The Function of Poetry

"X, F(X), thou
Art like good health; I never knew till now
How precious, till I lost thee. Now I see
The beauty whole, because I yearn for thee."

Everybody has an 'X' to yearn for. A place, a country, a person...

Me too.

From private to public puritanism

Back in the sixties, JFK's affairs were not disseminated easily and widely, even though they were well known to the reporters. There was a kind of decorum in public news, especially when related to officials. Indeed, voters had the right to know, but not at the expense of privacy.
The mass-media culture eliminated privacy. Now news consumers (not voters) have the right to know every step of public people. When the Tiger Woods' scandal exploded in late November, 2009, in just few days he lost not only his wife and stainless reputation, but also contracts for about $90 million (see: WSJ "AT&T Severs Ties With Woods").
Puritanism is still strong in American society. The society is still sensitive to cases of adultery and insincerity (see also Clinton's case). In contrast, in one big Central European country the former Prime Minister could cheat to his wife for severalm months and then change her for a twenty-something years old girl, and... nobody cares. "It is his 'private' business", it is said ('private' here means not intended to be published).
Some degree of puritanism may be healthy in democracy and public life as an incentive for virtue. However neither private nor public puritanism is a virtue: prudence (the exercise of sound judgment in practical affairs) and temperance (the practice of moderation) are the missing virtues.

New Year's sound of silence

Have you ever heard silence? Yes: silence. To hear "silence" is different than to hear "nothing". You hear silence when you are expecting to hear something, but instead you can't hear anything. That's exactly what happens to non-Americans in America during New Year.
In some big cities like New York, LA and San Francisco there are public celebrations (simple by any measure). However, most Americans celebrate at home, with a bottle of champagne and watching a movie. At midnight no music, no people on the street, put aside fireworks, which are forbidden in California. Silence.
What's missing here? Alas, the celebration of New Year should be very PC...

Christmas time

Christmas in America is only one-day event: Dec. 24th is a normal working day, as well as Dec. 26th (students of course have the winter breack). The Christmas Eve is a feast dinner, but not at the scale as in Poland, with 12 dishes and lot of traditions. The normal dinner is turkey and ham, as in Thanksgiving. You can see houses colorfully lit, Christmas trees and decoration, but again not as much as in Europe.
It is more common to hear "Happy holidays" than "Merry Christmas", and needless to say, when people say "holidays" they don't have necessarily in mind "Holy Days". There are two clear trends: the "PC" trend (see below in the Pocket Dictionary of Modern Acronyms) whose followers use the "happy holidays" greeting, and the "Christmas" trend, which is getting momentum (for example, families get together to sing Christmas carols; you can also google the phrase "Put Christ back into Christmas" and see the millions of results).
Americans spend the last day of the year normally at home, watching a movie or having dinner with friends at the most, i.e. with less exuberance and craziness than in Europe. Whether it is due to the present crisis or because of puritanism, it is difficult to say.

Pocket dictionary of modern Californian acronyms

ABC - American Born Chinese, i.e. Americans of Chinese extraction (totally polite expression)

BS - Bull sh...t, i.e. a light form of an impolite expression

PC - Political Correctness, Politically Correct

UCLA - University of California, Los Angeles; also: University of Chinese among Lost Americans, for the big proportion of Asians at that university

USC - University of Southern California; also: University of Second Choice or University of Spoiled Children, because it is a private university where the children of rich people that did not make it to UCLA go

[to be continued]

Formal informality

Americans are said to be direct and informal. They address people by their first names, say "Hi!" to everybody, like improvisations, rarely call people by their titles, and dress casual clothes for most occasions including at work, especially in the West Coast. Informality is not considered a lack of respect towards the other party, rather it is consider a sign of sincerity. Moreover, informality is related to the true belief in the egalitarianism of the American society: we are all equals before God and the Law, therefore there is no need of formalities and barriers.

