West vs. East is the clash of Rules vs. Context. Who overdares? Eurasia.
- Exercise 1. Is there anything wrong about these statements?
- “If I can’t rely on you with small things, how can I trust you with big things.”
- “If I can touch your arm, I can get hold of your buns.”
- “If you drink beer on Thanksgiving, you’re an alcoholic.”
- “If you wish well to children, you must buy these stocks.”
- “Today he plays jazz, tomorrow he’ll sell his Communist Motherland.”
Did you answer that #1 is an odd man out? Well, what actually ought to hit your attention, is that “obligation to be consistent” is the favorite trap of all manipulators. And if you want to understand the Slavic cultures, it’s essential to discern between small oranges and big apples.
PREP COURSE
- Case 1. You are dating at a coffee house. It offers hot chocolate Spanish style and French style. She orders both. What do you conclude?
“She is greedy. She wants to take advantage of me. She has no sense of money. She eats the chicken today so I eat feathers tomorrow. If she couldn’t choose between two cars, she’d want both. If she likes another man, she’ll betray me.”
What is the truth?
It is one cup of hot chocolate that costs $8 and lasts 10 minutes. Plus one more cup of hot chocolate that costs $8 and lasts 10 minutes. They cost 16 bucks total. They have different taste. Period.
She has tasted neither of them. She wants to find out the difference between hot chocolate “Spanish” and “French”. Possibly, to determine a place with the best hot chocolate around.
Maybe it’s not soon that she ever visits this place again. And if she would, what’s the reason of scheduling a cup of “Spanish” hot chocolate for the whole new time, and the whole new time for a cup of “Spanish” hot chocolate? Or should she go to Spain?
You can argue that delayed gratification is a mark of mental maturity. But this time I won’t even put on my historical mortarboard for telling that the FSU society has always been living as if at a volcano, with no predictable tomorrow. Nor would I rant about “these poor savages” wanting to have freedom in small things the more, the less choice they have in big things. Because…
It is a little cup of chocolate that lasts 10 minutes. What would change if this cup were ordered an hour after the first one? And why should it be the same sort?
It is just chocolate. Is she required to have one cup of hot chocolate per date? Or one sort of chocolate per woman, till the death parts them?
Can she at all love you and chocolate at the same time? Ask the kids.
She put on a special dress to celebrate your date. You decided to visit a special place to celebrate your date. Why shouldn’t you celebrate by eating something special too? Why should she “meet” you in the same old jeans with bulging knees she wears for running errands? Why should you “feed” her with habitual tea in bags?
It is not a bottle of Dom Perignon. It is just a darned cup of chocolate that costs 8 bucks. Do you have a sense of pleasure? Is this piece of pleasure less than the pleasure of having 8 bucks?
Is 8 bucks unaffordable? Ok, let’s save on cakes today. Let’s walk on foot today. Let her open her purse and pay the extrabudgetary expense.
Man = control? Then, woman = whim. Our men say, “If a woman wants something, better give her, lest she takes it herself”.
Sampling several sorbets at a sorbet-famous place is nothing but cute fun in a Russian man’s view. But he would also understand the two coats she might like at the same time. One for the snowbroth and one for sunny days. Or one for business, one for time off. (Ever heard of matching different shoes for different attires?)
Ok, let it be no new coat next year – what’s the problem? And what’s the problem about buying the TV a month later than planned?
Hey, who said “two TVs”? Here: Rules vs. Context. See Exercise 1, №№ 3 and 5.
Well, a TV in the living room / bedroom and kitchen per household is a variation of norm here. Usually it’s the matter of convenience, the more so when both spouses just can’t survive without the daily programs concurring at different channels. (Why get married if television is so important, then… But that’s another topic.)
What I’m driving at, is no threat of car-scale extrapolations. Let alone treachery. Unless you are a man of one thought and mood.
Wow, gonna adopt this StereoChocolate Experiment as an exercise in mutual understanding or, conversely, a Press-‘m-To-Get-Sh’t-Out test.
- Homework: Russian proverbs. “Don’t shoot sparrows with cannons” (“don’t break a butterfly on the wheel”). “To make an elephant of a fly” (“a mountain out of a molehill”).
