Cats these days seem more bratty and dependent than I remember growing up. And more housebound and supervised by their caretakers — perhaps the cause of the greater brattiness and dependency, a la the children of helicopter parents? Just as there has been a huge change in parenting styles over the past 25 years, so has there been with pet-caring styles, and in the same direction.
I'm inclined to rule out genetic change, not on principle, only because the change has been so sudden.
Fortunately, cats are less obedient than children toward over-protective owners, so they still get out a good bit. But it still feels like they have a weaker public presence than they did in the '80s. One of our cats used to flop down into a deep sleep right on the sidewalk out front. Once he even got accidentally picked up by animal control because they thought he'd been hit by a car and was laying dead on the curb. Another cat used to climb trees and walk over our first-story roof.
Come to think of it, it's been awhile since I recall seeing the "cat stuck up in a tree" in real life or pop culture. Last I remember was having to climb up a tree and dislodge our cat who liked to run up there, at least until the birds began dive-bombing him. That was the mid-to-late 1990s.
I'm not sure how to investigate this idea quantitatively, but it would be worth looking into by animal psychologists. There may be surveys of pet-owners over time about whether their cat is an indoor or outdoor cat.
March 30, 2014
Pre-screening peers on Facebook
Different generations use the same technology in different ways. Nothing new about that: as teenagers, the Silent Gen huddled around the radio set to listen to drama programs, quiz shows, and variety hours — akin to parking yourself in front of the idiot box — whereas Boomers and especially X-ers turned on the radio to get energized by music.
After reading more and more first-hand accounts by Millennials about how they use Facebook, it's clear that there's more social avoidance going on than there first appears. Refusing to interact face-to-face, or even voice-to-voice, is an obvious signal to older folks of how awkward young people are around each other these days. As recently as the mid-1990s, when chat rooms exploded in popularity, we never interacted with our real-life friends on AOL. It was a supplement to real life, where we chatted with people we'd never meet. Folks who use Facebook, though, intend for it to be a substitute for real-life interactions with their real-life acquaintances.
But then there's their behavior, beyond merely using the service, that you can't observe directly and can only read or hear about. Like how the first thing they do when they add an acquaintance to their friend list is to perform an extensive background check on them using the publicly viewable info on their profile. Who are they friends with? Birds of a feather flock together. Who, if anyone, are they dating? Where do they go to school, and where do they work? Where did they go to school before their current school, and where did they work for their previous five jobs? What's being left on their wall? What do their status updates reveal? Pictures? Pages liked? Etc.?
Damn, you hardly met the person and you're already sending their profile pics to the lab in case there's a match in the sex offenders database. Back when trust was just beginning to fray, people (i.e., girls) would have maybe used the internet to check for criminal behavior, but that would be it. Now it's far worse: they scrutinize every little detail on your profile, and every trace you leave on other people's profiles. They're going far beyond checking for far-out-there kind of deviance, and are trying to uncover every nuance of your life. Rather than, y'know, discovering that first-hand or at most through word-of-mouth gossip.
Aside from feeling invasive ("creepy"), it betrays a profound lack of trust in all other people. After all, it's not this or that minority of folks who are subjected to the screening. Nope, it's like the fucking TSA waving each Facebook friend to step up to that full-body scanner. "OK, open up your profile, and hold still while we scan it... All right, step forward... and... you're clear." What if I don't want to "hit you up on Facebook," and keep that part of me private? "In that case, you can choose the alternative of a full background check by a private investigator, and provide three letters of reference." Just to hang out? "Well, you can never be too safe. It makes me feel more at ease." Yeah, you sure seem at ease...
Moreover, it destroys any mystery about a person. Remember: mystery is creepy, in the Millennial mind. An unknown means that something's going to pop out of the closet and scare them. They have to open every door and shine a flashlight over every micro-crevice of the home of your being, in order to feel secure.
It also delays the getting-to-know-you process, and interrupts the momentum whenever it gets going.
Trust greases the wheels of sociability, and it used to be normal to meet someone for the first time in the afternoon and feel like you knew them well by the end of the evening. Not just boys and girls pairing off, but also same-sex peers making quick friends, particularly in an intense setting like a concert or sports game. These days, there's this nervous laughter, sideways stare, and lack of touchy-feely behavior (for boys and girls) or rowdiness (for same-sex peers).
I think it's probably too late for the Millennials to be saved from their awkward, pre-screening behavior on social networks. They're already in their 20s and set in their techno ways. Hopefully by the time today's post-Millennial kindergartners become teenagers, they'll look at the choice of Facebook as real-life substitute, and let out a great big BOORRRRRRINNNNNG. Locking yourself indoors and huddling around the radio set listening to soap operas died off fairly suddenly, and there's no reason that the next generation can't kill off Facebook just as quickly.
After reading more and more first-hand accounts by Millennials about how they use Facebook, it's clear that there's more social avoidance going on than there first appears. Refusing to interact face-to-face, or even voice-to-voice, is an obvious signal to older folks of how awkward young people are around each other these days. As recently as the mid-1990s, when chat rooms exploded in popularity, we never interacted with our real-life friends on AOL. It was a supplement to real life, where we chatted with people we'd never meet. Folks who use Facebook, though, intend for it to be a substitute for real-life interactions with their real-life acquaintances.
But then there's their behavior, beyond merely using the service, that you can't observe directly and can only read or hear about. Like how the first thing they do when they add an acquaintance to their friend list is to perform an extensive background check on them using the publicly viewable info on their profile. Who are they friends with? Birds of a feather flock together. Who, if anyone, are they dating? Where do they go to school, and where do they work? Where did they go to school before their current school, and where did they work for their previous five jobs? What's being left on their wall? What do their status updates reveal? Pictures? Pages liked? Etc.?
Damn, you hardly met the person and you're already sending their profile pics to the lab in case there's a match in the sex offenders database. Back when trust was just beginning to fray, people (i.e., girls) would have maybe used the internet to check for criminal behavior, but that would be it. Now it's far worse: they scrutinize every little detail on your profile, and every trace you leave on other people's profiles. They're going far beyond checking for far-out-there kind of deviance, and are trying to uncover every nuance of your life. Rather than, y'know, discovering that first-hand or at most through word-of-mouth gossip.
Aside from feeling invasive ("creepy"), it betrays a profound lack of trust in all other people. After all, it's not this or that minority of folks who are subjected to the screening. Nope, it's like the fucking TSA waving each Facebook friend to step up to that full-body scanner. "OK, open up your profile, and hold still while we scan it... All right, step forward... and... you're clear." What if I don't want to "hit you up on Facebook," and keep that part of me private? "In that case, you can choose the alternative of a full background check by a private investigator, and provide three letters of reference." Just to hang out? "Well, you can never be too safe. It makes me feel more at ease." Yeah, you sure seem at ease...
