Privacy

The French close their shutters every night so no one can see into their homes.  They don't talk about money, they don't talk to people on the metro, they don't give out their names, and it doesn't matter what they do for a living.  But they'll invite you in to their dining room, feed you, have a conversation with you about their children, their house in the country, and give you a jar of fig jam if you show interest.  This is the gist of the chapter I read today.  And I love it.

It's privacy.  It's a different notion of what is private, and what isn't private.  The home, the family, personal decisions--those are all private, to the extent that 'scandals' aren't really scandals at all but simply not your business.  And yet arguing, disagreeing, eating are not private matters, but in fact more public than we as Americans would think.

Hospitality is expected on many accounts, but only if you do it the right way--the French way.  Saying bonjour and au revoir as you enter and leave a shop, for example, will get you good service.  What has this to do with privacy?  Well, you're coming into someone else's private domain, and in doing so, it is only polite to greet and give farewells to the person whose home or business you enter.  However, asking someone outright what their name is will create immediate barriers.  Why?  Because whether they want to be contacted by you again should be their decision--not yours.

Also, it seems to me, the French are not worried about finding and keeping people they like to share company with, or converse with, because they figure that those people will find and gravitate toward each other.  And they seem less worried about wasting time with the wrong sort of people, because I don't think there's a worry about wasting time, or a worry about "wrong people."

Nadeau and Barlow point out one interesting difference I really enjoy: that is, the conversation between couples.  "They typical American couple seeks to display harmony. . . . The French expect exactly the opposite: . . . a relationship should be strong enough to withstand differences" (43-44).  It's not that American relationships aren't strong enough to withstand differences, because in fact they withstand all sorts of differences all the time, but that arguments in public seem distasteful to them.  And thus the French seem to value idea-oriented discussion rather than relationship-oriented discussion.  Meaning, they attack ideas, not the person.  And in doing so, a little arguing is hardly anything to bat an eye over.

This is an interesting cultural difference to me and it reveals how to go about talking to people in different ways.  Knowing and remembering someone's name in our culture is not only a sign of respect, but engenders trust.  Not so in France, where asking for someone's name is a breach of privacy.  Eating in our culture is our business, we eat what we want when we want it.  Not in France.  Eating is important, and therefore is something you do a particular way, something you allot time for, something you do communally with others.  I don't think either is inherently wrong or right, but different for explainable reasons.  So I better master bonjour and au revoir if I want to make people in France happy, which I do.

Ah, Socialism. Or is that--what?--history?

I'm loving Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong by Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow.  It's helping me recognize some aspects of French culture that I might not have been aware of before reading.  In reading just a couple of chapters, I'd like to report that I'm fairly certain that at least outside of the business place, if not within the business place, too, the French operate on P-time unless otherwise directed.  This may explain what North Americans tend to categorize as "bad service" because the French take their time.  It may explain why they work only 35 hour weeks, or why they take entire months off of work.  Because working every second of every day is unimportant, is unproductive, in the end.

But what I really want to discuss is something French businesses do that the book discusses called Les soldes or "the sales."  Twice a year, once from the middle of January to the middle of February and once from the middle of June to the middle of July, the French have their "sales."  Anything can go on sale at this point in time from clothing to furniture.  "To hold a sale outside that period, merchants have to obtain special approval from the police.  The rest of the year, smalls hops and big retailers can't so much as offer a rebate without facing the wrath of the law" (11).  Honestly, when I read this, I thought of socialism.  Of bureaucracy.  The state decides when stores have sales for goodness' sake!  But then I continued reading.

"It dates back to practices of the merchants' guilds in the Middle Ages," the book reads (11).  Um...before socialism existed.  "At that time, guilds had two functions: they settled disputes among tradesmen of one town and protected the tradesmen against competition from other towns" (11).  Such a rule explains why France still has what we call "Ma-and-Pa" shops.  Because quality and pricing is protected and managed, allowing small stores the chance at survival.  And thus, in France, sales are regulated.

