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... For all the talk of Southern hospitality, I find the women far less approachable and more b**chy, the coworkers far less social (polite but distant), the people in Meetup groups less engaging, and the Texas collective-cultural mindset one of strange braggadocio. ...
"Hospitality" is general term for politeness and social-skills... a means for getting on in the world. It's not a character-trait. It's a means, not an end. In other cultures, brusqueness and directness serve the same function. It's not that practitioners of the latter are morally inferior, or boorish, or poorly raised; but rather, the culture emphasizes different veneers. So, different veneers are displayed.
How we get along with others, is much contingent on acceptance of the prevailing rituals, expectations and postulates. If we find these to be irksome, daft, unpleasant or ridiculous, we create barriers, and market ourselves poorly. We end up getting treated coldly, if not outright with hostility. This, I think is why some people can regard a given locale as being warm and accommodating and welcoming, while others will consider the same local to be curt, snarky and cold. Both are right.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Atlguy39
...I just find that while people here can be friendly, nobody goes out of their way to "hang out" in any capacity. ...
The "hanging out" is much attenuated by family pressures. In a locale that emphasizes marriage, child-rearing and the nuclear family, focus turns inward. Friends, coworkers are the like could be treated cordially, even warmly - but they're not the priority. Family is priority. Persons committed to family, will naturally feel aloofness and even discomfort if too closely approached by non-relatives. Inversely, in a locale that emphasizes career or leisure, where the birth-rate is lower and filial duties are treated more laxly, there's greater emphasis on friendship and socializing. It's easier to make friends, even if people are of a nature "less friendly". Simply put, they have more time, and less investment in family ... ergo, more potential investment in friends.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Coldjensens
...Here in Michigan, in many places people are respected for their work ethic. If you join community service organizations or a church and work really hard to pitch in and help out, you will earn respect and eventually friendship. If you try to earn respect by displaying your perceived financial or professional success or your incredible intelligence or advanced education, you will not earn that respect and will likely be laughed at when you are not around. ...
This is stark example of glaring difference in values. An alternative view is that hard-work is open to anyone, and thus is nothing special. But success as a scientist, an attorney, an executive or the like, is special and noteworthy - and therefore deserves more respect, even if the incumbent is not particularly hard-working, and is more of a networker and a delegator, than a direct performer of labor. So, metrics of "worth" will be heavily contingent on the local prevailing values and mores.
My own area is rooted in agriculture and blue-collar labor. It emphasizes tradition of family and church. Alternative views may not be explicitly rejected, but they do lead to friction and misunderstandings. Adherents of mainstream view will likely find themselves to be a good fit. They will extol the tenor and theme of the place, finding harsh winters or flat topography to be no particular impediment to happiness. The gloomy skies won't bother them. Those with opposite values and consequently opposite social experience will in contrast find ample reason to deplore the weather, the landscape and everything else that greets the eyes and ears. They will feel morose, isolated and dejected... and will hanker to move.
It’s interesting I loved LA for work, being in film, you can’t ask for a better city with so much talent and equipment and locations and history. I would always geek out over the Hollywood sign or just driving by a studio as part of regular life. I never got over how cool all of that was. But I hated the city in almost every other way, except weather. But I did the same thing you did with Southern hospitality. In my mind the way everyone talks about SoCal weather it’s like it’s a 10/10 and unbeatable. In all reality it’s a good solid 7.5, that’s about it. The United States outside of Hawaii doesn’t have anywhere that’s really ideal weather, so the bar is set low compared to a worldwide level. It still rains way too much in LA for me, I prefer Vegas weather by far, and I’m not bothered by 100 degrees; I am bothered by 67 degrees in June. That’s unacceptable to me. If it’s not at least 80, it’s not swimming weather, and too often in LA I found the weather to be mediocre. Ok for walking around, not unpleasant, but nothing great either. Marine layer all summer long, blocking the sun until 2-3 pm, short days (dark by 8:30?! Very bizarre being from Portland where it’s light until almost 10), beach communities too cold even in the summer much of the time, just... not it for me. Maybe my expectations were just too high. I like the heat!