Moreover, it destroys any mystery about a person. Remember: mystery is creepy, in the Millennial mind. An unknown means that something's going to pop out of the closet and scare them. They have to open every door and shine a flashlight over every micro-crevice of the home of your being, in order to feel secure.
It also delays the getting-to-know-you process, and interrupts the momentum whenever it gets going.
Trust greases the wheels of sociability, and it used to be normal to meet someone for the first time in the afternoon and feel like you knew them well by the end of the evening. Not just boys and girls pairing off, but also same-sex peers making quick friends, particularly in an intense setting like a concert or sports game. These days, there's this nervous laughter, sideways stare, and lack of touchy-feely behavior (for boys and girls) or rowdiness (for same-sex peers).
I think it's probably too late for the Millennials to be saved from their awkward, pre-screening behavior on social networks. They're already in their 20s and set in their techno ways. Hopefully by the time today's post-Millennial kindergartners become teenagers, they'll look at the choice of Facebook as real-life substitute, and let out a great big BOORRRRRRINNNNNG. Locking yourself indoors and huddling around the radio set listening to soap operas died off fairly suddenly, and there's no reason that the next generation can't kill off Facebook just as quickly.
March 29, 2014
Were you into vinyl before it was cool?
By "being into," I mean that it was a conscious choice among alternative formats. And browsing through the NYT archive for articles about "vinyl," it looks like it became cool during the 2000s. Before then, when it was also a conscious choice, is roughly the mid-to-late 1980s through the '90s.
Today I was reminded of the two main things that turned me on to records in the mid-'90s: selection and price. Nothing romantic.
Not the sound quality — it sounds great, and distinct from CDs, but not a difference that would make me want to convert my CD collection into vinyl. And not the status points — back then, there were no status points to be gained, and even now I would gain little once I revealed what it was that I bought on vinyl (not classic rock, punk, grunge, or indie).
I'm visiting home and stopped by the local thrift store, which had several dozen crates full of records. I hadn't even gone there looking for them, I just figured why not browse around after having scored something that I did come looking for, a vintage afghan (black with gold and cream patterns). Right away they started popping up, and within ten minutes, I had a handful of albums that are difficult to find on CD, let alone for a buck a piece in mint condition. The Bangles, David Bowie, Bonnie Tyler, The Go-Go's, Paul Young, Bryan Adams, and Stacey Q (only a 12" single, but more than I've ever seen on CD).
The only one that I've even seen before on CD ("in the wild") was All Over the Place, the debut power-pop album by the Bangles. I have that on CD, but the hits from the others I only have on compilations or greatest hits: "Blue Jean," "Total Eclipse of the Heart," "Every Time You Go Away," "Two of Hearts"... and I don't think I have "Head Over Heels" or "Summer of '69" on anything. Yet for the price of one crappy download on iTunes — with 95% of the sound compressed out — I got the entire album that each hit song came from.
It may be new wave and synth-pop today, but 15 to 20 years ago I was still bored by contempo music and looking back for something entertaining. As now, it was mostly the '80s, a decent amount from the '70s, and a handful from the '60s. Only more on the avant-garde or experimental side, compared to more well known stuff that I dig now. Starting in college, you should be getting over your adolescent insecurity about needing to prove how obscure and unique your tastes are, and that's the only real change in my vinyl-buying habits — who the groups are, not the larger reasons of selection and price.
Some of that stuff was available on CD back then, but it was expensive. On the CD racks at Tower Records, there were several columns of just Frank Zappa, but they were closer to $20 than $15. If you dropped by any used record store, though, you could find them used and in good condition for about five to ten bucks.
And other material was either not released on CD, was out of print, or was otherwise damn rare to find on CD. Yet I had no problem finding a couple albums and a single by Snakefinger, the guitarist who frequently collaborated with The Residents. But unlike the most famous obscure band in history, Snakefinger was actually a working musician instead of a performance artist, and was a superior songwriter and performer.
As an aside, if you're looking for something unheard-of, but can't stand how weird the typical weird band sounds, check out his stuff from the late '70s and early '80s. He recorded a cover of "The Model" by Kraftwerk that's more uptempo and danceable yet also more haunting than the original. (None of his own music is very dance-y, BTW, in case you're allergic to moving your body.)
Anyway, it struck me as odd that someone would be into vinyl for practical reasons. There really is a lot out there that can be had for cheap if you buy records, without compromising sound quality.
It's not an analog vs. digital thing either. Tapes are analog, but they sound pathetic compared to either records or CDs. Video tapes are the same way. Does that make laser discs the next target for hipster status contests? If so, better hit up your thrift stores soon before they're scavenged by the status-strivers. At the same place today, I found a perfect copy of the director's cut of Blade Runner on laser disc for five bucks. Don't know when I'll be able to actually play it, but...
Today I was reminded of the two main things that turned me on to records in the mid-'90s: selection and price. Nothing romantic.
Not the sound quality — it sounds great, and distinct from CDs, but not a difference that would make me want to convert my CD collection into vinyl. And not the status points — back then, there were no status points to be gained, and even now I would gain little once I revealed what it was that I bought on vinyl (not classic rock, punk, grunge, or indie).
I'm visiting home and stopped by the local thrift store, which had several dozen crates full of records. I hadn't even gone there looking for them, I just figured why not browse around after having scored something that I did come looking for, a vintage afghan (black with gold and cream patterns). Right away they started popping up, and within ten minutes, I had a handful of albums that are difficult to find on CD, let alone for a buck a piece in mint condition. The Bangles, David Bowie, Bonnie Tyler, The Go-Go's, Paul Young, Bryan Adams, and Stacey Q (only a 12" single, but more than I've ever seen on CD).
The only one that I've even seen before on CD ("in the wild") was All Over the Place, the debut power-pop album by the Bangles. I have that on CD, but the hits from the others I only have on compilations or greatest hits: "Blue Jean," "Total Eclipse of the Heart," "Every Time You Go Away," "Two of Hearts"... and I don't think I have "Head Over Heels" or "Summer of '69" on anything. Yet for the price of one crappy download on iTunes — with 95% of the sound compressed out — I got the entire album that each hit song came from.
It may be new wave and synth-pop today, but 15 to 20 years ago I was still bored by contempo music and looking back for something entertaining. As now, it was mostly the '80s, a decent amount from the '70s, and a handful from the '60s. Only more on the avant-garde or experimental side, compared to more well known stuff that I dig now. Starting in college, you should be getting over your adolescent insecurity about needing to prove how obscure and unique your tastes are, and that's the only real change in my vinyl-buying habits — who the groups are, not the larger reasons of selection and price.
