What’s Wrong with People!

At the Metropolitan Opera for the performance of Turandot on Sunday, I noticed two couples – who had obviously just made each other’s acquaintance – standing at their seats and chatting animatedly during intermission. 

But when the two wives left for the rest room, the husbands suddenly became entranced with the ceiling. They exchanged not a single word while the wives were gone.

That’s when the whole edifice we call the human condition began to crack and crumble around me, and I muttered: “What’s wrong with people!”

Now that I’ve had a few days to think about this incident, I see it through Deborah Tannen's eyes She’s a pioneer in sociolinguistics and the author of You Just Don't Understand.

I’d spent time with Dr. Tannen on two occasions when I commissioned her to speak on communication to corporate groups. 

My hunch is that she would find the Met Opera scenario a textbook example of the different ways men and women use language to navigate social hierarchies and make connections.

Her research over the years has found that in social settings, women are the social anchors. The wives I observed at the Met were engaging in "rapport-talk." They were the bridge between the two couples.

But for guys, communication is a way to exhibit knowledge ("report-talk") or status. In a setting with strangers, men may feel there is no "information" to report or no established hierarchy to navigate, so they go mum. 

The husbands weren't being rude to each other while their wives were otherwise occupied, Dr. Tannen would say. They were comfortable gazing at the opera house ceiling together without the "burden" of small talk. They were engaging in a shared activity – a perfectly valid way males bond.

But still. “What’s wrong with people!” Why does our species have to be so ridiculously complicated?

We are like birds, constantly shrieking and pecking at one another. Monks, nuns, and even the old Shaker communities all say the hardest thing about their communal lives is not the celibacy – but the living together. I spent Easter at a monastery – where silence was total – and within the space of a weekend I had developed an animosity toward two of my fellow retreatants.

And what about ethnic groups? Those who are most similar are the ones who wage the bitterest violence against each other: Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants, Hutu and Tutsi tribes, Russians and Ukrainians.

This paradox – closeness breeding friction – is a central theme in sociology, psychology, and anthropology. Closeness itself threatens our sense of identity.

In fact, it was Freud who noted that communities with minor differences are more prone to feuding than those that are radically different.

Anthropologist Fredrik Barth theorized that ethnic identity is not defined by culture, but by the boundaries between groups. The Hutu and Tutsi tribes share language and religion, so social boundaries must be constructed to mark their individuality.

On an individual level, sociologist Erving Goffman described monasteries as “total institutions,” where every aspect of life happens in the same place with the same people.

We ordinarily play different roles at work, at home, and among friends. In a total institution, however, there is no escape. Anthropologists tell us that without physical or social distance, our nervous system can remain on low-level, territorial alert.

And you guessed it. The above dynamics can also apply to marriage, where they manifest in bickering and, half the time, divorce.

Philosopher Alain de Botton offers this thought: The cure for marital strife isn't finding a more compatible partner, but simply accepting the truth that every human is inherently difficult to live with – including ourselves.