It's not socialism, which is easy to accuse a country of, but not so easy to prove.  It's history.  I like this little addition in the book, "The practice of regulating sales predates the discovery of America by at least three hundred years" (11, emphasis added).  I.e. before we feared socialism, before we worshiped capitalism, before we even existed, France had a system in place to protect its business men and women, by way of guilds, regulation, and police.

And that's why its important to know history, because politics, government, and therefore culture are innately connected to it!

Healing Time

Our most recent reading about Monochronic and Polychronic time of course made me begin to wonder which I adhered to most, or best.  Before reading Hall's article I stumbled across a post written by Averyl Dietering--who is going to the UK--and agreed with her about Monochronic time.

For those of you who don't know Hall's theory about the two different times, M-time is best described as compartmentalizing your time into a schedule.  It's what you imagine the President's day is like, with everything from meetings with ambassadors to time for tucking his children into bed mapped out for him.  Or, if you knew what my last semester was like, where I had every day to the half-hour mapped out just so I could get everything done, it's like that.  The idea of M-time is that the only way to complete things is to compartmentalize them, to schedule them, to do only one thing at a time and then be completed.  Hall says that those who adhere to M-time often refer to time as being wasted, killed, saved, lost, or made-up (266).  P-time is organic, fluid, and chaotic to someone who operates in M-time, but it is most like a mother's schedule, Hall says.  "How else can one raise several children at once, run a household, hold a job, be a wife, mother, nurse, tutor, chauffeur, and general fixer-upper?"  If that example doesn't work for you, think of how you learned the Native-Americans treated time.  It's about people, Hall says, and the people who deal in P-time are usually never alone, very little is private, and rarely are people excluded or is time compartmentalized.  P-time is about keeping people informed, getting people the things they need, and rarely keeping to a schedule, or a queue, etc.

Before knowing this, and just reading Averyl's post, I was certain I was an M-time person.  It's what I've done my whole life.  School starts at this time, and work starts at that time.  Lunch with someone and this time, and a review meting at this time.  It's how I've learned to operate, and the way I show I care about people is by not wasting their time.  And I definitely think of time as possible to waste if and when I have much I have to do.  I, for example, do not appreciate when someone is late to a noon meeting we set up, when I have a lunch planned with a friend at 1.  Because I know that lunch friend is operating on M time, and being late is rude.  The person I had a meeting with who shows up at 12:45 is even worse because what they're telling me is that they have no respect for my time.  But that's ONLY because I have something planned at 1.  If I was going to be at work until 4 with no other meetings or plans, I care very little that the person showed up at 12:45.  It doesn't matter to me, because I got things done in those 45 minutes and an hour from 12 is just as productive as an hour from 12:45.

So, I realized that I adhere to M-time, and prefer M-time when I know others are keeping me to M-time.  But I also realized in reading this article that if it were up to me, I would much rather adhere to P-time.  Saturday's, for example, I have always treated as my days.  I hate when people schedule things on Saturdays because I like to be in charge of it as my only day.  It's my healing day.  Yes, I may be doing homework, or I may be sleeping in, or I may be cooking for a crowd, but it's my day and when you M-time schedule my day, I am not a happy person.  This is because P-time heals.  I couldn't give you a scientific reason why I believe that P-time heals, just that you need time where what time it is doesn't matter to feel like you're just human and not a piece of a machine.  And I imagine it's the way life is probably supposed to go, but "civilized" first-world countries can't operate on P-time, or else we don't believe they can and so we don't value it as much.  P-time looks lazy, and maybe from some frame of reference it is, but you don't have to be unproductive within P-time, it's just that when you complete things means means little; the clock means little.

I look forward to this Field Study which I feel will consist of the best of both times.  I expect M-time to get me up in the morning, and P-time to let me wander.  I expect M-time to help me meet people and keep appointments and P-time to let me converse with them with no worries of how long it will take, or how late it is.  I expect M-time to catch a train and expect P-time to let it take as long as it needs to.  M-time is for initiation into life-experiences, but P-time is for living them.  P-time is for healing.