NGUYEN TRONG CHUAN

PREFACE

The world is changing and Vietnam also is changing very rapidly. From a subsidiary, bureaucratic and concentrated economy, Vietnam is shifting to a market economy, industrializing, modernizing and integrating into the world. From a philosophical point of view, this is not only a socio-economic change, but also a change in value standards. This entails a search for new value standards that are more general, more suitable and able to serve better the progress of the entire society as well as each human individual. It must be suitable for an era of development and the trend toward globalization and multi-faceted international relations. In the course of this change a number of issues emerge, such as how to define real, fundamental values; what are the counter-values; how to maintain good traditional values and keep them from sinking into oblivion; which values should be received, and more importantly how to orient values, especially in term of the younger generation.

Through reviewing Vietnam’s recent situation this study would hope to contribute to the clarification of these issues.

The concept, "value", is used widely in many different scientific branches such as: philosophy, psychology, ethics, sociology, aesthetics, etc., and with different content. As it is difficult to have a reasonable definition which can be accepted by everybody, it is necessary to determine firstly the inner content of the definition to be used here. When speaking of value it is necessary to attend to the concrete socio-historico-practical aspects, namely, to its applicability and capability for promoting human behavior by obtaining, maintaining and protecting it. At the same time, though it is not necessary to moralize all values, in speaking of value we want to reaffirm its positive character as attached to the right, the good, the interesting and the beautiful.

On the other hand, values have objectivity because objects, processes and relations themselves include the ability to satisfy multi-faceted human demands, bringing multiple benefits to humans. At the same time, human groups express their attitude, point of view and evaluation of those abilities, as well as the level they can accept. However, human demands and benefits are extremely varied and diversified, — even extremely complicated. Hence, things that create value through their ability to satisfy the demands of most human beings have a definite stability.

When people choose some value as essential or fundamental, or say that a value comprises material and spiritual dimensions, or is of high quality, they are talking about a system of values. In this way we see that some values are common for humankind, while others characterize a nation or a community (village, commune). Some values are long-standing and respected and inherited through generations; but the impact, scale and time of others may be shorter. Some values will fade or even disappear completely when the historical situation changes, and newly formed values will replace them. The scale of values used by a nation, community, group or individual in the conduct of its behavior serves in effect as a measure for surveying values.

The attitude, arrangement and selection of material or spiritual values to be pursued, believed in, and followed as a duty is the orientation of value. Such value orientation is a very important factor in forming and confirming personality, helping an individual to find meaningful things, to avoid what is meaningless for oneself and harmful to the community, to be firmly targeted on ideals, to stimulate personal demand and interest, to adjust behavior and to motivate action. Obviously, beside its moral and aesthetic character, value orientation also is closely allied to awareness, feelings, emotion, will and desire.

In terms of nations as human communities traditional values have an extremely important role. Tradition includes the composition of the ideology, emotions, customs, habits, lifestyle, ways of behavior, and the will of the human community. Formed in history this becomes stabilized and is transferable from generation to generation. Hence traditional values concern what is considered the active, and typical of the national culture which should be maintained, protected, and promoted. The content of tradition is very diversified and varied, but can contain positive and negatives aspects simultaneously. Hence, from traditional values one must extract the positive, the good, the beneficial for the life of the entire nation today and tomorrow, as well as for the international community of which the nation is a member.

Vietnam’s traditional values originate from traditions formed a thousand years ago under multiple influences: the natural environment and geographical conditions, labor production and socio-economic structures, historical circumstances and the international and regional cultural environment. That includes the traditions of a community with the spirit of solidarity and mutual help, whether in peace or in war or other difficult times; traditions of village demo-cracy whose clearest symbol is the right to select a representative to control the works of the village or commune; and the tradition of standing firm in difficulty, hard work, love of children and respect for the aged.

Thanks to the contact with China and especially the reception of Confucianism with India and the reception of Buddhism, and with French culture Vietnam has traditions of love of learning, respect for titles like being a mandarin, altruism, leniency, as well as of freedom, equality and fraternity.

However, Vietnam’s traditional values have been formed mainly on the basis of the Vietnamese nation. Being a small country and experiencing too many wars of national defense the features highlighted in Vietnam’s tradition are patriotism, nationalism independence and self-reliance. Although Confucianism has been studied and many things learned therefrom, its great moral system does not touch patriotism. On the contrary, for the Vietnamese people patriotism is a value, indeed a spiritual motive for which many generations have sacrificed, and thanks to which they have won. Through struggle against extremely severe natural conditions and foreign invasions the tradition of flexible behavior, quick adaptation and easy adaption to existing conditions has been formed. All those good traditions form values which have been preserved by the Vietnamese.

Beside that positive, good side, the prolonged existence over many centuries and even until today of the small peasant economy also contributes to forming traditions which are not so good. These include being unfamiliar with economic accounting, carelessness, distraction, lack of tight discipline, sectionalism, localism, egalitarianism, low aspirations, and dislike of being surpassed by others. Those features have created negative aspects in the Vietnamese tradition.

Vietnam’s renovation since 1986 has been in all fields: economic, political, social, cultural and external relations. In the economic field the shift from a concentrated, bureaucratic, subsidiary structure to a market economic structure has quickly changed the face of socio-economic life, created the existing economy, led to rapid growth, and patently improved peoples’ standard of life in almost every field of activity. Many traditional professions have been restored and many new jobs created. The way of earning money to become rich also has changed and been diversified. The expansion of external relations also has created big changes in many influencing the outlook, the way of thinking, the attitudes and behavior of people, especially the young.

However, these changes have given birth to not a few com-plicated social issues and negative phenomena. The major concerns are the great difference between the poor and the rich which risks becoming conflictual, disrespect for tradition, and looking down on public opinion and law. Along with that, many social evils and crimes which had disappeared for many years or been greatly reduced now rise again.

