The View from the Tower of Babel (From Western Europe to North America)

I once thought each culture had its neuroses, I now think each culture is a neurosis. 

Neurosis is defined as a particular atrophied behavior, the expression of which results from some sort of malady. Mental conditions that are not caused by organic disease, but involve symptoms of stress, such as obsessive behavior, but not a radical loss of touch with reality. You could easily replace the word neurosis in this definition with culture. 

The malady would be, for example, the orderliness of German society. The French taste for luxury. Or the American drive to be exceptional. There’s that tweet that made its rounds on the internet captures it well "Every French beach town has a little café called like the Nautilus and every American beach town has a little café called Scratchy Dick’s Big Slut Crab Fuck Shack". Or the meme of a map of Europe divided north and south that names the upper half as potato Europe and bottom half tomato Europe. These stereotypes are just that, generalizations and tendencies that become apparent when placed in opposition to one another. International travel allows for this juxtaposition. 

I grew up in middle America, in the northeast, lived in California, was born in the south. I've traveled and lived in Europe off and on for twenty years. What I’ve seen from the vantage point of international travel is that the view from the tower of babel is at best comedic.

French gangsters wearing jogging suits deal grams out of fanny packs at the Barbès Metro Station in Paris. Overweight Germans drive high performance cars in a hurry so as to respect the Prussian value of punctuality. And it took me years to realize I am incredibly American. I will tell you why I am American. 

If you enjoy what you're listening to but would rather hold these stories in your hand, say while riding on public transport to mom's house or to the mirage of self-actualization through travel, you can buy a book or two at miragetravelpodcast.com

Transcript

The View from the Tower of Babel

I once thought each culture had its neuroses, I now think each culture is a neurosis. 

Neurosis is defined as a particular atrophied behavior, the expression of which results from some sort of malady. Mental conditions that are not caused by organic disease, but involve symptoms of stress, such as obsessive behavior, but not a radical loss of touch with reality. You could easily replace the word neurosis in this definition with culture. 

The malady would be, for example, the orderliness of German society. The French taste for luxury. Or the American drive to be exceptional. There’s that tweet that made its rounds on the internet captures it well "Every French beach town has a little café called like the Nautilus and every American beach town has a little café called Scratchy Dick’s Big Slut Crab Fuck Shack". Or the meme of a map of Europe divided north and south that names the upper half as potato Europe and bottom half tomato Europe. These stereotypes are just that, generalizations and tendencies that become apparent when placed in opposition to one another. International travel allows for this juxtaposition. 

I grew up in middle America, in the northeast, lived in California, was born in the south. I've traveled and lived in Europe off and on for twenty years. What I’ve seen from the vantage point of international travel is that the view from the Tower of Babel is at best comedic.

French gangsters wearing jogging suits deal grams out of fanny packs at the Barbès Metro Station in Paris. Overweight Germans drive high performance cars in a hurry so as to respect the Prussian value of punctuality. And it took me years to realize I am incredibly American. I will tell you why I am American. 

Break

I was sitting at a table in a cafe in southern France, it could’ve been any table in France, they are all one and the same. Like how every WalMart parking lot in America is technically connected to one another. A friend of mine, a Frenchman named Adrian, said to me “you know what we Europeans say about Americans? That you’re all like children. Impulsive, over excited, and you’re young because you lack a long history.” He exhaled the smoke of a hand rolled cigarette.  

I attempted to argue against his take. Said something to the effect that history is not only an accumulation of historical facts or a list of battles written by the victors. I mentioned the history of the Native Americans and added he would be racist to discount it. 

“But,” he asked, “how much of it do you know? You and your fellow Americans?”

My silence was a statement of guilt. Secretly, I knew he was right. The longer I stayed in France, in Europe, the more I understood I was American. It was mostly due to the distaste for the constraints of European traditions. The lunch hours. The tedious conversational niceties. Having to think before speaking, that type of thing. Sure a siesta appears pleasant in Spanish cinema, but it's more tyrannical than the sun. Before I went traveling I thought I was an individual. That was my neurosis. Assuming I was totally divorced from context, acting in a private pursuit of happiness, all the while calling myself free. I should have just called myself American. 

Back to my friend. That Americans are like children. It's something only a European could say. He was dressed in a collared shirt when he said it, and he stirred sugar into an espresso, calmly. It was appropriate. For he was cool, and I was exuberant—I had switched from coffee to beer and the streetlights had just come on, blanketing the cobblestone in lime. No matter how many times I saw it, the stereotypes of old Europe set my little heart fluttering. I’m equally interested in the representation of things than the things themselves. Expectations are more curious than reality, especially when conformity to those expectations makes reality. I like cliches. They are the cultural artifacts I excavate when traveling and its simple because they lay on the surface. 

"What I loved about the US though,” he said, “everyone’s running around like chickens with their heads cut off."

I had to disagree with him. I was in my twenties, so naturally a leftist. I retorted that Americans mistake movement for direction. Like I said, I was twenty and thought everywhere was better. One of my favorite aspects of Paris when I was twenty was that it wasn’t San Francisco. Now that’s what I dislike most about it. I was American therefore entitled—I had been told since the age of eight I could be anything and had taken it literally. I was promised I could’ve been an astronaut or the president. In the end, like most Americans, the entitlement only made me opinionated. 

