Signs of maturity (or lack thereof)

It's that time of the year, the school has started again.

New encounters, new subjects, new classrooms... always a mixture of excitement and anxiety.

I happened to read a piece of advice for teachers the other day. It said that if you are a teacher, you should never talk negatively about your predecessor.

Such as, "No? You guys didn't cover the nine essential nutrients for Martians last year? That can't be! ... All right, I will prepare an extra handout on that subject and distribute it next time. It's very, very important."

With eyebrow knitted and eyes squinted... The article said that from then on the students would start making claims that the previous instructor skipped the topic whatever it may be.

Including the ones that they had been taught.

I hereby confess that I committed a crime that is similar in nature in the past.

I am shocked!

It is again to my disadvantage to be endowed with good memory and a strong will to be impartial... Almost all of us are guilty of the same, but many conveniently are unconscious or forget about it.

So much for excuses. Let's hear what you have done.

When the school year started, we had a new teacher. She was a substitute until the regular hire came back from her maternity leave.

That's not unusual.

We knew neither instructor before. When the term was over for the fill-in and we got to know the regular instructor, we found out that we liked the substitute much better. We talked nostalgically how nice and good she was. One day, I showed my exam to my parents and said that I would have gotten a perfect grade had it been the former teacher.

It's a very flimsy excuse, comrade.

The scary thing is that I believed in it. All of my classmates were of the same opinion. So, when my parents told me that my explanation for the grade was not a good one, I told them that everyone in the class thought the same.

Yes, yes, that familiar "everyone," which can mean a handful of persons.

They replied that we would be saying the same had the regular been the substitute, and the substitute the regular.

It was not about their teaching methods or even personality, but about the role that they assumed.

I was very much surprised by their take on the event, of course.

Did you believe it?

I didn't dismiss it. I remembered it and wondered how that could be. Although I do not recall whether we claimed we had not been taught something we should have, I have a vague feeling that I participated in that kind of collective rewriting of history with my classmates. I think we knew that our claim might not have been true, but after some time, we simply believed in the revised "facts."

Hmmm... we as adults engage in acts of the same genre to more disastrous results.

People who deny all sorts of atrocities, such as genocides, fit that description.

They must have started their training early in their lives.

My recent discovery is that it happens on a smaller scale, too. Some people truly believe in what I think is grossly distorted versions of events. When I confront them, they are adamant that their version is true.

They must be thinking the same about you.

How come that they always come out unambiguously favorable in their stories?

Whereas you do not in your versions?

I know that it's not quite tight, but I claim that it is a proof that I am less biased than they are.

If your argument holds, some people may make themselves appear only partially guilty when they are wholly so, and claim that their take on the event is the true one.

The lack of impartiality in this world is mind boggling. What is even more flabbergasting is that the ones who genuinely believe in their distorted, self-serving history more than often win in the end. At least, they never lose thanks to their single-minded tenacity.

Blessed are the believers...

Back to my memories from school years, we once had a teacher trainee whom we liked very much because she was a lot closer in age. She had big sunglasses and boyfriend sweaters on. Her hair was adult and feminine. She radiated youthful confidence. In sum, she was awfully cool.

Everybody liked her, I bet.

Yes, until I was told to stop chitchatting and pay attention to her lecture.

Aha...

When some students got together and talked about how cool and effective in teaching she was, I snorted and said I wasn't sure. Then one in the circle said, "You changed your mind, because you were told to be quiet.''

There's no denying that it's a very good point.

I was shocked, because I realized then that it was true. The teacher trainee was no different before and after her telling me to be quiet, but I allowed myself to be biased against her in aspects that had little to do with her telling me so.

Don't you think maturity is founded on the separation of our private impressions of and feelings about persons from our judgments of their attributes?

You certainly can say that again. Professionalism is a kind of maturity that pertains to a subset of our activities. What puzzles me is that there seems to be little recognition of that very important principle.

You shouldn't make such a universal statement. It's your little living and working environment that you are talking about.