Some of that stuff was available on CD back then, but it was expensive. On the CD racks at Tower Records, there were several columns of just Frank Zappa, but they were closer to $20 than $15. If you dropped by any used record store, though, you could find them used and in good condition for about five to ten bucks.
And other material was either not released on CD, was out of print, or was otherwise damn rare to find on CD. Yet I had no problem finding a couple albums and a single by Snakefinger, the guitarist who frequently collaborated with The Residents. But unlike the most famous obscure band in history, Snakefinger was actually a working musician instead of a performance artist, and was a superior songwriter and performer.
As an aside, if you're looking for something unheard-of, but can't stand how weird the typical weird band sounds, check out his stuff from the late '70s and early '80s. He recorded a cover of "The Model" by Kraftwerk that's more uptempo and danceable yet also more haunting than the original. (None of his own music is very dance-y, BTW, in case you're allergic to moving your body.)
Anyway, it struck me as odd that someone would be into vinyl for practical reasons. There really is a lot out there that can be had for cheap if you buy records, without compromising sound quality.
It's not an analog vs. digital thing either. Tapes are analog, but they sound pathetic compared to either records or CDs. Video tapes are the same way. Does that make laser discs the next target for hipster status contests? If so, better hit up your thrift stores soon before they're scavenged by the status-strivers. At the same place today, I found a perfect copy of the director's cut of Blade Runner on laser disc for five bucks. Don't know when I'll be able to actually play it, but...
March 25, 2014
Don't improvise in period movies
Got around to seeing American Hustle tonight, and liked it better than most new movies I see. One thing took me out of the moment several times, though -- the improv scenes.
In a period movie, actors should stick close to the script because they are unlikely to be able to improvise and maintain the period's authenticity on the fly. When the acting is more spur-of-the-moment, it will come from the actor's gut, which is tuned to the here-and-now.
There was a scene where Irving Rosenfeld asks "Really?" in a slightly flat and miffed voice, in response to someone else's ridiculous behavior. That's too specifically from the 2010s. At the end when Richie DiMaso does a mock performance of his namby-pamby boss, it's so over-the-top and laughing-at rather than laughing-with, that it felt more like a frat pack movie from the 21st century. Ditto the scene where DiMaso is trying to convince Edith to finally have sex, where the dialog sounds like it's from a doofus rom-com by Judd Apatow.
These and other scenes should have been in the outtakes -- wackiness ensues when the actors break character! When they're left in, it creates jarring shifts in tone, as though an actor who'd been speaking with an English accent switched to Noo Yawka for half a minute, then switched back to English (all for no apparent reason).
Improvising and wandering slightly outside of the character's range isn't that jarring. Like, maybe you're just seeing a slightly different and unexpected side of them in this scene. But anachronism is not so easy to suspend disbelief about -- it definitely does not belong to that period. If they turn on the radio in 1980 and it's playing Rihanna, that kills the verisimilitude.
It's even more baffling in American Hustle, where the costume, make-up, and production design has been so meticulously worked to make you believe you're looking in on a certain time and place. All it takes is a series of distinctively 21st-century improvs to throw that into doubt for the viewer.
In a period movie, actors should stick close to the script because they are unlikely to be able to improvise and maintain the period's authenticity on the fly. When the acting is more spur-of-the-moment, it will come from the actor's gut, which is tuned to the here-and-now.
There was a scene where Irving Rosenfeld asks "Really?" in a slightly flat and miffed voice, in response to someone else's ridiculous behavior. That's too specifically from the 2010s. At the end when Richie DiMaso does a mock performance of his namby-pamby boss, it's so over-the-top and laughing-at rather than laughing-with, that it felt more like a frat pack movie from the 21st century. Ditto the scene where DiMaso is trying to convince Edith to finally have sex, where the dialog sounds like it's from a doofus rom-com by Judd Apatow.
These and other scenes should have been in the outtakes -- wackiness ensues when the actors break character! When they're left in, it creates jarring shifts in tone, as though an actor who'd been speaking with an English accent switched to Noo Yawka for half a minute, then switched back to English (all for no apparent reason).
Improvising and wandering slightly outside of the character's range isn't that jarring. Like, maybe you're just seeing a slightly different and unexpected side of them in this scene. But anachronism is not so easy to suspend disbelief about -- it definitely does not belong to that period. If they turn on the radio in 1980 and it's playing Rihanna, that kills the verisimilitude.
It's even more baffling in American Hustle, where the costume, make-up, and production design has been so meticulously worked to make you believe you're looking in on a certain time and place. All it takes is a series of distinctively 21st-century improvs to throw that into doubt for the viewer.
March 24, 2014
Field report: Bowling alley birthday party
A party at the bowling alley became a common option by the late '80s, and I went to one today, so they're still at least somewhat common. Yet in 25 years a lot has changed, reflecting the larger social/cultural changes.
First, the guests are dropped off at the bowling alley itself — not at the birthday boy's house, where they'll pre-game before the host parents haul them off in a couple of mini-vans to the bowling alley. I've written a lot about the death of guest-host relationships during falling-crime / cocooning times. Each side is suspicious of the other — the hosts fear being over-run by and taken advantage of by guests, and the guests fear mistreatment (or whatever, I'm still not sure) by the hosts. It is primarily a guest-side change, just like the decline of trick-or-treating or hitch-hiking.
Now they have to meet in a third-party-supervised place like a bowling alley (or the mall / shopping district for trick-or-treating). Before, they would've met inside the host's home.
Then once the kids are dropped off, the parents will hang around to some degree before the event is over and they take their kid back. (Every kid today had a parent present.) Rather than drop them off, go do something for awhile, and either pick their kid up later or have them dropped off by the hosts. Again we see parents being so paranoid that they won't just leave their kids alone in the company of the hosts. Even if it's a bowling alley with only nuclear families present in a lily-white region and neighborhood, and during a Sunday afternoon.
(I can't emphasize often enough that, just because you live in a diverse shithole part of the country, doesn't mean that everyone else does. If parental paranoia is palpable in an all-white smallish town — if it is a national phenomenon — then it does not have to do with protecting kids against the dangers of a diverse megapolis.)
At least the parents won't hover directly over their child at a party, but the assembled grown-ups will form a ring around the kids, or form a side-group of chatting grown-ups next to the kids. Line-of-sight supervision remains unbroken. They can't trust their kid to use his own brain because he doesn't have one — intuition requires experience, and helicopter parenting blocks out experience from their kid's upbringing. It's more of a programming.
One of the kindergarten-aged guests politely declined eating a piece of birthday cake because it had "artificial frosting." He didn't know that (for all I know, it was made of natural poison). Still, as though if it were organic sugar, it wouldn't wind you up, put you in an insulin coma, rot your teeth, etc.