“Everything’s relative,” I said. 

“Guess you’re right.”

“If everything is relative,” I said, “who’s better to judge a place than an outsider?” I didn’t wait for his response. “I know though,” I said, “that Americans are forever going on about the best thing.” I said Americans as if I wasn’t one.  I continued, “We talk of the greatest. We use so much hyperbole, like children. I once saw a T-Shirt in the Dallas Airport during the second Gulf War that showed a map of France, overlaid with a map of Texas, with an offhand comment about Texas being bigger, therefore better, than France. 

“Come to think of it,” I added, “Have you ever thought Americans look like they shopped their look from a catalog or television show? I reckon it begins in adolescence, when teens are groping around for an idea of self, and look for a suitable disguise. But, to the extent that Americans are adept at pushing their adolescence into their twenties, and continue their twenties into their thirties, an entire demographic slice of contemporary American society resembles high school cafeteria lunch tables. With jocks, preps, goths, and skaters sitting segregated.”

Break

In my twenties, I crisscrossed the country on Greyhound buses. I would save minimum wage for several months then call a friend in a distant state to ask for space on a couch. Once, in the New Orleans bus depot, while waiting for a westbound to Texas, I admired framed black and white photographs of Greyhound passengers in the 40s and 50s. The exhibition was destined for a larger audience, so no commentary on segregation was made. The theme of class was not developed in the series. The viewer was simply asked to pay homage to history without feeling indebted to it. It was the cost Americans were willing to pay to be free. 

The men and women travelers half a century prior were impeccably dressed all the way up to the hats. Men had their shoes shined, women wore cotton. Both looked good if not uncomfortable. The depot in the millennium was all travelers in sweatpants eating from vending machines or convenience stores. They had moved the ashtrays outside since the 40s and desegregated the waiting rooms, but it was the same families traveling for hours to see, or to flee, relatives, jobs, opportunities. Yet seemingly poorer, black and white.

I carried several paperbacks by the Beat Generation authors, Kerouac and Gary Snyder mostly, so the towns where the bus stopped became literary, cinematic. Plot lines were drafted in the autobiography of my mind. All places sat at a crossroads and in a historical continuum between “out west” and “back east". At a taco stand in Indio, California, I studied a map. To the west was the pride from traveling that came at a cost of a sense of belonging. To the east were friends and their couches, their porches. If I settled in any of these towns, I thought, although many were ugly they would soon become familiar. Home. But then again, I wouldn’t have any reason to write letters. 

In Kansas City, I met a poetess, recently returned from Chile, who claimed a tenuous connection to Pablo Neruda. She said that she had sworn off reading so as not to infect her poetic vision. I asked her, as we waited in line for the bus West to board, to give me a verse. “There are more people inprisoned behind picket fences in the Midwest...” I don't remember the rest, the queues in the Kansas City Bus Depot, like many other depots, were disorganized and she incidentally boarded a different bus. I wrote the verse in the condensation on the window and wiped it clean before anybody could read it.  

I dropped acid with a man in his mid-fifties recently released from a midwestern jail for three strikes drunk-driving charges. Cutting the blotter on a McDonald's tabletop at dawn with a knife and within the driver's proximity, I considered my recklessness a proof of manifesting my destiny. It was a close reading of Kerouac's "the only people for me are the mad ones…"

“Maybe, you'll find out one day," Kenneth said as we boarded the bus. "It's incredibly easy to be jailed in America.” 

He seemed to be, if not apologizing, justifying himself. In Wyoming by evening we were smoking a joint on the side of the depot, staring blankly at a plateau. I had only ever seen plateaus in spaghetti westerns and while watching reruns of Bonanza with my grandfather. It was too risky to rob a bank in the police state the US had become and the Mexican border wouldn’t provide immunity, so I settled on doing drugs on intercity buses to convince myself I was living up to expectations. Conquering the West. 

“There’s a narrative," I said to Adrian in Montpellier, "at least for white men in the US, that it's a rite of passage to go out and see your country. As if it's owed to you.” We had since switched from beer to wine. 

Kenneth drank for nearly three days straight, while I shot buffalo from the window. At Salt Lake we walked the multiple blocks to buy several bottles of vodka, outside the city center. It was Christmas and the acid was still working hard. The nativity scene was all fire from the candles burning in the surroundings. The whiteness of the snow was brighter. The twin arches of a McDonalds sign guided us back through the grid to the station like a cross.

Through Nevada, we split a fifth of whisky with a Native American. I rolled another joint. He mentioned his destination several times, each time it became more slurred. He was returning. Going home. Without mentioning where he was coming from. The Greyhound bus seemed to him to be in disputed territory between home and away, some bridge through both night and day. When we stopped at a gas station the bus driver said the name of the native’s town. A town I had never heard of nor do I now remember. The man was snoring. Drool shone on his cheek. I shook him awake. He stood up then repeated the name of the stop, not as a question but an affirmation. I followed him down the steps, and, surveying the darkness around the convenience store, asked him where he was going. To which he replied "to the east until I hit the river and after crossing it I climb two hills and on the other side is home."