There is basic courtesy that should be observed regardless of our feelings toward that person.

We talked along this line some time ago.

I recently discovered that for people...

In your little environment, ahem.

All right, in my teeny-weeny environment, enforcement of rules are subject to how much positive feelings the enforcer has about the subjects.

"According to the official schedule, it is your turn to do this not-so-fun job, but okay, I know you are busy, so I will do it for you." That kind of a thing?

I would say so if the person is under pressure, although s/he has not been slacking off, and that to every such person.

People around you are totally confused because you help whom you like and don't like in the same way.

There are times when I want the people that I like to be strictly rule-abiding with me, although there are not many who defy rules and whom I like.

If I recall well, the willingness to be considerate and courteous is not only related to the feelings that we have for the persons involved, but also how repairable the relationships are with those people.

For some, the desire to go by the accepted rules is proportional to the fragility of relationships that they have with the parties involved. In extreme cases, they would go along with anything if they see that the person who is in front needs to be made happy.

Comrade, your hands are trembling with anger...

I tell you, it's total breakdown of communication! You would think that you have gotten an okay to something, only to learn later that it was a no, for example. It creates an anarchic and chaotic world. We have rules and laws precisely so as to be fair and predictable when we make important judgments.

You would doubt whether such persons have any principle.

It's balls that they don't have.

Hush, comrade.

Should I say instead that the ones that they have are shriveled up and about to fall off? They fail to understand that liking a person should neither be necessary nor sufficient to be ethical with her/him. Similarly, we do not have to pretend that we like someone in order to act ethically toward that person. If we do, it would be...

Comes your favorite word of the season, right? The one that starts with an 'h' and ends with a 'y'? There's a 'p' in it, a 'c' in it...

When people turn chummy because they want me to do something for them, I feel as if they were trying a cheap trick on me. If it is in my power to do it and if I see it necessary and reasonable, I would. It has no relation with whether I like her/him or not!

They are again totally confused, because they were nice to you and you agreed to carry out the task, but you look as if you were about to blow fire out of your mouth to scorch them.

The same people think that if they shower me with praises I would become fond of them.

Of course, they shouldn't lie.

They have absolutely no idea that they are showing the ends of their diapers as they walk around...

It shows, here and there

Have you ever noticed that we reveal more of our thoughts than we intend to?

Not all of us experience such under-the-influence moments, you know.

I'm not talking about dropping the guard.

Including the occasions when we become too carried away with the subject and blurt out what we tried to bury deep down?

We may become so engrossed in talking about the effects of unhealthy lifestyles on public finance that we forget that a burden case is standing right next to us. Is this the kind of incident that you have in mind?

We may even exclaim, "We have to do something about those people!"

Do you have a nightmare on that theme, once in a while?

I utter the f- or s-word out loud, and everything stops, as if it were a movie and the projector went on strike. It takes a moment to realize that everyone is looking at me with expressions of anger or horror...

Anyway, we don't have to go that far to say that we communicate more than we plan to. As I said in our last meeting, we can't hide our true feelings. It shows through the way we say things. The voice is one obvious factor. The eyes tell an awful lot as well.

It is easy to see excitement, joy, surprise, sadness, boredom, indifference, annoyance, contempt, fear, and so on in them.

What we look at as we talk is another.

The floor/ground, the ceiling/sky, the face of the interlocutor, the object around her/him, her/his body parts or our own, etc.

Our gestures count, too. We can fiddle with the object that we happen to carry. If you have long hair, wearing a ring or mustache, you can play with it. We may cough, we may straighten our clothes when we start or finish talking, and they all say something about our mood, our true feelings behind the words. We usually don't plan those gestures and most of us have little control over what our eyes convey to others. How the talk was initiated and by whom, what was the topic before and after the part in question---these reveal not so much of mood, perhaps, but related thoughts.

And that is why we always reveal more than we intend to?

When we recount the conversations we had with others, we often fail to communicate the full significance of them because we omit the details.

