Susan MacDougall, Friendship

You're listening to Not Simple, a cultivating leadership podcast. Hello and welcome to today's episode of Not Simple. Today I am delighted to be joined by Susan McDougall. Susan is a Middle East anthropologist at Cambridge University. She's also the mother to a gorgeous six-month-old boy, named Javier. And one of the fascinating things I find about Susan is that Susan is American-born with the Scottish last name, married to a Lebanese gentleman who studied in France, and now they both live in the UK. So this is the very definition of a woman of the world to me, so welcome, Susan. I'm so excited to have you. Thanks, Wendy, I'm so excited to be here. Cool. I want to remind everybody briefly why we started Not Simple. We believe really strongly in the idea that so many of our issues in the world today are not simple. And no matter how hard we try or want to simplify all the complexity away, the complexity is just going to remain. So we're hopeful that if we talk a little bit about it, make it a little more accessible and a little more fun for people. We'll all be just a little better equipped to handle some of the really complex challenges in our world, and hopefully have a little more fun with them. So Susan, what are we talking about today? So today we're talking about something that I find really complex, so I think it's often people consider it very simple, which is friendship. Friendship. Fantastic. I'm so excited. And I can only imagine, OK, I guarantee this is going to be one of those where we hit the end of our 30 minutes, and I say, geez, I wish we could talk for three more hours. But 30 minutes on friendship, why does this matter to you, Susan? Why? Well, I think the more professional reason or the more, I guess, official reason is that I did my doctoral field work in Jordan and I'm on Jordan on female friendships. I basically hung out with some women in a lower middle class neighborhood, and my dissertation revolved around the sort of everyday dramas of their lives in my life with them. So I got really interested in the topic of how friendship works. Also kind of moving into a different cultural environment. The rules about how to be a good friend change a little bit, and you become, when you're sort of hyper attuned, first of all, and also a little bit incompetent, you become a little bit more interested. But I also think that as an adult who has moved around a lot, I have found at different points in my life the project of developing a network of friends, has looked really different, and as a time has been really fun and easy, and a time has not been easy at all. So yeah, so it seemed like a really important topic to know a bit about. Yeah, and as I listen to that, I'm fascinated also the thing that just popped to me as you were saying that was in now and this time of COVID, when we are so much more kind of isolated in some ways, probably friendships changing in that way too, like how do we, how do we develop friendships, how do we maintain them, sustain them, help them thrive anyway. Okay, friendship it is. I love this one about COVID, I mean, I think this is something that we can take in a million different directions. And so this is one, if you don't mind, you can pick up this thread of COVID. As I saw a friend recently, my husband and I had been in Lebanon while Khalid was born, and after that, and then we recently came back to UK, and so I saw a friend who was living here, he came to visit us in London, and he said he felt like everyone's friendships are frozen in time, but it's like you're not under normal circumstances, you'd be kind of going out and mixing in groups that were of a size where you could encounter new people, right? And so you could add friends to your group, but now it's sort of like your relationships have no opportunity to develop or add or subtract, right? It's like you're the way that we socialize is now so tightly kind of managed that expanding or contracting your social circle is really difficult. And I was like, oh, that's such an interesting way to think about the time that we're living in, right? Is that everyone's sort of social network is on pause? Yeah, in person social network, this is a time when it seems like an online social network is sometimes actually on fire, and our person's social networks are on pause. That's fantastic. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, so I mean, has that been the case for you? Do you feel like your online social network has taken off? Um, on fire for me actually means less that it's grown dramatically and more that there's just so much that has moved from the dining table conversation into the sort of online back and forth between people, which I have found to increase the kind of polarization of our people's views, and that's kind of what I mean by on fire, that the, yeah, that the online social interaction has become, um, combative almost at times, or either we deeply agree or we deeply disagree and there's very little discourse in between. That's definitely, I mean, definitely seems true in my observation, there's a lot of material, especially given the politics of COVID, right, I think that, uh, it seemed at least where I was living or in Lebanon, it was not so much like this, it was a bit different, but in the UK for sure, it seems like also in the US, it's really sharp kind of like you're on board for certain sorts of restrictions, or you're like personally offended by the existence of the restrictions and people who follow them, but there's no sort of like middle ground, which is interesting because the science is pretty murky, yeah, yeah, so I love this and I want to come back to it, I love, I'd love for us to take a moment and kind of dial back and look at your experience of friendship in general, and sort of some of the ways that you see us as a society, as human oversimplifying the idea of friendship. Yeah, so I mean, I think that the like number one way that we oversimplify is by thinking of it is liking, or that it's like