Vietnam Diaries (Day 19): Freedom Earned or Lost?

Based on my first impressions, I have seen Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City's Urban Districts) be a stark contrast from all the others I have visited in Vietnam. It beats all the others, including the capital, Hanoi, in terms of the pace (10x) as well as the cost of living. It is also, by far, the most Westernized of the eight cities or towns I have been to, with even your average street peddlers talking to you in broken English, people dressing up in sync with international fashion trends and many of the major global companies having a visible presence here. 

An Unbeatable Pace

All cosmetic factors aside, I have also felt the people are cool and distant, unlike all other cities where I felt welcomed and at home. This might be one of the reasons it is called the Paris of the Orient (I love Paris, but it does not have the warmest people in the world). Given my two days of immersion in local history through museums and reading a memoir of a war survivor, I am wondering why this might be the case. 

Look busy and suave, but keep the stranger at bay

Firstly, Saigon was the capital of French Indochina (including Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam) for nearly four decades till 1937. Secondly, Saigon was the capital of the Republic of Vietnam from 1954-1975 after the Geneva Accords, with strong American influence. 

The sheer act of foreign presence in the region has an influence on the people. Being exposed to their ways and culture for decades increases the chances of you, under the right conditions, adopting them. I have found this to be especially true when the own history of the place is an amalgamation of many diverse people. As a corollary, despite having similar exposure to the British, Mumbai and Delhi are far more westernized than Calcutta or Chennai. 

The Erstwhile Cabinet Room, or the REAL seat of power [pre-1975]

During the war with America, many Vietnamese were caught between the Viet Cong, that required the people to demonstrate fealty to them and the American and South Vietnamese troop, who were growing increasingly concerned about Viet Cong's increasing local influence in the region. To avoid unnecessary attention, the lesser that was said and known about someone, the better. 

Le Ly Hayslip captures this beautifully in her memoir "Life in the village had gone from love and distrust of no one to fear and mistrust of everyone, including our neighbors. It was okay to visit your friends and relatives, but if you stayed too long, the cadre leaders were sure to ask you about it later. If you stopped for a ladle of water, they asked why you chose to stop at that particular house." 

You either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain: President Ngo Dinh Diem just became another autocrat replacing a foreign one [pre-1975]

What made it worse for the people of this city was that they were marked using systemic identification and discriminated against by the new Communist government, despite the fact that the reunification required unbiased and equitable rights and opportunities for everyone. For instance, to avail social benefits, the people were required to move to 're-education camps' outside the city. Following the end of the war, according to official and non-official estimates, between 200,000 and 300,000 South Vietnamese were sent to the camps, where many endured torture, starvation, and disease while being forced to perform hard labor. Of course, I explored this more after reading the book on this Wikipedia page, given no public museum will allow the narrative of those government to be tarnished. 

When the government doesn't care about you and systemically acts to take away what was rightfully yours, you'll take all precautions to not become a victim in the system. You'll operate with caution and you'll strictly separate what personal and professional is. If pragmatism requires you to be selfish, then so be it. 

Having led a team, I know that psychological safety is the founding pillar of culture in any team. There is plentiful and compelling research that talks about psychological safety as a first step (see Google Re:Work's research; Simon Sinek's TED Talk or even Patrick Lencioni's book on the Five Dysfunctions of a Team). I have seen it have compounding negating effects where trust is low and compounding positive effects where trust is high in relationships. And trust in individual relationships is built when the environment you create is conducive for it. 

While you can't scale the same research to the level of a country, you can only imagine how much more complex the problem is. You don't see and know the people in power,  unlike your boss. Not just work, but all actions of your life may be under scrutiny. Any set ways of working are reinforced in thousands of big and small ways by other factors and thus, changing them requires changes in all of these factors. To illustrate my point, freedom of speech by itself is of no use when other conditions, like free, fair and inclusive elections don't exist. 

Saigon's Central Post Office is so beautiful that it in itself is a reason to write to someone!

The evolutionary advantage of human beings was to leverage communication to form communities, based on shared symbols, myths, and ideas (like a nation, religion, etc). If we take away the ability to let these ideas evolve through constant, occasionally conflicting dialogue, then our ability to mobilize even larger communities is going to become more and more limited. However, with challenges like climate change and terrorism, it is the need of the hour for the global communities to form and rise.

Returning from my digression back to the people of Saigon, I just want to say that while you appear cool and distant, I understand your reasons. I may have done the same if I were you.

What are you thinking? I cannot read your mind.