The Culture Code (5 page)

THE
WACKO
CULTURE

For example, Americans love Mike Tyson, Michael Jackson, Tom Cruise, Venus Williams, and Bill Clinton. We love them for several reasons. Primarily, though, we love them because they are weird, eccentric, and nowhere near the middle. They show us that extreme behavior is perfectly acceptable. We love them because, like Jennifer Wilbanks (the Runaway Bride), they are afraid to grow up. In reality, they are nothing more than “Runaway Adults.”

The New York Times
recently wrote, “Mike Tyson maintains a magnetism that leaves sociologists struggling for explanations.”
USA
Today
says that Tyson is “flying…and then falling. Up and down, immobile and…in jail. Therapist says troubled Tyson has decided it’s time to grow up.”

Who wants to grow up, though?

A typical American expression is “I still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up.” You will hear it often from people in their sixties or seventies.

Michael Jackson does not want to face the reality of his age. Nearing fifty, he still wants to sleep with children. It is fine when you are nine or ten to sleep over at a friend’s house. When you are forty-seven and sleeping with twelve-year-olds, though…

Oprah Winfrey invited Tom Cruise on her show to promote one of his movies. Instead, he spent the hour promoting “It’s okay to be weird” behavior. During the show, he jumped around the set, hopped onto a couch, fell rapturously to one knee, and repeatedly professed his love for his new girlfriend. When my kids were nine, they used to jump on their beds for an hour. I never confused this with grown-up behavior, and people have responded to Cruise’s “jumping on the bed” in a similar way. At the same time, though, right after his
Oprah
appearance, they bought $65 million worth of tickets to his new movie in its first weekend.

Venus Williams won the 2005 Wimbledon championship, the most stiff-upper-lip tennis tournament in the world. Her dress was sedate and white, but she could not repress her exuberant adolescent joy and started jumping in the air after her victory like a nine-year-old on a bed.

Bill Clinton was a political genius, not for his understanding of world problems, but for his ability to resonate with the American cultural unconscious. Clinton was the perfect adolescent president. Fantastic material for the stand-up comedian: cheating, lying under oath, a sex scandal—the whole package was perfect.

What these figures have in common and what fascinates us so much is their resistance to growing up. They are forever young at heart, crazy, up and down, one day invincible, one day totally rejected, and they always come back. They are the “eternal adolescents” all Americans would love to be.

At the same time, they are a victory for nonconformity. In America, you can be weird and successful. As the journalist Jack Miller wrote, “Creative artists and performers who are wildly eccentric, who do not look like the rest of us, who live in a reality unfathomable to the majority deserve praise, kindness and appreciation for their talents and their gift of genius. Vive la différence.”

This is the “wacko” culture. Would you rather be part of an adolescent culture or a senile one?

THE
AMERICAN
CULTURE:
ADOLESCENT
THROUGH
AND
THROUGH

As you will learn throughout this book, the American culture exhibits many of the traits consistent with adolescence: intense focus on the “now,” dramatic mood swings, a constant need for exploration and challenge to authority, a fascination with extremes, openness to change and reinvention, and a strong belief that mistakes warrant second chances. As Americans, we feel we know more than our elders do (for instance, we rarely consult France, Germany, Russia, or England on our foreign policy), that their answers are out of date (we pay little heed to the opinions of these cultures when it comes to global matters), and that we must reject their lessons and remake the world (few of us—even our leaders—are students of world history, choosing to make our own mistakes rather than learn from the mistakes other cultures have already made).

Like all adolescents, we are preoccupied with love, seduction, and sex. We are not unique in this regard. People in many cultures throughout the world are fascinated with these things, perhaps more than with anything else. After all, as human beings, we need sex at the very least to ensure the continuation of our species. The unconscious attitudes we Americans hold about these matters, however, are unique and are closely related to our cultural adolescence.

Adolescence is a time of confusion and contradictions. New discoveries are promising one day and disappointing the next. Dreams sprout, flower, and wilt as quickly as daffodils in the spring. Certainties become uncertainties in the blink of an eye. This is as true of adolescent cultures as it is of adolescent children, and nowhere is it clearer than in the Codes revealed in this chapter.

Some of you will find the following pages disturbing. Some of you will insist that you don’t see yourself in these Codes in any way. (You might even be right about that.
Of course,
every individual is different, as he or she is also governed by his or her individual unconscious.) The revelation of the following Codes might be upsetting to you, but please remember that Codes are value neutral. The Codes themselves do not pass judgment on a particular culture. The American Codes simply reflect our cultural adolescence. This is very good and empowering in many cases, as you will see in subsequent chapters, and it explains why we are the best in the world at many things and why we have been such innovators and reformers.

If one were to compile a list of things at which the American culture excels, however, love, seduction, and sex would not be on that list. You know this already. After all, when we consider someone a great ladies’ man, we might call him a “Don Juan” or a “Casanova.” We will never, however, call him a “Joe Smith.” The function of the new set of glasses provided by the Culture Code is to show us
why
we do the things we do:

Why
are American women so concerned with finding “Mr. Right”?

Why
does the
FCC
frown on (and even prosecute) the televising of a woman breast-feeding, but allow the exhibition of fictionalized bloodbaths during network prime time?

Why
are American women offended when construction workers whistle at them in New York, but flattered when a man does the same in Milan?

The answers are in the Codes.

WHAT’S
LOVE
GOT
TO DO
WITH
IT?

