Is Rudeness Relative?

Along with the very real possibility of being impaled by 6-foot-long icicles I have been thinking lately about whether or not rudeness is always relative. I tend to think about this most after I have become extremely annoyed by a Swede doing something I perceive to be super rude and they seem positively astonished by if I say anything. These incidents tend to involve:

• People cutting in front of me or the kids as we go into the library, get on a bus, etc.
  
• People bumping into me or the kids in the street and not saying anything
• People pushing by us to get somewhere without saying excuse me or whatever

Now Swedes, unless they have lived abroad for a long time, would not think any of the above are rude or out of the ordinary. Notice that all of these involve pretending you don't see the other person you are pushing, bumping, etc. The norm in Sweden, in public spaces, is to not see anyone and not speak to anyone you don't know, and that includes people you injure. The weird thing about this to me is that Swedes, when you've met them, are truly the humblest, most egalitarian people I've ever met, and that's perhaps why the public behavior is so bizarre.

My theory is that this all relates back to the Swedish value/norm of "lagom," which translates badly to just enough. Swedes are often worried about being too much of anything -- too loud, too smart, too outgoing, too fat, whatever ... they want to be just enough of everything. They are most comfortable when everyone is the same. And when everyone is the same, I guess you don't have to say excuse me when you push by someone because why the heck should you apologize to them because they're not any more special that you and shit happens, right?

Anyway, this is the clearest example I have in Sweden of rudeness being relative. What is rude to me is clearly the norm for the Swedes, and so I go around muttering to myself about rude Swedes when of course in their minds they aren't at all.

So are there some things that are ALWAYS rude across all cultures? Well, you gotta figure that making jokes about someone else's country that refer to sensitive political or historical events are up there. Take the participant I had in my cultural understanding course this week. His jokes over the two days included jokes about:

• The French letting the Germans walk right into Paris
  
• The Germans not being welcome in Holland in large numbers when they wear green
• Not going to Venezuela because you'll never come out again
• It's better not to have oil in your country because the U.S. will invade you

This guy had no edit feature and, as far as I could tell, no practice in putting himself in others' shoes, so we worked on both of those things. We'll see if he can hold back on the Stalin jokes when he goes to Russia next week. Sigh.