A Byrd's Eye View

Of Culture, Counting, Courts and the Web

Last week, one of my SGI leaders was talking to me about the importance of the SGI-USA's "member care" campaign - something that used to be called "statistics", and which most accurately could be described as "compulsive counting and categorizing". This lovely American woman seemed baffled and amazed that the members in our chapter were unable to get in touch with their religious mission to count each other, fill out cards with each others' information, and then report on their names and numbers. I offered the opinion that Americans couldn't get enthusiastic about counting because the behavior was foreign to us in a religious context. We pretty much do a census every ten years as the U.S. Constitution requires, and then we relax with a cold root beer and watch reruns of The Newlywed Game.

So, I offered my leader the opinion that the SGI-USA's compulsive counting behavior was Japanese in origin. Think about it - no other American churches I know of keep lists of who comes out to what activities and what division they fall into and what the names of the guests are and how to get in touch with them, etc., then have regular meetings where the church leaders sit around focussing on these cards, as well as discussing these cards and the people on them. No, other churches visit the sick and feed the hungry, they pray together, they have prison and street gang ministries, they study and discuss their faith, they do all the good works they believe their faith requires of them. They just don't have special people in the local congregations charged with the task of counting attendance on an ongoing basis. They may not even have membership cards to pray over! Imagine! The Lutherans don't do it, the Catholics don't do it, the Jews would form a committee to look into why their names were being recorded on cards and write annoyed letters to the editor, the Unitarians couldn't even conceive of anything so anally-retentive, and the Tibetans are too busy visualizing. So that leaves us, the noble members of the SGI-USA, forerunners of world peace, sincerely having heart-to-heart dialogues with each other about the fundamental Buddhist value of enumerating ourselves, dividing ourselves into divisions. and making timely bi-monthly reports. Because, as we know, every membership card represents a precious member.

I know, I know - "we count because we care". I just wasn't ever all that into counting, and I didn't know anyone except a few CPAs who were. We are to believe that each membership card represents a precious person - that's why we pray over them. But membership cards don't represent people to me, people represent people to me. So, when I scratched my head over the membership cards and statistics meetings, I thought it meant there was yet again something wrong with my faith. The SGI-USA pores over its membership cards because it cares - but does that mean that if I don't eagerly join in the counting, that I don't care?

I was overjoyed to learn from other American-born folks who have experience with the Japanese that they (the Japanese) are in fact a culture of counters. Apparently, they actually have people who count the people who count. What a huge relief that information was! My counting impairment wasn't a sign of inferior faith after all - it was just another example of the way the SGI's dominant culture (Japan) clashes with the cultures it attempts to colonize. These sorts of things used to bug me, but they don't anymore. Now I just sort of smile and shake my head.

Interestingly, the SGI-USA's compulsive counting (oops, member care) campaign wasn't started until July of 2004, almost three years ago, although most districts didn't even know about the campaign until January of 2005. For the previous ten years, no real concern had been paid to numbers at all, at least not that I can remember. There were a hardy few bean-counting types who made reports every now and again, but it certainly wasn't a throbbing priority. And then suddenly, counting membership cards became an extremely important faith activity. Important enough that leaders had to be trained in the extreme importance of membership cards, and that regular statistics (oops, member care) meetings had to be held at the district, chapter, and area levels. Huh?! What happened? Why the suddenly all-important count? Well, I have a theory, and here it is:

1991-2005 were not big years for caring about membership numbers. During these years, the SGI-USA was more concerned with issues like pointing out the evils of our parent sect, Nichiren Shoshu, and, if possible, driving them out of the country. We were less concerned with how many members we might lose in the fight or how many guests we might alienate with world-peace slogans like "Strongly Unite to Defeat the Evil Temple." As a result, the SGI-USA's numbers became a little bit....shall we say..off. So off, in fact, that in February of 2004, the SGI signed on to a "friend of the court" brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in which we actually represented our numbers as being 330,000 in the USA. That's right, team, 330,000. And this was during a period when our World Tribune circulation was hovering (as usual) around 35,000 - 50,000.

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As an aside, I take some personal responsibility for the inflated membership numbers. For years, I had made special zaimu (annual financial contributions) in the names of all my deceased friends and relatives, several tragically deceased rock stars (John Bonham will be very enlightened and very wealthy in his next lifetime), and even a few pets. I personally was responsible for at least 30 names on our area's special contribution roster for years. And I know for a fact that I'm not the only person who did this. It was done out of sincerity, truly. I loved John Bonham. However, this means that if special zaimu numbers were used as a source of membership census information, I can guarantee a huge amount of number-puffery. John Lennon fans alone might have counted for several thousand contributions. So, in the immortal words of Maxwell Smart, I say to our esteemed leaders in Japan: "sorry about that, Chief."
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Well, some weak-faithed ne'er-do-well (I think it was me) found the US Supreme Court friend-of-the-court brief online and, in April of 2004, posted it to some Yahoo talk boards, including the SGIUnofficial Board. This document, you will recall, is the one in which the SGI-USA claimed to have a membership of 330,000. The outrageous exaggeration of our numbers was so obvious to the online community of riff-raff that the 330,000 number was greeted with reactions of knee-slapping hilarity and overall shock. Hardy-har-har. The SGI-USA is telling the US Supreme Court that we have 330,000 members! That's a laugh!

And before six months had passed........

The SGI-USA's ongoing statistics campaign became an extremely important faith activity at all levels. Membership cards are how we demonstrate that we care. Our leaders in Santa Monica trumpeted in the World Tribune that we had accomplished the "unprecedented" number of 100,000 (and, as we know, this also includes more than a few non-member house-mates and spouses). So, now our numerical claims are less likely to be a source of embarassment or confusion, and more likely to be within 50,000 of accurate.

What can we learn from this story?

1. The Japanese don't like being laughed at, especially by inferior, faithless riff-raff like the online English-speaking Nichiren community. Americans are way better at making jokes about ourselves than the Japanese are. If we weren't, we would have killed each other off during Clinton impeachment. Don't forget: Japan may have given the world "Iron Chef", but America made "The Gong Show". (cue tail-wagging puppies and flag-patterned fireworks).

2. Somebody "at the top", or "over there" actually reads what goes on online. I have other top-secret, classified evidence for this as well. Stay tuned for another blog on this topic.

3. At some point, the American members are going to have to decide what our own values are, and how we are going to relate to each other as American Buddhists. We've got our own culture, customs and standards, and Americans have been caring for each other for a couple of hundred years now - sometimes more successfully than others, but at the end of the day, we know what we're doing.

4. Don't make special zaimu contributions in the name of dead English rock drummers. It's not funny (see #1 above).

If you learned some lesson of your own from this story, you can post it here.

Be compulsive, be accurate, be cool.

Byrd in LA

Posted by wahzoh at May 12, 2007 11:18 AM