amy. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom. P. 5

[x] Lee and Zhou. Success at all Costs.

[xi] Chua. Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mom. P. 205

[xii] Lee and Zhou. Success at all Costs.