I held imprinting sessions all over the country, searching for the Code for love. During these sessions, I asked participants to focus on the word “love” without specifying whether I meant romantic love, parental love, sibling love, love of country, love of pets, or even love of a sports team. When I guided participants back to their first imprint, though, a vast majority of them went to the same place.

My first experience with the word “love,” or related to love, was when I was four or five. In the kitchen, Mother was preparing a cake, my favorite cake, a cheesecake. The smell was the smell of love. She opened the oven and I told her, “I love you!” She closed the oven, came to give me a kiss, and told me, “I love you, too.” Then she gave me a big portion of the cake and I knew she really meant it when she said, “I love you.”

—a forty-year-old man

Mother loved us so much, she cooked all Thanksgiving Day. She was so happy to see her family all together again, around the table, eating…so much love around the table, so much food. We could not stop eating.

—a thirty-six-year-old woman

When you are little, parents are there to care for and protect you. You have no cares or worries. If something bad happens, your family is there for you. I miss this protection.

—a fifty-eight-year-old woman

The best way to describe my parents’ room is a nest. The carpet was light brown and the walls were blue. The bed was in the center of the room and had a huge white comforter. It was on this bed that I sat with my mother as a child and asked her about the world.

—a twenty-one-year-old man

I remember lying in my mother’s lap in my early years. I remember talking with my mother and sharing caresses.

—a sixty-five-year-old man

Consistently, participants related their first experience of love to their mother’s care—feeding them, holding them, making them feel safe. This is entirely understandable. After all, for nine months, our mothers provide us with the most perfect “resort hotel” imaginable. The room service is first-rate and available immediately upon demand, the space is neither too hot nor too cold, transportation is free, and there’s even a musical backdrop (her heartbeat) for entertainment. And even though we ultimately must leave this vacation paradise, our mothers are there to guide us through the transition, feeding us with their bodies, keeping us coddled and warm, taking us out to see the world, and providing numerous ways for us to occupy our time and to delight in the act of learning.

These responses were very consistent with the thinking of an adolescent culture. Adolescents, after all, flit from pressing for independence to acting like children; in the latter mode, they seek the succor (inwardly, if not overtly) of their mothers, the safe harbor provided by that all-encompassing love.

Then there is the “independence” mode, the mode that demands a rejection of home and the right to make one’s own mistakes. When I asked participants to recall their most powerful memories of love, different stories emerged.

I went to college. I was so happy. Free at last. But it did not go so well. First time I started drinking, I could not stop. Then I don’t know what happened next, I was so sick. None of the boys who were after me the night before were there to help me.

—a fifty-year-old woman

I was thirteen and I liked a boy but he liked someone else. This taught me a big lesson, because I thought that I was prettier than her and she was fat, but I was spoiled and sometimes mean.

—a twenty-four-year-old woman

My most powerful experience is when my parents decided to separate. I found out eavesdropping on their discussions late at night. Things were tense, but everyone wanted to be normal.

—a thirty-seven-year-old man

I have an image of a white beautiful horse and a blond beautiful woman in a flowing crepe-like dress with a lush green forest and waterfall and a handsome man meeting and embracing her. I long to be that woman.

—a thirty-eight-year-old woman

This was a different component of the adolescent experience: the part where experimentation leads to exhilaration and disappointment, to success and failure. The vast majority of these stories expressed some degree of discomfort, of uneasiness with the events described, much as an adolescent describes experiences he doesn’t like and doesn’t understand. Remember, these stories were about the
most powerful
memory of love.

Perhaps the most significant element of the adolescent experience, however, is the loss of innocence. There comes a point in every adolescent’s life when he realizes his ideals aren’t as gilded as they once seemed. This realization usually leads to new maturity and the acquisition of new coping tools. It also often comes, though, with a sense of disillusionment. When participants wrote of their most recent memory of love, they repeatedly told the story of lost ideals.

I know what boys want. They say they love you, but I know what they want.

—a thirty-five-year-old woman

I have three children from three different fathers who died in drive-by shootings. Before I die, I want once again to have a baby, to feed him, to love him, and to be loved unconditionally.

—a fifteen-year-old woman

I purchased a diamond for my girlfriend. I recall her taking it off in the car while we were arguing and I became infuriated. I took the ring and threw it out the window. I told her since it meant so little to her, I threw it away.

—a thirty-one-year-old man

These three sets of stories—the first imprint, the most powerful memory, and the most recent memory—revealed a distinctly American pattern. Participants spoke repeatedly of the desire for love, the need for love, the belief in something called true love, but they also spoke consistently of being disappointed in this quest. A very large percentage of the “most recent memory” stories spoke of loss, bitterness, and sadness. Americans—regardless of their age—view love the way an adolescent views the world: as an exciting dream that rarely reaches fulfillment.

The American Culture Code for love is
FALSE
EXPECTATION
.

Without question, losing at love is an international experience. Even in cultures where marriages are arranged and courtship is rare, there are tales of forbidden love and of the sad consequences when that love dies. In older cultures, though—ones that passed through adolescence centuries ago—the unconscious message about the expectations for love are very different.

In France, the concepts of love and pleasure are intertwined. The French consider the notions of true love and Mr. Right irrelevant. The refinement of pleasure is paramount, and romance is a highly sophisticated process. Love means helping your partner achieve as much pleasure as possible, even if this requires finding someone else to provide some of this pleasure. French couples can, of course, be devoted to each other, but their definition of devotion differs greatly from the American definition (fidelity, for instance, is not nearly as important to them), and their expectations are set accordingly.