I ♥ NY
27 Feb. 2008
I've been trying to pinpoint what it is that makes me so excited to be back in New York again, especially since, when I lived here years ago, I absolutely hated it. Too busy, too dirty, too active, too exhausting. Now, though, I've hit my stride and can't imagine living anywhere else. So what changed?
It could be a variety of factors. I no longer feel the need to do and see everything the way I did when I was 20, for instance, so the exhaustion element doesn't really exist any more. I got spoiled by walking when I lived in DC and crave a city that lets me continue to do that, mitigating my irritation with other, less desirable, elements. But, mostly, I think it's because as I've refined my understanding of democracy and human interaction I've come to appreciate NY as one of the few examples of the American city the way it is supposed to work. I love New York for its pure embodiment of that tenuous American dream.
I miss the South sometimes. I miss the oak trees. I miss the expansive skies and furious thunderstorms and I miss mockingbirds and mourning doves and whipporwhills. I miss the food (good Lord, do I miss the food). Ocassionally, I even miss my crazy ass family. But I don't miss the people in Texas. I don't miss getting unabashedly hateful stares because I'm not dressed right or because I don't have makeup on, or when people realize I haven't been to church on Sunday. I don't miss hearing the word nigger all day long, and I don't miss the fact that the only permitted topic of conversation is who saw the appalling hairdo Nellie Jean got and how could that man marry her anyway, seeing as how she ain't nothing but trash anyhow, but at least she'll get found out when the kids turn out to be rotten, 'cause, you know, that bad blood's got to turn up sometimes, just you wait and see. I don't miss hearing that I'll turn straight once I find the right man. I don't miss seeing a person who needs help denied it because they aren't the right sort of person. I don't miss the oppressive heat and I don't miss the oppressive rules by which a proper person lives their life, and by which other proper people make sure it happens.
New York, though. New York. Nobody gives a shit if you walk down the street wearing a pink tutu and wings. Nobody cares if you speak Tamil, or Greek, or English. You can get together with your buddies on the weekend to play poker, and nobody's gonna sit around and tell their Aunt Myrtle about it. You can be a Democrat, you can be Republican, you can be a complete bastard or a saint. It doesn't matter. Because, more than anything, New Yorkers cherish their freedom. They are free to dress, talk, think, and act as they damn well please, as long as those actions don't negatively affect someone else's ability to be equally free. New York embodies the American ideal the way no other place I've lived has. A person is free to strive towards the life they want to live, on their terms, and no one else's. You are free to fail spectacularly or suceed gracefully in New York, based on nothing but your own choices. This does not stop people from, perhaps, secretly thinking you are a complete fuckup. But they keep that information to themselves, thank you very much, and in so doing leave you open to continue living your life. Freely.
Would that the rest of the country followed New Yorkers' example. We might live forever.
27 Feb. 2008 11:58 pm
An old man was sitting at the entrance of a town. A man came by and asked the old man,
"What are the people like in this town?"
The old man asked him, "What were they like in the town you came from?"
The visitor responded, "They were mean, rude and nasty!"
The old man replied, "Well, that is what you will find here."
Another visitor came by later that day and asked the old man the same question, "What are the people like in this town?"
Again, the old man asked, "What were they like in the town you came from?"
The second visitor responded, "Oh they were wonderful! So nice, friendly and helpful!"
The old man replied, "Well, that is what you will find here."
Perhaps your attitude or mindset since the last time you lived in the city has changed? I live in a big city (albeit not comparable to New York) and having lived here my whole life I've only become increasingly disenchanted with it. Every time I've visited my friends in small towns I've had a great time as people are a lot easier to approach, but there's always so much high school type drama. It's amusing for a bit but eventually you want to bitch slap everyone around you. I don't know. While the anonymity of the city can be somewhat comforting and you aren't feeling like you have to meet that social standard of those people who'll gossip about you at the drop of a hat, the city trades it off for socialization through silent impersonality.
"I confess it's a shame when you livin' in a city
That's the size of a box and nobody knows yo' name"
I'm just rambling now. Keep writing!
28 Feb. 2008 3:35 am
I don't mean to come off as generalizing too grossly. I've met people outside of NYC who are great and wonderful and cling tenaciously to a belief in equality and fairness in all their interactions with others, and I've met New Yorkers to whom these concepts are completely foreign. But even so, each city I've lived in has certainly had its own tenor, and the culture of each is noticeably distinct. And I have to say, while I don't find NY less friendly or isolating than other towns (actually, I've read a study or two that suggests that the size of your community has no effect on the number of friends you have. Small town, big town...same number of friends!), I do find the folks who live here significantly more open to the different ways in which we all pursue our lives. There seems to be an understanding that, just because a system works for one person, doesn't mean it should be expected to work for any one else, or that there aren't other systems that work equally well.