I bummed a menthol off a black woman as an inroads to conversation and together we watched the man go out into the crucible of night.

I boarded the bus, swinging wide around the driver so as not to be kicked off for drinking. The sun was behind us when we entered California.

America Chevrolet ad

Was it really romanticism that set Americans out on the road? The Eisenhower Highway System, whose construction began in the mid-fifties transformed the succession of ruts, pits, and holes of lesser roads into broad ribbons to wrap the country. It also facilitated the crossing of the land by military vehicles. And with it the flexible labor migrated from one urban manufacturing hub to another. The burgeoning fast food industry rendered travel more predictable and safe and convenient to uproot and fracture families. Just as foreclosures in rural America during the Dust Bowl broke up the patchwork of the subsistence farms and sent Okies west. So were those who went out on the road, the Beats, Humbert Humbert, and the serial killers nomads or simply refugees? 

When I went back to college in France, whether it was in the Mediterranean or the center or in the Alps, my classmates often went home on weekends. During school holidays they would vanish. In short, they were from somewhere else, albeit nearby. The place was often a village. Adrian was from a hamlet not far from where he ashed his cigarette. His grandparents were buried not far from where we drank. I had moved so often, like many Americans, I hadn't seen my family in months, or was it years? My friend spoke of his village like a true peasant— “the bright natural acidity of this Cahors wine,” he said, “is due to the limestone in the hills around us.”

I smiled with gray teeth.

“One thing, I’ll add,” he said. “Americans suffer from binary thinking. Like children, you lack nuance. This good & evil thing in your films.”

“It's easy,” I said, “kids love a simple narrative.”

Break

"Do Americans live in a society? Clearly not. Americans live in a culture that teaches competition over cooperation, where everything is for sale, and everything is sold. Like education, health care. They, or should I, say we don't live in a country but rather a market. This is why American cultural production is unstoppable. Jazz, blues, rock, hydrogen bombs. We create things, sometimes out of nothing. Like the plastics industry. Slinkies, yoyos. Or neologisms. ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.”

Adrian had once asked if I had strange epiphanies come to me in the shower and I had replied, yeah, it's called Shower Thoughts, there's a whole subreddit dedicated to it.

To which he replied, "You fucking Americans. You have to make everything a thing." I didn’t tell him, as I suggested we change bars, that we were on what was called a pub crawl. 

I once traveled three days from Central  Europe to Midwest America and the first time I stepped foot on US soil, other than in an airport or bus depot, was in a gas station well south of Boston. Night was kept at bay by strips of fluoros, and an overhead speaker niched in the building's corner advertised "Amish style aromatic feeder boxes." 

While I stretched my legs, I inspected the regional products, which were difficult to find as they had been pushed to the back to make way for a wide range of condiments. After washing my arm pits in the sink next to the ghost of Hank Williams, I was asked to rate my experience in the bathroom. Two days later an email asked to evaluate my bus ride. It was an endless referendum geared to the consumer. And in a culture where people dress up like protagonists in their favorite choose-your-own-adventure novel and judge one another like hyper-critical high schoolers, we embrace or dismiss one another for the designs on our T-shirts.

We also can't frame socio-economic thinking around anything but race to the point that everybody is vying to become a minority. We’ve conflated representation with power, in our great big costume party, and think that a stage is all it takes to have something to say. As if having an opinion is the same thing as being empowered. Yet, when a speaker who self identifies with multi-hyphenated identities gets their Ted Talk they only end up yet another URL. At best a bumper sticker. 

We lack subtlety. We lack tolerance all the way up to American foreign policy in which we feel the need to kill all the ideologies with which we disagree. We interpret the course of history as an eternal battle between good and evil, between free market capitalism and a slide toward armageddon. 

The saddest thing I saw in my twenties was poor people fighting each other to board a Greyhound bus, all across the country. 

Break

Yet, Americans are incredibly friendly. At least to their in-group. One corollary of binary thinking is that if you’re good, you’re good. There is a belief that you’re a reasonable person as long as you're wearing the right Tshirt. Or you share a common diagnosis in the ever growing Diagnostic Statistics Manual. 

Break

Germans, on the other hand, rank among the bottom 5 least friendly local population (50th) according to the Expat Insider. 

Expats in Germany Are among the Unhappiest & Loneliest Worldwide the author claims. 

Under the link to the article on the German subreddit a comment reads "Ah, so they're fitting in perfectly."

The article continues “While Germany offers a rich and diverse cultural scene,” the article reads, “some expats struggle to adapt to the local customs and etiquette. They find Germans to be cold, distant, and unfriendly, especially in big cities like Berlin or Munich.”