Russian people, maybe even more than Ukrainians, operate “substantial” and “comparatively negligible” categories. They rather round it all up rather than have the trouble of splitting hairs. And if you come up with “big forecasts by small errors”, you may likely face the opposite attitude: “not letting trivia distract from big tasks”. This is especially hard-felt in business and HR.
Russians can easily forgive small things and sacrifice big things. Still, they can understand a person refusing to make or take big sacrifice – but find small grudges and niggles especially mean. (The most notorious example of keeping the record of each spouse’s hygienic-purpose expenses. No Russian person wondered why at all this couple was divorcing.)
Field study: Call a taxi service, let it take you to the opposite part of the city, hear the cabman bill you for the wrong and corrected routes together, pay the amount appointed for the right destination, get tagged “bad client”. Ask a bank clerk to accept your deposit with a higher interest rate that was in force until 16.00 (you came up at 16.10). Have your cash accepted by the daytime operation desk. Buy these kind ladies chocolates at a nearby shop, lack 5 smallest money units, get the coin forgiven… Welcome to Kiev, the capital of Ukraine.
Related comment on settlements
ADVANCED LEVEL
- Exercise 2. What can happen if you follow these rules?
- “If you’re a he-man, you must not have emotions, maybe just except anger.”
- “If you love your work, why would you need a vacation.”
- “If he’s an animal-loving, vegetarian, non-smoker, he must be peaceful.”
- Case 2. Would you marry a person who…
- Invented sleek cribs for exams in least or most important subjects.
- Let others copy, if there was no competition, and if there was, still let a friend.
- Crosses the road wherever and whenever it looks safe.
- Would trespass barriers for a shortcut, for a better photo, or to smell a flower from the bush.
- Could pinch that flower, for decoration, memory or propagation (“there is a superstition that stolen vegetation takes better root”.)
- Would participate in a shashlik picnic (BBQ) near the sign “Fires prohibited”.
- Uses the Internet for personal purposes from workplace.
- Listens to pirated music and uses pirated software.
- Would better choose the solution that helps evade taxes.
- Would boycott anyone who’d tell – not even on her, but on any neighbor.
Answered “No” to any three of these? Congratulations! You’ve just refused to allow women of the Former Soviet Union into your sight.
In Russian / Soviet culture, all these situations are reckoned apart from personal honesty or sociopathy. Because there is an apparent “inhuman adversary” – the State, and its extrapolation, the Masters.
80 years of totalitarianism, preceded by ages of serfdom and censorship in the Russian Empire, and succeeded by the rule of predatory politicians and exploitative employers, – have formed the polar perception of “us” and “them”.
“To the Russian people, the Motherland has always been its home, the State – its cage.” Speaking about Russian patriotism, Zadornov conveys it as the sense of pride and affinity for fellow people, combined with sentiments for the native neighborhood and nature.
You are honest in a Russian way if you are good to persons, don’t commit crime in terms of the Ten Commandments, and don’t offend the public order demonstratively. As for “them upper”…
It’s like winking your rear lights to next cars when you see the road police in ambush. “F*ck it before it f*cks you!” Because oh how it will,.. like always had.
Everyone’s got the itch to hack the Matrix.
Well, why do these people abuse the nature they love, you may ask? Imagine the boundless abundance of resource that belongs to “no one and all”, as the background to the stubborn spires of the sense of appropriation, that has been oppressed too long, and had too little space and nutritives of its own.
(Creative environment that the West recognizes as intellectual property is perceived in the FSU as tantamount to air and water. Like it – afford it – have it.)
The point is, where they stop. One thing is a mansion owner who squats the whole section of the river bank, or goes fun-fishing with an electric rod. (I must write an article on the phenomenon called “zhlob”. A task as challenging as indispensable.) But a light-footed woman with one flower?..
Again we arrive back to the basic Russian principles of “life is now”, corrected by “cautious is allowed”, and measured by “quantities negligible”.
The logic of rules and the logic of context… Mothers keep telling, “what if everyone picks a flower”, but from the child’s point it’s apparently bizarre to imagine everyone really doing it. Oh these stupid forbidders! Same stuff with school teachers who seem (and usually not only seem) to enjoy power for the power’s sake, impose unnatural drill and unnecessary data, discourage activity and invention, and feel fulfilled when they compress a living spirit into an obedient part of the “system”.
