None of this stuff should be relevant anymore! It’s ever comforting to know that Armenians are still like rats in a burlap sack—mired by age-old Eastern superstition, expired cultural constructs, magical thinking, and backhandedly self-aggrandizing familial guilt.

I recently watched a documentary on orphans in Malawi. The Western commentators bemoaned the grinding poverty of the country but praised the people’s sense of community. But in a gross irony, they completely missed the point—these things can’t exist without one another. As the poverty level rises, people devolve into co-dependence, mysticism and, ultimately, self sabotage. It becomes an endless cycle. And this applies not only to material poverty, but to intellectual poverty too. In other words, “close knit,” as it applies to families, cultures and other such social structures, is merely a euphemism for stiflingly provincial.

In order to cast off this tradition of ignorance, one must first strike out on his (in this case, her) own and truly attain material independence. Only then can you begin to truly embrace and empathize with your history and culture.