Farewell, you won't be missed!

[muckefuck]

Kate the Great's Bookstore is closing. I know the reaction--even you other Edgewater types are scratching your heads saying There's a bookstore there? That's the number one reason why this comes as no surprise. The number two reason is that they're having a half-off sale to clear the shelves, so I spent a goodly amount of time last night scrutinising the stock; in the end, I bought one thing (Nuala O'Faolain's first autobiography). And I'm not sure if this counts as #3, because I don't remember it ever being so egregious before, but the whole time I was there, the clerk was having a loud phone conversation with her brother in Texas. How do I know who it was? Because when she rang off to ring me up, she cheerily told me, "That was my brother. He's driving through Texas and he has a headache." "I'm not surprised," I wanted to say, but instead I gave her the weak smile that says And I give a fuck about that because...?

Every day, in every way, I'm becoming more crotchety. My entire progression from work to home last night was a losing battle against the forces of inane, disruptive chatter. I was doing a decent job shutting it out on the el ride by burying myself in a book until a young loudmouth who seemed to have no filter between his mind and his mouth (the result of too much "medication", or too little?) stationed himself next to me and I gave up trying. Later, O'Faolain in hand, I went to a local low-end Mexican joint for a milanesa and the whole store was dominated by the very vocal horsing around of three mature women at a neighbouring table. Is the distinction between private and public space really breaking down in our society or am I simply becoming more annoyed to the rudeness that's always been there?

I've been trying for some time now to distill the code of behaviour instilled in me by my petit-bourgeois upbringing into a single guiding principle and I think I may have found it: Restraint. Don't draw attention to yourself. Better to say nothing and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. Sein mehr als Schein. Don't spit. Don't fidget. Don't talk to strangers. Don't talk with your mouth full. Don't talk; listen. Leave some for the next person. Etc. Since this is a negative virtue--you're evaluated on what you prevent yourself from doing--I'm toying around with the idea that the middle class defines itself primarily in contradistinction to the working class. That is, we do these things not because "they make life more pleasant", but because they are what Ethnic people do. And if there's anything we are not, it's low class beasts like them. So to prove it, we avoid loud colours and loud noises, demonstrative behaviour and excitement--any of the things children are naturally drawn to.

Comments

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

I think the point is that your basic sense of what's comfortable or fair is strongly determined by your socio-economic class. Small children don't seem to have it, much, so I'd argue it's clearly learned behaviour.

[lhn.livejournal.com]

Don't they? Small children often react badly to loud noises, offensive smells, etc., so the comfort issue is there.

Children also seem to have strong intuitions about fairness pretty early on, though they're certainly educated in particular details according to the culture they grow up in. (Though even if the culture spends a lifetime explaining to the younger brother that it's fair that the oldest get the biggest piece of pie and the bulk of the estate, history suggests that it's not reliably successful at wiping out the younger brother's intuition that this isn't fair. Culture's a factor, but it's not working on a blank slate, and it can't go in wholly arbitrary directions.) Those cultural details don't immediately strike me as primarily economically determined. Of course it's an element, but the frequent existence of intuitions of fairness that run counter to people's economic interests at least suggests otherwise.

[ladysophis2k8.livejournal.com]

Yet, Jacob managed to overcome his complaint somehow.

[(Anonymous)]

Though with all due respect to my illustrious ancestor, I don't know that "fair" is the first word that springs to one's mind as regards the way he arranged for the redistribution of his father's estate (and his blessing!) :-) If only Isaac and Rebekah had taught those kids to share. (Though happily, they did make up later.)

(At that, Esau got off easy compared with the Shechemites.)

[lhn.livejournal.com]

That was me-- I somehow got logged out.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

Yes, OK: it seems likely that it's not "nature or nurture" but some combination of the two; culture comes from somewhere, after all - people have to make it up all the time, and we're clearly working with some ingredients. As for how much nature and how much nurture, I like Steven Jay Gould's response - that two sources, interacting with each other, can give rise to great complexity and novel products, which cannot be unraveled to reveal their 'original' components.

As for the intuition of fairness, there is very likely something there: all sorts of other social animals manage to divide limited resources among themselves, such that no group member starves. With humans, though (and arguably with animals) I don't think you can come up with extra-cultural explanations; culture is there in the mix, whether it supports or undercuts economically driven rational actor behaviour in any given case.

But I think you know this and we probably agree, and we are, in any event, deep in unfalsifiable terrain. As for the specific case of noise levels in public spaces, we see wide variation between cultures (whether geographically-based, class-based or even age-based), and I think muckefuck's point may well be valid. I know I tend to ask "why are they so noisy?" rather than "why am I so quiet?"

[lhn.livejournal.com]

Sure. Though of course it's not as if escaping one's own cultural context is either an option or desirable. It's academically interesting (or would be if we could come up with a falsifiable hypothesis-- and failing that it's still perfect for a net discussion :-) ). But it doesn't practically alleviate the day-to-day fact of being trapped on an L car surrounded by people apparently raised in a barn. :-) Or the incentives it creates to not be so, for those who want to encourage the use of public transit or other shared spaces. (That people have a culturally valid reason to talk conversationally in movie theaters isn't going to change the fact that it contributes to declining attendance as the alternatives improve.)

There's also an inherent asymmetry that favors the more intrusive custom over the less, such that the only way to even approach a balance is with some sort of fairness-based norm or other culturally negotiated settlement. Given a world evenly divided into a loud culture and a quiet culture, then perfectly mixed, you'd still get vastly more people asking "Why are they so noisy?" than "Why are they so quiet?" One custom obtrudes into the enjoyment of the other, where the other is barely noticeable to its counterpart until/unless it asks to be accommodated.

Not unlike smoking: a given culture can be smoking-tolerant or smoking-intolerant. But a train car with 99 active smokers and one nonsmoker is a smoking car, and a car with one active smoker and 99 nonsmokers is a smoking car. Same with loud cell phone use, strong perfumes, etc.: the inactive trait by its nature loses to the active trait unless an accommodating norm can be established. Fairness being presumptively identified with the active side getting its way 100% of the time strikes me as close to a reductio ad absurdum, suggesting that justice (however broadly defined and disputable in its details) almost certainly demands some concession to the other side once they're both acknowledged to exist. (Certainly I'd settle for a single enforced quiet car per train.)

Which isn't to say that the accommodations can't be pushed too far the other way. (While it's invariably to my increased comfort, I'd say smoking restrictions have long passed that point.)

[ladysophis2k8.livejournal.com]

cf. Soldier Field; McCormick Place; Wembley; Piccadilly ... etc. etc.