For Free
September 18, 2008
When do we stop thinking about resources? What cannot be made in capital? Is anything outside the grasp of consumerism? What has not yet been comodified?
Originally uploaded by robotson
Last night a friend of mine and I were discussing how friendship is rather strange in America. We understood each other because with my Russian background and the importance of hospitality, and with his close-knit bonds based on history in India, friendship means something different for our cultures. I grew up knowing that when guests come they are treated like royalty. They are given the best piece of everything. My birthday parties were all about the guests, not about me. I spent all day making sure people would have fun. I’d make gift bags for them to take home later. My American friends didn’t understand why I wasn’t more selfish. Why I kept insisting that my birthday isn’t about me.
We make friends for life. That come running no matter what. It was hard for both of us to confront the American habit of transient friends. Of short-term relationships. Of fairweather friends. In our cultures, it’s a lot more close. They become like family. Like blood. The honesty that exists between friends is different than it is here. It’s more than sharing secrets or gossip. It’s about opening up to one another about who we are. To feeling vulnerable. Friendship, like any relationship, should involve some risk. Some risk of pain, because that is how you know that you are truly connected to a person. What makes you a good friend is the ability to hurt, but choosing not to. It is accepting the power that your friend gives you, and not abusing it. That is something I don’t feel most Americans understand. He understood when I said, “She broke my heart,” when I was referring to a friend that hurt me deeply. It truly was heartbreak. I cried. The love I felt for her was not reciprocated, and she did truly terrible things to me. She did not want to be a good friend to me anymore. It was a hard lesson to learn. I make friendships for life. My friend understood, nodded, and said that it was similar for him in India.
Can this idea of friendship be taken away from me?
Can this be marketed? Can I send a customized request for a friend to Nike?
Sort of, I can already customize my future partner. Dating websites allow you to pick physical characteristics, activities, personalities, religion, weight, and salaries sometimes…You’re basically shopping for a friend/significant other. No chance. No risk. No unknown.
In an era where face-to-face communication is shrinking…what does it do to friendship? Does friendship become “social networking”?
September 18, 2008 at 10:46 am
I was astounded by Russian friendship when I was in the USSR. In 1984, a family from Leningrad whom I met on a train invited me to their home for dinner (at a time when it was dangerous for Soviets to have American guests). It seemed like they gave me every plate and bowl in the house while the rest of them shared. They gave me a balalaika, a book of znatchki, a scarf. It was overwhelming.
A couple of years later I spent the summer in Krasnodar. I was with a group of graduate students. We liked making Russian friends; it was a status symbol. But, we, the American graduate students, all had the same reaction: these Russians want to hang out with us every day, for hours and hours. wtf? where is the personal distance?
September 19, 2008 at 7:36 pm
It is a weird thought that maybe some day, friendship will be as distant as social networking sites are today. Although I feel like it would be hard for that to become reality, it doesn’t strike me as being totally impossible.