In fact, those changes have impact on the system of traditional values, though estimates of the level of that impact are not quite in agreement. A few people consider that under the big changes in the economy not a few traditional values have been inverted, fallen into crisis or even into oblivion. In contrast to the past, economic, material values now carry more weight than spiritual ones; personal benefit is a stronger motivation than collective benefit. However, as confirmed by many researchers, seen calmly and with vigilant precautions, this phenomenon is obviously a necessary adjustment. If in previous times spiritual collective values were highly considered, material values were forgotten; readjusting the balance is quite reasonable, and should not be a matter of concern.

This adjustment itself has its positive side in that it promotes self-control and the ability for self-improvement; it stimulates independence and creativity. This overcomes passivity and reliance on the state and the collective in order to seek a better material and spiritual life for oneself on the basis of an assured material life. Instead of relying on the collective, society, and the state, people have recognized that they need to be active, to calculate economic results, and to improve their knowledge so as not to fail in the severe competition of the market economy.

However, extremism is also a reality in present day Vietnamese society. This trend threatens the traditional values mentioned above. It rates highly a comfortable material life, looking down upon altruism and not paying attention to other people. It honors technique while disregarding human beings. It blindly follows Western and foreign values. It looks only to oneself, forgetting the collective and the community which long have been precious traditions of the nation. Although these trends are not dominant it is necessary to recognize them in order to take measures of prevention and to avoid the extreme turns which cause harm to the society.

Many sociological surveys have been conducted regarding changes in the value outlook caused by changing historical circum-stances. Among 20 values commonly popular, the Vietnamese polled indicated the following ten as leading values:

1. Peace: 86.0%

2. Freedom: 76.8%

3. Health: 72.6%

4. Employment: 64.9%

5. Justice: 64.4%

6. Education: 62.0%

7. Family: 57.3%

8. Belief: 57.3%

9. Security: 56.0%

10. Profession: 52.9%

From this the following conclusions can be drawn:

- The high percentage of people who chose peace reflects the sincere aspiration of a nation that has lost too much to war. The high rank of this value probably corresponds to other nations all over the world. That value has power to gather and unify all nations, North and South, East or West, whether developing or developed. It is a common value of humankind without which such other aspirations as wealth, strength, happiness and development cannot be realized. Peace is a key to independence, freedom and employment.

- Other values such as health, education, justice, belief, family and security remain traditional values which are highly appreciated.

- Survey results show that the values of one’s profession are in the greatest need of change. Above we have commented that in the Vietnamese tradition the weak point is economic accounting for fear that one’s neighbors will consider one to be rich. However, this tradition of egalitarianism is rapidly weakening. People turn to a number of values which motivate people to enrich both them selves and the country according to the motto: "A rich people, in a strong country, with an equal and civil society."

It has been more than ten years of renewal, and the way of getting rich and choosing an occupation have changed greatly. Seventeen percent of the people chose an occupation with high income despite difficulty, while only a few people chose an easy job with low income. Interestingly people preferred a practical occupation with high income, but one that did not harm the community and family responsibilities. Concretely, 64.2 percent chose occupations which enabled them to take care of their family and 57.8 percent chose jobs that could help others. People seem not to pay great attention to the economic sector or office where they will work: working for the state or for private or foreign companies all are acceptable, provided the job is suitable and renders high income.

This is a remarkable change in the Vietnamese psychology and value-orientation. However, the point is that when people become accustomed to change they do not lose their traditional values, but still stay close to family and community. This is easy to understand because to the Vietnamese people’s mind, if the family is happy and stable the community (village, commune and the entire society) will be stable and peaceful, and people will be able to face the great waves of difficulties in life. Maintaining family values is a firm guarantee in the struggle against the merciless, cold-blooded competition of the market structure.

This has the following implications:

- As becoming rich is a popular value, the older mandarin values of respect for titles and positions now lessen remarkably.

- Traditional values continue strong while at the same time bearing new content. For example, if in the past the value of "freedom" meant mainly freedom for the entire nation or national independence, nowadays it means also freedom in business, work, learning, improving knowledge and selecting one’s private activities in fields not prohibited by the laws. Such freedom is close to the individual and his or her improvement.

- Some values which in the past were quite ordinary now have become urgent, for example, employment. This value can be found in all nations, but now in Vietnam it is urgent because of the shift in the economic structure. It is certain that not only in the present, but also in the future employment and profession will remain leading values, especially for young people and particularly in countries with high populations.

- Further, the survey results identify some spiritual values which people honor, praise and consider highly such as: creativity, love, justice, beauty. Many Vietnamese now value these only to a middle level, some grade them below other values. This is obviously the "negative" side of present value orientations. Probably it reflects also that in a life full of difficulties the Vietnamese must first solve their urgent problems, rather than dealing with other values.

Life is changing very fast and human awareness too does not stop at any one point. The above survey results are only preliminary and can serve only as points of reference. Other changes surely will take place in the future. But today’s life allows researchers to confirm that the fundamental orientation of the scale of values measuring what Vietnamese believe and seek, in other words, things that create the present pattern of Vietnamese values, are still the traditional human values. However, these shift from patriotism in battle to patriotism in the construction of peace, in industrialization and modernization; these are the present sense of the national culture and national pride. Together with respect for other good traditional values, the newly formed values and those common to all humankind provide a foundation creating the shape of current life for the Vietnamese and their society. That is the base also for ensuring the dialogue and integration for peace and development in this region and in the world. Knowing how to respect and preserve the good values of this and other nations, while maintaining one’s own identity is the key to improving the quality and meaning of life in an era full of change and tension.