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Showing posts with the label cynicism

The importance of values - corporate and personal

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My employer formally arrived at corporate values, several years ago. I actually am not just in agreement, but strongly supportive of these values, fortunately perhaps. One of them is "trust and personal responsibility in all relationships" - and I believe that aligns well with the secular humanist school, to which I ascribe. Growing up as a visible minority in a culturally diverse environment, I recall how often classmates and their parents alike, had pre-conceived notions - what I'd call mainly prejudicial assumptions - of what values I may espouse, all based on my parents' heritage (and statistically, I was more likely to be Chinese, so was often mistaken to be one). What they didn't seem to consider, though, was that my parents had clearly had to have fundamentally rejected some of the strongest values supposedly held by the Japanese: conformity (at least outwardly) and avoiding familial shame, in order to embrace a Westernized country, and become immigrant