However, there is a certain note of "formality" in this informality. If one looks at the eyes of a casual person for 1 second, he or she will fill the need to say greetings. If one wears a jacket --not to say a tie or suit--, he or she would be pushed first at the door, just in case he or she is somebody important. Hence, if one wears a suit and looks in the eyes, all formalities awake and are due again.

Flowers and weeds

The gift culture alone would not give birth to the innovation cluster of the Silicon Valley. There is also a compelling environment pursuing the frontiers of feasibility. The Silicon Valley is an area for hunters, not fishers.

I don't know the exact statistics, but it seems that Californians do not have the "killing instinct". After one or two generations, Californians become fishers. The killing instinct is therefore imported. California is a land of opportunities; however these opportunities are sized by non-conformists from the the East Coast, the Mid-West, and abroad.

Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet and founder of 3Com, says that "invention is a flower, innovation is a weed", i.e. if you want to succeed, you don't have to be nice, but effective in proliferating your idea.

I haven't still figured out how can the flowers of a "gift culture" co-exist with the weeds with "killing instinct"...

A gift culture

"If you're going to San Francisco

You're gonna meet some gentle people there"

sang The Mamas & the Papas back in late '60s. It remains true and it is part of the Venture Capital eco-system of the Bay Area.

In a radius of 50 miles around San Francisco, there are two outstanding universities (UC Berkeley and Stanford), 46% of the American Venture Capital (c.a. 20% of the World's VC), hundreds of IT (including HP, Apple, Dell, Adobe, 3M), bio-tech, and clean-tech companies, thousands of savvy entrepreneurs, and the list goes on. How can they survive and not kill each other?
One of the answers is the gift culture that proliferates in the Bay Area Venture Capital eco-system. A gift culture is a society where valuable goods and services are regularly given without any explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards (i.e. no formal quid pro quo exists). People help each other, interact, meet, share information and experiences. A business proposal may be refused by 30 funds before finding a sponsor. Therefore, one knows that maybe in the future I will be considering a project that was rejected by others or hire a professional that worked for the competition. Instead of annihilating the community, they grow together.

If we want to have a successful venture environment in Europe or Latin America, we will have to learn that there is a great joy in giving.

Citizenship, nationality and ethnicity

The first time I realized the difference between citizenship and nationality was when I moved to Europe. I had an Argentinian passport, but was Polish. In countries of the New World this difference is not obvious per se.

Many European countries are a composition of nations: Flemish and Waloons in Belgium, Catalonians and Basks in Spain, etc. A mosaic of nationalities enrich a country's culture.

In the United States, the concept of country and nation are equal. When Americans speak of the nation, they have in mind the country; to have the American citizenship means to be an American in nationality. If an American asks you what country are you coming from, there is no further question about nationality. However in many official documents in the US (for example, to get the Social Security Number), one has to declare his or her race/ethnicity: "American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, White, Hispanic Latino", while the question of race is rarely or never placed in Europe.

The concept of nation is not univocal in Europe and America. Europe is a composition of nations and will never become a country; America is a nation composed of different ethnicities, all proud of their country. Another characteristic that makes America so unique.

Thanksgiving: B2B, not B2C

Thanksgiving is probably the most celebrated family feast in America. All races and creeds join the feast and many people, usually dispersed across the country, go back to their home cities and towns to join their families. The feast is celebrated on the forth Thursday of November. The normal meal include a turkey.
I spent my first Thanksgiving with the Bowmans, who had an open-house party. Most of their children (they have 11) were there and neighbors also showed up. After dinner, some of the children, who are already adults, started telling family stories from their childhood, where in every case their dad was the heroe.
Traditionally, it was a time to give thanks to God for the harvest and express gratitude to others for our many blessings. While historically religious in origin, Thanksgiving is now primarily identified as a secular holiday. For instance, during Thanksgiving there are at least 3 football games and people click in front of the TV for hours. The day after is the so called "Black Friday", basically a consumerism "feast" with big sales, to the point that crowds line-up before stores early in the morning to get into the shops.
It would be worthy remembering the roots of Thanksgiving. B2B (Back-to-Basis), instead of B2C (Business-to-Consumer) approach.