I rent a desk in a coworking space in a German city for my email job. A tram that I wish was still called a street car shakes the foundations of the stone building when it passes ten times an hour. I learn German during my downtime. I remark on the efficiency of compound words like Schadenfreude, taking pleasure in someone else's misfortune. Or Trauerfloristik, funereal floristry. I learned that “Zeitung,” or “newspaper,” literally means the filling of time, aka events of the day. It's a precise, visual word. As is the German language. “Augenblick'' is “a blink of the eye.” Of course, there is its Latin equivalent “moment” but that conjures nothing in my mind. The Germanic language has specific words for nuanced concepts, "Fingerspitzengefühl" (keen instinct or tact), "Weltschmerz" (world-weariness or melancholy), "Kummerspeck" (excess weight gained from emotional overeating). A “washbear” is a raccoon because the animal lacks saliva and therefore washes food before eating it. 

So, after learning two Romance languages and struggling to learn Arabic, I can confidently say that comparatively, German is an incredibly economic and visual language. 

But you wouldn’t know that because the people with whom I work rarely speak to one another. In the shared kitchen we choose mugs emblazoned with puns and hyperbole. We turn around one another, and several times a day, my coworkers merely nod or grunt when I say hello. 

I’ve hitchhiked in Germany, South from the Swiss border, through the industrial heartland of Europe in Cologne, Dusseldorf, Essen, in the Ruhr valley. I was repeatedly taken by business men in Audis. What I didn’t know back then was that, “how are you?” is not a rhetorical question. The men would answer matter of factually, then continue conducting business on cell phones. They paid tolls with automatic readers, as they hurdled past the smokestacks in the flats. Corporations lined the highways, very American, although lacking fountains so as not to waste water. They dropped me off on an on-ramp barely saying goodbye before accelerating down the ramp. 

Yet, when you’ve made a friend in Germany they remain loyal. It reminds me of the Midwest, where five million Germans migrated to the United States during the 1800s, bringing their craftsmanship and farming techniques, their beer and potatoes, not to mention the modesty I appreciate in Midwesterners. 

Break

And nature?—The national parks in the United States are untopped, especially when compared to Europe where, after overhunting and overlogging for millennia, they now marvel at squirrels in gardens. You would be hard pressed to hit a deer on the highways in either France or Germany. The forests, at least in Western Europe, are relatively diminutive. I once got lost in a woods in Romania and all it took was two hours to walk out of it. I had been warned of bears at the tree line and jumped when I heard rustling in a clearing. It was only a stray dog, docile and domesticated. 

That said, if you want art or architecture, then go to Europe. It's true that America also has decent art museums, because inside them are European paintings. 

During my first few days in Europe, in Paris, I waddled with beer from park to garden. Wrote bad poetry in every wicker chaired red awning cafe. Second hand smoked. At night, instead of retreating to a hotel or hostel, I would piss in the bush then lay out on a bench, and generally go musing with some fantasy I held about middle ages Europe. Mornings I bathed in public fountains. I visited the museums when they were free and while visiting the apartment of Napoleon the third housed in the Louvre Museum, I lingered under crystal chandeliers eavesdropping on English speaking tour groups. 

"To walk through the Napoleon III Apartments is to travel back in time!" The guide boasted.

As I took notes in the back pages of a novel (If I remember correctly, I was reading Story of an Eye), it occurred to me how much of the beauty I saw about me was inaccessible to me, all gold and velvet. Observing the plaques, the names were off, the history was not mine. I had the distinct feeling that I did not, and had not, participated in history. The optical illusion of a garden painted on the dining room wall gave on to an unfamiliar garden, complete with peacock. Here I felt most peasantly. Even the animals were treated better than me, as they walked a property of trimmed hedges. In their own ideal. 

"Napoleon the third," the guide said, was the only president of the Second Republic from 1848 to 1852, and after a coup d'etat proclaimed himself Emperor and effectively became the last Monarch of France."

She went into a series of battles, detailed Napoleon's defeat to Bismark, and lost me in the dates.

The only revenge I could enact, the only agency I could muster to fight the namelessness was to elbow my way through Japanese tourists vying for angles for photographs to the bathroom and masturbate in the world's largest museum. 

When I returned to the tour guide she was praising the uprising known as la Commune. I felt better, and began assessing the course of history with a clear mind. 

While there may be crime in ornamentation, as the Austrian architect Loos argued in his drive for equality, its opposite is also true. In America, anyone who has the buying power can shop at a Best Buy in the Midwest. They're shaped like a fish tank. The aesthetic effect underlines the reality that often the rare beauty in urban America is on a screen. That's precisely what they sell. To people drowning in entertainment. American towns, caught up in the modernist dogma of form follows function are a monstrosity, from Shreveport, Louisiana to Modesto, California.

As a kid, I lived near a portion of historic Route 66, in Rolla Missouri, a town self proclaimed as “The Middle of Everywhere.” I learned of the existence of the road from the exuberant signage and Autos of Yesteryear museum, now closed. When they added I-44 through Missouri, much of it fell right on top of the Route 66 corridor. These days, the original path runs parallel to the interstate, as if, again, America wants to tip its hat to history without having to respect it. We're not only young, we've neutralized our past in some oedipal complex.

