Changing Culture

Yoko and I were watching the AFC and NFC Championship games on Sunday. She has really learned to enjoy American football and gets as excited watching a game as anyone I know. She has also become pretty knowledgeable about the rules of the game and the players. For example, she knows Percy Harvin plays for Minnesota and use to be a Florida Gator (so she likes Minnesota). Her favorite team is Boise State. (She fell in love with them after their unbelievable victory over Oklahoma at the Fiesta Bowl in 2007.) Yoko generally likes college football better than professional football. I think her preference for college football has something to do with the purity of amateur athletics and the fun and raw emotion displayed by young and enthusiastic fans. Football is a part of American culture that Yoko admires.

Baseball is the Japanese national pastime – but Japanese baseball is different from what we play here in America. There is a very funny book call “The Chrysanthemum and the Bat”, written by a friend of mine, Robert Whiting, which describes the subtle cultural differences in how baseball is practiced and played in Japan. The book’s title is a humorous allusion to Ruth Benedict’s classic, “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword”, a serious anthropological study of Japanese culture commissioned by the US Government during the Second World War. The theme of Whiting’s book is that Japanese culture imbues and colors every aspect of life in Japan, including something as mundane as baseball.

I thought about this tonight only because I am watching football with my Japanese wife, who is upset – not at the violence of American football -- but at the violence and meanness of American culture in general.

Yoko and I talk about “American culture verses Japanese culture” on a regular basis. The discussion is usually triggered by something I bring home from the store (unhealthy snacks), something on television (Viagra commercials during family viewing hours or personal injury attorneys advertising for victims), or something that she observes in my interactions with other people. (I’m frequently accused by my wife of having done or said something that is ill mannered, impolite, or inconsiderate.)

What triggered tonight’s discussion was a new Walmart commercial aired during the football games. A dad, dressed as a clown, jumps into a room where children are attending a birthday party and stabs his foot on a child’s toy. He screams at the top of his lungs and scares the kids away, ruining the party. Yoko understands that this is intended to be humorous, but she doesn’t think it is funny. She thinks it is rather violent and unappealing. I can’t disagree.

Yoko objects to “reality” TV shows, like Donald Trump’s “The Apprentice,” that pit people against one another and challenges contestants to disparage and humiliate each other. Where is the human kindness and Christian values of love and compassion we espouse? She hates the MTV show “Punked”, which she sees as “mean” spirited and has none of the fun or innocence of Alan Funt’s “Candid Camera” or America’s Funniest Home Videos, which she likes. Japanese love slapstick and other forms of humor, but most often Japanese humor is self deprecating. Jokes are seldom directed at someone else.

I’ve been reading a book by the brilliant Charles Munger, Warren Buffett’s acclaimed business partner, called “On Success.” Munger writes about the psychology of human misjudgment and addresses the issue of excessive self-regard tendency. (For example, 90% of Swedish drivers judge themselves to be above average.) Yoko believes that Americans suffer from high self-regard and self-centeredness. That might be true for the Japanese as well. I agree with a lot of what Yoko thinks about American culture, but I sometimes wonder if she realizes she is seeing American culture through her own cultural filter.

Munger writes that “Man’s excess self regard typically makes him prefer people like himself.” Munger concludes that we need to be objective in making assessments about self, family, friends and property to avoid the folly of high self regard. It’s a good lesson for all of us to learn.