I just have a lot to unpack about the "United" States

Ever since migrating to the United States, I am seeing that US society does not allow people who live in it to express the problems they are experiencing at all, altogether. In Asia, where I am from, there is admittedly a stigma against showing that you're falling apart. However (and this is particularly true for the Philippines which is considered the most Westernised of all Asian countries), the social structures there are communal in nature, meaning they are organically built towards people supporting each other. The US government's broken healthcare system, which I work with in my day hob, uses a clear-cut government definition of "immediate" or "nuclear" family versus "extended family," and siblings immediately become the latter once a person turns 18 because apparently "immediate/nuclear family" is just your grandparents, your parents, your spouse and your biological children if you have any. This is an important discovery for me because I noticed in the news that while highly individualist societies like the one here in the US may lead the global coronavirus vaccine production, the people in it are also consistently anti-mask use (folks in the US keep rallying against mask usage much harder than Asians do).

Photo of a woman at the supermarket, taken during the coronavirus (SaRs-COV2) pandemic. Courtesy of Freepik.

Given how highly individualist US society, it's expected to just pick yourself up by your bootstraps, grin and bear every single hardship. In that path lies disaster because humans are social beings, and our mental health both depends on and influences the societies we live in. If many of us are experiencing mental health issues or some form of mental instability, it doesn't just affect us, but it also affects other people, even those not immediately around us! Now the goal isn't just to fix yourself, but to be able to understand and help each other through our mental health issues or mental instability. Unfortunately the method of help needed isn't so clear-cut, and in fact it could lead us to hurting each other in the process even without meaning to do so.

I've begun reading into these a lot more because...

I've begun reading into these a lot more because I have been wanting to understand the societal problems surrounding imprisonment. As some of you may recall, my sister was imprisoned for nearly 5 years for a crime she didn't commit, and just recently she expressed frustration because a friend of hers who had gotten out and reintegrated into society earlier than she did asked for help because she (the friend) was involved in something that could send her back behind bars again. While the Philippines is still a by and large an Asian country with Asian societal values, we do have a long-running relationship with poverty brought about by colonization (333 years under Spain, 46 years + continuing soft power dominance by the USA). A lot of my sister's friends remain in or return to jail because they come from either the margins of poverty, highly unstable environments full of abuse and violence, or (more often than not) settings that integrate both. And because the Philippines was the first to liberate itself from Westernization (Spain) only to be colonized again by the West (USA), it's become even more difficult for us to reconcile the fact that our organic support systems have been affected by the generational trauma that has caused. This means on the ground level, that a lot of her friends and mine alike still feel alone in their mental health issues or instability even when we reach out to them, and almost everyone just prefers to keep to themselves instead of making it loud and clear that help is needed. Also, this means that discussion of mental health in general is very new to us, and now I wonder how many Filipinos were sent to either a mental health institution (which is also struggling) or prison for being poor and malnourished with little access to medication or even a support system where they can just really talk their problems out. 

A very rare family picture in 2016.

This has also meant that I have had to take a long, hard look at myself and my attitudes over punishment. Asians are very pro-order and pro-community, and in fact the value of placing community over self explains why we're pro-order. I was sexually and physically assaulted by robbers back in 2011, so I was originally relentlessly pro-policing, then I made a 180-degree turn in 2016 when my sister was arrested. Some friends, notably lawyers, told me to take up law as a result of being uniquely and intimately acquainted with both sides of the law, but with my distress against the educational system that I performed well in which punished me for pursuing justice for fellow students, plus my own mental health still in shambles, I declined. I then learned that one of the people who robbed and assaulted me wasn't just a high-ranking official of the Philippine National Police, but he even became the CHIEF of Police in 2018-2019 (I can't forget him, he very narrowly missed striking me with a broken pipe)! For added irony, the fact that he loves Voltes V, a 1960s anime about self-emancipation from humanoid space colonizers dictating superiority over the human race (it was banned in September 1972 almost immediately after then-President Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law), has been completely lost on this guy.

So apologies for the rambling, but I just wanted to say that... it isn't right how we as individuals all have to take responsibility for someone else's problems when we can barely work through our own, but we also need to understand that our own problems often bleed into other people so we need to find a balance that meets everyone's basic needs and justice. A policing strategy no longer works because we are punishing people for deep-seated issues and instabilities that they can't just work on by themselves, people whose basic needs are not being met at all. We need to look into the heart of those issues and instabilities or else the people experiencing them will repeat the same actions, words and thoughts that ultimately land them into prison, and we who are on or beyond their periphery will end up playing god justifying to the world why only some people deserve mercy while other deserve to stay in cages instead of preventing the whole thing in the first place by meeting their needs. Studying the root of all our problems, that what we think are individual problems may actually have communal or societal roots after all, would be able to help all of us further down the line. It requires playing the long game, it requires tons of self-awareness and retrospection and self-reckoning, it requires even more patience and understanding both towards the self and the others around us, all of which I have started but none of which I have completed in any way, shape or form. But I think being able to put into words my thoughts and feelings about this complicated subject is helping me understand what's going on around all of us, and how to be of more help. I just have a lot to unpack, and I hope that my unpacking helps people here too. 

And all of this because of a Twitter/X thread.