My grandparents in eastern Texas commonly referred to neighboring towns as if they were distant states and Louisiana, whose border was 30 miles east, held the same weight as Vietnam. My grandfather, who was drafted into the Korean War, was a cook on a ship that never left a port in San Diego, but he spoke of California as if it were Asia. There is now a WalMart within walking distance of the well on his farm. The bucket is all holes.

In the US, Amtrak sells tickets for rides named the Lake Shore Limited. It cuts through the Hudson Valley traveling from New York to Chicago. On the opposite side of the nation, on the Coast Starlight, trains travel from Seattle to Los Angeles where passengers take in the Pacific Ocean from an observatory cart. It skirts the bay where my grandfather would throw trash into the ocean at the end of his shift.

On the Greyhound bus stops I had to look behind the fast food restaurants to find the gems. Any holdouts against the corporate steamroller of convenience stores and gas stations that have eaten into the landscape and usurped the regional character of pockets and corners of America. Take it from American painter, Thomas Hart Benton, whose work I first saw on a field trip at the age of seven to Jefferson City, Missouri. I remember it because it was the first time I felt a part of history. In my elementary school imagination, I lived in the murals. 

Benton was a prominent American painter and muralist associated with the Regionalist art movement. Born in Missouri, he was deeply influenced by the Midwestern landscapes and people, which he depicted in his works. I identified with the children catching crawdads in the clay bottomed creek. Benton gained recognition for his dynamic and often large-scale murals that celebrated American life, history, and culture. His style was characterized by rhythmic forms, bold colors, and a sense of movement, capturing the essence of everyday life and the supposed American spirit. 

An interviewer of Columbia University’s Oral History project asks in 1976. 

    Q: Do you think the country's being homogenized now? We seem to be losing our sectional differences.

    Benton: Well yes, no question that it is. The subject matter that I devoted my art to has practically disappeared. Not wholly, because I know areas where I can go out and live on a farm and re-find it. But generally speaking, it's gone, and one thing about it, the town near that farm will be just like any other town by now, and most cities.

Break 

When I rose out of the subway hall on an escalator in Les Halles, in Paris Center, it was Fete de la Musique, or World Music Day. The event originated in 1982 and was initiated by the French Minister of Culture, Jack Lang, and Maurice Fleuret, a French composer, music journalist, and festival organizer. The idea behind La Fête de la Musique is to promote music by encouraging musicians of all genres to perform in the streets, parks, museums. I was unaware of this. I took Europe to be drinking cheap beer until midnight, listening to punk rock in front of churches and that I had been kept ignorant. 

To be homeless one needs to lower one’s standards, and the lower standards, the further one can travel. I had ambitions to see all of Europe, I had ambitions to stay away from America, so I had to do away with almost all my standards. That night, I slept in the bushes behind Notre Dame on cardboard laid over a spot of urine.

Hitchhiking out of Paris I was picked up by a large man on a backroad. I stood stranded in the rain outside of Toulouse, autumn was coming on, and I thanked him as I stepped into his spotless and ordered Citroen. I apologized. We spoke of the weather, compared countries. We bonded over shit talk on my president. I then told him I was looking for under-the-table work. At this, he went long on the benefits of the French Foreign Legion. 

“I drop you off at the next Gendarmerie, you spend a night in a hotel, and the next day you're on a boat. To the war. Then in five years, you’re French.” 

As I thought everywhere was better than America, I mulled over his offer. The man drove through the countryside with a disregard for speed limits, and the Plane trees that flanked the road that were planted to shade columns of Napoleon's soldiers blurred at the window. The sky was colored like a Cezanne painting.

Under a sky 

 But, after 20 kilometers of deliberation, I apologized then shut the door and continued in the rain. 

Surfing that cliche of a baguette in one hand and a paintbrush in another, I once, in trying to obtain a visa, interviewed at the School of Fine Arts in Toulouse. My French was rudimentary, all pointing and unconjugated verbs. The lady at Admission’s English was about the same. She opened her hands like opening a book and asked “portfolio, where?” I responded that I did not bring it, she asked what kind of art I did. I fumbled, trying to describe the type of vandalism that I did in my free time. My medium, I said, was spray paint. She looked at me like I drew dicks on the doors of bathroom stalls and told me about a long process for foreign students which made me ineligible. Here I was, an American, thinking I could just pay my way into school and score a visa. I thought about using the bathroom before leaving. 

Later, after much bureaucratic gymnastics, I went back to school in France for lit and languages. I learned the language. In doing so, I understood the culture. Of course, there are the initial opinions when traveling. Oh how the French are polite, reserved! Their children are angelic, even in grocery stores. One needn’t read Georges Bataille’s work on sovereignty and desire to interpret the pursuit of luxury as the will to transgression. Nor the postmodernists to craft pompous diction. The cultural specificities begin to manifest themselves in language. I had a shower thought:

In France, if you listen closely, it will happen: you see someone trip on a crack in the pavement or speak out or turn, they will say something in the heat of the moment that betrays their vulnerability. “La honte” or “Oh the shame!” It happens one day, and it happens many days. 