28 Feb. 2008 8:27 pm
BTW, I suppose I should also add that when I say I've lived a lot of places, the distinction isn't strictly small town/big town. I've lived in a place so small the entire county had a smaller population than the elevation, grown up in the 4th biggest city in the US (Houston - the Texas city to which this rambling post refers), and lived several places in between. So I'm pretty sure the mindset I'm trying to pinpoint isn't an outgrowth of size or anonymity. I just wish I did know what the root of the attitude was!
Anyway, thanks for the comment. It's pretty awesome that there are one or two people reading this who I don't personally know!
29 Feb. 2008 5:59 am
Yes indeeeed, sorry if I come off as a bit antagonistic. There's no conversation without someone playing the Devil (to me anyway).
I typed in "beat you like a red headed step child" the other day on google and this popped up. I just wish I could stream of thought what you write without being stoned, and beyond that, finishing what I start writing.
I've only ever lived in Toronto, but I've visited a few places...small towns in Ontario are pretty nice. I'm mixed-race but I've never heard an off comment that doesn't deal with me for infringing on someone else's life. People in the States I've always found extremely friendly, but I've never really stopped around much.
The place I've found the most similar experience to your home-town experience has probably been Pakistan. People are fairly critical of you when you step outside the culture, and the only thing that shifts some sharp tongues away from me is that I was never a part of it. I think my mom probably gets a treatment something like what you've experienced, or at least she used to. Pakistanis and Indians are huge gossip whores, I think it's something to do with having too much pride and no humility. I think it's safe to say that modesty is dead and more than a few people could use a shot in the mouth and more than a little time away from the tee vee. Everyone wants to be an archetype!
29 Feb. 2008 8:41 pm
Interesting. The Southern US is also known for having a lot of pride and not a lot of humility, so you might be on to something there. They're also very slow to change and have long memories, which may have a fair bit to do with it as well.
But, yeah, as I'm thinking about it, I definitely am leaning towards the humility angle. I mean, basically, that's what it boils down to, yeah? That people believe they have all the answers and live the perfect lives, and, not only that, but that what is best for them is best for everyone else, too.
1 Mar. 2008 9:45 am
Exactly. It's the inability to recognize any way of living or progression beyond what we think is the "proper" way that, at least I feel, cripples us. We divide and conquour ourselves. Up north, we have the extremely divisive but just as equally meaningless party names of "Conservative"(neo-con), Liberal (U.S. Democratic party supplant) and NDP (push left as hard as you can no matter how illogical). Well, we also have the seperatist party "Bloc Quebecois", but they just have their own localized interests at heart. Hey...maybe they're on to something?
Anyways I'm un-sober and probably shouldn't be trying to put out any "logical" arguements. peas!
1 Mar. 2008 10:51 pm
Certain people choose NY for the reasons you have cited. What you call freedom, I call privacy.
For me, moving to NY (after a stint in the midwest) was motivated by the kind of life I wanted to lead. A life where it was perfectly acceptable to spend one's twenties in school. Where I could hold off marriage and childrearing until my late 30s. I didn't want to spend my life in a car. I wanted to be able to run errands on foot.
Granted my perspective is a bit different than your's having not lived in the deep south. I wouldn't say that Chicago is a particularly judgmental city. If New York didn't exist, I would have been content to live in Chicago. My issue with Chicago is that it is isolated from other major cities in the region in a way that New York is not. You have to cover more distance to get from point A to point B in the midwest.
2 Mar. 2008 3:43 am
I think privacy and freedom are different things, and I'll stick by my use of the word freedom. Learning about or snooping into a person's life is a privacy issue. Using information about a person to make judgment calls, impose expectations, demand change from a person, or alter one's own treatment of them turns it into a matter of impinging on their freedom. Because, ultimately, the purpose and effect of all of those behaviors is to coerce a person to conform to another's standards, whether through active techniques (denying them a job) or passive (providing social pressure). A level of shared standards are obviously required for a society to function (do not kill people); however, the demand to meet impossible (change your skin color) or superfluous (women should be good cooks) standards are what I take issue with.
4 Mar. 2008 5:23 am
Freedom to choose with a little societal influence to throw a little determinism into the mix. Do something you love, as long as it makes money. Don't let people push you around, unless the only way you can push back would get you in trouble or cost you money and time. I don't know, I'm pretty disenfranchised with modern society. Life seems pretty bland over west, but maybe I just need to travel more. I wouldn't mind some state-of-nature reversion though, the idea makes me curious.
While it would be foolish and unfair for us to treat people according to generalizations and our own pre/mis-conceptions (whether from our own experiences or those of our peers), wouldn't it also be foolish to completely ignore them? These days we're finding that we have many of our unsubstantiated conceptions backed up by statistics, but do the statistics justify prejudices? Do they make them "correct"? Is it ever really fair to generalize, even if based on knowledge of a general trend?