A lot of these brand-new food taboos that were wholly absent during the 1980s are just roundabout, rationalized ways to fragment the community. Sorry, my kid can't come to anyone's party because you'll have traces of peanuts in something and he'll die. So don't mind his absence from all celebrations that might bind a peer group together.
As for the actual bowling, you see both major societal influences at work — the self-esteem crap and the hyper-competitive crap. Quite a combination, eh? All of our kids are going to compete as though their lives depended on it, yet they're all going to enjoy the exact same rewards afterward.
The bumpers being up is not about self-esteem. That's just helping them learn, like riding a bike with training wheels at first. But everything else is. Like letting them cross the line as much as they want without penalizing them at all. Or cheering after any number of pins get knocked down — don't you think the kids can tell that they'll get praise no matter what they do? And hence they can just BS the whole thing and get full credit? Gee, I wonder if that'll pop up a little later in life...
The hyper-competitive stuff is way more visible and more offensive, though. If they knock down more than 5 pins, they're going to do some kind of victory dance, boys being worse than girls. Congratulations: it should've been a gutterball, but the bumpers let you knock down 7 whole pins. "Oh yeah! Uh-huh!"
And they're so eager to generally show off that they don't care how awful their technique is. Not like I'm even an amateur bowler, but I know that we're not doing the shotput here. The boys are again way worse than the girls on this one. (The winner today among four boys and two girls was one of the girls. She creamed the rest, not from being good, but from not crashing and burning in an attempt to show off.)
Have you guys seen kids throw a bowling ball lately? When I was their age, we stood with our legs wide apart, held the ball from behind with both hands, and rolled or lobbed it as close to the middle as possible. It's a granny-looking move, but when you're in kindergarten, you don't have the upper body strength to throw it in a more normal way. Heaven forbid you teach that lesson to kids these days, though. They're going to prove that they can do it. Only not.
They carry the ball with both hands near their chest, running up to the line with their left side forward (if right-handed), and then heaving or shotputting the ball with their right hand, turning their upper body to face the pins when they're near the line. This must be the worst way to release a bowling ball, and if the bumpers were not up, every one of these releases would go straight into the gutter. Not meander their way into the gutter — like, not even halfway down the lane, it's already sunk.
One kid did this with such enthusiasm that after shotputting the ball, his upper body carried itself forward over his feet, and he landed on his hands and knees — over the line, every time.
So, who cares if they're not trying to achieve the goal that the game assigns them? They're showing how eager they are to display intensity ("passion," later on), and that's all that matters in a dog-eat-dog world. The rules can be bent or changed on the fly, as long as the most intense person will win. After all, the parents aren't correcting or penalizing them.
One final odd but sadly not-too-surprising sight: the setting was a college student union, yet there were only two groups bowling, both family-and-kid-related. There were a handful of students playing pool for about 10 minutes, then that was it, no replacements. No students in the arcade area. On the other side of the rec area was the food court, which was closed on Sunday but which still had about a half-dozen students spread out.
Doing what? Why, surfing the web — what else? Most had a laptop out, one was on a school-provided terminal, and one girl was reading a textbook or doing homework with her back to everyone else.
If you haven't been on a college campus in awhile, you'd be shocked how utterly dead the unions are. Like, there are stronger signs of life in a gravestone showroom. Most of the students are locked in their rooms farting around on the internet / texting or video games. The few who venture out go to the library or the gym, where they can be around others and within the view of others, but still hide behind the expectation that you just don't go up and interact with people in those places. Unearned, risk-free ego validation — what's not to love for Millennials?
First, the guests are dropped off at the bowling alley itself — not at the birthday boy's house, where they'll pre-game before the host parents haul them off in a couple of mini-vans to the bowling alley. I've written a lot about the death of guest-host relationships during falling-crime / cocooning times. Each side is suspicious of the other — the hosts fear being over-run by and taken advantage of by guests, and the guests fear mistreatment (or whatever, I'm still not sure) by the hosts. It is primarily a guest-side change, just like the decline of trick-or-treating or hitch-hiking.
Now they have to meet in a third-party-supervised place like a bowling alley (or the mall / shopping district for trick-or-treating). Before, they would've met inside the host's home.
Then once the kids are dropped off, the parents will hang around to some degree before the event is over and they take their kid back. (Every kid today had a parent present.) Rather than drop them off, go do something for awhile, and either pick their kid up later or have them dropped off by the hosts. Again we see parents being so paranoid that they won't just leave their kids alone in the company of the hosts. Even if it's a bowling alley with only nuclear families present in a lily-white region and neighborhood, and during a Sunday afternoon.
(I can't emphasize often enough that, just because you live in a diverse shithole part of the country, doesn't mean that everyone else does. If parental paranoia is palpable in an all-white smallish town — if it is a national phenomenon — then it does not have to do with protecting kids against the dangers of a diverse megapolis.)
At least the parents won't hover directly over their child at a party, but the assembled grown-ups will form a ring around the kids, or form a side-group of chatting grown-ups next to the kids. Line-of-sight supervision remains unbroken. They can't trust their kid to use his own brain because he doesn't have one — intuition requires experience, and helicopter parenting blocks out experience from their kid's upbringing. It's more of a programming.
One of the kindergarten-aged guests politely declined eating a piece of birthday cake because it had "artificial frosting." He didn't know that (for all I know, it was made of natural poison). Still, as though if it were organic sugar, it wouldn't wind you up, put you in an insulin coma, rot your teeth, etc.
A lot of these brand-new food taboos that were wholly absent during the 1980s are just roundabout, rationalized ways to fragment the community. Sorry, my kid can't come to anyone's party because you'll have traces of peanuts in something and he'll die. So don't mind his absence from all celebrations that might bind a peer group together.
As for the actual bowling, you see both major societal influences at work — the self-esteem crap and the hyper-competitive crap. Quite a combination, eh? All of our kids are going to compete as though their lives depended on it, yet they're all going to enjoy the exact same rewards afterward.
The bumpers being up is not about self-esteem. That's just helping them learn, like riding a bike with training wheels at first. But everything else is. Like letting them cross the line as much as they want without penalizing them at all. Or cheering after any number of pins get knocked down — don't you think the kids can tell that they'll get praise no matter what they do? And hence they can just BS the whole thing and get full credit? Gee, I wonder if that'll pop up a little later in life...
The hyper-competitive stuff is way more visible and more offensive, though. If they knock down more than 5 pins, they're going to do some kind of victory dance, boys being worse than girls. Congratulations: it should've been a gutterball, but the bumpers let you knock down 7 whole pins. "Oh yeah! Uh-huh!"