L.A. was a moderately hard city to adjust to, very initially (first ~1-2 months), but I never felt miserable there. It just has a different urban fabric and urban culture than other cities around the world, and really sticks a proverbial middle finger in the face of the concept of the traditional city. Cities like the SF Bay Area, Phoenix, San Diego, Tijuana, Houston, and Dallas have certain aesthetic similarities with L.A., but no city is quite like L.A. in that L.A. successfully combines a dense population with a quasi-grid network designed for lower density development (freeway traffic notwithstanding).
L.A.'s layout makes it difficult to drive across the metropolis to meet people, but the "socially cultivated" social climate there seems to happen naturally, given the work-intense nature of the region and times and distances it takes to get between the SF Valley, the SG Valley, DTLA, West L.A., North OC, Newport/Laguna, Malibu, Ventura, etc. In other words, people in L.A. make friends, and friends of friends, through work more so than in most cities; not always, but generally. As adults with our lives revolving around work anyway, this can be positively conducive to social and cultural acclimation, and that helped me in L.A. Of course, it depends on the industry you work in. I think you'd have had a different experience if you stayed far away from the entertainment industry in any capacity (which I understand that is probably the industry you want to still somehow remain connected to), as L.A. attracts some of the worst of the worst personalities in the world to work specifically in that industry (which is still, I think, California's third largest industry, and which is to also say that there will be huge egos and exorbitant expectations for its workers and creative minds).
I'm quite the fan of California's Mediterranean climate, but that's just me. But I actually don't let weather serve as too much of determinant of where I'll live (very cold climates like much of Alaska notwithstanding), simply because the Mediterranean climate is so rare internationally and most weather conditions can be prepared for physically and psychologically.
As your expectations for L.A. were perhaps too high, so, too, have been my expectations for Houston. It happens. I'm trying to learn to lower or temper my expectations, as that might be a better guarantor and determinant for psychological success in life (and that can fuel motivation for success and satisfaction in all realms of life). Maybe that's why I'm here in Houston, to learn to do these things which I didn't realize, or which I at least underestimated, I needed to work on.
Last edited by AmericaBravoCharles; 03-29-2019 at 09:56 AM..
"Hospitality" is general term for politeness and social-skills... a means for getting on in the world. It's not a character-trait. It's a means, not an end. In other cultures, brusqueness and directness serve the same function. It's not that practitioners of the latter are morally inferior, or boorish, or poorly raised; but rather, the culture emphasizes different veneers. So, different veneers are displayed.
How we get along with others, is much contingent on acceptance of the prevailing rituals, expectations and postulates. If we find these to be irksome, daft, unpleasant or ridiculous, we create barriers, and market ourselves poorly. We end up getting treated coldly, if not outright with hostility. This, I think is why some people can regard a given locale as being warm and accommodating and welcoming, while others will consider the same local to be curt, snarky and cold. Both are right.
You're probably right.
As a Southerner would get peeved by the characteristic brusqueness of the urban northeastern US (I probably would be peeved by it, too), or the prideful arrogance-at-onset of some Quebecois, or the aloof-at-initial-onset approach of Californians, or the pleasant but reserved veneer of upper Midwesterners (actually, "Minnesota Nice" could easily be perceived as being disingenuous), people from these other regions might not always know what to make of sometimes sugary Southern politeness.
I'll easily contend that Southerners, including Texans, are far better about saying "sir" and "ma'am" than people in other parts of the country, but many are still brusque, surly or irritated in doing so--and not sugary. One doesn't necessarily need to visit a Southern city to find this, as this can also be found in small, low-growth or population-loss towns (not just in the South) that have struggled economically for years and with people who are (somewhat understandably) leery of "outsiders," even outsiders from neighboring towns. So, yeah, these are veneers and mannerisms that Southerners are raised to project and state even subconsciously or otherwise without thinking, and not necessarily intently unless when a social circumstance calls for intentness.
... people in L.A. make friends, and friends of friends, through work more so than in most cities; not always, but generally. As adults with our lives revolving around work anyway, this can be positively conducive to social and cultural acclimation, ...
