Shantung Compound

“What is the role of self-deception in human growth and development”

In 1945, the American Red Cross delivered 1550 parcels of food and other goods to a Japanese internment camp of 1450 people located in North China. The Japanese planned to disperse the packages equally among the people. Of the people in the camp, two hundred were American. Some of the Americans thought they deserved more since the parcels were from their country so the Japanese planned to divide the extra 100 parcels among them. However, many of the Americans were not satisfied and thought they deserved all of the parcels.

Langdon Gilkey, a young professor who kept a diary of living in this camp, initially thought that this was a minority view. There was a meeting about it in which he realized that many people felt this way. They had rationalized it out and convinced themselves that it was the morally correct for the Americans to receive the American parcels. This incident, along with others concerning life, food, property, and space pointed out fundamental aspects of human nature to Gilkey. In Gilkey’s book, Shantung Compound, he stresses the importance of morality in any society or community, but also the tendency for self deception. People often twist their perceived morals to justify their own self interest.

Before living in the internment camp, Gilkey had initially gone back and forth between a liberal Christian worldview and a humanistic view. Gilkey thought that man was a good and rational being. After all that he had witnessed in the internment camp, Gilkey came out with the view that at the core man is self serving. This is a survival tool that can be both good and harmful.

In the case of the parcels it was harmful. In cases of housing people i...

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It is important to realize that people deceive themselves all the time. It is exposed most visibly when people are placed in a new situation and exposed to things that don’t match up to their old worldview. This is a point of growth where a person must decide what they think about it. The most frightening part is that a person might deceive himself. For Gilkey, a person should be the most careful of the self deception because of self interest.

Overall, Gilkey thought that though most people who lived in the camp wouldn’t admit it, it was beneficial to him and others to be exposed to the fundamentals of living and humanity. It was an experience of growth and change that rapidly happened the way it does not for most people. He felt that it was very useful to see how his observation of humans still played out in the world outside of the internment camp.