The vulnerability, shame, is experienced in the eyes of others. The word faux-pas has migrated into English the language by a process called linguistic drift. It describes a unique “thing” best expressed in a culture’s language. The ubiquity of the word denotes the power of shame to bend an individual to conform. The connotation of a “false step” to an Anglophone is less felt than a French person feels a “faux pas.” Shame!

To shame someone is to ostracize them and delimit appropriate behavior. Michel Foucault, French philosopher and social theorist argued that modern societies are characterized by the emergence of various disciplinary institutions such as prisons, schools, and hospitals. These institutions use surveillance, normalization, and examination to regulate individuals' behavior and create "docile bodies" that conform to societal norms. Foucault contrasted the sovereign power's use of corporal punishment and public executions in pre-modern times with the modern shift towards disciplining the mind and soul. He argued that punishment has become less about retribution and more about reforming the individual, aiming to produce obedient citizens. Normalization is a key technique of disciplinary power. It involves establishing norms of behavior and measuring individuals against these norms. Those who deviate from the norms are subjected to correction and discipline. 

Schooling is mandatory in France from the age of three. From 9am to 430pm. It makes for well behaved children. It makes for neurotic adults. Maybe this explains why it's uncommon for French people to strike up chitchat in the street. Social constraints make the cost in interaction too high, and besides they might be in a hurry to get to the pharmacy to pick up their refills. 

In the US, guilt is the motor for conformity. In our purity culture, a president can be impeached for getting his dick sucked in the Oval Office. In the prosperity gospel, welfare recipients internalize the narrative of bootstrap capitalism. There’s that quote falsely attributed to Steinbeck that all poor in America are temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Whereas the French feel the weight in the regards of others, a struggling American carries the fear of failure squarely on his or her shoulders. 

Break

While under the fluorescent lights in a French university on the Mediterranean, I discovered Hofstede’s 6 dimensions of culture, a framework for comparing cultures. They include Power Distance, Individualism vs. Collectivism, Masculinity vs. Femininity, Uncertainty Avoidance, Long-term vs. Short-term Orientation, and Indulgence vs. Restraint12.

Power Distance: This dimension measures the extent to which less powerful members of society accept and expect power to be distributed unequally. France has a relatively high power distance, indicating a hierarchical society, while Germany and the US have lower power distances.

This one was easy to see. College professors in France treat their students like high schoolers, barely encouraging critical thinking until Grad school. Learning is mostly by rote. Essays categorically follow a three part structure. The modern French education system established during the 3rd republic rendered instruction mandatory in 1885. All classes were in French and the cursus, established by the Education National in Paris, was, and still is, centralized. Everyone learns the same thing, everyone knows the same thing. Its referred to as Culture Generale and consists of historical facts and curiosities. To speak to a French adult in any length about the nation is not unlike a museum guide giving a walk through of their bourgeois history.  

They’ll say something to the effect of “Louis, is a common name in France, like Louis 14th, is an elision of Clovis, who actually united the Frankish tribes to become the first king of the Frank.”

Everyone says the same thing. For example, I've lived in three corners of the country and have heard the common conversation about whether a chocolate croissant was called a “chocolate croissant” or “chocolatine” or if plastic sack was really a “plastic sack” or a “pocket.” Over and over again. Don't worry if you don't know how many times you should kiss a woman on the cheek in greeting, the conversation is on everyone's tongues and they speak it as if it's the first time it's been had, and giggle as if it's the country's best kept inside joke.

Power Distance: the university professors were shocked when I lay my head down on my desk to sleep off a hangover or I left halfway through a lecture. Shame on me!

I'll give you another example, more nuanced. There's the way of speaking, the manners. Americans, particularly men, are boisterous. We’re taught to be iconoclastic, and we write ourselves in as the heroes in the stories we tell. Correct me if I'm wrong. For the first several months, or years actually, I would drink beer with my college classmates. I smoked handrolls, not like a vagabond but a student. Not Buglers but Gallois. Like most students, I spoke about the world at large. Told stories of close calls. Like hopping freight trains through the Texas Panhandle where the roads that made and ruined the country were miles away. It was but a small proof that I was living a good life. Maybe I was overcompensating during that period that every immigrant goes through in which he or she is considered as a novelty.

A common rejoinder from the more sober persons was time and time again, "Ah bon." Maybe I was only an opinionated dude. After all, you have to be to speak into a microphone to the internet. 

I would then sit back and let the conversation fill the air around the table. When my French was decent enough, it hit me. I had an epiphany in the shower. All conversations in French society maintained an equilibrium, remaining inoffensive and easily accessible to all. They talk with, not at each other, and I was being shamed for running off at the mouth. 

Again. Using Hofstede’s dimensions of culture. The second. Individualism vs. Collectivism: The US is known for its individualistic culture, where personal freedom and self-reliance are highly valued. For example, Americans often prioritize their personal goals over those of the group. On the other hand, France and Germany have slightly lower individualism scores, indicating a greater emphasis on collective identity and group harmony. In these countries, people may prioritize the needs of their family or community over their individual desires. So I was an atom, and my individualist harangues, that could only be met with similar tangents, upset the behavior of molecules. To extend the metaphor, it was difficult to bond. Lol.