I'd opine that the above is precisely the definition of a global city. It pulses and throbs. It has not time for narrowly parochial coloring. Work, career, commerce, research, advancement, profit - these, and not tribal allegiances, or even the domestic trappings of family, are the primary aims. It's much the same in NYC, in London, even in Moscow. Life moves quickly, and in such quick motion, some of our closest personal allegiances are with our cubicle-mates, our business-travel buddies, the long-lost distant mates with whom we reconnect only twice-annually at conferences. Our principal family, our principal neighbors, are sitting right there, around the office conference-table.
This type of dynamism is hard to recreate in a non-global city, even one as large and comparatively prosperous as Houston. So at least is my personal intuition. Those who regard this global pace and approach as being excessively stiff, one-dimensional, mechanical and soulless, are going to be disappointed in the global cities, and will prefer the smaller ones. Those who instead self-energize from 100-hour work-weeks and for whom their coworkers are their trench-mates, would find anything but such a global city to be provincial, village-like, stifling and quaint.
L.A. was a moderately hard city to adjust to, very initially (first ~1-2 months), but I never felt miserable there. It just has a different urban fabric and urban culture than other cities around the world, and really sticks a proverbial middle finger in the face of the concept of the traditional city. Cities like the SF Bay Area, Phoenix, San Diego, Tijuana, Houston, and Dallas have certain aesthetic similarities with L.A., but no city is quite like L.A. in that L.A. successfully combines a dense population with a quasi-grid network designed for lower density development (freeway traffic notwithstanding).
L.A.'s layout makes it difficult to drive across the metropolis to meet people, but the "socially cultivated" social climate there seems to happen naturally, given the work-intense nature of the region and times and distances it takes to get between the SF Valley, the SG Valley, DTLA, West L.A., North OC, Newport/Laguna, Malibu, Ventura, etc. In other words, people in L.A. make friends, and friends of friends, through work more so than in most cities; not always, but generally. As adults with our lives revolving around work anyway, this can be positively conducive to social and cultural acclimation, and that helped me in L.A. Of course, it depends on the industry you work in. I think you'd have had a different experience if you stayed far away from the entertainment industry in any capacity (which I understand that is probably the industry you want to still somehow remain connected to), as L.A. attracts some of the worst of the worst personalities in the world to work specifically in that industry (which is still, I think, California's third largest industry, and which is to also say that there will be huge egos and exorbitant expectations for its workers and creative minds).
I'm quite the fan of California's Mediterranean climate, but that's just me. But I actually don't let weather serve as too much of determinant of where I'll live (very cold climates like much of Alaska notwithstanding), simply because the Mediterranean climate is so rare internationally and most weather conditions can be prepared for physically and psychologically.
As your expectations for L.A. were perhaps too high, so, too, have been my expectations for Houston. It happens. I'm trying to learn to lower or temper my expectations, as that might be a better guarantor and determinant for psychological success in life (and that can fuel motivation for success and satisfaction in all realms of life). Maybe that's why I'm here in Houston, to learn to do these things which I didn't realize, or which I at least underestimated, I needed to work on.
Yeah see I think that’s also it for me, I don’t want to make friends with people who live literally 2 hours away during both rush hours and where even with moderate traffic it’s an hour to see them. It felt way too sprawled out and I never made a single friend living there. I also have absolutely zero interest in being close friends with anyone in the film industry more or less. As a die hard libertarian I have no tolerance for liberals, I can’t stand them, or hanging out with people who want to turn everything into an issue. That’s 87% of my union, so it doesn’t leave much of any hope meeting a like-minded person.
I actually liked the city of LA way more than I liked the people living in it. Five years was enough for me. I am glad I lived there, I learned so much and did so much, but once I learned my craft I didn’t see any reason to stay there. I can go there to make movies (or not) and that’s great, but I don’t want to live in a high tax nanny state. I simply refuse to live somewhere like that because to me it’s an implicit approval of their policies and I don’t approve. I don’t want to pay insane sales taxes and crazy income taxes along with massive property taxes because the housing is so expensive that even the “reasonable” property tax rate becomes insane by virtue of the fact housing is so expensive.
