Just read a Time Magazine article about cultural influence on the success of various immigrant groups in America. Very thought-provoking. It made me think about the culture here. I think one reason this region as a whole is not “rich and successful” in the commonly thought of sense, is that the stress on money is not as entrenched here. In the town I grew up in, there was not a wide range of income groups. As far as I knew, no one in town would have been considered “rich” out in the wider world. Maybe upper middle class. There was a fair amount of poverty, but not an extreme amount. And everyone mixed with everyone else. There wasn’t this huge separation of income levels. Everyone knew quite a few people from different socio-economic strata. And most had relatives that crossed these lines. It created a fair amount of tolerance toward other groups. Of course, I’m talking about economic levels, since our town had no minorities, just white Christians.
But what were the expectations and underlying messages of our Appalachian/Midwest culture? We certainly wanted to do well, but I don’t think extreme wealth and success were what we pictured when we thought of doing well. Doing well was making a decent enough living to afford all the basics of American life without too great a sacrifice. Sure, kids dreamed of extreme wealth and success—I know I did—but it was some remote chance, not something with outlined and attainable steps.
The important things, at least from my perspective, seemed to be family and friends. The things you did with other people, even if was just to sit around and talk. There seemed to be a lot more tolerance for eccentricities and failures in other’s lives. Sure, they may be a cause for gossip, but not for ostracism. I found it shocking when I moved away to California, how many people grew up seeing such a narrow range of life, sequestered in their suburban neighborhoods where virtually everyone was of the same economic class and had basically the same values, they found it difficult to understand differences. Not necessarily hatred or racism or culturalism, just incomprehension. I was driving with a good friend of mine at the time through a bad Oakland neighborhood, when, looking around, he said “I don’t see how they can stand to live like this.” I was dumbfounded. But he wasn’t a bad person. Aside from being apparently blind to the fact that a lot of “them” don’t choose to live that way, he just truly couldn’t understand how poverty affects the expectations and choices of people who were brought up to it. He couldn’t understand it because he had never been exposed to it. So while my little town in the middle of nowhere would seem to be the most isolated, in some ways the rich neighborhoods on the edges of Somewhere are the ones that are truly isolated.
But I digress. (As always.) Anyway, the culture around here is tolerant, if you’re one of us, but less so if you’re an outsider. We can make jokes about hillbillies, but by God nobody else better! There also seems to be a culture of spoiling children, which is the opposite of the Tiger Mom theory. I know I was spoiled, but in a good way. Not to the point where was totally entitled and oblivious of everyone else’s needs. But in a way that told me I was special (?). I guess that’s the word, though it sounds so trite and overused, especially today. It’s hard to explain, but I think it can be a good thing, though there are bad things about it, too. I wasn’t very prepared for the world at large, but at the same time I had kept my youthful dreaminess and creativity.