This is a prescient observation. As a child of Asian immigrants to the US, I've lived through the clash of these two types of cultures. Asian society can be ver

This is a prescient observation. As a child of Asian immigrants to the US, I've lived through the clash of these two types of cultures. Asian society can be very prescriptive - if you live a certain way, your life will be good. It will lack self-determination, but it will generally be a joyous one. This type of system takes a utilitarian view - maximize the most good for the most number of people. The downside of utilitarianism - and prescriptive happiness - is that edge cases are not handled. Do you not subscribe to the traditional roles of gender? There are very, very few avenues for you to seek happiness in that world. As someone who does not deviate from the norm (other than the fact that I was born in America), I enjoy my culture and all that it has to offer. I am not sure if that would be the case if I was at all unlike others in my traditional culture. There are other ways of living I might have tried when I was younger, had I not been afraid of the social consequences. I don't feel deprived as a result, however. The promise of America is that it's a land of misfits and outcasts. Many of our ancestors left their homeland because they did not fit-in in some way. A lot of the times they were ideological outcasts - they believed that individual merit and success should not necessarily be abandoned for "the greater good". That if you form a society of these types of "selfish" people, you paradoxically end up with something that is better for everyone. While this is a mainstream idea now, this belief in individual determinism was entirely out of the norm globally in the era of American's founding. I think the "Problem with Identity" that you so eloquently describe is a direct result of our current times. Human society is experiencing the greatest philosophical and societal upheaval in the history of its existence. Never in history have people crossed so many boundaries - political, physical, social - in such massive quantities and so drastically. You can argue this is good, you can argue this is bad - but this is a fact. Now for the truly unpopular opinion - religion was developed for circumstances like this. In the West, the word "religion" evokes visions of about modern, punitive, Abrahmic-style religions. Rather, I'm referring to what Westerners call "spiritualism". I believe every religion's origin was in this concept. Why are we here? What happened before, and what happens after? How does one find meaning in this world? Spiritualism doesn't have answers for any of these questions, but it equips us with the tools to find answers. That's really what it's all about. Many Westerners are familiar with meditation - this is but one of many tools that arise from Indian (and other Asian cultures') spiritual practices. I think as society at large struggles to find answers to deep problems, they will return to spiritualism as a source for answers. It will happen in fits and spurts, and with lots of misunderstandings. But the change will occur, slowly but surely.