Nations and Culture

The USA has always been a nation of immigrants, where all are accepted with no single dominant culture or ethnicity (ha!) - or at least that’s what we like to tell ourselves.  But that fact has rarely been embraced by its citizens.  The early settlers of English ancestry were appalled at the surge of Irish immigration in the mid-eighteenth century.  And subsequent waves of immigrants were often met with disdain, prejudice or outright hostility.  Our current polarized view of Hispanic immigrants is not that dissimilar to our historical habit of resenting the latest arrivals.

I would be hard-pressed to describe an average American citizen. He or she could be any skin color, adhere to any religion or none at all, and have a wide variety of cultural traits.  There may be certain characteristics that visitors to our country would point out – our love of large vehicles, our obsessive commercialism, our customer-service orientation, our ambition and workaholism, our friendliness, our patriotic fervor and perhaps a few others.  But are those really cultural traits?  

 

European nations were more homogeneous than the USA in the past and seemed to have a common ethnicity, language, cuisine and culture.  Of course, there were regional differences – a native of Bavaria would never say that people from Berlin had the same culture! -  but the similarities seemed to outnumber the differences and there was a sense, whether exaggerated or not, of each nation having its own unique identity. 

 

But in the last 50 or 60 years this has changed.  The ethnic and cultural mix of most European nations has changed pretty significantly and is likely to change even more in coming years.  Some of that change is due to the flow of formerly-colonized people into the country – primarily in France and the UK, and to a lesser degree the Netherlands.  In other countries, such as Germany, the immigration is similar to the USA, sparked by war, famine, economic hardship and the search for opportunity in a more successful economy.

 

For nations that have long had relative homogeneity and a somewhat well-defined cultural identity, these changes are often unsettling and disorienting.  Is a person of recent Turkish descent who doesn’t drink beer or eat pork really a German, even if he or she has been born there?  What defines a German?  Will a person of recent Algerian or sub-Saharan African descent ever be accepted as a true Francais or Francaise?

 

What defines a nation or the people of a nation?  As globalism, climate change, conflict, economic uncertainty and other historical forces mix up the peoples of this world, will nations retain their so-called cultural identity (which of course was never really that well-defined anyway), or will they simply become collections of people with a common language and government?

 

When the French soccer team walks out onto the field and more than half the players are Black- Beur, (the expression Black-Blanc-Beur is used to describe the mixed nature of the French squad) part of France celebrates its cultural, racial and ethnic diversity, but another, and perhaps growing, part of France doesn’t feel comfortable at all with this phenomenon.  

 

Almost every European nation is struggling with this question.  And it is a question that the USA has struggled with for its entire existence.  Asia is still much more homogeneous, but is there any doubt that as it becomes more economically successful it will eventually experience a similar mixing? 

 

Will the world one day become one big melting pot with races, ethnicities, cultures all mixed up throughout?  And will all of the nations and peoples in this big melting pot simply be molded into the prevailing forms of social media-dictated culture?  Will there even be such a thing as a cultural identity, or will the Internet, Hollywood, and giant corporations herd us all into the same cultural corral?  

 

Perhaps the only remaining pure cultural outposts will be the most impoverished countries, where there is no profit in implanting the world culture.  And we will all plan bucket-list trips to visit them so as to experience these very rare and unique places, then retreat hastily to our Starbucks and Pizzerias and scroll through our Instagram reels to hear the latest world pop sensation.

 

Wow, that took a rather sudden dark turn, didn’t it?  The future may not be as much of a cultural desert as those last couple of paragraphs suggest, but the evolving nature of nations and associated peoples is accelerating and it is not at all clear where it all will lead.

Male/Female Friendship

I heard a French podcast recently that explored the nature of male/female friendship and why it so rarely occurs.  At first, I was skeptical, thinking that in this modern era the stereotype of men and women unable to be friends seemed outdated and could no longer be true.

 But then I thought about my life and the fact that I have no close female friends, and it didn’t seem quite so unlikely.  And as I thought more deeply about the challenges that male/female friendships must overcome I realized that it is not so strange that it is a somewhat rare occurrence.

 

Men and women seem more likely to forge strong platonic bonds before they get married or have long-term partners.  Developing a friendship with someone of the opposite sex after one is married requires a high level of trust in the partner, not to mention a measure of fidelity in the one embarking on the friendship.

 

After all, the elephant in the room with any male/female friendship, if both are heterosexual (or even bi-sexual!), is the lurking possibility of infatuation.  If one or both are physically attracted to the other, then a blossoming friendship can easily morph into a romantic attachment.  Both parties may be strong enough in their own partner relationships to resist any significant expression of that infatuation, but the tension may still be there.

 

It is easy to fall into stereotyping the predisposition of male/female relationships to become difficult in this fashion.  Perhaps it is hyperbole to presume that every male/female encounter has the potential to become an infatuation.  But aren’t we programmed to seek out romantic partners?  The fact that we may already have one may make us resolute in avoiding actual liaisons, but that does not mean that we are indifferent to the temptation or the desires that naturally occur.

 

If the early stages of a friendship are not accompanied by a physical attraction, then the friendship may be built on a purely platonic basis.  But the danger of a future attraction still lurks.  There are many examples of ‘friends’ becoming lovers over the course of time as a strong emotional or spiritual attraction slowly awakens the physical/chemical one.

 

Therefore, it is somewhat understandable that our culture looks askance at such seemingly innocent male/female activities as going out to dinner or meeting for lunch if one or both participants are married or in long-term relationships.  Jealousy, that ‘green-eyed monster’, is always ready to rear its head even in the most solid relationships.  And there is at least some justification for jealousy given the numerous instances of friendships becoming romantic and ending marriages.  

 

The other side of the male/female friendship coin is the diminished value of being ‘just a friend’ in the eyes of many men and women.  This is the infamous ‘friend zone’.  For many, being perceived as a friend, i.e. not a potential romantic partner, is tantamount to being relegated to a lower status.  It implies that you are not attractive enough to qualify for infatuation.  This derails many potential male/female friendships in their early stages. And it raises the question: In every male/female friendship is there always one person who is slightly or even hugely disappointed that the relationship is not romantic?

 

Perhaps it is not surprising that male/female friendships tend to languish after one is married and few new ones are initiated.  Most couples tend to focus on family and on a few friendships with other couples, where there seems to be less risk of temptation (though certainly not a guarantee!)

 

Once in a long-term partnership, most men and women only nurture the same sex friendships from their past, though even those friendships often stagnate due to the time demands of family and work.  Male/female friendships, if they continue at all, are typically conducted as trios rather than duos, with the spouse included and watchful for any hint of danger!

 

This is the rather strange nature of friendship relationships between men and women.  It matters not how old or how young one is, there is always the potential for fascination, leading to infatuation, leading to flirtation, leading to romance, leading to trouble.  Does this mean that we are destined to never have fulfilling male/female friendships?  Sadly, it seems so, and we are no doubt the poorer for it.