(no subject)

[oyceter]

First mess-up at work today, sigh. Hopefully it wasn't very big, and I got it fixed quickly, but still. My manager wasn't there when it happened so I will have to tell her tomorrow. Unfortunately, the person whose job I was helping out with was the one who found out and was sort of grumpy about it.

I don't like being yelled at. And I am very sensitive to being yelled at, so what some people may just consider brusque is pretty scary for me. I was thinking about this after said incident today and about the guilt vs. shame society. I can't remember who said it (maybe Ruth Benedict of The Crysanthemum and the Sword) and how Asian cultures are supposed to be cultures of shame while Western cultures are more cultures of guilt. When I first heard this, I sort of shook my head and thought, wow, horribly essentialist. Now I'm wondering if the fear of yelling is part of the culture of shame thing? Or maybe it's just me. Because I think I would do a lot more things if I thought no one would catch me. Well, not thought. If I was sure of it. But I really dislike confrontation and arguments and being yelled at. And I never quite know how to respond, so mostly I think I just try to out-polite people.

I also just noticed today while talking to some old friends I haven't kept in touch with for a while (no, Anlee, I'm not talking about you!), I try to make my life seem as boring as possible. Mostly this is if I don't really trust them. But it's a sort of camouflage in a way... just be boring enough and ordinary enough and people will sort of just pass right by and not notice the true strangeness underneath. This is why I don't talk very much when I first get to know someone. It feels like I should sort of test the waters and let them talk more before I really start talking, because once I start talking, I don't really ever stop.

Taken from jonquil:
A book you own that no one on your friends list does: Er. Do you know how many books my FL has? I'm going to go with vols. 4-9 of Yazawa Ai's Nana in Japanese.

A CD you own that no one on your friends list does: Alas, my music taste is fairly common. Maybe one of my C-pop CDs... Guang Liang's first album.

A DVD/VHS tape you own that no one on your friends list does: The Taiwan version of Spirited Away.

A place you've been that no one on your friends list has been: Er. I'm just going to guess somewhere rural in Taiwan, except cychi is on my FL and he's probably been there too.

Comments

[oursin.livejournal.com]

I think Benedict was applying in that particular context Norbert Elias's theories about shame and guilt societies - his work (from what I know of it, i.e. very little) was mainly about the shift in (mostly Northern/Western) Europe in the early modern period to a guilt society based on internalised moral controls (associated with the rise of Protestantism, I believe).

[oyceter]

Ahhh, that makes more sense, thanks. I actually haven't read Benedict either, but I remember a professor or two mentioning the concepts in class.