The look in the eyes, gestures, etc., you mean?

Someone may say to me, "You're overly pedantic," but...

You still have hard feelings about that one, eh? I can see it in the movement of your facial muscles.

The problem with people who give me such evaluation is that they don't let me be me.

Are you saying that the negative remark was based on stereotypes?

Not necessarily, considering the fact that it came from my own mother.

Why did she say such a thing?

She meant it as a piece advice for enriching ma vie sentimentale. But what good is it to attract people by pretending to be a person that you are not?

Isn't that a problem that you have with almost anyone? That people do not like you any more if you reveal your true self?

I wouldn't say 'my true' self, because that sounds like I am deceiving others.

Let's say 'your core,' then.

Don't you think it best if we accept that any relationship is community service for each other?

You mean, all of us tolerate each other and nothing more...

Getting back to the topic of factors besides words, we are not so bad at integrating the unspoken elements. That is, we know from them whether the statement is meant as a joke, serious advice or even revenge. The curious thing is that we are hopeless at reproducing them.

That's why actors can keep their jobs, I'd say.

It doesn't have to be reenactment of the scene. We hear the tone, see the gestures and postures. In theory, we should be able to describe them.

We are bad at putting them into words?

What is mind boggling is that we forget the details in most cases. We cannot recall what we noticed and only remember the overall impression that they gave us.

Someone may complain that her/his lover said s/he was too pedantic, but s/he may not get the sympathy that s/he deserves unless s/he can explain how it was said.

I told you, it was my mother! I myself have experienced and also witnessed others go through the same process over and over. We are certain from the non-verbal cues what the true intentions of the interlocutor are, but because of our inability to explain them convincingly, we are told that we are interpreting people in a wrong way.

Isn't it usually the case that if we insist on our take of the event, we are labeled obstinate at best and psychotic at worst?

Or wishful-thinkers, scaremongers... I had been wondering for some time why quite a few people tell us that we should trust our intuitions and gut feelings.

I thought we are not supposed to.

We are taught to avoid emotional and impulsive reactions. These days, I am inclined to give such responses more credit than before.

Are they the same, intuition, gut feelings, hunches, emotions, and impulses?

They are similar in that they are considered irrational and cannot be explained neatly.

You are saying that so-called irrational responses should not be taken lightly, and quite a few people are of the same opinion.

We are very much influenced by what the ideal scientific methods are. That is, if something cannot be proved with evidence and reason, it has very little or no value.

But if we go astray from that principle, we will be allowing witch hunting.

There is that danger, but ignoring circumstantial "evidence" is also dangerous. The huge problem with those fuzzy factors is that they escape communication, and often memory as well. Our interpretation of a specific event is often based on the observation of similar ones over the years. Usually, we cannot remember enough of them to make our case convincing.

Doesn't it depend on how much your interpretations in general are trusted?

It does. In other words, neither credibility of our hunches to ourselves nor that to others can be established in an instant. To complicate matters, nobody has a static set of reactions, so we are never able to deduce with certainty whether interpretations of reactions were reasonable or not.

A bigger problem is that we tend to think that we know ourselves best, but that is not true. We may inquire a person what s/he was thinking, but the answer can be far from what it really was, and that without attempting to lie.

Another danger is that a manipulative person can sell her/his interpretation to a less manipulative one. For example, the former can ingrain in the latter that s/he is useless.

Didn't you imply above that we have the capacity to detect malice in such cases so as not to believe in it?

I guess we differ in that ability. Most of us certainly become more adept at it as we accumulate various experiences in this world. Anyway, we should not underestimate how much people can pick up clues. I can't conceal disgust and contempt when dealing with insincere statements, and that has been a problem.

What about writing, does it come with circumstantial evidence as well?

Writing is a tough one. It is very easy to give an impression that you did not intend to and be totally unaware of it. Writing has a greater variation than the use of voice, I think, and it is much harder to find out the unwritten elements.

Sometimes little correspondence means laziness on one side or both, not necessarily lack of caring feelings.

