When it comes to a paradigm shift, a relative change in human behavior is not transformative but it is a start. There is change and there is lasting change that Nicole La Porte reports on in a heartwarming course being taken by Korean-American fathers who are trying to mitigate the influences of an Asian paradigm that has caused suffering for them and their families.
The problem according to a guidebook for the course is the growing national epidemic of abusive, ineffective and absentee fathers. Korean-American fathers had brought with them some of their “old-world” behaviors to the U.S. Joon Cho, one of the volunteers in the Father School program described those problematic behaviors like this: “They’re not emotionally linked with their children or their wife. They’re either workaholics, or they’re busy enjoying their own hobbies or social activities. Family always comes last.”
Electrical engineer Edmond Rhim, a Christian Korean-American, showed up for FatherSchool which promised that he would emerge an “emotionally adjusted” dad. His wife obviously had done some arm twisting. “She’s happy now,” said a smiling Rhim. His wife Hanna assured reporter La Porte that “I love my husband, but he is under construction.” Rhim said of himself, “I’m not a bad father.” But realizing how difficult it was for him to relate to his wife and two teenage kids—and realizing, finally, how empty that left him—he paid the $120 course fee and agreed to show up.
FatherSchool spread from Korea in 2000 to help Korean immigrant fathers in dealing with Americanized kids who wondered why their fathers weren’t more like the touchy-feely dads they watched on TV. Since then FatherSchool has exploded. It now operates out of 57 American cities and has graduated nearly 200,000 men worldwide.
This brief glimpse of both the suffering caused by one aspect of P-B conditioning and the attempt to mitigate that suffering reveals the challenge that we all face in changing the direction toward a sustainable global village community. The creators of Father School, while relatively successful in directly addressing unhealthy behavior, would have created more profound behavioral changes by beginning with the source of all dysfunctional behavior—the worldview. At that point using proven transformational practices, a new identity would have naturally emerged resulting in more comprehensive and long-lasting if not permanent behavioral change.
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References and notes are available for this article.
For a much more in-depth discussion on Simple Reality, read Simple Reality: The Key to Serenity and Survival, by Roy Charles Henry, published in 2011.