If a conversation culminates around a table in France, it builds slowly on a bedrock of former points or inside jokes, until, hours later, the group is in laughter, together. Although that is rare and depends on the quantity of wine in the conversation.  

That’s why they have class consciousness. They speak of solidarity. Their media, and social policy, because it addresses social ills from a class perspective, is often on point. 

In France, the upshot of routing personal socio-economic failures back to the shortfalls of government policy is that if you're poor, so is everybody else. It’s a loophole that French republicanism promises freedom, equality, and fraternity for all because although it doesn't provide them—no government can—it's nobody's fault. Besides, the relative high quality of life is no doubt due to the relative bad work ethic. 

They don't protest for change, rather against it. They drag their feet into the future, not preparing another revolution or commune. They're probably only preparing lunch. Yet in a world that is constantly changing and forever sliding toward armageddon, to remain the same is timeless. Cool.

Break 

Most travel, and most travel writing is drafted during a honeymoon period, when your heart goes crooning with the middle ages architecture. When the rain on the cobblestone still shines in your writing on your blog post that cheapens the genre of travel writing. When the traditions are quaint and not constraints.

A car tailgates me on the streets of an eastern German city. During the honeymoon period you notice the superficial. Later you write it into the larger observations. I’m two seconds too late to accelerate when the red light turns green. Comparisons are odious but that’s half of a traveler's experience. I once lived in Haiti's capital, Port au Prince. Gangs controlled over half the city, and kidnappings happened daily. The president was recently assassinated. But, as you carve the neighborhoods laid out like an amphitheater in your Landcruiser, although the traffic is choked, the drivers are cordial. The entire political system hangs on a thread and yet each driver spared what they had. They were generous. Unlike the passive aggressive conductors of German roads.  

Masculinity vs. Femininity: Germany has a relatively high masculinity score, emphasizing assertiveness, competition, and material success. For instance, German society values career achievements and financial stability. In contrast, France and the US have lower masculinity scores, reflecting a greater emphasis on nurturing relationships and quality of life.

The only point I can say here is that, as I looked for an apartment in various neighborhoods, the real estate agent repeated the virtues of the neighborhood. He spoke of home, or should I say, apartment, ownership. Which is somewhat rare in Germany where many rent for life, but ownership entails impeccable upkeep and seriousness. Rentability. The real estate agents spoke of Ruhezeit. The institution of "Ruhezeit'' which translates to "rest period" or "quiet time" in English, refers to designated quiet times, when residents are expected to keep noise levels down to avoid disturbing others, highlighting how Germany, and Europe in general, is a great place to retire. It’s no place for adult children. 

The real estate agent, on three occasions, and I understand this is not representative, delimited the virtues of the neighborhoods by saying “here we work, they don’t work.” 

As if I gave a fuck. I was, after all, on a honeymoon. 

Germans live in a society. There’s a series of children's books in German that explains the functioning of society called "Wieso? Weshalb? Warum?" (Why? Why? Why?). The series covers a wide range of topics, including nature, science, technology, professions, and everyday life. The books are known for their interactive design, with flaps that can be lifted to reveal more information, detailed illustrations, and age-appropriate texts. The series helps children understand various aspects of society, how things work, and the principles behind everyday occurrences, fostering curiosity and a love for learning. There are a lot pertaining to cars and construction. If you drive through the industrial landscape of modern Deutschland, you might note something neurotic about the amount of roadwork. 

Long-term vs. Short-term Orientation: Germany has a higher long-term orientation score, emphasizing perseverance, thriftiness, and respect for traditions. For example, Germans value long-term goals such as saving for retirement or investing in education. In contrast, France and the US have lower long-term orientation scores, indicating a greater focus on short-term results and adaptability.

They clip coupons and hold on to copper coins. You can see, or should I say hear how they speak of sales at the local Aldi often. It surprises me that the eastern half of Germany was ever communist with how ungenerous they are! 

Other than talking about sales at the local Aldi, Germans have a very cause and effect logic. If they only discovered the reasoning it would create alchemy! The culture values precision, thoroughness, and reliability, which is evident in their historical contributions to science, philosophy, engineering, and metal music. The education system emphasizes critical thinking and problem-solving, while the German language's structure might encourage logic. German sentences often place the main verb at the end, requiring the listener to pay attention to the entire sentence before understanding which may encourage a more linear and logical way of processing information.

According to Hofstede's analysis of culture, uncertainty avoidance is a dimension of culture that measures the extent to which a society tolerates ambiguity and uncertainty. Germany has a high uncertainty avoidance score, indicating a preference for rules and structure, while France and the US have lower scores3. In a local paper reporting on a new, yet dysfunctional parking meter shows dozens of disgruntled people queuing to pay. The other day, I saw a jogger on a sidewalk use his hand as a turn signal as if he were a machine. Germans may be the only people I’ve seen read instruction manuals after purchasing items, and I’ve heard it said that if you want an honest, technical review of a product bought on Amazon, go to Amazon.de and translate the German language review into your native tongue. 

