compared to a control group such as Canada, or in Brazil as compared to a control group such as Argentina or Peru?
The answer to all these questions is, It sure seems so, at least from the casual-traveler anthropologist’s point of view. Not only do some societies, such as the United States or Italy or Brazil, seem to produce many more assholes than other societies, but each seems to have more assholes than it used to. Maybe societies such as South Africa have fewer assholes in the wake of the apartheid years. If we look at global trends, though, asshole production seems to be on the rise.
One could argue that asshole production proceeds at a uniform and steady rate and that there has merely been an increase in asshole
reporting
, with increasing media scrutiny of public figures and profit-driven exposure of assholes on TV, in print, and on the Web. At the same time, however, increasing reportage also
creates
powerful incentives for assholes to bare themselves in public, for a large audience. That could itself cause asshole production to rise on average.
Here much depends on how we should interpret cultural difference. We might recall cross-cultural variation in what counts as rude behavior, as in familiar East-West contrasts. This makes it hard to tell who is or who is not an asshole. Many Asian cultures regard loud talking in public as a mark of self-centeredness and attention seeking. The South Korean asshole who visits the United States, where self-expression rather than modesty is generallyprized, would have to be especially loud to stand out. On the other hand, in a South Korean university, a visiting American student who is used to being encouraged to speak up in class could easily be mistaken for an asshole if he hadn’t yet noticed that interrupting a professor in lecture is seen as disrespectful. The confusion can persist in perceptions of whole cultures. In a developing South Asian nation such as Indonesia, it is hard for the American or British traveler not to feel that the country is overrun with assholes, given that queuing at the airport (or on the airplane) seems so much like a scrum. It takes a while to see that there is in fact a semblance of order: one is to be as pushy as possible about relative line position without simply pushing others out of the way. (Indonesians don’t share the American or British allergy to actually touching other people.) And there is no clear sign of asshole overproduction among the Indonesian people more generally. If anything, Indonesia underperforms in this way.
Given such cultural differences, one might be skeptical about whether there is any statistically significant cross-cultural or cross-temporal variation in how many assholes are getting produced. The issue is finally one for anthropologists and sociologists to settle. Still, to at least suggest why the steady state view might be wrong, why there might be real variation in asshole production, we might offer anecdotal evidence and a bit of theoretical speculation.
First the anecdotal evidence, from a kind of transnational association. Traveling Brazilian surfers, so almost everyone agrees, are much more likely to be assholes than surfers from almost anywhere else. Acting like an asshole is plainly encouraged in the subculture of Brazilian surfers, who tend to travel in large packs (e.g., of five or ten people as compared to the usual one or two or three). This probably reflects the aggressive manlinessof larger Brazilian culture but also has a more salient and direct explanation in the relatively recent past. When Brazilians first started showing up on Oahu’s famous North Shore, they were antagonized by local Hawaiians, despite mainly lying low. Hawaiian surfers had already become defensive about white visiting surfers from California, Australia, and South Africa and were especially sore about the bombastic Aussies who began to dominate in surf contests and brag loudly about it. White surfers seemed to be
The answer to all these questions is, It sure seems so, at least from the casual-traveler anthropologist’s point of view. Not only do some societies, such as the United States or Italy or Brazil, seem to produce many more assholes than other societies, but each seems to have more assholes than it used to. Maybe societies such as South Africa have fewer assholes in the wake of the apartheid years. If we look at global trends, though, asshole production seems to be on the rise.
One could argue that asshole production proceeds at a uniform and steady rate and that there has merely been an increase in asshole
reporting
, with increasing media scrutiny of public figures and profit-driven exposure of assholes on TV, in print, and on the Web. At the same time, however, increasing reportage also
creates
powerful incentives for assholes to bare themselves in public, for a large audience. That could itself cause asshole production to rise on average.
Here much depends on how we should interpret cultural difference. We might recall cross-cultural variation in what counts as rude behavior, as in familiar East-West contrasts. This makes it hard to tell who is or who is not an asshole. Many Asian cultures regard loud talking in public as a mark of self-centeredness and attention seeking. The South Korean asshole who visits the United States, where self-expression rather than modesty is generallyprized, would have to be especially loud to stand out. On the other hand, in a South Korean university, a visiting American student who is used to being encouraged to speak up in class could easily be mistaken for an asshole if he hadn’t yet noticed that interrupting a professor in lecture is seen as disrespectful. The confusion can persist in perceptions of whole cultures. In a developing South Asian nation such as Indonesia, it is hard for the American or British traveler not to feel that the country is overrun with assholes, given that queuing at the airport (or on the airplane) seems so much like a scrum. It takes a while to see that there is in fact a semblance of order: one is to be as pushy as possible about relative line position without simply pushing others out of the way. (Indonesians don’t share the American or British allergy to actually touching other people.) And there is no clear sign of asshole overproduction among the Indonesian people more generally. If anything, Indonesia underperforms in this way.
Given such cultural differences, one might be skeptical about whether there is any statistically significant cross-cultural or cross-temporal variation in how many assholes are getting produced. The issue is finally one for anthropologists and sociologists to settle. Still, to at least suggest why the steady state view might be wrong, why there might be real variation in asshole production, we might offer anecdotal evidence and a bit of theoretical speculation.
First the anecdotal evidence, from a kind of transnational association. Traveling Brazilian surfers, so almost everyone agrees, are much more likely to be assholes than surfers from almost anywhere else. Acting like an asshole is plainly encouraged in the subculture of Brazilian surfers, who tend to travel in large packs (e.g., of five or ten people as compared to the usual one or two or three). This probably reflects the aggressive manlinessof larger Brazilian culture but also has a more salient and direct explanation in the relatively recent past. When Brazilians first started showing up on Oahu’s famous North Shore, they were antagonized by local Hawaiians, despite mainly lying low. Hawaiian surfers had already become defensive about white visiting surfers from California, Australia, and South Africa and were especially sore about the bombastic Aussies who began to dominate in surf contests and brag loudly about it. White surfers seemed to be
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