That can work in the opposite direction as well. As I said before, if we write frequently to each other, that gives an illusion that we care and understand each other well.

Such illusions are backed by solid evidence such as the number of correspondence per month, whereas intuitions and hunches are devoid of proof of that sort...

I find it interesting that incidental details are often more powerful than our summaries of them, such as "He was very angry," "She was clearly shaken," etc.

But we tend not to remember the details that have contributed to those conclusions!

A few more snags to our claim that instincts should not be taken lightly...

I knew it, I knew it. It's your "Snag Time."

One is that deep-rooted prejudice can be misunderstood as legitimate instincts. Examples are ones based on appearance, including race, gender, and so on.

That one...

Another is that one bad incident can form and dominate our instinct.

A severe case of food poisoning would make you physically allergic to what caused it.

That's a good one. The last snag that I can list at this moment is the cultural dependency of incidental proofs. The other night, I was listening to the dialogue between Karen and Denys in the film, "Out of Africa." At that point in the story, they were in love with each other, but did not know whether their feelings were mutual. I felt a bit confused because their conversation did not seem to indicate that one was interested in the other.

If you mean that there were no too obvious, sugary lines, isn't that the only way of declaring love that you approve of?

I have been watching too many of more typical Hollywood movies lately that I didn't even recognize my preferred way of courting.

Mais quelle horreur !

Exactly... It goes to show that cues may not serve their purpose if you are not used to them.

Are you sure that we should trust our instincts after all?

Maturity transcends cultural boundaries, remember?

'Maturity,' our catch-all word are here to save us!

Big, big leaf with tiny hair versus big leaf with tiny hair

Do you really think social conventions are arbitrary?

How else can you explain the fact that opening a gift in front of the offerer is considered rude in one culture and not doing so is rude in another culture?

I think those two rules are based on different aspects of the same action. Since it is not nice to show disappointment, it is better to open the gift after the guest has left. This is the rationale for the first one.

As for the second case, promptly unwrapping the gift is supposed to be a sign that the receipt alone has already made you happy. It also allows showing appreciation in person, rather than in a thank-you note to be sent later. This approach requires that you be prepared to smile and look delighted, even when you are given the ugliest and the most useless object in the entire universe.

Your examples do not say customs and conventions are arbitrary. On the contrary, the common, ultimate goal is to convey appreciation for the act of giving itself, that is, regardless of what is given.

You are right. It is all about showing appreciation for one another. But if we agree that the two takes on gift giving make equal sense, the preference of one approach over the other is arbitrary.

You cannot open right then and there, and also later---you have to choose. Plus, if you are inconsistent in the timing of opening, people would start searching for meanings. Did s/he open it right away, because it was from Monsieur Untel and not from Madame Unetelle? Or, because it was bulky and wrapped with a colorful paper?

I have seen quite a bit of frustration among people who crossed the lines of these two types of culture.

Another well known source of friction is how lavish a spread you present when you invite people.

In many cultures, showing that you are stretching your means to entertain the guests is very important. That said, I feel really uncomfortable when a precious goat, sheep, pig, or chicken is slaughtered, just because I am from a far away place or faintly connected to a person who is mighty important to them.

They are eager to chop the heads off, even if you just met them an hour ago.

How am I going to tell them that I am a vegetarian?

The spread issue can go the other way around, too. If you are raised in a culture which says any guest is to be fed until s/he has to lie down for digestion enhancement, some other cultures come across as offensive.

True. One time, I brought a nice bouquet of flowers to a luncheon, only to find out that the hostess had decided to have a rather soggy and plastic-looking pizza delivered, instead of cooking herself.

I suppose she had a coupon?

I think that was the case, indeed. I was shocked, too, that I was the only one who presented something to the hostess.

And that the pizza was served from the box... Are you resentful, because you had gone a long way to compose a bouquet which looked classy, but not as inexpensive as it actually was?

... But I don't remember your coming to the florist or to the luncheon with me!

Isn't it the company and the content of conversation that matter?

