I'm learning a great deal from Clarissa's blog about aspects of behaviour that one can consider socially normal. Even though Clarissa is from the Ukraine, quite a large part of her ideas about social normality have more in common with people from U.S. culture than mine.
Many people assume that my upbringing must have been generally "Western", because English is my first language and because I am white. Surface appearance belies the significant underlying differences, however, which permeate my psychology.
To aid others to understand these differences, let me outline a few of them that may differ from contemporary Western values and ideas.
1. I was not brought up to think of myself as having a discrete identity and personality that had to be recognized in its own right. It's not that anyone would have denied that I had a personality of my own. It just wasn't accorded any value as such. My personal characteristics were not viewed as a sign of future success or failure in life. Rather, physical characteristics (and to a lesser extent, academic aptitude) were considered markers for this. Overall, very little attention, if any, was given to the consideration of my -- or anybody else's -- future prospects.
2. Sturdiness -- particularly as represented in the character of the soldierly white male -- was very much lauded in my original culture. If someone fell sick in any way, they were hurriedly ushered as far as possible from center stage. It was a huge social shame to have anyone who didn't conform to this ideal of sturdiness in one's family. Also, sexual transgressions led to this enactment of defense against the exposure of the family to social shame.
3. Christianity was synonymous with moral decency. Everybody was nominally a Christian, unless they were morally indecent. Islam was considered a morally indecent religion.
4. I had no sex education in school and I didn't understand the fundamental mechanisms of sex until way into my late teens (and even then, it was rather hazy and didn't bear thinking about).
5. As a female, I had to suppress my anger as female anger would worry and unhinge my father. Male anger was okay. My father's lid would burst every so often and he would express very high levels of rage -- but never in a way that we found coherent.
6. I never had any trouble with socialization in any of my Rhodesian (later "Zimbabwean") schools. That is because socialization itself wasn't really an issue. The thing was to mingle and to go along with others. This was more in the mode of external action, rather than in terms of understanding others' viewpoints. In fact it was assumed that everybody thought the same, so there really wasn't anything to discuss.
7. Everyone felt that "fate" was something you had no control over. Events just happened to you and one situation moved into another. There was nothing you could do about that and nor should you bother to try. Everything that happened to you in life was simply inevitable.
8. The survival or death of anyone around us was part of life's inevitability, which didn't bear thinking about too deeply.
9. Women were considered incapable of doing sports as vigorously as men -- although Zimbabwean sportswomen competed very effectively at an international level. At levels lower than international competition, women were considered to be a little anemic -- sometimes incapable of exerting themselves too much.
10. All people were very formal and polite. Foreigners were labeled as outsiders by means of jest and sometimes even treated with censure if they were deemed to be lacking in "class". One had to show good manners in order to be accepted within the society.
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