>On Oct 21, 2007, at 9:48 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > If you have a lot of
> > formal education or a great deal of uncommon talents like Marjane
> > Satrapi's artistic gift, you are likely to make much more money in the
> > West than in Iran or anywhere else in the South for that matter.
>
>So, in other words, the materialism of the West - which Satrapi
>denounces from Paris, the echt cosmopolitan city, and you denounce
>from Columbus, the echt middle-American city - has charms that trump
>the revolutionary appeal of building the new Islamic society. It's
>not like they're eating tree bark and beetles in Tehran, either. That
>sounds to me like desk-chair radicalism that barely pauses, if at
>all, to take note of its own contradictions.
>
>You relocated yourself from Japan - certainly not a poor country -
>more than ten years ago. Why? Is there some appeal to the American
>way of life that's caused you to stay here for a decade?
>
>Doug
my friend, V, is hardly a radical -- and certainly not representative of anything but, while he sometimes shook his head at some of "our ways" (e.g., the notion that children get pushed off on their own easily and readily to live on their own, away from family, etc. or the time when he was sick, in the hospital, and not one person from his workplace bothered to find out what was up), he also can't help but chafe against the restraints on his life in India. Those restraints being mainly the constant pressure to spend your life doing for others: you marry for the family, you choose careers for the family, you cannot be found to smoke, drink, or have pre-marital sex (among other things) because these things are wrong and not what good people do. (You have what he called 'illegal' girlfriends (= girlfriends outside your caste and, possibly, whom you have sex with), of course, and you smoke and drink behind your parents' backs when you're off to Delhi, at school, or to the US, at school or working.) Even my boss, who's extremely Americanized and very happy in the US, endures visits from her aunt, and makes jokes about how her very liberal, very wealthy, elite caste family sends her aunts to check up on her moral behavior: she hides the drinking and the fact that she spends every other weekend with her fiance, who works in another state.
They'd be mortified, the aunts, even though there are many things which her very liberal family does in India which would mortify the family's of V and K, my friends from work. K, himself, just wouldn't believe it when he heard that my boss actually visits her boyfriend for the weekend.
So V and my boss both see drawbacks to the US (my boss often laughs at USers attachment to pets arguing that it's b/c USers don't have family and are lonely) that are actually connected to the freedom they constantly talk about, which is what they think is great about the US. What they mean is freedom from intense social pressure to conform -- not conform to social trends, but to make decisions in your life according to tradition, family demands and needs, etc. As far as I can tell, this isn't from any direct prompting from USers in conversation. When they talk of this freedom, that is, it doesn't seem like they're just mouthing words that they think USers want to hear. After all, neither have been shy about criticizing certain US habits. USers, that I've observed, certainly don't sit around in this conversation yammering about how free we are in the US. It's just not part of their lexicon. (and I'd hazard a guess that today' 20 and 30 somethings hardly ever think about freedom in terms of being free from familiar pressures and demands, as they might have40 years ago) Rather, if they were to herald any freedoms, it might be in terms of economic freedom or more likely political freedom in the sense that USers believe themselves free of government tyranny in a way that other countries aren't (or so they sometimes think).
Out of time and not sure if I've conveyed my meaning correctly -- if I'm capturing what it is about the US that makes both of them want to stay here and not return permanently. Which is very strange, to me, in so far as my boss is from this extremely well-to-do family and would live a much finer life in India. As one of the guys said the other day, after my boss explained about the work ethic and hard work and pushing for children to be superstars academically, "So, you ended up in Podunk Company USA?" All that, and here's where you are? YUP. Because, to her, being in POdunk Company USA, hardly in a prestigious job, which is what she'd have were she a USer from an elite background, is preferable to her than being in India, making great money, living in the equivalent of a small mansion with servants, and vacation homes, etc. etc.
btw Doug, of the incidents at work that I emailed you offlist about? My boss said about the restroom incidents "This was worse than anything I've seen -- and I'm from India. I've seen gross stuff." Heh.
(Strangely enough the one Mexican family I know well enough, emigrated her with a entrepreneurial visa. they had money, iow. they love the US for its terrific schooling. no shit. In Limpdick, yet.)
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