In theory, yes. But, to this day, I feel I have to make more dishes than the guests can possibly consume and I consider a "little something" for the host/ess an absolute must.

I thought you were more open-minded.

It's similar to saying "good morning" to strangers on the street. It certainly does not make everyone on earth on good terms with each other, but it is a gesture that acknowledges your presence and existence. I am convinced that contentment in life is made of such seemingly trivial acts.

In short, although you admit that there are various possible ways to achieve the same goal, you are offended if people do not take the way that you prefer.

I would avoid saying offended, but I was disappointed in this particular example. You may think that I only approve of the manners that I am most accustomed to, but not so. After all, what do we have our thinking faculty for?

Conventions are conventions, because some thinking has been done for you beforehand.

If you cross cultural boundaries, you are most likely to encounter customs and conventions that tell you to do what you were told not to do in some other place.

Just as in the case of gift opening.

As a person with the experience of having lived and living in other cultural environments, you are given the opportunity to choose among multiple solutions to a problem. That is where thinking becomes required.

While you had accepted in toto the customs and conventions taught by your parents, you now reflect on them, compare them with the solutions that you yourself have discovered, and make a rational judgment as to which solution is best.

How successful that can be depends on how open-minded your environment is, and even if people around you are receptive to alien manners, it may take some time to be understood that your way is a viable alternative.

In other words, if people think you are strange, their closed-mindedness is to blame. How convenient!

I remember reading about an anthropologist who lived in a village in a foreign country for his case study. The very first task was to learn the local language. The village elders assembled for the occasion with a bunch of different leaves.

To teach him how to count?

I don't remember if it was the very first lesson, but anyway, he had to learn the name of each plant, looking at the leaves. For him, they were so much alike that he could not distinguish one from another. Of course, the villagers did not understand why a grown-up like him could not tell the big leaf with small veins and short hair from another big leaf with similarly small veins and short hair, but with different luster.

You mean his mental capacity was inferior to that of a five-year old, as far as the villagers were concerned?

Yes. It took some time for the anthropologist to understand that the ability to identify different leaves was very important in their daily lives, in terms of medicine, toxin and nutrition, and that was why the village elders insisted that he master the art. The villagers themselves could not articulate the purpose of the exercise explicitly, because they had not been exposed to other cultures; they had not consciously examined their ways of life in relation to others'.

Does it mean that the definition of full adulthood is culture dependent?

Consider the case of our anthropologist. He does not have the knowledge and the skills to function as the head of a household in the village. Even surviving on his own is probably impossible. Put differently, he may be an adult in his own country, but no doubt disqualified as such in this village. In many cultures, you become an adult only after you are married and have children. In some others, that is no longer part of proper adulthood.

We can say, then, that maturity is about how well you behave along the socially accepted norms. That further means you will have to adopt whatever the local culture says one should do.

It is impossible to abide by all culture codes that we come across.

Come to think of it, if social conventions are arbitrary and maturity is about following such conventions, being mature is arbitrary. We can't be serious about a standard that is arbitrary to start with and changes from place to place.

The most important component of maturity is about knowing when you are going to violate or have violated the codes, and how you make up for that. I believe how you amend is, in fact, more important than whether you commit a cultural transgression or not; however careful we may be, we all make faux pas.

I know about that one! So, what is your recommended strategy?

Be ready to admit your mistake or conscious violation, and be sincere about your past and future intentions that you did and will not act out of malice. Arrogance is always a bad idea, of course, but self-deprecation can also get absurd.

Should we be insincere if we wanted and want to be malicious?

...

Okay, skip that question. But, aren't we back to the same, fuzzy idea that everything should be in moderation?

Yes, and the world will never agree on what that moderation is.

Three cheers for your pessimism!

Oh no, I'm quite optimistic today. If you haven't noticed, that is a problem.

Blame others at a hint of criticism... So much for mature behavior, I'd say.

I declared that maturity can well transcend cultural boundaries. How more optimistic can one get?