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Monday, August 12, 2013

on the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)

Barry Schwarz covered this Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) phenomenon well, in what he calls the "Paradox of Choice"...:



Where, after a certain point, being presented with more options for choice actually leads to diminishing returns in terms of reported satisfaction for the choices we have made... Basically because we become infected with FOMO.

Facebook triggers FOMO for me.

Xenocentrism

Also from Wikipedia:
"Xenocentrism is the preference for the products, styles, or ideas of someone else's culture rather than of one's own.[1] The concept is considered a subjective view of cultural relativism.[2] One example is the romanticization of the noble savage in the 18th century primitivism movement in European art, philosophy and ethnography.[3]"

Related to Cultural Cringe, which I've explored in a preliminary way in my previous post.

An interesting presentation on Xenocentrism and Ethnocentrism.

Considering:

The habit of Xenocentrism can be manifest in a number of different ways, which includes Cultural Cringe, but can also be ethnic-fetishism (e.g. oh Japanese food is so much better [than our own national / ethnic cuisine]).

Some reflections on Cultural Cringe

What is Cultural Cringe?


According to the wikipedia entry on Cultural Cringe,

"Cultural cringe, in cultural studies and social anthropology, is an internalized inferiority complex which causes people in a country to dismiss their own culture as inferior to the cultures of other countries. It is closely related, although not identical, to the concept of colonial mentality, and is often linked with the display of anti-intellectual attitudes towards thinkers, scientists and artists who originate from a colonial or post-colonial nation. It can also be manifested in individuals in the form of cultural alienation. In many cases, cultural cringe, or an equivalent term, is an accusation made by a fellow-national, who decries the inferiority complex and asserts the merits of the national culture."



in particular, in Australia...:


"The term cultural cringe is most commonly used in Australia, where it is believed by some to be a fact of Australian cultural life.[12] In Another Look at the cultural cringe,[10] the Australian academic Leonard John Hume examined the idea of cultural cringe as an oversimplification of the complexities of Australian history and culture. His controversial essay argues that "The cultural cringe ... did not exist, but it was needed, and so it was invented."


The cultural cringe can be expressed in the almost obsessive curiosity of Australians to know what foreigners think of Australia and its culture.[13]


Some commentators claim the cultural cringe particularly affects local television programming in Australia,[14] which is heavily influenced by imported shows, mainly of American origin. The Federal government has legislated to keep a quota of Australian content (Australian Content Standard and Television Program Standard 23).


Some argue that a form of cultural cringe resulted in anti-heritage attitudes which led to the demolition of many world class pre-war buildings in Melbourne, Brisbaneand Sydney, destroying some of the world's best examples of Victorian architecture.[15] Modernism was promoted to many Australians as casting off imperial Europe to rebuild a new independent identity, and the existing pre-war architecture, which was a feature of Australian cities, was denigrated.[16] This resulted in many calls to demolish the Royal Exhibition Building, labelled the derogatory term "white elephant". It was not until Queen Elizabeth II granted the building Royal status that Australians began to recognise its value. The building became the first in Australia to be given World Heritage status.[17] This reaction against the cultural cringe continues in some fields such as architecture, where local architects are shunned for using introduced styles.[18]


It has also been claimed that cultural cringe has led to federal government information technology contracts going to large foreign multinationals, rather than domestic IT companies.[19]


Another manifestation of cultural cringe is the "Convict Stain". Many Australians felt a sense of shame about the existence of British Convicts in what is now Australia, and many did not even attempt to investigate their families' origins, for fear that they could be descended from criminals. This was known as the Convict Stain, and it made research all the more difficult. It was most evident in sport, where people with known convict heritage were sometimes banned from sporting clubs. For example, in cricket, the Melbourne Cricket Club has a well known Convict Stain policy, making exception for very few, most notably Tom Wills the inventor of Australian rules football. The effect can be reinforced in Britain, where Australian tourists have been asked in jest if they are "returning to the scene of the crime". In recent decades community attitudes have changed, and many Australians with convict ancestors are now more comfortable investigating and discussing their past, wearing their forbears status almost as a badge of pride. Colloquially, attempts by non-Australians to negatively connotate convict pasts are laughed off by Australians, who are now more inclined to associate criminal forbears as evidence for the possession of more positively perceived Australian attributes such as disrespect for authority.[20]"






I am interested in the psychology of Cultural Cringe (CC)...



An experience of many friends of mine here in Australia, disproportionately queer people of colour, who choose to or deeply fantasise about leaving Australia to make a better life for themselves/ourselves in other spaces that we presume to be either more friendly to queer people or to people of colour, or to both. In particular, many acquaintances and comrades of mine have sought refuge in cities like Toronto, New York, and Oakland.






Other thoughts:

About Australian denialism... a sense of a lack of understanding or willingness to understand our own history, both by the Anglo-Australian majority, as well as by many recent migrants (of colour)...

The hapless fixation and fetishisation of American and British cultural values (of which I am, of course, also unfortunately complicit).





Some nuances between types of CC:

e.g. Growing up in Singapore, I also had denigrating perceptions of the culture I was growing up in, believing it (and by extension myself) inferior to "Western" cultural values and norms, which I associated with liberation (from Confucian patriarchal homophobic creatively-stifling values) and Ecstasis (particularly of the American variety). This was, of course, deeply racialised for me too.

Comparing this to the Australian CC, which is not so much "postcolonial" as still deeply imperialist and colonial (Australia, of course, being a country in which the colonist settlers still maintain power and cultural hegemony in determining the self-concept of the nation).




Other thoughts about CC, in terms of devaluing the intellectual and creative contributions of fellow countrypeople, or, when reactively/parochially asserted, they still come across as disproportionately Anglo. So a cycle of CC in me, in my relationship to Australian citizenship. I despair of the internalisation of American-centric values in myself, knowing them to be deeply problematic, while simultaneously I recapitulate certain norms of CC when I lambast Australian cultural production as being myopic, racist, unsophisticated and "backward".





So an exploration of some sort of a remedy, perhaps implicit in a narrative potential in Australia:

Around multiculturalism, internationalism, proximity to Asia, and the unfinished business of engaging with Aboriginal Australian demands for sovereignty. To explore the creative potential in this, not for "international acclaim", but indeed, for personal interest, for creation of new autopoietic patterns within containers of my own making (in which I, along with other queerAustralians[ofColour]) actively choose to give one another recognition, skillshare, etc. and for that to be perfect-in-itself.




More to come...