And they're so eager to generally show off that they don't care how awful their technique is. Not like I'm even an amateur bowler, but I know that we're not doing the shotput here. The boys are again way worse than the girls on this one. (The winner today among four boys and two girls was one of the girls. She creamed the rest, not from being good, but from not crashing and burning in an attempt to show off.)
Have you guys seen kids throw a bowling ball lately? When I was their age, we stood with our legs wide apart, held the ball from behind with both hands, and rolled or lobbed it as close to the middle as possible. It's a granny-looking move, but when you're in kindergarten, you don't have the upper body strength to throw it in a more normal way. Heaven forbid you teach that lesson to kids these days, though. They're going to prove that they can do it. Only not.
They carry the ball with both hands near their chest, running up to the line with their left side forward (if right-handed), and then heaving or shotputting the ball with their right hand, turning their upper body to face the pins when they're near the line. This must be the worst way to release a bowling ball, and if the bumpers were not up, every one of these releases would go straight into the gutter. Not meander their way into the gutter — like, not even halfway down the lane, it's already sunk.
One kid did this with such enthusiasm that after shotputting the ball, his upper body carried itself forward over his feet, and he landed on his hands and knees — over the line, every time.
So, who cares if they're not trying to achieve the goal that the game assigns them? They're showing how eager they are to display intensity ("passion," later on), and that's all that matters in a dog-eat-dog world. The rules can be bent or changed on the fly, as long as the most intense person will win. After all, the parents aren't correcting or penalizing them.
One final odd but sadly not-too-surprising sight: the setting was a college student union, yet there were only two groups bowling, both family-and-kid-related. There were a handful of students playing pool for about 10 minutes, then that was it, no replacements. No students in the arcade area. On the other side of the rec area was the food court, which was closed on Sunday but which still had about a half-dozen students spread out.
Doing what? Why, surfing the web — what else? Most had a laptop out, one was on a school-provided terminal, and one girl was reading a textbook or doing homework with her back to everyone else.
If you haven't been on a college campus in awhile, you'd be shocked how utterly dead the unions are. Like, there are stronger signs of life in a gravestone showroom. Most of the students are locked in their rooms farting around on the internet / texting or video games. The few who venture out go to the library or the gym, where they can be around others and within the view of others, but still hide behind the expectation that you just don't go up and interact with people in those places. Unearned, risk-free ego validation — what's not to love for Millennials?
March 22, 2014
Another path from helicopter parenting to egocentrism
I'm visiting my nephew and got dragged into playing Legos with him. "Dragged" not because I'm heartless, but because I want to keep sufficient distance in case I need to assert authority. Remember: being your kid's friend undermines your authority. It's the kind of thing he should be playing with his peers, not a family member who's 27 years older than him.
At any rate, he's so excited to show you this thing he made and that thing he made, and what this design in the booklet looks like, and what that one looks like. I found myself the whole time saying "cool..." or "man..." or staying silent. All you get is agreement from family members, even if they don't really think it's cool. Family members have to treat each other more nicely than if one of them were an outsider.
It's your peers who would pipe up with "BORRRINNG." Like, "Hey Uncle Agnostic, you wanna watch Sponge Bob?" I can't tell him, "Nah man, that shit's boring." But one of his friends hopefully would. "Aw c'mon, change the chanelllll. Sponge Bob sucks." Then they'd engage in a little back-and-forth, give-and-take, until they compromised.
With family members in an era of family friendliness, the grown-ups tell the child that whatever they like is awesome. No need to change, improve, or compromise your interests and tastes.
This ego sheltering can only last so long, though. What happens when the kid starts to interact with his peers at age 25 or whenever it is with you damn Millennials? His whole formative years up to that point have prepared him to expect that other people will find his interests fascinating and his tastes impeccable.
Then, SLAM — your peers shrug off many of your interests and find your tastes average. That's typical, and not the end of the world. But with no preparation for it, the ego faces this challenge in such an atrophied state that it gets utterly demolished.
To pick up the pieces: "Well what do those idiots know about awesome anyway? They're probably just jealous. I don't need their confirmation anyway." Now they're headed down the path of social withdrawal and misanthropy. They'll grow suspicious of their so-called friends who don't share 100% enthusiasm with their interests.
Parents in the '70s and '80s used to view their job as preparing their kids for the tough and unpredictable world out there, not to insulate them from it. It'll slam into them at some point, so might as well make sure they've grown to withstand it. Parents stayed out of our lives even when we were children. By encouraging us to go out and make friends on the playground, or at school, or around the neighborhood, they helped us discover the shocking reality that not everybody is as interested as we are in the stuff we're interested in.
That not only taught us to negotiate and compromise with someone who wasn't on the same page as us, but also to seek out new friends who would be closer to us. That way we have our friends where we don't have to struggle that much just to get something done, and other friends or acquaintances who we have to make more of an effort to do things with — but not shutting them out because of that. Each side goes back to their closer circle of friends afterward and engages in some good-spirited gossip about how weird the other side can be sometimes.
This is a separate effect from over-praising the kids' efforts and output. That shelters their ego about their capabilities. This is about what gets their attention, what motivates them, their interests and tastes. It's much closer to the core of their identity than their capabilities, so that questioning it is far more likely to be perceived as doubting who they are as a person.
That will trigger a much more desperate defense: "What do you mean, you don't like Harry Potter? Here is a PowerPoint of the Top 10 reasons why you must, unless you're a big fat stupid idiot."
Never having your tastes questioned — not well into your late teens anyway — leads to another major problem that you see with Millennials. They can't separate objective and subjective discussions about something they like. It all boils down to the subjective. The objective is only a means toward that end, as though an objective argument would force them to decide one way or another on the subjective side of things.
To end with an example, most of them like music that is not very musical. That is an objective claim, easy to verify. If it's what floats their boat, I guess I'll just have to consider them lame, and they can look at me playing a Duran Duran album as lame. But objectively speaking, "Rio," "Save a Prayer," "Hungry Like the Wolf," etc. are more musical. More riffs, motifs, more varied song structure (intros, bridges, outros), more intricate melodic phrasing, richer instrumentation (actually hearing the bass), instrumental solos, greater pitch range for the singing, more required to write the instrumental parts, and so on.
I know some Boomers who see that spelled out, and compare what Pandora says about their Sixties faves, and respond self-deprecatingly with, "Meh, I guess I get turned on by simplistic music then!" as opposed to fancy-schmancy music. Millennials get bent out of shape, though, as though "logic has proven my tastes inferior — must re-inspect the logic."
But that's what happens when your tastes rarely get questioned during your formative years. You don't appreciate that there could be two separate ways that this could happen, one objective and the other subjective. In fact, being told that your favorite TV show is boring would probably have introduced you to the objective side of things, when you asked them why they felt that way. "I dunno, it's like none of the challenges the characters face actually matters. The motivation feels empty." Ok, they wouldn't phrase it that way, but you know what I mean. Usually their response would not only amount to, "I dunno, it just sucks."
