The Needed Changes

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Clarissa

March 28, 2016

I was walking with Klara today, and when she started making little noises like a cute bear cub, I stopped the pram in somebody’s driveway and looked in to comfort her. I talked to her because my voice always calms her down, adjusted her hoodie (she’s sporting a hoodie today; it’s incredibly cute), pulled up the blanket, and took a drink of water.

When I was finally ready to continue the walk, I discovered that there was a car behind me. The owner of the driveway where I stood had arrived and was waiting patiently for me to move on. This person didn’t honk, didn’t jump out of the car to yell at me, and instead waited quietly to avoid disturbing the baby.

People are worried that Ukraine’s current government is turning to be not much better than all the previous ones. But not even the best government in the universe can make people learn to be considerate to somebody else’s (let alone to one’s own; that’s an impossible dream) baby, not to stick bribes into the faces of everybody they meet, not to be casually cruel to each other, etc. These are the changes Ukraine needs. Everything else will follow.

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8 responses to “The Needed Changes”

Vic Crain

March 28, 2016

Teaching people to be respectful of one another is a general need, not something one country lacks.

There was a somewhat famous book from 1989, Fulghum’s “Everything I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kintergarden.” Not enough people have read it.

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Shakti

March 28, 2016

Is it odd that I thought “why wouldn’t you stop your car and wait for the woman with a baby stroller to move from your driveway if you just got home?” I’m picturing a bunch of houses not along a busy street.

Do you have any idea how long the car was there?

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1. Clarissa
  
  March 28, 2016
  
  Our (Russian speaking) people are very mean and angry. Everything is a pretext to be mean to people.
  
  I do tend to space out but I don’t think I stood there for all that long.
  
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  1. cliff arroyo
    
    March 29, 2016
    
    Have Russian speakers always been nasty to each other, is it a product of the CCCP or did communism take a national failing and inflate it into epic proportions?
    
    I have the idea that for many Russophones being mean and nasty to each other is a little like Black Friday for NAmerican poor people – a chance to feel like they’re winners who’ve beaten the system for a change.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      March 29, 2016
      
      I do think this is the legacy of the USSR. People have no way of channeling the rage where it belongs and unload on each other. A contributing factor was that the Soviet policy of making everybody suspicious and fearful of everybody else was successful. We were persecuted with stories of children who ratted out their parents to the KGB and joyfully sent them to death. One’s family members were one’s worst enemy because it was so easy for them to denounce one to the authorities.
      
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Stringer Bell

March 29, 2016

https://streamable.com/lsb6

Came across this video on reddit.

Chinese tourists at buffet in Thailand
byu/aktivate74 invideos

I’m glad that someone introduced the idea of collective trauma brought about by the cultural revolution in that reddit thread. I know you’ve talked about this a lot in your posts about why Russians behave the way they do.

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1. cliff arroyo
  
  March 30, 2016
  
  “I’m glad that someone introduced the idea of collective trauma”
  
  As good a place as any for this. While I was in Cyprus there were some Chinese at the same hotel (Cyprus is apparently trying to lure Chinese and Arabs there are newer signs for investment opportunities in Chinese and/or Arabic all over the place joining the older ones in Russian).
  
  Anyhoo, they were very normally behaved (not liked the linked video) but one of them, a young-middle aged man) brought the concept of ‘oral trauma’ alive to me more than anything I’ve ever seen or read.
  
  I happened to notice that he was suckling his food. That is he’d have a chunk of food on his fork or spoon and rather than put it in his mouth he’d kind of suckle it (cheeks working like hungry baby). Very weird (the people he was with weren’t doing this).
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    March 30, 2016
    
    I know how he feels!
    
    Klara never fusses as much as when I eat. She must feel that a big chunk of my emotional investment gets transferred away from her.
    
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