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Money and Power Don’t Change Mindset
Mark Steyn once wrote that a great part of the appeal of Elvis Presley was that…
…no matter how rich he got, his tastes never changed. Being rich meant doing all the same things he’d done when poor, only more so: he had banana pudding every night; instead of eating one cheeseburger, he’d eat six; instead of cruising Main Street for a late-night diner, he’d hop on the private jet, burn $16,000 worth of fuel and fly to Denver for a peanut-butter sandwich; instead of a 22-inch TV, he had the planet’s biggest set; instead of grumbling that there was nothing on, he’d blow the set apart with his M-16 automatic rifle; instead of shooting beer cans off the tailgate of his pick-up, he’d buy up every available flashbulb in Memphis, toss them in the pool and shoot them out of the water. At Graceland, he took an antebellum colonnaded fieldstone mansion and turned it into the world’s largest trailer.
This isn’t the decadence of Hollywood and Manhattan, just the regular tastes of poor rural whites on an unlimited budget.
I was thinking about how true this is for so very many people. You might think that Russian Mail-Order Brides would be thrilled to marry a decent but lonely American guy, but you would be wrong. Being Russian, they just find other ways to maximize misery.
The Assad family were tyrants who ravaged and bled out a country. They could buy any toy a person could want. And they did: luxury cars of every brand. But in the corner of their garage are a couple of honest-to-goodness RVs.
Why?
My theory is that the desert nomad myth hangs tough, even with people who have never, themselves, been actual nomads.
Every culture has its RVs, the telltale elements that we just cannot leave behind. And it is not just food or dress or even language. Think of the Depression generation (and often their children) who simply cannot bring themselves to throw out food.
So here’s my question: What is the single most prominent cultural marker for your people?
I’ll go first: in the Orthodox Jewish litvishe world, the single biggest compliment you can pay someone is to call them smart. For better or worse, intelligence is rated more highly than any other attribute.
Jump in! The water’s warm!
Published in General
As a Southron, grits, properly made.
Cornbread is good, too. No sugar.
I usually enjoy a Mark Steyn article but that was just so bitterly cynical and somehow wrong that I have a difficult time stomaching it. I don’t for a second believe that Elvis was finished musically at that point in his career. Death finished it prematurely.
If we’re talking ethnicity, while I have ancestors from all over Central Europe, the greatest concentration seems to be German. Maybe this isn’t a German-German thing, maybe it’s just a German-American thing. Maybe just a Minnesota German-American farm culture thing, I have no idea. But here is an observation I have made.
There seems to be a propensity to be stingy with compliments or encouragement among some of “my people.” My father was raised with the attitude that people should be scolded if they do something wrong, but should never be praised for doing a job well, because everyone is supposed to do everything right every time. I don’t get this. If someone is doing a good job, why wouldn’t you want to let them know you are happy with their performance, so they give you more of it? And the people I have seen live by this philosophy have by no means been shy about receiving praise. They have wanted to be reassured that they’re great. I’m dealing with a pretty small sample size, though, so maybe I am seeing a pattern that doesn’t really exist.
I think that’s rather common, Weivoda.
Greeks? Heritage. Overweening pride at being Greek. My ancestors were building marble temples and inventing philosophy while yours in northern Europe were living in wicker hovels and chasing around in forests!
My ancestors came from a rather long line of New England Yankees on one side, and German families who had immigrated in the 1880s. They seemed to embody the sentiments attributed to an old Vermont Yankee husband, who told his wife:
“When I think of what you have meant to me for all these years, sometimes it’s more than I can stand not to tell you so.”
— Vermont is where you find it. Keith Jennison, Durrell Publications, c.1954
I subscribe to Steyn because I support him. And there is no denying that he is one of the most verbally brilliant men of our age.
But I cannot read Steyn anymore, because I always feels worse for doing so. His world is darker than I want mine to be.
Don’t knock it until you try it. We also sailed the seas and traded (and raided).
So did the Greeks. See the Odyssey and the Argonautica.
The Latvians were ethnically at least part German. Somebody no doubt participated in the Livonian Crusade and forgot about the oath of chastity, probably.
The Swiss-Germans seem to have found themselves on the wrong side of someone’s line at the end of the Thirty Years War. They worked their way north until they boarded ship in Amsterdam for the New World. Another batch came over at the start of the 17th century from the Rhineland and headed for Pennsylvania.
The first contingent from the British Isles proved sufficiently annoying to the Crown that they received a free ride to America “there to remaine and not to returne.”
Family has been keeping that close for centuries, eh?
Nah. When we went back during World War II, there were no hard feelings.
Re the OP title: Yes they do. I’ve observed it in the person with whom I am most closely acquainted, as well as elsewhere.
Khmer here. We pride ourselves on being clever. The use of words and witticism, rhyming, riddles, rapidly formed punning, and spoonerism are considered to be the Khmer national habit.
And litigation, another national habit.
Family on my mom’s side all hunted: deer, rabbit, squirrels, turkey. After decades living in the suburbs of Baltimore and DC where all that was verboten, I moved to rural Georgia. I have a twelve-gauge, and when the deer cross the property, I sometimes wish we weren’t so close to the neighbors….
Military service for most men when circumstances called for it, at least this was the case for my immediate family and ancestors going back to colonial times. These families lived in the Appalachians or nearby from Pennsylvania to Georgia. But I see that ending with myself, one first cousin and one half-sister being the last, so that’s three generations now where I haven’t seen it in a single family member.
Fårikål . . .
Ample (some would say excess) food at family and social gatherings. I attribute this to our mostly German ethnic heritage.
My maternal grandmother and my aunt (not my grandmother’s daughter) were both known for putting out at least three times the amount of food the number of people who were gathering could possibly eat, and then sending everyone home with enough “snacks for the trip home ” to feed everyone for at least two days!
Other than food, frugality. Simple entertainments, mostly at home. Things (clothing, furniture, tools, equipment, etc.) were expected to be cared for and to last practically forever. The one exception was automobiles. My grandfather’s only splurge was a new car every year until he retired, and then a new car every two years. Though he always bought the base trim of a modest model (always a Ford). My parents and I followed the frugality part, but we included cars, and kept cars a relatively long time.
Maybe just an ’ovel made of wicker, but were an ’ouse to us.
Does Cambodian lend itself to the above more than English?
Door Dash on tiny hooves.
That’s nothing, the Bajorans have them ALL beat!
Yes.