25/6/93

The Humiliation Factor

In our macho society, confrontation is solved with a subtle, sublime admission of inferiority.

   The story goes that shortly after the car was invented, there was a traffic accident in South Dakota. There were only two cars in the entire state, but one day, crunch, they collided head on. Both drivers had been in the habit of driving as if they were the only ones on the roads. Just like here.
    The guy flashing his high-beams at me must have learned to drive in South Dakota at the turn of the century. He didn't look like a South Dakotan - though I have never really seen one, so I can't be sure - but he certainly drove like one. He kindly drew my attention to the uncomfortable fact that I was blocking him. "Manyak! Ya hantarish! FOO-ya Amerika'i," he explained.
    If this guy was South Dakotan, then I'm a North African.
    I took stock. From this gentleman I understood that I was insane, I was in his way, I was expected to get my car off the road immediately and go back to America. It didn't matter that I'm not Foo-ya American, because we all are; it didn't matter that this was a one-lane, one-way street and I was going in the appointed direction and he was not; it didn't matter that I was right and he was wrong. It was no contest, really: he had a voice right out of ג€œThe Call of the Wild,ג€ whereas I kept clearing my throat and starting my rebuttals with "But -"
    I could have been gallant. I could have backed down, and backed up the wrong way all the way down the one-way street to let him get his way. I could have - but I couldn't.   Not for this fellow. At least, not until I got in some choice words.
    "F," I started to say.
    It was the only English he seemed to know.
    Of course that only made him madder, and he got nastier and I got angrier and I yelled louder and that really ticked him off and he mentioned my dear mother and that was going too far so I brought up his wife's misgivings and he reared back and called me a dirty leftist and I called him David Levy's pickle vendor and he said I should get AIDS from Shulamit Aloni so I spat on his louvered metallic-black 1993 BMW with the letters "JPS" on the side, and that was finally a step too far. Somebody was going to have to bleed for this.   That's when I thought of my analyst.
    My analyst introduced me to the Humiliation Factor. Now, the last thing a compulsive paranoid schizo-neurotic needs is an analyst who's into humiliation, but I'm his last appointment and the poor guy has to unwind somehow and I'm such a lost cause anyway, so he gives me an extra 10 minutes free every week and I let him work on his Humiliation Factor theory.
    In our macho society - his thesis goes - confrontation is often defused when the more vulnerable combatant submits a subtle element of self-humiliation, a sublime admission of inferiority to which the more aggressive opponent must respond with the Magnanimity Loophole, resulting finally in a curious turnaround in character. Watch how it works:
    Let's pick it up from when my indignant gob of spittle lands on this pig's shimmering chromework. With this spit our spat has graduated from merely verbal to the verge of violent. I have about five seconds to act. But remember, subtle.
    "Ptui! And that's what I think of your car, ya big fat slob. Did you steal this thing, or can you afford to drive around like the prime minister from selling a few pickles a day?"
    " ..."
    "You don't sell pickles? So what are you, a pimp?"
    " ..."
    "No kidding! Radishes! Big radishes, or little ones?"
    " ..."
    "How much a kilo?"
    " ..."
    "Hey, not bad, you must sell a lot if you could buy a BMW. So, how does it hold the road? Really? Impressive. Nice. Jeez, I'd sure love to drive a baby like yours, but I pay income tax, you see, and the best I could do is this crummy old Zitzka. But what the hell, it gets me to the hospital for my treatments - cough - and anyway, most of the day I drive a Volvo garbage truck. Gee, I don't think I ever before had the honor of spitting on such an expensive car."
    As he slams into reverse and stonily waves me through, he helps me humiliate myself - "I work hard, habibi, and I don't have time to fight with trash like you" - but then, the magnanimity: "Hey," he says gruffly as a parting shot, "if you're going to the hospital, it's the first left after the traffic light. Yalla."
    This is how we locals like to put up our dukes: (a) all-out mutual abuse, (b) at its peak, meek self-abasement by the weaker, (c) the triumphant last word by the stronger as (d) he yields smugly to the weaker.
    Observation: real macho men never drive in reverse. If they have to, then only flooring it.

THE HUMILIATION Factor, the shrink tells me at 150 shekels an hour, is also valuable as a preemptive strike. Like during a visit to your favorite bureaucracy. You're going into a position of weakness, so you roll over and be pathetic. "Help me, please." Whimper, make it clear that without her noble, benign assistance, you're doomed. You're already doing half her job by humiliating yourself, so she can get on to the next stage, pity, lifting you out of the dust, showing that yes, you do need her, and she's waited all day to be needed.
    However, there is a drawback, my analyst explains: Israelis don't always play by the rules. You're doing a beautiful job humiliating yourself, but it turns out your opponent is only too eager to help. It's nice that he agrees with you, but this is now really humiliating. I asked the shrink about this, and before the clock struck 150 shekels, I had my answer. "Agree with him."
    "Agree?"
    "It's what we in the profession call 'antidisabusementarianism,' a flip-flop form of paralogistic counter-undeception. You know, like cacodoxical katagelophobia or, in layman's terms, essentially the sociophenomenon of pseudohumiliation. If you know what I mean."
    "It means I should agree with a yotz that I'm a putz?!"
    "Exactly. That'll be 150 shekels. Cash this time."
    I understood that good advice doesn't come cheap. "I'll tell you what," I said bargainingly. "I'll give you 120 and you can call me names for another 15 minutes."
    "You'll give me 150, you thieving little mumpsimus. Pedaleur. Poltroon. Pilgarlic of the worst order."
    I called him a quack, he called me a mattoid, a korinthenkacker, an iatrapistiac. I told him he was insane if he thought I'd pay him anything at all. He retorted, I snarled, he shrank, blanched and regrouped. He attacked, I counterattacked. I got up to leave, he hurled a shot below the belt, I wheeled and glowered. He cleared his throat and suggested I zip up my jacket, it's cold outside. I asked him since when did he care. He said he did, I scoffed. He winced. I growled: "And your goddamn couch is lumpy. Fix it with this." And I slammed down on his desk 150 shekels.