Wherever we look, be it dialectics – the basis of post-Soviet mindset, or the ancient Yin-Yang concept, we face the “unity and struggle of opposites” that can’t exist without each other.
Psychology points out that every personality contains the Mask and the Shadow (the “approved” face and the hidden balance), Mr Good and Mr Evil, Miss Quiet and Miss Hooligan, etc. etc. If we don’t let our suppressed parts unwind at small things, they would make a mess of bigger things… and even if no “demons” burst out, we won’t feel happy one hundred per cent.
So, better let her dance and whim, lest she ranks you akin with “State, the Machine of Compulsion”? ;)
Take it easy!
© Comrade Natalia
(…and please link this page when using some info from here…)
May 24, 2007 at 3:46 am
“In Russian / Soviet culture, all these situations are reckoned apart from personal honesty or sociopathy. Because there is an apparent “inhuman adversary” – the State, and its extrapolation, the Masters.”
We Americans call those situations “sticking it to the man”, where “the man” is the Masters, and “sticking it” means a small act of rebellion, like the ones you’ve described. We usually congratulate somebody who “sticks it to the man”. :)
June 14, 2007 at 6:55 pm
Except envy, where Joe Blow uses the man to stick it to the object of one who has somehow managed to stick it to the man to his advantage, while he or she has not, to their disadvantage.
And in matters of relationship dissolution or divorce, earlier confidentiality and disclosure is used against the estranged source of dismay, often taking into use in the West, the antithetical legal version of sticking it to the man—otherwise known as the vengeance of the Cult of Feminazi–Family court.
Sticking it to the man when “the man” is one’s opponent. And being stuck by the man when another who is not the man wants to stick it to you.
Selective use of the man. Often translated to trust no-one intimately. And intimately trust only yourself.
Is it ever wise to voluntarily give to a beloved Gideon’s Sword? In order to induce this potential lethal disclosure the bait of the value of trust is demanded. Why don’t you trust me enough to give to me information which cause entirely ruin your life if you give it to me. Otherwise known as a shift in the balance of power.
Love and war.
Do divorced Russian men who are wealthy stay that way because they take the bait masquerading as required familial trust or because in God they trust?
Am I popular because of my noble Western man’s character, or because this character is naive according to some disingenuous Russian women’s agenda?
Again I say, I look forward to the friendship of Russian men.
June 14, 2007 at 11:42 pm
If you find some capable of making the way through the flowery jungles of your wordplay, please get us acquainted so that he could improve my English! )
June 15, 2007 at 1:47 am
It’s a North American thing, “sticking it to the man”.
This means civil or criminal disobedience.
What I explained is that as much as people using civil disobedience when doing so benefits them; they also will use this same legal body or government offices to give vengeance to their enemies when this also benefits them.
For example, on Sunday Fred cheats on his tax return. He effectively sticks it to the man. But on Monday this same Fred calls the police, agents of this same government from whom he is withholding taxes, to report that his neighbours, who laughed at his fat dog on Sunday, are drinking and driving and so he wants them to charge them with “driving while impaired.” Now he is this same loathed government group to “stick it to Joe Blow”. A reversal of ethics. Because now, on Monday, he uses the same police who would arrest him on Tuesday if they knew that he just received an illegal shipment of whatever on Tuesday.
So, as much as people like to claim a sense of common bonding against unfair forces; I contend that the more accurate philosophy is “everyone for himself”.
So, Natalia Orloff, I then said that in light of human nature, that it is best to never fully trust anyone, including one’s beloved. Because someday this same beloved can become be-enemy in a child custody battle. For example.
But savvy wife in good times, knows that information is the great equalizer and that it never hurts to have damaging information on her loving hubby of today in case tomorrow he’s less loving. And so she taunts him with a test of love in order to extract damaging information from him. “But honey, marriage is a bond of trust. You can trust me. I’m your woman.” Yeah, yeah. I know sweetie. And woman is spelled vengeance in less loving circumstances.
To which I suggested, ‘never give her any information which can ever hurt you, because when women are really, really hating you, hell hath no furry like a woman scorned.
Basic self-protection 101. They do have 101’s in university in Ukraine, yes?
