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Blogs rule, good idea Dan the Man.

Ive got nothing to say so Im going to post this essay I wrote for school. Hope you find it amusing, despite the typos.

To Snot or Not? An Intercultural Musing

On a cold February morning in northern France, the howling wind outside finds a peculiar echo inside the classroom. There a cacophony of emptying nostrils punctuates the monotone lecture of the professor with hair raising guffaws, whining bleets, and long snorting blows. I sat in the back, confused. As an American exchange student I had become used to being constantly en garde lest I make the slightest faux pas. This uproar of public snot unloading befuddled me completely. How could a culture in all other aspects infinitely more refined and hung up on etiquette than America be, in this aspect, so utterly ill-mannered, rude, and downright uncivilized?

I am not the first to ponder the comparative mores of nose-blowing. Robert Elias, a German sociologist, dedicates an entire chapter of his monumental work The Civilizing Process: A History of Manners to nose blowing. According to him, snot etiquette evolved in Western countries in tune with a larger “civilizing process.” The key element of this process is the development of “self-restraint,” a phenomenon linked to a rising monopoly of power by the State. In rough summary, the theory states that, in the feudal times, an aristocrat plundered cattle, ravaged women, and noisily and publicly emptied his nostrils as long as he could muster the physical force to stave off reprisals. Servants, on the other hand, having no force of their own, were expected to bow, curtsy, and politely sniffle in the corner. According to Elias, with the rise of the modern state in the 18^th century, the right to physical violence was monopolized by the government, which then became the supreme force in the land. All others were reduced to servants; Elias points out that even the most wealthy aristocrats of the Versailles Court paled next to the Sun King, and thus were obliged to knock with the pinky finger, eat with a fork, and blow their nose with a handkerchief.

Yet there I was, in Louis’s own homeland, and the state was doing nothing to repress the violent trumpet-blasts disrupting my education. Was I to take it that, along with liberté, égalité, and fraternité, se moucher joined the list as one of the demands of Louis XVI’s beheaders, and the polite sniff went the way of the Bastille? Yet if so, surely Napoleon, as astute a guardian of the State’s prerogatives as any, would have offered those dissident bleets a whiff of grape-shot to cure any congestion. Maybe in 1968 the uprising students thumbing their noses at De Gaulle’s bourgeois inhibitions proclaimed ”Sous les paves, les mouchoirs” (“Under the cobblestones, the Kleenexes”), or perhaps “Sois jeune, Mouche-toi”(“Be young. Blow your nose.”)

The blowing seemed to deep-rooted, however, to ascribe to any contemporary political event. The cause might lie in the language itself. Perhaps French nasal vowels are simply impossible to pronounce unless the nostrils are vigilantly kept clear of obstructions. Or perhaps instead it was the cuisine, and doctors will one day find that although red wine leads to long life and thin hips, undue baguette consumption leads to massive mucous excesses. Perhaps long scarves inhibit bloodflow to the brain necessary to keep sinuses clear. Perhaps that famous French nose is difficult to empty all in one go, explaining the hardiness of the efforts being made by some of my colleagues.

The problem might have been that I was asking the wrong question. Instead of French phlegm flying abnormally loose, perhaps my little corner of the world was unusually uptight in its desire to retain bodily fluids in their respective orifices while in public. Supporting this point were the Germans, who, contrary to popular beliefs about Teutonic uprightness and self-possession, routinely let it fly with Wagnerian enthusiasm on crowded buses, in restaurants, even while cruising the Autobahn.

But we Americans, are we not the last bastions of laissez-faireisme, individual rights, and “doing as one likes,” the consequences be damned? How could this be reconciled with an excessively harsh repression of the God-sanctioned activity of nasal discharge? Here Elias starts to fall apart; with our federal system, should we not be blowing like our medieval forbearers? How can a country otherwise so far behind in the civilizing process, a country which murders, pollutes, and plays baseball at rates far beyond those of any European state, simultaneously blow its nose in such refined daintiness?

Perhaps we’ll never know. As for me, I soon became accustomed, and, finally, when I could sniff no more, when a tickle of fluid touched my upper lip, with sad nostalgia for my home and native land, let fly my white flag in cleansing relief.