Anthropology of Americans: California diary

I finally figured this out. In the most extreme part of (white) America, which is in fact California (because the most 'liberal' in the sense of anyone with any power can do what they want--so arguing with a woman is 'sexual assault' and--you get the idea), there is a disconnect between the content of what people say and the affect that they express it with.

For example, "That's outrageous!" they might say, with great enthusiasm. And you think, oh, so they're getting a kick out of this, so whatever they are talking about, they love it. Years later it dawns on you what they really meant: They meant "That's outrageous." That actually means it's bad and they don't like it. It's just that in Lotus Land you are not supposed to dislike anything, just as you cannot disagree with anyone about anything.

Another thing they do is describe to you how everything is. And this is also a form of negation. But you could only figure out that. You can only guess it because what they describe is plainly awful. The most common such expression, at least in the 80s when I lived there, was "go with the flow." This is an obvious marker of anxiety in a culture of affectively enforced consensus. The people who say this are trying meekly to utter a protest, and it is indeed against everything in their world. They mean that you should not "just go with the flow" or go along with whatever the people around you are into, but at least sometimes, stand up, be an adult, and maybe even say No. But this possiblity is set up to be strange. Which is why if you state a pointed disagreemeent in any context, people will gasp and someone will take you out of whatever group you are in and take you aside for a talking-to. So then the question some will ask, almost ritually, is "So do you think one should just go with the flow?" The answer of course is no. But no one will say that.

The most extreme example of this I encountered was a law student at a party. I figured he was a law student or lawyer. He was the son of the head of the department of policy analysts for the university, where I worked in a menial clerical job one summer. He said, loudly enough, with a number of us listening, "Where I work, there is a sense people always have that you cannot lean too much to the left or the right ever, but must hew to a very straight and narrow road of basically thinking and saying what is expected of you." And he said this with a cunning smile. I knew immediately of course that his field was law and he was talking about his idea of most corporate law firms. Is it true? Partly, of course, and the whole corporate and for that matter university worlds are not very different. I also was pretty sure that he and his family were Jewish. This thought deepened the disgusting taste in my mouth. I said, "This sounds like courtiers or court Jews. It sounds like a stinking servility of the mind. I think it's disgusting, and people like this should be ashamed. One should not be a servile power-sucker. If you are, and you are advocating that, I fear for you and everyone who knows you." Of course I did not say this. But later I thought, what does he mean?

What he meant is subtle to grasp. It is a claim about totality. "Our world is an awful one of total conformity. It doesn't have to be that way, maybe, and yet it seems to be, doesn't it?" And this is said half as provocation. The person who says this doesn't like it at all, and he is taunting you to have the courage to be against everything. He hints that he is but wishes he wasn't. Of course, on a witness stand he would say only that he isn't and hopes you aren't, and why can't you see that's obvious?

This all reminds me of once in California when a guy in a circle of friends I was then part of thought I was hitting up on his girl. He said to me, "Look, I have tried to communicate so as to explain this to you, in every possible way I could think of. I hinted, nodded, winked, gestured,...I mean, what do I have to do, spell it out in words?" "Well, I replied, notwithstanding that everyone here has learned from their class in the anthropolgoy of Americans that most communication is body language, which means both that it's obvious and that you have to figure it out, if you had actually said what you meant, I might have understood, and you could have saved us all a bit of needless entertainment."