At any rate, he's so excited to show you this thing he made and that thing he made, and what this design in the booklet looks like, and what that one looks like. I found myself the whole time saying "cool..." or "man..." or staying silent. All you get is agreement from family members, even if they don't really think it's cool. Family members have to treat each other more nicely than if one of them were an outsider.
It's your peers who would pipe up with "BORRRINNG." Like, "Hey Uncle Agnostic, you wanna watch Sponge Bob?" I can't tell him, "Nah man, that shit's boring." But one of his friends hopefully would. "Aw c'mon, change the chanelllll. Sponge Bob sucks." Then they'd engage in a little back-and-forth, give-and-take, until they compromised.
With family members in an era of family friendliness, the grown-ups tell the child that whatever they like is awesome. No need to change, improve, or compromise your interests and tastes.
This ego sheltering can only last so long, though. What happens when the kid starts to interact with his peers at age 25 or whenever it is with you damn Millennials? His whole formative years up to that point have prepared him to expect that other people will find his interests fascinating and his tastes impeccable.
Then, SLAM — your peers shrug off many of your interests and find your tastes average. That's typical, and not the end of the world. But with no preparation for it, the ego faces this challenge in such an atrophied state that it gets utterly demolished.
To pick up the pieces: "Well what do those idiots know about awesome anyway? They're probably just jealous. I don't need their confirmation anyway." Now they're headed down the path of social withdrawal and misanthropy. They'll grow suspicious of their so-called friends who don't share 100% enthusiasm with their interests.
Parents in the '70s and '80s used to view their job as preparing their kids for the tough and unpredictable world out there, not to insulate them from it. It'll slam into them at some point, so might as well make sure they've grown to withstand it. Parents stayed out of our lives even when we were children. By encouraging us to go out and make friends on the playground, or at school, or around the neighborhood, they helped us discover the shocking reality that not everybody is as interested as we are in the stuff we're interested in.
That not only taught us to negotiate and compromise with someone who wasn't on the same page as us, but also to seek out new friends who would be closer to us. That way we have our friends where we don't have to struggle that much just to get something done, and other friends or acquaintances who we have to make more of an effort to do things with — but not shutting them out because of that. Each side goes back to their closer circle of friends afterward and engages in some good-spirited gossip about how weird the other side can be sometimes.
This is a separate effect from over-praising the kids' efforts and output. That shelters their ego about their capabilities. This is about what gets their attention, what motivates them, their interests and tastes. It's much closer to the core of their identity than their capabilities, so that questioning it is far more likely to be perceived as doubting who they are as a person.
That will trigger a much more desperate defense: "What do you mean, you don't like Harry Potter? Here is a PowerPoint of the Top 10 reasons why you must, unless you're a big fat stupid idiot."
Never having your tastes questioned — not well into your late teens anyway — leads to another major problem that you see with Millennials. They can't separate objective and subjective discussions about something they like. It all boils down to the subjective. The objective is only a means toward that end, as though an objective argument would force them to decide one way or another on the subjective side of things.
To end with an example, most of them like music that is not very musical. That is an objective claim, easy to verify. If it's what floats their boat, I guess I'll just have to consider them lame, and they can look at me playing a Duran Duran album as lame. But objectively speaking, "Rio," "Save a Prayer," "Hungry Like the Wolf," etc. are more musical. More riffs, motifs, more varied song structure (intros, bridges, outros), more intricate melodic phrasing, richer instrumentation (actually hearing the bass), instrumental solos, greater pitch range for the singing, more required to write the instrumental parts, and so on.
I know some Boomers who see that spelled out, and compare what Pandora says about their Sixties faves, and respond self-deprecatingly with, "Meh, I guess I get turned on by simplistic music then!" as opposed to fancy-schmancy music. Millennials get bent out of shape, though, as though "logic has proven my tastes inferior — must re-inspect the logic."
But that's what happens when your tastes rarely get questioned during your formative years. You don't appreciate that there could be two separate ways that this could happen, one objective and the other subjective. In fact, being told that your favorite TV show is boring would probably have introduced you to the objective side of things, when you asked them why they felt that way. "I dunno, it's like none of the challenges the characters face actually matters. The motivation feels empty." Ok, they wouldn't phrase it that way, but you know what I mean. Usually their response would not only amount to, "I dunno, it just sucks."
March 21, 2014
Ancestry in India revealed more by dance than by language
Continuing an earlier post which gave evidence for traditional dance styles being a better predictor of genetic ancestry than the language spoken.
Recall that Hungarians speak a non-Indo-European language, yet their folk dances place them squarely within the Central European -- and even Indo-European -- norm of step dancing. The style is characterized by fancy footwork, percussive footwork, and keeping the body's vertical axis more or less in place.
Language is a little too utilitarian of a trait to be free from cultural selection pressures, hence the handful of cases like the Hungarians who adopted the language of genetic outsiders for one good reason or another. (To trade, to serve as clients to their patrons, to move up the status ladder dominated by foreigners, and so on.)
Dance styles do not play such a utilitarian role in people's lives, and there is a very strong sense of "this is how the dance is done," so they are more conservative against selection pressures to adopt foreign traits. Cultural and genetic ancestries will tend to overlap, but they overlap much more closely when dance is singled out as the cultural trait, and not quite so closely when we look to language.
Now for the picture on the other end of the Indo-European world. There are two major language families represented in India, Indo-European brought by one branch of the, er, Indo-Europeans, and Dravidian, which better reflects the state of things before their arrival. Here is their distribution today, with the I-E languages in yellow and orange, and Dravidian in green:
Judging from language would lead us to expect I-E genepools everywhere but the southern third of the country and a fringe along the Himalayas. But when we look at the frequency of key genetic markers of the I-E migrants, such as lactase persistence, we see them confined more tightly to the northwestern regions (see this broader discussion by Razib):
The Indo-Europeans were (agro-)pastoralists, so they would have been under strong selection pressures to get more calories out of milk through metabolizing its sugar. Before the I-E folks showed up, there was a large-scale sedentary civilization based on agriculture in the Indus Valley, and you don't need to digest lactose if you're subsisting on grains. So, the blue regions above are more likely to be the descendants of that pre-IE civilization, driven somewhat to the south and east by the I-E pastoralists who settled in the northwest.
Notice that the language map vastly overstates how genetically Indo-European the Indians are. However, looking at language as a utilitarian trait, rather than a neutral one, we infer that large swaths of the Subcontinent who are genetically not-so-Indo-European have adopted the languages of foreigners for one good reason or another.
