Category: Civilization, History, and Anthropology

CULTURAL OBSERVATIONS: LOVE IN THE EAST

Now, after living here three years, I understand what my Ukrainian and Russian friends have been warning me about Ukrainian and Russian women, but that they couldn’t quite put into words.

It’s both good and bad. Or maybe it’s not bad, just different.

In my generation, in the states, we became wealthy enough that the family is no longer an economic unit, but an emotional one: you marry for recreational compatibility, and for psychological compatibility. You marry for friendship.

And we have been ‘sorting’ (See “The Big Sort”) for a long time now, into regions and castes. Hence my prediction (not terribly hard, insightful or unique) that America will both divide and develop into castes like south america and india for the simple reasons of abandoning european household traditions, and drastically importing underclasses.

So what we americans see is retention of the practice of marriage in the upper classes where the economic benefit is great, and the disposable income to enjoy each other is great, and we see abandonment of marriage in the lower classes where the economic benefit is limited, and the disposable income to enjoy each other is limited – (and frankly, where the other person isn’t always enjoyable.)

But the net is, I grew up in a world where the relationship takes precedent, and personal intimacy is the highest ambition. This is higher on Maslow’s pyramid of wants needs, but like higher economic velocity, is more fragile than economic wants and needs.

Now women here in the east (like the men) have visible ‘survival values’. Visible low-trust. Visible short term horizons. Even if they are moral. Even if they are sweet girls deep inside, their value system is that they should be married by 22, have children by 25, and if by 30 they don’t they’re old. And the outnumber their men due to unemployment, alcoholism, illness, emigrating for work. Worse, it is ‘normal’ for husbands to cheat on their wives here either frequently or occasionally, and western men just tend not to so – and consider it a failure if they do. Worse, domestic violence is common and expected. I have (I’m not kidding) had a woman try desperately to make me violent with her. Which given the history of my father and mother I’m just not going to let happen – ever. I couldn’t understand it other than it was expected.

So for a woman in the east, the world is a very different place from the west. Family (meaning children and relatives and friends) provide emotional support, economic insurance, and men are disposable, and unreliable, and emotionally expensive resources. They love you just fine – within the limits of their abilities and traditions and expectations. But they don’t love you like a western woman does: as your best friend, the person you depend on for everything, and the person you trust most in the world. They don’t have the luxury or the tradition for it.

And this has given me some consternation, because I absolutely love the culture here and feel that in many ways it is so much better than the nonsense culture we have in the states. Western men are so much better than eastern men, but we are constantly demonized by the feminists. Eastern men are terrible by contrast but they are never demonized. You see and hear from mature men everywhere in society here. Whereas the media in the west is constructed for youth and women to the exclusion of men. To no small degree, white men read. Women and children watch advertising.

But once you have had a woman who is your best friend, the love of your life, and total personal intimacy of interwoven souls all women in the east seem — somehow loveless. More feminine. More beautiful. Better mothers. But not soul mates.

Now I am making a broad generalization with the realization that women can’t avoid cognitive solipsism. And one of my closest friends is Russian and he and his wife DO have that level of intimacy. But they live in America also. So like any topic where we compare entire categories such as race and gender (yes ladies I know your brains have a hard time with this), we see distributions. But it is still possible to make observations about tendencies in distributions.

Lesson is that we have exchanged the durability of the marital relationship in the west for the luxury of greater EARLY intimacy that improves over time. Whereas in the east they still practice economic and familial mating, in the HOPE that intimacy evolves over time. In our world individuals matter more to both man and woman, and in their world the family matters more to the woman, and it appears, less so to the men.

Marriage is necessary for the construction of commons. Because men are dangerous creatures. We all pay costs of creating a civilization and marriage turns out to be one of them.

I love being married. I love women. But I love her friendship more than anything else. Where you can discuss every bit of each other’s souls, and work to make each other happy and fulfilled. There is nothing like it. I can find a family easily. I can find sex easily. I can find income easily. I cannot find my closest love and friend easily. Despite the fact that in my view, I can love nearly anyone I find even moderately attractive.

Feminine intimacy is to some degree the ultimate good. I just did not realize that it was a luxury good. Or that it was not a universal preference. Or how significant a difference in relationships had occurred in the west as the result of our wealth.

Economics in everything.

Curt Doolittle