imomus

Well, I think what you're expressing is very Western. In the Western view, it's reductive and objectifying to identify someone according to their structural position, their specific relationship to other people. In Asian cultures, that's seen as a positive thing, whether the group in question is the family or a professional organisation. In the West we see freedom as some kind of neutral void, a place where a super-autonomous individual can step "free" of all social ties. In the East they tend to see freedom precisely as being integrated socially. There is nowhere outside of society, and defining yourself in relation to this "nowhere" is, finally, nihilism.