This disconnect is also evident in outward appearances. Take an eastern group such as the Bihari, who speak I-E languages. They have fairly dark skin, noses that are wide at the bottom, and low-lying nasal bridges. They would not look out of place in Southeast Asia or the Pacific Islands. Contrast that with the relatively lighter-skinned and hawk-nosed people of Pakistan, who would not look so out of place in Iran.
But external appearance is not a cultural trait, so let's turn to dance. Of the roughly 10 canonical forms of Indian classical dance, only one is native to the northwest -- Kathak (see an example clip here). It is a spirited step dance straight out of the Indo-European playbook. In fact, it looks a lot like Flamenco (example clip here for those living under a rock), carried into Europe by the Gypsies, who also speak and I-E language and who also hail from northwestern India -- 1,500 years ago. The common cultural ancestor between today's Flamenco and Kathak must go back even further. Here is a clip of a dancer from each style comparing and contrasting their similar styles.
All of the other classical dances of India belong to the blue regions in the lactase map. They ought to look quite different from Kathak, and they do: they include movements that are slower, limber poses are held as though the dancers were sculptures, and bending the body's vertical axis out of alignment is common. This is what most of us think of when we hear "Indian classical dance." They are also likely to feature costumes with a variety of garish colors, ornate headgear, and masks or make-up with exaggerated expressions. All of these features may tie together in a narrative / opera form, not just dance by itself. See this clip of the Bharatanatyam form, and this clip of the Kathakali form.
Those features place almost all Indian classical dances with those of Southeast Asia, from Thailand down into Bali. In fact, some of the distinguishing movements would not look out of place in a crowd of people practicing Tai Chi, nor would the costumes look so strange to a crowd used to Chinese opera or Japanese Noh theater.
Once again, dance styles are more faithful informants about a group's genetic ancestry than language is. You may adopt an Indo-European language in order to trade with, apprentice under, etc., a newly arrived powerful bunch of foreigners. But when it comes to expressing your race's identity in a communal setting, the dancing will be Dravidian.
March 19, 2014
How superficial and bratty were the Silent Gen as youngsters?
A recent post looked at how Millennials (the females anyway, but probably also the males) have a shocking level of superficiality regarding the opposite sex. Girls don't want a guy because he's "cool" but because he's "hot." I attributed this to the helicopter parenting and cocooning environment that they grew up in -- social avoidance and distance lead you to only notice and value people's appearances.
Did something like this happen during the previous heyday of cocooning?
The Mid-century was part of the Great Compression, when competitiveness and squeaky-wheel entitled-ness were steadily falling. So, young people back then -- the Silent Generation -- did not live by a social code of dog-eat-dog. And yet, their formative years were part of the Dr. Spock / smothering mothers approach to treating children, which seems to be a feature of cocooning and falling-crime times (cocoon the children for their safety, no matter what it turns them into).
Hence, we expect them to look like Millennials, only in a way where everything is not a status contest.
Recall this post about how Mid-century singers and actors / actresses were required to be quite attractive. Throw in the election of JFK, and even politicians fit into that pattern, to a lesser extent. That had totally changed by the Eighties, when major entertainers looked more like Bill Murray, Sigourney Weaver, Phil Collins, and Ann Wilson from Heart. And our President looked like Ronald Reagan.
Since the '90s, it's swung back toward the Mid-century norm of superficiality, with Justin Bieber and Katy Perry as today's major entertainers (or attractive TV news readers, or attractive sideline reporter chicks, or attractive spokeswomen for breast cancer, or...). I don't know how good-looking Obama is perceived, but he was elected on superficial grounds -- he's got dark skin, so it'd be like My Cool Black Friend running the country! Don't bother checking the individual in question to see if he really is the cool-black-friend type or not... And Republicans are no different, with Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin being much better looking than major aspiring politicians from the '70s or '80s.
What about brattiness among Silents? I haven't gone through all the major hits of the Mid-century, but I can think of two just off the top of my head: Lesley Gore's back-to-back hits of 1963, "It's My Party" ("and I'll cry if I want to, cry if I want to, cry if I want to") and "Judy's Turn to Cry". The first hit #1, the second #5, and both made the year-end Billboard charts.
You might object that these were for 14 year-olds, who would've been early Boomers, not Silents. True, but I'm talking about young people during the Mid-century more than a specific generation. If that included some early Boomers toward the end, that doesn't change the focus.
Finally, check out this sit-com / product placement special from 1952, "Young Man's Fancy". The Silent Gen daughter, Judy (that name again), acts like a spoiled brat toward her mother, though her callous and dismissive attitude is more calm and carefree than the hostile tone that her Millennial descendant would take.
When she hears that her brother's friend from college is coming over for dinner, she gets all disgusted by the sound of his name (Alexander Phipps) -- with a name like that, he's bound to be an ugly geek! He turns out to be good-looking, so she naturally responds by cursing her brother for not warning her that he was bringing home a hot guy (or whatever she calls him). Now she has to make herself up with no time. When she yaks on the phone with her friend about him, it's only his cuteness (or whatever the slang was) that she spazzes out about.
That spastic reaction reminded me so much of how Millennial girls respond to the Random Hot Guy type. His appearance is the only thing they notice, not his character or other appeal. They only want to get noticed and thereby ego-validated by the Random Hot Guy, not actually open up to, get close to, or do anything with him. And they flip out when they see one, as though they hardly get to enjoy the opportunity. Because everyone is so sheltered and doesn't run into each other so often? Or because by choosing only based on looks, there just aren't as many who make them feel butterflies in the stomach? Beats me.
Eighties babes were more collected around guys, whether because it wasn't such a rare thing to be next to and interacting with them, or because all sorts of guys appealed to them. It was also ultimately uncool to be seen as a spazz, so they must have developed greater skill at composing themselves around others.
I realize that the Fifties sit-com is not the best acting, not a documentary, and produced more for product placement. (Gee, how neat is it to be watching the program on an ELECTRIC computer screen?) Yet, the character type they were going for to portray "kids these days" was a callous, superficial airhead. And I'm sure the actress had experience with that type of person, at least from observing and interacting with her peers, and perhaps personal inclination too.
Teenagers in the Eighties were not shown that way -- they were more concerned, thoughtful, and interested in getting to know what made someone tick. I get a similar impression of youngsters from the Twenties based on Fitzgerald's short stories, and plot synopses of silent films about the Flaming Youth of the time.
In both eras, they had an anti-authoritarian kind of attitude, but that is not callous dismissiveness directed toward all people who are not hot. And in both eras, young people were all about having fun and living life -- and good looks may only get you so far along that path. Wanting to have fun in a social setting makes young people focus more on what others are like inside -- are they an instigator or a killjoy?
