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Jul. 29th, 2003 11:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mangosteenSo the amount of vitriol that has been spewed in this thread is quite remarkable. Since I really don't feel like throwing more wood on the fire over there, I'm just going to speak my piece over here, and I can get flamed on my own merits.
Observation: New England standoffishness is a survival trait.
It's not rudeness, though it may be viewed as such. It's not paranoia, although that's a likely explanation to someone who doesn't know better. And ferchrissakes, it's not racism. It's just a completely different alignment of social priorities than what you see outside of the northern states, and New England in particular.
Why? Simple.
Observation: It gets cold in New England during the winter (and spring, and late fall.)
...which of course leads to the following.
Realization: If myself or others don't take care of me, it's going to get cold, and I'm going to die.
This, among many other things, tends to make you divide up the world into two groups:
1. People that will help me when the winter comes.
2. People that won't.
This makes New Englanders have pretty stringent criteria for friend-building, as well as the perception of familiarity. To wit: "Don't be my friend if you're not going to be my friend."
Example: A more down-to-earth example is the following. A friend's car breaks down at 3am on a major highway about 25 miles from where you live. They call AAA. AAA says that they'll take about 3 hours to get there (New England AAA sucks, but we knew that). Your friend then calls you, and asks if you can wait with them, or at least get them to someplace warm, while they wait for AAA to get there.
Let's say it's 8 degrees Farenheit outside. What do you do?
How about 72 degrees? What do you do then?
What if the region of the country you live in has the potential to go below freezing for 6 months out of the year? How will this carry over in what you would do (and who you would do it for) during the rest of the year?
This is not to say that "all friendships in other parts of the country are superficial". That's ridiculous. Rather, the bar is higher for the point at which someone in New England will call someone a friend, relative to the rest of the US, because of all the little things being a friend entails.
There's a lot more, but I'll leave it at that for now.
Observation: New England standoffishness is a survival trait.
It's not rudeness, though it may be viewed as such. It's not paranoia, although that's a likely explanation to someone who doesn't know better. And ferchrissakes, it's not racism. It's just a completely different alignment of social priorities than what you see outside of the northern states, and New England in particular.
Why? Simple.
Observation: It gets cold in New England during the winter (and spring, and late fall.)
...which of course leads to the following.
Realization: If myself or others don't take care of me, it's going to get cold, and I'm going to die.
This, among many other things, tends to make you divide up the world into two groups:
1. People that will help me when the winter comes.
2. People that won't.
This makes New Englanders have pretty stringent criteria for friend-building, as well as the perception of familiarity. To wit: "Don't be my friend if you're not going to be my friend."
Example: A more down-to-earth example is the following. A friend's car breaks down at 3am on a major highway about 25 miles from where you live. They call AAA. AAA says that they'll take about 3 hours to get there (New England AAA sucks, but we knew that). Your friend then calls you, and asks if you can wait with them, or at least get them to someplace warm, while they wait for AAA to get there.
Let's say it's 8 degrees Farenheit outside. What do you do?
How about 72 degrees? What do you do then?
What if the region of the country you live in has the potential to go below freezing for 6 months out of the year? How will this carry over in what you would do (and who you would do it for) during the rest of the year?
This is not to say that "all friendships in other parts of the country are superficial". That's ridiculous. Rather, the bar is higher for the point at which someone in New England will call someone a friend, relative to the rest of the US, because of all the little things being a friend entails.
There's a lot more, but I'll leave it at that for now.
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Date: 2003-07-29 11:45 am (UTC)I had a different experience in Iceland (speaking of harsh northern climates). The people there tend to be quiet and self-contained; they don't make small talk in supermarkets (even between themselves), for example. But I never got a "rude" vibe from them; in fact, I found it refreshing to be left alone (and it wasn't just that they could tell I was a foreigner; the sales clerks would often start speaking to me in Icelandic when I got to the counter). I also got the impression that they'd help you if you needed help, and I also felt the safest there that I've felt just about anywhere.
I think it's the combination of bad weather and high population density that is more likely to make people go from standoffish to rude. I'm guessing that in more sparsely populated northern areas folks are more likely to be polite to each other (compared to around here) because you don't have as big a pool of people to choose from when you do need help (and eventually you will). The random joe you snub on the street in a rural town in summer may be the only person available to help you survive a blizzard come winter.
It's also partly a matter of finding what you're looking for. If you go looking for stupid racist people, you'll find them. If you go looking for nasty cold people, you'll find them too. Another part is that regional cultural differences do exist and many people are likely to see stuff that's different from what they're used to as being rude.
Back to the comic, I think it's also a comment on Davan's father deciding that all Bostonians are assholes based on one woman being an asshole herself. He found what he was looking for.