Rules for You, Not for Me

Yesterday on the subway, I saw an Asian guy holding the door so his entire family of six could get in. It’s not like they were all waiting on the platform when the train arrived; some of them were still running toward the door. My reflexive reaction was anger and annoyance. So selfish, I thought. Then I wondered where my anger came from. It’s not like there’s a God who decided how much selfishness is allowed, drew a line on the spectrum of selfish behavior, and said, “Listen. From this point on, I’ll call it ‘selfish,’ and until here, you’re OK.”

My internal line was likely drawn during my childhood in Japan. The Japanese are generally more responsible than Americans and have a lower tolerance for selfish behavior. My parents were also on the extreme end of the spectrum within Japan. I grew up constantly hearing my mom tell me not to trouble other people. She is so neurotic about it that she cannot relax at restaurants because she feels like she’s troubling the waitstaff too much. When a new restaurant opened near her that replaced all the servers with robots, she was happy about it.

By Japanese standards, the behavior of Americans is appalling. But of course, Americans would shrug off their critical gaze: “Fuck off. Where we draw the line is none of your business!” Again, there is no God dictating it. If we imagine a global spectrum, one end is a society where anything goes; you can kill someone if he annoys you, steal anything you want. On the other end is a society made entirely of Stormtroopers: everyone obeys all rules and laws to the letter, everyone values the same things, and there is no disagreement. A perfectly civilized society. Nobody is annoying, but nobody is interesting either. All cultures fall somewhere between these extremes, without any explicit agreement or authority above humanity.

I don’t know where this Asian family came from, as I didn’t understand their language, but it’s possible that their culture drew the line at a different point. It’s fair game if most people in that society don’t mind being held up by families like that. What I can’t stand are hypocrites who get pissed at others for violating rules they themselves don’t honor.

In art school, there was this guy who often “borrowed” and squeezed out excessive amounts of expensive oil paints from others in class. We would look at each other in disbelief, but he was oblivious. I said to my friends that it would be fair if he were generous with his own paint; so one day I tried squeezing out an excessive amount of his paint to see how he’d react. I couldn’t hear the end of his complaints. He annoyed us so much that we tried to get rid of him, as he was following us everywhere. He’s still my friend, though.

Some years ago, I was arguing with another friend on Facebook, and he snapped, “What’s your problem with hypocrites?!” It was a type of “critical thinking” I had never engaged in, because it seemed self-evident that being hypocritical is a bad thing. But at the meta-level, there’s also a spectrum of hypocrisy, and we all fall somewhere on it. And again, it’s not like some God decided that this much hypocrisy is OK.

I feel like Japan has more hypocrites than the U.S. Because they must conform strictly to societal expectations, they’ve become skilled at transgressing without being detected. But if anyone is caught, they are not forgiving. The lead actor and actress of Asako I & II, directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, were caught having an affair some years ago. It appears nothing much happened to the actor, but the actress was practically banned from the film industry. I couldn’t figure out why. Apparently, if a woman seduces a married man, it’s the woman’s fault. Meanwhile, they love films about having affairs. Even though I wasn’t specifically looking for them, I came across countless dramatic films about married people falling in love with someone else, many of them sympathetic to the idea. I guess they want to keep it strictly a fantasy. Americans wouldn’t have that level of hypocrisy.

The part of me conditioned in Japan still reacts with anger to selfish behavior, while another part of me says, “Chill. Who knows what their standards are?” When I come across double standards, I can feel the top of my head fuming, but my wife has helped me control my knee-jerk reactions, not because she’s a psychotherapist, but because she loves having different standards for me.