I defied a cultural norm

I defied a cultural norm. I did! It felt kinda good actually.

But really, one little cultural norm that irks me is the American tendency to ask "how's it going?" when you greet someone. It has simply become part of the standard greeting procedure even though people rarely honestly answer that question. It's such a disingenuous question, because people don't really want to know and don't really care about your response or how you're actually doing.

I was walking along at work and a coworker passed me by. She asked, "hey, how's it going?" Instead of the usual "Oh I'm fine" or "doing well!" or some other canned, dishonest response I decided to really tell her how I was. I'm really excited for summer but I'm also really busy, and so on and so on. She got this glazed, kind of shocked look on her face as her smile faded as she realized I was actually answering her question. It was definitely an awkward moment! At the same time, I felt good to actual break this annoying norm and answer her question. If you ask a personal question, especially something like how someone is doing, you should expect a response!

I remember I also did this one when I was in high school, just real quickly. I was having a terrible day and someone I knew passed me in the hall and asked me how was. I just responded, "terrible" and kept walking. She was shocked, but I didn't care. Guess what? That's how I feel, and if you aren't prepared for an honest answer, you shouldn't ask the question.


The second question--the role of culture and norms in society--is kind of a massive one. Where do I start? It's almost hard to distinguish culture from society, to me. Culture is what defines society and gives it form and shape and meaning. Culture, like art, is difficult to define; like art, it can be defined as anything and everything. What i mean is, some people claim that art can potentially be anything around us; the same can be said for culture.

Norms are a little more concrete. I'd say the value of social norms is to maintain a sense of societal order and predictability. In this way, they remind me a bit of how the human mind uses stereotypes. Stereotypes are generally bad things--generalizations we make about people based on some trait they have. But imagine if we didn't have these evaluative shortcuts when we interacted with people. Evaluating every single person we come across every day at an individual level without making guesses or inferences about them based on things like race or gender or economic status would be mentally tiring. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but it's a more efficient way of going about the world. Norms, to me, have a similar function. They are shortcuts to existing smoothly in society.