Clearly, "further research is needed" in the matter, but even this cursory look has turned up more evidence that you would've expected for a superficial and bratty mindset among young people during the Mid-century.
Did something like this happen during the previous heyday of cocooning?
The Mid-century was part of the Great Compression, when competitiveness and squeaky-wheel entitled-ness were steadily falling. So, young people back then -- the Silent Generation -- did not live by a social code of dog-eat-dog. And yet, their formative years were part of the Dr. Spock / smothering mothers approach to treating children, which seems to be a feature of cocooning and falling-crime times (cocoon the children for their safety, no matter what it turns them into).
Hence, we expect them to look like Millennials, only in a way where everything is not a status contest.
Recall this post about how Mid-century singers and actors / actresses were required to be quite attractive. Throw in the election of JFK, and even politicians fit into that pattern, to a lesser extent. That had totally changed by the Eighties, when major entertainers looked more like Bill Murray, Sigourney Weaver, Phil Collins, and Ann Wilson from Heart. And our President looked like Ronald Reagan.
Since the '90s, it's swung back toward the Mid-century norm of superficiality, with Justin Bieber and Katy Perry as today's major entertainers (or attractive TV news readers, or attractive sideline reporter chicks, or attractive spokeswomen for breast cancer, or...). I don't know how good-looking Obama is perceived, but he was elected on superficial grounds -- he's got dark skin, so it'd be like My Cool Black Friend running the country! Don't bother checking the individual in question to see if he really is the cool-black-friend type or not... And Republicans are no different, with Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin being much better looking than major aspiring politicians from the '70s or '80s.
What about brattiness among Silents? I haven't gone through all the major hits of the Mid-century, but I can think of two just off the top of my head: Lesley Gore's back-to-back hits of 1963, "It's My Party" ("and I'll cry if I want to, cry if I want to, cry if I want to") and "Judy's Turn to Cry". The first hit #1, the second #5, and both made the year-end Billboard charts.
You might object that these were for 14 year-olds, who would've been early Boomers, not Silents. True, but I'm talking about young people during the Mid-century more than a specific generation. If that included some early Boomers toward the end, that doesn't change the focus.
Finally, check out this sit-com / product placement special from 1952, "Young Man's Fancy". The Silent Gen daughter, Judy (that name again), acts like a spoiled brat toward her mother, though her callous and dismissive attitude is more calm and carefree than the hostile tone that her Millennial descendant would take.
When she hears that her brother's friend from college is coming over for dinner, she gets all disgusted by the sound of his name (Alexander Phipps) -- with a name like that, he's bound to be an ugly geek! He turns out to be good-looking, so she naturally responds by cursing her brother for not warning her that he was bringing home a hot guy (or whatever she calls him). Now she has to make herself up with no time. When she yaks on the phone with her friend about him, it's only his cuteness (or whatever the slang was) that she spazzes out about.
That spastic reaction reminded me so much of how Millennial girls respond to the Random Hot Guy type. His appearance is the only thing they notice, not his character or other appeal. They only want to get noticed and thereby ego-validated by the Random Hot Guy, not actually open up to, get close to, or do anything with him. And they flip out when they see one, as though they hardly get to enjoy the opportunity. Because everyone is so sheltered and doesn't run into each other so often? Or because by choosing only based on looks, there just aren't as many who make them feel butterflies in the stomach? Beats me.
Eighties babes were more collected around guys, whether because it wasn't such a rare thing to be next to and interacting with them, or because all sorts of guys appealed to them. It was also ultimately uncool to be seen as a spazz, so they must have developed greater skill at composing themselves around others.
I realize that the Fifties sit-com is not the best acting, not a documentary, and produced more for product placement. (Gee, how neat is it to be watching the program on an ELECTRIC computer screen?) Yet, the character type they were going for to portray "kids these days" was a callous, superficial airhead. And I'm sure the actress had experience with that type of person, at least from observing and interacting with her peers, and perhaps personal inclination too.
Teenagers in the Eighties were not shown that way -- they were more concerned, thoughtful, and interested in getting to know what made someone tick. I get a similar impression of youngsters from the Twenties based on Fitzgerald's short stories, and plot synopses of silent films about the Flaming Youth of the time.
In both eras, they had an anti-authoritarian kind of attitude, but that is not callous dismissiveness directed toward all people who are not hot. And in both eras, young people were all about having fun and living life -- and good looks may only get you so far along that path. Wanting to have fun in a social setting makes young people focus more on what others are like inside -- are they an instigator or a killjoy?
Clearly, "further research is needed" in the matter, but even this cursory look has turned up more evidence that you would've expected for a superficial and bratty mindset among young people during the Mid-century.
Forget it Jake, it's Malaysia-town
The near complete inability of the nations in eastern Asia to reveal what information they may have and cooperate during an urgent, life-and-death matter should temper the enthusiasm that many Westerners feel for glorious Asia — what with their high IQ levels (by global standards) and their low homicide rates.
Rather, this groping-through-the-labyrinth of an investigation should serve to revive an older description — "the inscrutable Oriental." It's all about keeping your guard up, wearing an unreadable stone face, and covering your ass / saving face above all else.
And it is not only in lending a hand that the Asian is stingy. Merely requesting help from others is seen as a sign of weakness, incompetence, "Why you so lazy?!" etc., and must only be resorted to long after it has become obvious that you're not as all-powerful and all-knowing as you'd thought. The level of hubris among Asians is astounding: no matter what the calamity, the in-over-their-heads team is bound to respond with, "Back off, man — I got this."
Why any Westerner would want to import large numbers of denizens from a black hole of trust, is beyond me. But probably boils down to them being a nerd who lives in the abstract and the hypothetical, where BRAINS + DOCILITY = MAX STATS, and having little connection with the real world, where these ghost people are among the worst neighbors and citizens you could ask for.
Rather, this groping-through-the-labyrinth of an investigation should serve to revive an older description — "the inscrutable Oriental." It's all about keeping your guard up, wearing an unreadable stone face, and covering your ass / saving face above all else.
And it is not only in lending a hand that the Asian is stingy. Merely requesting help from others is seen as a sign of weakness, incompetence, "Why you so lazy?!" etc., and must only be resorted to long after it has become obvious that you're not as all-powerful and all-knowing as you'd thought. The level of hubris among Asians is astounding: no matter what the calamity, the in-over-their-heads team is bound to respond with, "Back off, man — I got this."
Why any Westerner would want to import large numbers of denizens from a black hole of trust, is beyond me. But probably boils down to them being a nerd who lives in the abstract and the hypothetical, where BRAINS + DOCILITY = MAX STATS, and having little connection with the real world, where these ghost people are among the worst neighbors and citizens you could ask for.
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