OK some thoughts:

First, one thing that’s actually insanely annoying is, thinking how in America there is this nonsense called notion of “personal space”, I’m actually not 100% sure where it comes from.

First, the notion is actually kind of nonsense call especially if you’re Asian, or grew up in Asia, or any other really really crowded city, in which jostling and jiving,,, and trying to tarry for position is key. Just try to go to Vietnam, mainland China etc. 

So first, maybe it is this weird, Puritan Protestant Quaker, early American colonialist, Victorian era. In where there are pseudo manners, in which, people keep their distance, engage as minimally as possible, and this kind of fake notion of maximal personal freedom comes to play. 

As a consequence, society becomes lame, cold, And otherwise unenjoyable.   this is typically why most Americans although probably living in the most prosperous country of all time, are quite miserable.

Who?

So first of all, to some degree everyone is “ethnic.” whether you are Jewish, Irish, German Polish, even if you descended from England, Scotland, if you’re Protestant or Catholic or Baptist or something else… Sooner or later if you go back enough in genealogy, your ancestors were repressed by the king or whatever.

And what’s kind of interesting is, apparently my friend who taught a course in France to a bunch of undergrads when they asked about race,… actually what super fascinating is there, a lot of people talk about bloodline, whether they were blue blooded, descended from nobility in Kings, or whether, they descended from a bunch of country bumpkins. 

For example, race racism doesn’t exist in Korea because everyone is Korean. Rather, it comes down to whether you are “yangban” or not –> which is the elite aristocratic class a scholarly Mandarin or not. 

Anyways, the reason I’m thinking about this is because, is I’m starting to re-transition my life back in America, it’s full of all these strange structure juxtapositions and contradictions that literally make no sense. Even from a sociological angle.

“why you so sensitive”?

So in America, I think first of all… Everyone is living in fear. Fear of the next lawsuit, the next to whatever thing… And as a consequence, nobody engages with each other. In LA, ironically where we live in entertainment Hollywood capital of the world, it is actually not customary to just smile and wave Hyatt strangers, people just pretend to live in their own bubbles, even though everyone is secretly looking for attention. 

For example everyone here wants to be “discovered”, even yesterday in Beverly Hills I saw like a line of like 40 girls all wearing the same black tank top and blue jeans, for a casting call. 

With physical proximity comes emotional proximity

Maybe everyone is just afraid of emotional attention and affirmation and feelings?

E