LA does have one thing in common with Vegas where we’re moving though, which is it’s a much better place to live if you’re wealthy. When I was in LA I had money, but by LA standards I was more like middle class. I spent $5,500/month as a single dude in my 920 square foot condo and I didn’t have any extra money to go out and do fun things. My extra money went to film production and equipment. If I had the money then that I do now, I’d have at least had way more fun and now I have a fiancé to do those fun things with. I have no doubt I’d like LA more right now than I did 10 years ago. I’m just too stubborn to spend that much time in traffic and pay exorbitant taxes. Maybe if you’re making only $50K a year the income tax doesn’t seem so onerous but with what I have for investments I’m losing out on a few thousand a month by living in a high tax state versus a no income tax state. I also have high standards for housing if I’m sharing it with someone else and being older now, so the type of house I can buy for a million bucks in Vegas is $4-6 million in LA. I don’t have that kind of money to spend on a house so then I’m stuck living in a place that’s below what I know I can afford anywhere else. It’s just not that great of a city to 1) Live much more humbly, 2) Endure horrid traffic, 3) Pay an extra $2,500/month in taxes and more expensive living costs, and 4) Know your vote will never count / be stuck with liberals everywhere.
OP, I did not read the entire thread, but I lived in Illinois my entire life until we moved to Indiana 3 years ago. It took me a good year before I felt at home. I was double guessing our move the entire first year we were here! I was even looking at homes in our old town! Once I embraced our new area and all it had to offer I started to realize that there was a reason why we moved here and I started enjoying our new town. At that point I started to get involved in the community and started to make it a point to meet people. Now, three years later I wish we had moved here earlier! I love our new town and truly feel at home.
I know this will not be the case for everyone, but OP you have to give yourself time to adjust and you have to want to be happy there!
My own area is rooted in agriculture and blue-collar labor. It emphasizes tradition of family and church. Alternative views may not be explicitly rejected, but they do lead to friction and misunderstandings. Adherents of mainstream view will likely find themselves to be a good fit. They will extol the tenor and theme of the place, finding harsh winters or flat topography to be no particular impediment to happiness. The gloomy skies won't bother them. Those with opposite values and consequently opposite social experience will in contrast find ample reason to deplore the weather, the landscape and everything else that greets the eyes and ears. They will feel morose, isolated and dejected... and will hanker to move.
Kind of true. Though I'm not the opposite in beliefs and values, I don't have a family. Thats a huge detriment that does make me feel isolated, dejected, and somewhat of an outcast. That said, I'm buying a house. Given my timing, that probably means I'll get a great job offer back home.
My best option is to travel more and get away. That's my plan for now.
Kind of true. Though I'm not the opposite in beliefs and values, I don't have a family. Thats a huge detriment that does make me feel isolated, dejected, and somewhat of an outcast. That said, I'm buying a house. Given my timing, that probably means I'll get a great job offer back home.
My best option is to travel more and get away. That's my plan for now.
Travel, for sure. But, why bother to buy a house in a city you so hate?! Do what you need--exercise a ton more, see a therapist, do meditation, make yourself laugh hysterically, whatever--but get in a state of mind so that when you're not in the office, you're methodically treating a job search in another city like your second job.
Travel, for sure. But, why bother to buy a house in a city you so hate?! Do what you need--exercise a ton more, see a therapist, do meditation, make yourself laugh hysterically, whatever--but get in a state of mind so that when you're not in the office, you're methodically treating a job search in another city like your second job.
Simple. I'm tired of putting my life on hold. Maybe if I'm fully "in", I'll embrace it or at least enjoy it some. And yeah, I've been following that advice (search) for 3 years, and nada. I do the other things you suggested, all of them.
Large parts of the country are anchored in "family and church" values it seems. Not saying it's "good" or "bad," just is. Well, much of the mid-west, smaller towns in the north-east, much of the south and smaller towns in the west. If you have no interests in either of those, you're out of luck it seems.
I lived in a mostly blue collar city growing up, but open minded one because, looking back, the state itself and close proximity to the capital. When I lived in rural Florida, it was just plain weird to me personally. The most mixing of people and anything goes was in the South West, which I still miss. Anyone and everyone could be friends and hang together. Back to the east coast, too traditional for me, family, church, work your 40 hours, you fill in the blank. Everything seems to play by a rule book.
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