Two of the most successful businessmen I know have all their money and their marriages. And by the way, when their wifey’s were less than hungry in their sexual part of their marriages, claiming her 1001 excuses, they “expanded their horizons” until she “came” around again. And never did it ever dawn on them to fully disclose or to deny their right to sexual satisfaction.
Get it now?
Russian men are denigrated a fair amount. But there are two sides to every story. And I am eager to hear the Russian men’s stories. So far, they’re the only ones who I haven’t heard from in this West-Eurasian relationship dynamic.
And finally, one of the successful businessmen is Canadian. The other is Russian. I know only of the Russian man, what a bilingual mutual friend has told me. I would like to get the full story in person when I can speakie his lingo.
Now, and you could see this coming yes?, now if only I can find a Russian friend who can translate your English into my Russian.
Batta bing, batta boom. I just love it when that happens. Don’t you?
June 15, 2007 at 11:49 pm
Wow, someone’s gonna justify the reasons for deception. ;) Prepare to hear some more: “I respect my wife enough to protect her from knowing about my adventures”.
June 16, 2007 at 5:05 pm
No. As you know Natalia, I serve my drinks “straight up”. I don’t condone deception. My primary purpose is to illustrate a common reason not to “fully disclose”.
And regarding the taking of lovers… How do I know that the original deception was not hers? For example, “Yes dear, you’re the love of my life[today].” Man hears “of my life” but does not “see” ‘today’. Man marries girl. Man sees later than his “today” is not as his yesterday, and that her deception was based on familial and social pressure to marry and give birth.
He wakes up to his role as breeder and starved for love decided to avenge his foolish heart by looking until his children can be raised by his new wife. That is if he has enough money and power to protect “his” best interests in his newly awakened reality. Man does what he can to preserve his role as father as he was originally promised, before he awoke to find the lie lying beside him every loveless morning.
Testing, testing, testing. And I’m not referring to AIDS testing.
In the West we often refer to divorce as “the man getting ass raped in court.” Love and war.
So complicated when “at first we practice to deceive” to quote Shakespeare. Or was it something I read on a toilet stall wall?
Batta bing. Batta boom.
June 17, 2007 at 9:27 pm
Canuck, There are several sayings in cowboy country about trust. Such as:
Don’t give a man a gun and bullets as a peace offering.
Never hand an angry man a loaded gun.
Don’t give someone bullets to shoot you with.
Very plain sayings, but have a good meaning. Two were paraphrased as I can’t remember the exact wording.
June 20, 2007 at 8:12 pm
Aunt Natalia, I have 2 questions.
If I don’t smell the flower because I can’t smell, will they understand why I don’t ( I will take a foto if it’s unusual to me and I have a camera).
If I could pay less taxes by tracking the little hygienic products, would she find that intolerable??
The first question is real, the second is currently hypothetical. But, that being said, the second is also possible under certain circumstances.
June 21, 2007 at 9:53 am
Answer yes!
Life is so designed that for everything there may exist more or less circumstances that justify it.
And tolerance implies the Golden Rule of reciprocity. Which is a bit complex thing, though.
Case Study. Below, replace our copybook “chocolate” with anything else…
“I [don’t] eat chocolate, so I stay with same [non-]eaters.” - Pretty reasonable.
“I like chocolate, but I’d hate my partner to.” – Therapy time.
“One eater per family is enough.” - Make sure that the abstinent partner is painlessly tolerant.
“I can be tolerant to choco eaters” – This doesn’t necessarily mean “I dream to gorge on it myself”.
“I hate choco eaters” – “I wish I were one” (in every joke, a part of joke). Trauma trace, beware of violent hypersensitivity…
“I don’t eat chocolate, but it gives me no right to denounce.” - Of course, conditionally. “Provided he/she doesn’t get fat, nor intrudes on my own choices. (Doesn’t eat raw pork before my eyes… drinks only good wine and not to inebriation… etc.) We might even share this indulgence once in a while.” Principle understood?
“I disapprove what you say, but I’ll defend your right to say it…” “…so far that your fist stops before my nose”.
Then we get into the family field, and difficulties begin.
One of the principles for our matchmaking service and its users would be, “Seek common grounds: win-win solutions or, if impossible, solutions of least damage to either of the people involved.”
