Theme
11:22pm June 27, 2014
Anonymous asked: What did you mean by california having a culture of selfishness? I live there, and i'm not sure what you're talking about.

Large chunks of California (not all of it by any means) have this weird thing where people will be friendly to other people on a superficial level, but when the chips are really down, they won’t help each other.  It can become very ugly.  It took seeing other parts of California, and other parts of the country, to fully understand how bad it is in these parts of California.  (And this isn’t a liberal/conservative thing, the selfishness cuts both ways.)  I’m not the only person who’s observed it, and I lived there, mostly in assorted parts of the Bay Area, redwoods, and Central Coast, for 25 years.  (My actual family are Okies and that’s a completely different part of California with a completely different culture that I’m not talking about here.) It’s hard to spot when you’re totally immersed in it.  But you may be from one of those rarer parts of California where that is not in evidence.  But it’s quite common in some parts.  And it’s quite rough if you’re poor or disabled or otherwise disadvantaged, to have to deal with these people who are friendly enough on a superficial level but who won’t help each other when things get bad.

I observed the contrast immediately when I moved to Vermont.  People here can be gruff and unfriendly but one time I dropped my bag in the street after a blizzard, on crutches, and five people appeared out of nowhere to help me, then silently went away when they were done.  That sort of thing never happened to me in most parts of California.