Baggage - with Laura Goodin

As Baggage gets closer to release date, I have some treats from the writers, just to keep you interested. Today's is from Laura Goodin. Laura's story looks at science fictional homesickness and reflects her own past more than somewhat.

Laura has focussed on just two questions, looked at from several vantage points, exploring some of the ideas she addressed in her story. Along the way, she provides a bit of a brief for some those of you who will be descending on us for AussieCon.

Laura will check in here, so you can ask her questions. If you ask her about me as editor, she's going to lie through her teeth and say that I'm near-perfect. This is because I'm evil and bribe with chocolate. But we knew that.

1. What is the most important Aussie social error to avoid?

This is the stereotypical question it's assumed everyone who goes to live in another country wants to know. People expect answers like "Don't cut into a queue," "Pointing at people is considered rude," or "Don't show the soles of your feet to a statue of the Buddha." And, indeed, it's these sorts of small oopses that preoccupied me when I first arrived. It's exhausting, but necessary, to pay utter, focused attention to your every word and movement, and those of everyone around you, as you try to get the hang of things. It was stressful enough for me, even though I come from a culture relatively close to the Australian culture on the "You're weird/you're not" scale. I can't even imagine what it's like for someone who grew up further away from the Australian cultural locus. Oh – my biggest social error in those early days? Probably the time I cut into a queue. No, no – all I wanted was to ask for a serviette/napkin! I swear, that was all!

These days, which means nearly fifteen years after I arrived, I've pretty much assimilated into the day-to-day cultural swing of things. The little oopses may still occur, but I'm secure in the skill of avoiding the big errors, which means the little ones aren't so crucial. I know people will cut me some slack, because people everywhere, for the most part, cut everyone some slack. That's how societies work: there are rules, and most of them are more like suggestions. When you first arrive, you aren't sure which are which, so they all seem hugely important and nerve-wracking and mission-critical. After a while, though, you can tell what the most heinous transgressions are, and you know that if you avoid them, people will still like you even if there's a moment of awkward silence now and then. The ones I still struggle with are the ones where a particular behavior is valued in my home country but despised here. There aren't many of them, but the worst is talking about your own achievements. You have no idea what kinds of inner conflict that sets up when you come from a country that expects you to come into work on Monday and say, "Hey, guess what, my team won on the weekend!" Here in Australia, you're supposed to wait to be asked, and even then you can only murmur, "Yeah, no, yeah, we did all right." When pressed, you might give a detail or two of what some of your teammates did, never of your own achievements.

My daughter was only two and a half weeks old when we moved to Australia, so, despite what it says on her passport, she is completely acculturated into Australian society. Moreover, she's a teenager, one of a class of people who are absolutely the most sensitively attuned to social approval and social errors. (God, they're harsh.) I asked her how she would answer this question. She said, "I've found that the thing that gets you the most 'Oh my God, did she just say/do that?' looks is when you start to talk yourself up a lot. Don't get me wrong, if you say something like, 'Oh I can help with that. I'm pretty good at science', it goes down pretty well, and no one really minds. BUT, if you continually boast about the latest thing you've bought, the latest award you've won, that amazing thing that happened to you the other day, that time you beat someone at something, you tend to get branded as someone who is insecure, not someone who is successful. Whether or not the social pressure on people to talk themselves down is a good thing, it is a very prominent aspect of the part of Australian culture that I've experienced.

"I picked this up pretty quickly, because I went to school here. I would often hear the phrase 'Oh God, (s)he is so up him/herself'. Never, ever, ever, in my whole life, have I wanted someone to say that about me. So, like all the kids I hung out with, I talked myself down, and kept myself to myself when it came to my achievements. I wasn't so lucky with teachers, however, as they tend to completely disregard this unspoken rule of humility. I can still remember the mix of pride, embarrassment and dread I felt when my good work or an award I had won was recognised in front of the whole class. The WHOLE CLASS, for goodness' sake. Ooooooh, the shame. But I digress.

"Maybe the kids I hung out with learnt this behaviour from their parents, or it's just a strange genetic phenomenon that they refuse to make themselves look good. Either way, it definitely affected the way I behaved, and even thought, when I was in primary school.

"I don't really know how to finish off this response...thing... but I hope you've enjoyed this glimpse into the socially ruled, emotion-fuelled thrill ride that is my life in Australia."