friends like each other, and this is an idea that actually if you look at like this sort of Scottish enlightenment period, it actually has a really interesting historical genealogy that like the idea that friendship is where liking took place is something that, uh, emerged kind of in the time when Adam Smith was developing his theory of like markets and, uh, in the invisible hand and what should be governed by the market because in order for that to work, it meant that you had to have a like sentimental life outside of the market, right, in order to be sort of like a value maximizing individual in market environment, you needed to have a side of your life where you could engage in sort of sentimental interactions or like, you know, feelings were pure, um, that were not corrupted by this sort of like self-interest. And so I see this as like we, I, when I think of friendship or when I hear people talking about what friends should be or what a true friend is, it's like this kind of niceness and liking are, um, are such big parts of it. And the reality is that like friendships are, you know, infinitely messier and nastier and deeper and all sorts of ways good and bad than just like two people who like each other and get along and are nice to each other, um, yeah, so, so I like to get into that stuff. So I just learned a couple of really fascinating things that one, that actually blew my mind to think about that idea that, that this idea that friends are, are people who like each other was born only a few hundred years ago and yeah, that, that it, it sort of as I listen to you describe that it's like the beginning of this question of work life balance, which we don't even need to go to. I love it. I love it. Like it's like you could almost look in history and say right there, it was born before that we had a life now, and we have a life and our friends are in our life. Yeah, yeah. I mean, absolutely. I mean, this is a great point, but like the way that we think about what is social life and what is family, like also, I mean, the whole idea that like family and friends are like two separate categories is something that like emerges really clearly from that sort of division, right, that you have like a private sphere that is like not governed by like how the market works, right, and you work really hard to keep it separate. I think in a lot of ways it's like you shouldn't be bringing sort of market logics into your home. And you shouldn't be bringing your home life into your work, which we, yeah, your personal life doesn't, it doesn't belong in business, right? Everyone should be, I don't know, which is, I think where we get all sorts of other ideas, like the idea of like nepotism or corruption, right, follows from this kind of very clean economic, like homo-economicist perspective on how work should be going, right, which is, which is new to our time. And I mean, yeah, this is probably my favorite time. I'm going to spin off on it. I mean, there's another piece in it that I also heard, which I'd love to explore as well and I'm happy to go either directions around this idea that that friends or people who like each other win in reality, they really must be, if I stop and think about some of my deepest relationships, my longest friendships, my most sort of soul-feeding relationships in my life, I could say that sometimes those are the people who I can do the hardest things with. Like those are the people who I can disagree with really strongly and yet work through it or who can have a different opinion than I do and it's worth it to work that out. So it's fascinating because I probably would have said, of course, I like my friends, and yet in any given moment, there might be these places where we're, where we super disagree, or, yeah, so let's, anyway, yeah, yeah, we can go to New York, we can go to, I mean, I think let's do liking because I have like one kind of avenue that I'm thinking that will be interesting to take this. And so in Jordan, and this is true in the Levant, generally, in Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, you have this concept called Moatibib, which is basically like berating someone for messing something up. Like if one of the ways that like I experienced it a lot in the friendship that I had is if you, if someone called you, right, and you didn't call them back, then the next time that they saw you, they would be like, what's wrong with you? You didn't call me back. I'm angry at you. You owe me an apology, and I don't know if I want to talk to you, like there would be some kind of like, even if they weren't necessarily very angry, you had to go through several rounds of like them saying like, you're in the wrong, you're in the wrong, you're in the wrong. And then I think what I learned is my instinct was always to be like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I'm absolutely wrong, like, please forgive me, and they were like, kind of taken it back because it was actually my role to be like, no, like the reason why I didn't is because, like, I sent you a text message and you didn't respond to that, or like, I came and knocked on your door and you weren't in. It's like the idea is for this to be like a reciprocal process of us, cool, being like your, you were slacking as a friend for this reason and you were slacking as a friend for this reason. Essentially, we kind of come to a crescendo and like, move on to doing something else. And so this, like, berating someone for like not coming to, not coming over when they were invited or getting to return a phone call or even, you know, any, like a whole range of ways in which they were like, not quite living up to friends standards was how you really could tell if someone was an actual friend. Wow. Wow. It was like if you were not, if you didn't have that kind of relationship with them, then they were considered like really formal and there was a totally different register for that, which was like a really fake polite, like politeness that was like really effusive. And people were