Romance,

• woo: make amorous advances towards
• have a love affair with
• the group of languages derived from Latin

I have hesitated posting this, for it is a bit like opening a pandora’s box and inflicting a devestating idea onto the psyche of humanity. I have chuckled and called it my publisher’s block.

I certainly had the idea even before I first came to Australia that I was entering a non-romantic culture. I know about the typical intimate but non-romantic type of experience where even if you are tied up on the bed a woman still would not be able to figure out how to seduce you.

Even with this type of romantic ineptitude, I had always considered romantic non-romantic cultures to be different, yet relatively neutral towards each other. While they emphasize different values they at least know about and tolerate each other. and why not. After all there are certainly advantages to both approaches towards life. I had absolutely no idea of the sinister experience that was to lay ahead.

That is not to say that most of my social experiences haven’t been sinister over here, they have. For a long time I had to endure various “bloody yank” experiences coupled with the “you do not exist” treatment so prelavent here. Being reactionary to this assault and carrying my passport and showing people I was Canadian did not help. So I began to preempt the situation, letting people know right off the first sentence where i was from. I knew they were not going to ask, and would be pissed right off royaly if I dare pointed out the accuracy to them.

And that is the thing that got me, was the uniformity of the approach. Heck I might as well say the same thing for Canadians. From my vast recollection the approach I have witnessed and put forth has always been along the lines of “where are you from, that is an interesting accent, are you from somewhere” when someone detect an accent. Here, they do not ask, they told.

Interesting.

I must say that over the years it has improved. The preemptive approach has allowed me to make some contact to the point that I can have a talk for a couple of hours and socialize to some albeit small level. There has been some synergistic benefits from that.

At any rate, at one time I was presented with the opportunity to attended an event with a group of people that lasted over several days, a gathering if you wish. One day there was a workshop on one of those psychology categorization profiling thingies.

The presenter has a nice pace and a repetitive structure to the workshop. He goes over each category the same way, with the questions they ask, the traits, some cartoons joking about the trait and a famous person of that category. Then he runs a video of someone (Australian for the most part) with that trait who explains their thought process. After that the guy leading the session asks who thinks they belongs to that category and that generates some interactive discussion. Yada yada.

The groups had nicknames and one of them was the romantic. The presenter commented that there were a lot of this type of people from European countries like Italy and South American countries like Brazil. I watch the video of this Australian shaking my head and wondering where they got this guy. I mean it was depressing to watch, I really felt sorry for the guy if you know what I mean.

What was interesting was the reaction after the video. Up until now the response from the crowd had been “well that is interesting, a good approach, I think like that some times, I belong to that group” (although the later was left to the end). This time it was different. One woman got going on about this guy with a “how dare he think this way” tone, and it was echoed by another, then another. I turned and I saw the same look at all the women within my field of vision. They just tore into him, even some of the quiet ones opened up and took a strip off this guy. It was amazing. A male of the audience interupted with a “hey hey, hold on just a moment here.” to no avail, it went on. Another, who said he was from a romantic culture (he was greek) tried to support what the guys had said but he got shot down with a blast as the women were now on lynch mob mode. They just kept on going.

Finally it was at this point the leader of the workshop asked for calm. It was too late, the mob had turned into a riot. Well I had been watching the scene long enough and was darn out right fed up. I laid right into them...LOL.

I told them I came from a culture that respected that type of person. I told them of common experiences, where a poet would utter to a woman, a complete stranger how she was a butterfly coming into his life, and will flutter away momentarily. I told them that romantics don’t bottle it up until it becomes explosive, that they don’t drown with the onslaught wave of emotion, they swim through it and experience it fully, and along the journey they compose, sculpt, paint as an impression of the journey. That is why you can read Shakespear, look at a Picasso, a Dali, a Gaugin or a Da Vinci and be profoundly affected by it. You don’t have to live this way, but gee whiz there are people that do, you should at least tolerate them.

I felt I was defending a culture with an atomic bomb.

It stopped. The whole room went quiet. The leader quickly recuperated with a discuss it later comment and moved on. The rest of the day was civil. I did notice something curious at the end of the day however, when people were asked to stand together inside various groups I also noticed two major clusters, with a third also having a substantial amount of people and it trickled on from there. However there were 3 types that were missing, obviously one of them was romantics. That was curious for a group of around 30 people. It added to the curiosity that the other two groups devoid of people were nicknamed achievers and optimists.

So that was the event. It had stunned me. I had a chance to speak to the greek guy afterwards. I just had to debrief myself from this surrealistic experience. I it was a “did I really see what just happened?” type of conversation. To my shock, this born Australian but of a greek background not only concurred but said that it was a typical mood here.

I have mulled over this for months. While I had been considering non-romantic cultures from a neutral perspective, this event definitely demonstrated a hatred and animosity for the concept that I had never quite seen before...ever. Words such as aromantic romatophobic, amoraphobic were toyed with but nothing seems to describe the focused passionate yet vitriolic hatred I witnessed.

It was indeed an insightful discovery, and of course, now that I know what the field is, I can take advantage of that well earned information.

To be continued....

• Insightful Discovery - CEX 09:25:53 04/18/2008 (0)