God bless my daughter for verifying my perceptions! I remember similar feelings of anxiety during my own childhood – only about different cultural transgressions, regarded amongst my own people as heinous. It points out to me that every culture has an element of cruelty in it: culture, by definition, demands conformity: I can't imagine an individual who could possibly possess the capacity for independent thought and yet fit the ideals of their culture precisely. Even the most suave and self-assured in each culture has a few quirks that must be hidden or shed. We've evolved as a species to be able to cope with these demands, but that doesn't make it either easy or fun. And there are always those who, for one reason or another, find it even more difficult than normal to meet the demands of the people around them. I have no answers for how to make quirky individuality more valued than the ability to demonstrate, and thereby uphold, the standards of one's culture. I suppose I can't even convincingly argue on anything more than an emotional basis that it's better to value the quirky individuals than to suppress them. I just know that I'm more comfortable around misfits and geeks...


2. What kinds of help can you most rely on Aussies to give, and where will you likely be disappointed?

When I first arrived, a newborn baby in the frontpack and a suitcase in each hand, I was absolutely stunned by the willingness of Australians to pitch in and help. Australians are mad keen on babies, as a rule, and can't do enough to help you out when you've obviously got a lot on your hands. (If that image, so close to the image of a newborn, i.e. non-toilet-trained, baby, is a little disturbing, well, so it should be.) In fact, Australians are far, far readier than the people of my own culture to get right in there and give a hand to anyone who is having a rough time of any description. In my culture, as a general rule, you wait to be asked to help. There are reasons why this works for us, just as there are reasons why any cultural norm works in any society; these reasons could be historical, pragmatic, shaped by geography or chance, but they evolve because, on some level, they work. So I'm not saying that my own people are aloof and unhelpful, and I'm not saying that Australians are pushy and officious. I'm saying that if an Aussie sees you need help, you'll get it. I thought it when I arrived and I think it now.

As the years went by, however, I started to notice another aspect of this cultural norm: if you don't look like you need help, good luck asking for it. Probably for the same reasons that they are so ready to pitch in during times of real need, Aussies have a dreadful contempt for people who whine or malinger. And if you feel lonely and wish people would be friends with you? Get off your arse and make some friends, mate, don't blame us.

My husband has immigrated a number of times in his life, including two immigrations to Australia (long story). I asked him about this question, and he said, "I found out very quickly that Australians love the battler, the underdog. It's often regard as a cliché, but it's borne out in reality so often. The natural-disaster victim, the kid who's bullied in the playground, the complete stranger who looks as if they need help but doesn't know where to turn, the refugee, the person who has lost everything in the house fire and the person who is ill but doesn't have to be. These are the people the Australian wants to help. And it's not limited to people. Australians are close to their wildlife and their domesticated animals too. An Aussie will not stand for cruelty to kids, horses or dogs – and not always in that order.

"But, if you're the type who's always had it good and has lost a bit, but not everything, and you are overly vocal about how tough it is for you, don't expect a sympathetic ear or an outstretched hand. The banker who has to sell his Mercedes or the financier who has to forgo a bonus – neither of these is looked upon as deserving of help. Currently, I don't expect the billionaire mine owners who cry foul about having to pay more tax will carry the day either. The federal government is, in fact, banking its political future on it.

"The same could be said for the person who just keeps on asking for help. There comes a time, and every Australian seems to know when it is, when you should start taking care of yourself and thus be prepared to help out the next person in line who is worse off than you. I remember the worst thing you could be called when I got here was a 'bludger' or, even worse, a 'dole bludger'. The rhetoric may have softened, but not the attitude."

I've learned a lot about how a more group-oriented society like Australia's works, in comparison to my home culture, which tends to be hyper-individualistic. Interestingly, this does not seem to mean that there is a lot of support for the quirky individual (see question above). Instead, it means that you're expected to succeed without asking for help if you can possibly avoid it. I have to say, after so long here in Australia, I've come to appreciate the "all hands on deck" approach, even as I glance over at my home country and remember what it is about the "go it alone" approach that I still feel comfortable with. (I quite like not being interrogated about what I brought for lunch every day at work, for example – I still can't help feeling that some things, even banal and inoffensive things, are just nobody else's business.) I don't want to set up one of those slick, one-dimensional continua that I was handed when doing cross-cultural studies at uni – this culture is cooperative, this culture isn't; this culture is high-tech, this culture is high-touch; and on and on. Cultures are far more complex than that. Instead, I propose the question: "Culture A feels like this about X; is there something in Culture B about which they feel the same way?" That way you can start to find the commonalities, start to understand.