These are the cultural idiosyncrasies of the honeymoon. 

I signed a lease. Then moved boxes up three flights of stairs. I passed through the back door. There’s a massive inner courtyard, the size of a football field behind all the apartments of the block. It’s been divided by fences, each section belonging to one address, rendering each plot the size of a four car garage. In the basement are multiple bins with blue, yellow, brown, and black lids. For paper, plastic, compost, and waste, respectively. Because they care about environmental sustainability. Our neighbors, who had not spoken to us as we passed with the couch on the landing, knocked on the door. 

“The black bin is for trash, not plastic.” 

I wasn’t waiting for apple pie, but didn’t expect a correction so soon. 

I live in the east, where intergenerational poverty from the former communist regime meets a burgeoning version of consumer capitalism. You've all seen that photo of the opening of the first McDonald's in Moscow. It's like that, 30 years on They've been swept up in the zeitgeist of rampant individualism expressed through  bad tattoos. The free market has ushered in an array of energy drinks. We're deep behind the lines of Potato Europe. Where the butter churns. 

The urban centers are green, bike lanes are sandwiched between roads and sidewalks. The parks boast incredibly creative and unique playgrounds that allow children to navigate risk at young age. Unlike in the US where playgrounds, and society in general, have become secured and sanitized to avoid injury, lawsuit, or a thrill.  

Indulgence vs. Restraint: The US has a higher indulgence score, valuing leisure time and enjoying life. For instance, Americans may prioritize personal happiness and self-expression. On the other hand, France and Germany have lower indulgence scores, reflecting a greater emphasis on self-discipline and restraint.

There’s a quote often attributed to Vladimir Lenin and goes something like this: "There is a joke about the German revolutionary who, intending to blow up a train, bought himself a return ticket. It's not a joke, it's the tragic truth about the German revolutionaries." 

Always one for learning, I visit the Stasi Museum. I learned that at its height, the official state security service of the German Democratic Republic, was one of the most repressive intelligence and secret police agencies in the world. At the height of its operations, it is estimated that the Stasi had about 91,000 full-time employees and up to 175,000 unofficial collaborators or "Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter" from a population of around 17 million in East Germany. This ratio of surveillance agents to population was for every 63 to 100 people. When including part-time informers, the network coverage was even more extensive, potentially involving an even larger segment of the population in its web of surveillance.

The Stasi's methods were incredibly invasive, with agents conducting extensive surveillance of both East German citizens and foreign visitors. They kept detailed records on a vast number of people, collected information through a widespread network of informants, and employed psychological harassment and intimidation to suppress dissent and opposition to the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED). The extent of the Stasi's surveillance and oppression became fully known only after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the opening of the Stasi archives to the public.

I remember my neighbors. With the way they sweep silently down the stairs and keep odd hours, the numbers are against them—at least 1 out of 63 persons were on the Stasi payroll. They are a couple, meaning 1 out of 31 and a half. 

Lenin was wrong though. There was a revolution in Germany, although it was bloodless. The Peaceful Revolution in eastern Germany, was a series of nonviolent demonstrations for political reform and freedom starting in 1989 often cited as a pivotal moment leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. When I think about it, I would’ve protested against our neighbors, too. 

Zizek 

Interesting, but you could also qualify the German toilet as a way to honestly, pragmatically assess one's health. All the more important for its aging population. The French toilet in which shit directly disappears, contrary to Zizek's assertion of revolutionary expression, can be seen as a sign of hypocrisy. After all, they have somehow managed to wrangle out of their complicity in the holocaust by trumping up the resistance led by De Gaulle and Co. Finally, the AngloSaxons, we just want to put water between ourselves and the past and drown the stench to persuade ourselves we don't stink.

Break/Conclusion 

American's movement is direction, namely towards some white Atlantis. We love to claim Swiss stock. Midwest tourist towns boast German heritage. But are these hyphenated identities anything more than a little “Kiss Me I’m Irish” pin on our sweaters? They call America the cemetery of foreign languages because first generation immigrants often forgo learning the language of their parents. I guess, we all learn to speak like children, eventually. 

To return to Thomas Hart Benton, and his landscapes studded with artificial mountains and exaggerated skylines. The grass, greener. The interviewer asks:

    Q: Do you think, looking back on it, that your view of these unspoiled, rural districts might have been a little romanticized?

    Benton: Possibly. I told you the other day that to some extent, those travels were, certainly after 1926, were an effort to recapture the world of my youth. And possibly any art that pictured that would have the character of a romance because it was a dying culture.

If all cultures are neuroses I’ll be the first to admit I’m neurotic. Travelers, made mostly of comparison, can never see the thing in itself. As do Americans, even townies who have never traveled out of their state. They live a mismatch between the great narrative of the nation and their current reality. They look around the decoration of a Cracker Barrel and what they see is tragic. It’s a vanished country. And when looking back at the US from atop the Tower Babel, a country from which I'm estranged, I sense that all Americans are estranged. Like adults are estranged from their childhood.