Statistics, man, statistics! Sure, they're cherry-picked to push a hypothesis more often than not, but if you can find enough events of something to show a general trend or some sort of commonality, should you not use that knowledge, at least to some degree, to influence your opinions and actions?
EVERYONE should be a good cook.
4 Mar. 2008 4:22 pm
I can't agree with that.
I don't believe in pushing people around. I don't believe in extreme self-interest. I don't believe in placing a person's right to choose above a person's responsibility to those around them. I actually believe that behaving acceptably and in such a way that it doesn't infringe on another person's life is damn frigging hard and requires an immense effort.
I'm not proposing we completely ignore people. I'm proposing that we understand each other better and expand our definitions of what constitutes acceptable behavior. Basically, I think if a person's behavior is not hurting another person, then it should be considered reasonable and within the bounds of acceptability. This increases the amount of freedom there is to go around. Period. The appeal of this system is that, if a fair number of people followed it, it would increase freedom and actually become self-sustaining/fulfilling.
The drawback is that it is completely unrealistic and naive - freedom does not exist wholly and people are selfish assholes. People must either work for it by pushing themselves to maintain it (thus choosing to give up a small amount of their own freedom) or they maximize their own at the expense of others'. Either way, all people do not have all freedom all of the time and few are willing to go to the effort to sustain such a system.
Given that, on a personal level, I think all one can do is ask oneself whether you would rather take some from others to give yourself the most, or whether you would rather give up a small amount of your own so that all may have it equally.
5 Mar. 2008 5:08 am
I don't believe in egoism etc., but it's what I see from people and the direction I see people being pushed through their (general) susceptibility to mass media. I try to go by the golden rule, but after a while you just want to give people what they give you instead of giving what you want in return. When it comes down to the people I'm with and the people I want to be around, I'd much rather have the whole group happy than be vastly more well off on my own. My friend and I were talking the other day about being the one rich person in a group of friends. Wouldn't you want to spread at least some of your wealth to your friends? Can you really enjoy all that money on your own?
Anyways, what I guess what I was trying to get at is that I find egoism to be much more prevalent in densely populated areas like the city, where people who are not ourselves or those we know on at least a semi-personal level become anonymous, faceless mannequins that simply pass us by. Whether the people you know talk trash about you or not depends more on the kinds of people you interact with, and I think that living in a big city you can more easily weed those trash talking folks out from the group that you keep close. While those people in the small towns shove their criticisms in your face, how are they for egoism?
I guess I'm saying that in the city egoism dominates and while people may seem less critical it's just that they hide it, and in small towns people seem more willing to lend a hand but more wary of what seems outlandish to them (as they only experience such a range in people), and so feel that as they are in a position to comment on the oddity at hand (whether it be your sexual orientation or your marital status), as they have no worry of backlash they should comment.
Now, as to statistics! We're constantly being turned from humans into numbers on paper. Not only are we anonymous bodies wandering through cities stacked high with them, but our personalities are determined through focus groups and studies.
Hah, I always lose track of what I'm trying to get at. Tell me if you find it.
5 Mar. 2008 5:46 am
I haven't actually lived in a small town though so I can only talk from my experiences visiting for periods! And I also am prone to generalizing for the sake of arguement.
8 Mar. 2008 3:36 pm
No, I didn't feel totally comfortable with the small-town/big-city faceless number in the crowd explanation before, and I still don't. For starters, it's too pat. It's too oft repeated. And, I guess more to the point, it doesn't really match my own experience. Also, finally, I hate the whole cliche about how people in NY are anonymous faces. That's bullshit. I recognize and say hello to people in my neighborhood all the time. I recognize strangers on the subway because we tend to ride together at the same times. I bump into friends in different parts of town. I have favorite stores I frequent and can greet the proprietor in. New York is not anonymous, it is not isolated.
In fact, I think that group isolation is the key. I think the more isolated a particular group of people is from other, differing groups, the more harshly they impose their worldview on others, because being isolated to a particular group tends to lead the group to extremes of thought, it leads to an ignorance of other possibilities as viable, and it plays off of people's tendency to please the group.
This may have tendencies to run one way or the other based on the size of the location, but by no means is it a one-to-one relationship. The extremely rich have more than enough resources available to them that they can willingly segregate themselves from other populations, whether they are in a idyllic country town or in the biggest city in the world. They can actively construct a system that keeps outsiders out, where those in the middle classes may have more bleed over between differing groups of people. At the opposite end of the spectrum, in a town with only ten people, you might not like the fact that one dude is black, but you'll learn to accept it because he owns the only gas station. In time, you'll probably even like him.
So I think how much a person is able to isolate themselves has more to do with the resources available to them. But sometimes they are natural resources. Sometimes it is the number of other people available as resources. Sometimes it is the number and variety of ideas as a resource. Sometimes the resources are monetary.
24 Mar. 2008 10:37 pm
Nothing more to say really, I can't disagree with that.