Having learned about the Western manners of courteous back-stabbing (smiling to the Joneses – and telling on them, or saying “As you wish, darling” – “and now we divorce”), I would add:
“Discuss everything you like and dislike. In advance. But even more importantly, when you face an unpleasant surprise. Give second chances.”
When people are attracted to each other, they can learn and change.
Recommended reading: “Clockwork Orange”, “1984”.
Visual comprehension (express-course): “Chocolat“, 2000.
P.S. Examples shall be taken for analogy, not literally. Quite expectably your mate might have no habit of smelling the world (there are visual, kinesthetical, audial, verbal and mixed models of perception). But most likely she might now and then forget keeping minor records, even understanding their meaning, and always feel hurt when reproached for it.
June 21, 2007 at 10:54 am
This is the current edition of our agency policy:
“A person who intends to gain and maintain Club membership, must have the following qualities:
1. Be open and prone to learning and training.
2. Pay attention to others’ opinions and behavior, look for reasonable grounds of those, before making judgements.
3. Commit all effort to have a legitimate life-lasting marriage, based on joint free and fair will, mutual respect, support and sexual loyalty.
4. Behave in observance of the interests of one’s own and others’ children, born or unborn.
5. Hold oneself responsible for one’s own happiness.
6. Be willing to help or please one’s significant other unconditionally and in return, in a way they woud like.
7. Make decisions on the opinions of both mates or spouses concerned. Seek win-win solutions or, if impossible, solutions of least damage to either one.
8. Spare other people’s attention, time, feelings and dignity.
9. Refuse to receive material benefits from a mate who doesn’t otherwise or anyway have chances to become one’s spouse.
10. Not exchange sexual intercourse for material expense or vice versa.”
(C) Natalie Orloff, 2006
June 21, 2007 at 1:49 pm
Yes, wonderful. If I can make a few suggestions?
First, only a small point on #10… perhaps “for material expense” should read, “for material ‘gain’”?
Natalia: Probably “material value”, to keep it equally applicable to men who may expect to buy sex – not only women who may expect to sell it.
Second, and I know, as you probably already guessed, #3. “and sexual loyalty”. This issue, I am sure, will require very much ethics and will be greatly appreciated by many.
Natalia: In order not to make other readers skip all over the blog for your essays on the favorite subject, I respectfully transplant some paragraphs of this comment to the “Fidelity & Jealousy” thread, where subsequent discussions shall take place. Although this issue is certainly affected by differences in national social cultures and individual-specific perceptions. Is, like, dancing with another a treason or not. But let’s keep topics organized.
So many people love the idea of emotional security and relationship commitment that they create the commitment before they ask all necessary questions and develop the relationship to the point where they know as fully as possible what to expect.
Natalia: Oh yessss. There are so many sensitive issues that people shun but should discuss. We’ll provide our clients with special facilities and agendas for their correspondence to let them leave no stone unturned, declare personal boundaries and agree on common grounds.
Thirdly, my congratulations for the first point, “Be open and prone to learning and training.” In the interest of not having to endure too onerous levels of frustration–this really should include learning of sexual knowledge necessary to satisfy the beloved’s sexual needs and rights and to strengthen the bond of love within the relationship. Simply going on intuitive knowledge is not enough.
Natalia: Yes, this as well. Every person is a whole new world. Now imagine two still greater worlds of cultures and backgrounds that they enter and bring aroung themselves.
No-one knows what is their sexual fidelity tolerance at a distance and before they have met. However, the out of sight out of mind excuse to play while the other is not yet present is utterly loathesome. The other will know. They will feel it. There is no hiding of the truth witin a loving bond.
Again, both parties should not commit to such a bond until they are certain of the timing of the uniting or meeting and after establishing knowing who exactly who is this strange new “beloved”.
Commitment is a huge gift and an even bigger responsibility.
Natalia: We would allow multiple choices, but limit them to serious ones; prohibit breaches of agreements, but discourage premature oaths and jealousies.
Fourthly, and only a small suggestion to insert the word “better” in front of “of the ______ interests of one’s own and others’ children”. Who knows what precisely is “best” interests. Better suggests the intent to seek what is best–even when this can be debatable.
Natalia: I even did without the qualifier.))
Overall, certainly your policies lay the grounds on which much trust and respect can come from those who sign on to your service.
All the best.
Natalia: Thank you, same best wishes!