Tango-L/[Tango-L] Social-ethical behavior and protocols
Bad behavior and misconduct at milongas. "Judging from the responses on the Tango-L it is not exclusive to us but I can't really speak for other nationalities. This free "interpretation" and disregard for the codigos of tango is just another example of why we are perceived as such. Too bad the dancing doesn't rise to the same heights as the arrogance, but then again that shouldn't be a surprise." I have three comments I must share with you friends to answer this accurate Charles' observation: 1)Yes, indeed there is a lot of arrogance here. It is on our culture. In part is because we are a mighty, so vast, rich, and quite egocentric nation. We became the center of the world because the significant roll we played during the WW I and II and many others scientific, cultural, musical political, (to just mention some) contributions . We may often consider other cultures and "poor" countries of the third world being beneath our standards. It is more. We want to impose our standards on them. We want to copy and adopt the good from other societies and traditions. However, most of the time, since we are immersed in a super-materialistic society, we get only the surface of them, the exterior part of the practice or art. We miss or ignore the essence quite often. Few examples? Yoga, Tai-chi, martial arts, mystical practices or disciplines, and of course: ARGENTINE TANGO. I do not like to generalize but after living here for more than 37 years, I'm convinced of my daring but careful observation. 2)There is another cultural aspect that we must weight here. I observed that a great majority of the people that I met, they were very concern when they have to judge a misbehavior or a wrong conduct. They usually or call the police, they send you to court, they ignore you, they stop calling you, but they never come forward to tell you in your face what is going wrong. This idiosyncrasy can be seen as hypocrisy, lack of sincerity, or fearful lack of cowardly. Therefore, some people do not come forward to condemn a bad behavior at milongas as I did. Their rationale? "I prefer to say something positive rather negative;" I do not agree to ventilate those things in public." It seems that, with this "Pontio Pilato" like rationale, the alternate option will be then gossiping and backbiting. In most of the cases when there is something wrong going on, unless they are not suffering directly on their own flesh, they remain quiet and silent when observing injustice, misconduct, and out of the line behaviors, propitiating the continuation of them and even becoming accomplices. All because the fear of risking prestige or anything. 3)After sharing my negative experience with a lady grossly misbehaving at a milonga, some people came forward privately to identify themselves with my legitimate concern, to give support and good advise. However, few people, less than the number of my right hand fingers, had the courage to say something condemning that unacceptable conduct. That "washing my hands" approach , ignoring my complain and the real facts, recalls a wise quote from a great man: "The greatest atrocity of the bad things of the bad people, is the silence of the good people. THE SILENCE OF THE GOOD PEOPLE HORRIFY ME MORE THAN THE ACT OF THE BAD ONES." -Gandhi I lost two or three friends or half-friend after posting my honest concern with courage. However, the misbehaved lady in question is still negating any wrong doing, leading a local tango organization and hosting workshops and milongas, ready misbehave forward again. Clean and strong hugs, Nicetune. _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list Tango-L@mit.edu http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l