Still Learning New Things

In a way, it is nice to know that even after two and a half years that Kazakh culture still has plenty of things that can stymie and frustrate me. Recently, in my third year course we watched the film, Definitely, Maybe, in which a father tells his daughter in a long and involved way how he came to meet and fall in love with her mother, and I thought that a fun assignment would be for my students to bring in their own stories of how their parents met. Next week however, only two of my students had talked to their parents. I went to talk to my counterpart about this assuming that once again my students had collectively flaked on an assignment for my class, but it turned out that while that might have been the case for some students, for the most part the assignment was a flop due to a cultural misunderstanding. As it turns out, asking your parents how they met is considered very shameful and embarrassing, so my students decided that not doing my homework assignment was better than getting a severe tongue lashing at home. That said, while I can see why they did not want to do the assignment, I still do not understand why it is such a big deal to ask how your folks met. For most people the first encounter is rather innocuous, in a class, or at work, or maybe a party, and even the more exciting first encounters, such as a group hike at Mt. McKinley or a bride-knapping, would not even rate a PG if they were turned into a lifetime movie. After all, it is not like you are asking about the moment of your conception.

This episode made me realize just how many cultural mores in both in Kazakhstan and in the rest of the world are rooted in the fear of embarrassment, and how troubling that is in several ways. It seems to me that when regulating our behavior, we usually think about how we will be perceived by other people, rather than whether or not that behavior might be hurtful to another person. In other words, we are polite because we do not want people to spread bad rumors about us, not because we want to make the other person feel comfortable and taken care of. A change in perspective would not make a huge practical difference; most things that are considered bad taste and certainly those behaviors that are cross-culturally taboo would remain so. Still, I many cultural mores that serve only to inhibit and have no impact on the feelings of others or the functioning of society might pass away. I doubt that such a shift in the cultural paradigm will ever happen. Our sense of shame has been ingrained in us for millennia by our religious traditions and societies, and too many people have too much to lose in such a radical change. Still, one can hope. The world would be a better place if people did things out of a sense of compassion and empathy rather than just for appearance’s sake.

I'm Back

So, while the length of my absence was mostly due to my laziness and inability to find much new to comment on, at least 40% of the blame needs to be placed on the fact that Kazakhstan blocked Blogger! Anyway, I now have a hotspot shield which allows me to access Blogger and Hulu.com to boot, so I will be back to posting and watching American television again in no time.