kind of like, yeah, you, this is polite. It's polite to talk to people in this like really effusive way, but we know that it's a lie. We know that it's not sincere. So if you're talking to someone that way, it means you're not their friend. And I was kind of like, you know, is one of those things where, you know, when you encounter something when you're like, yeah, that explains a lot to me, like, I didn't have that concept, but now that I have it, it's opened up like a whole new world in terms of how relationships work. Can't say a lot. I mean, I would totally agree with you that like this is a feature of close friendship. Fascinating. And to imagine, and you can imagine in that how culture clashes would arise. So if we in our Western world believe that if I like you, I'm polite to you or nice to each other is sort of equated with friendship, and in this 11 teen space, it's like, no, if I'm nice and polite to you, that means that I'm holding you at an arm's length and being kind of fake polite and probably didn't welcome you in. And vice versa. Yeah, we, you can just see how, how it would be so complicated to, yeah, encounter for these two cultures to come together or figure out how to be friends, how to like do a good job at being front. So how did you figure it out? How, like, you said, you know, your first instinct was to say, oh, I'm so sorry. And then your friends were taken aback or these women that you were, yeah, it was kind of like that. It was like, is she dumb or does she not get it right now? I think I just started to get it because I, I often would, because I think like there was some of it that would happen behind people's backs or that some, or within my ear shot, I would be like not involved with some of it. I remember once two friends of mine planned, like, it get together at their home. And a third friend said she was going to come in at the last minute. She canceled. She was like, I have something at home, I'm not going to be able to make it. And they called her and they were like yelling at her, they're like, why are you not coming? We're angry. We set a place for you. You're like missing out on something really fun. Like, we can't believe you're doing this. And I was like, it's okay. If she can't come, like, stop yelling at her, like, what, you know, can you, like, cool it with this woman? And they were like, no, no. Like, you're wrong. We do this because we love her. Like, this is how she knows that we love her. It was not subtle at all. Like, I had to get to the level where they're like, this is the rule. Right? Get back to the program. And, and so then I figured out that like, and so then I, one of the things that was really challenging for me is to learn how to, like, give it back, like, I, um, this is not exactly massive, but I was driving. I rented a car for some period. And so all of my friends, um, in my, where I was doing field work for, uh, you know, kind of, like, interested in my car, for it was like, they didn't, none of them had cars. And so it meant that, like, we could drive and so mean driving was like a real, and it was like a new event, right? It's kind of, you know, yeah, anything to talk about, anything to fuel a, like, uh, a good session. Uh, and I, I'm not a good driver, kind of, it should be driver, I think. And being in Jordan, where it's like a different set of rules than where I grew up, um, like, kind of aggressive urban driving, I was like, I really kind of dove into it. I was like, all right, I'm going to park wherever I'm going to cut people off in the round about, I really dove into that, um, it's kind of driving subjectivity. And they were always telling me they're like, you need to take the driving lesson, like, you could not know how to take speed bumps, you could, like, you parked around and right there. And I just finally, like, I learned how to be like, no, this is correct. I know more about driving, I normally, I would be like, yeah, bad driver. I kind of rose to the occasion was like, no, like, actually, this is correct. I did it for this reason, started, like, making things up about why I was driving in this terrible way. And they were kind of like, okay, you know, I was sort of like, oh, right, way to go about it. There's somehow a special structure there that says, it is appropriate and shows care when we hash out all the possible ways that we could be rubbing against each other. And then say, okay, yeah, I mean, I think in this context, a lot of it was about, um, like, looking out for each other, you know, it was kind of like, well, someone is going to make fun of you're driving or tell you that, like, you're out of line for being late or something like that. It's my job as your friend to point out if you're not, uh, if there's something that you're doing that makes you vulnerable to criticism by people who are not your friends. Yeah. And so that was a lot of how it's structured. But I think, like, as you point it out, like, one of the things that, uh, I think, you know, just certain other friendships, it's like, you can more mention this in a different way. Like, looking out differences really at length, right? If you have an argument, then I know that for me, the kind of like American contexts were I, uh, learned about being friends, I guess, if that a huge thing was like, can you, when you have a disagreement, like, sit down and be like, I was really hurt. And this is what I, you know, like, kind of as my friend Ada called it cry talking through your disagreement, so you can kind of reach, uh, a new understanding about each other and then move, um, yeah, and then move on from a place of like greater understanding, which is not the same as the Jordanian crunches, but it's the same idea of like, you know, you get to a level where you're not just going to pretend everything's all right. Yeah. You're going to have the hard conversations or whatever those hard conversations are. Yeah. So fascinating. So there's always way, like, different ways in different, um, societies that we work through some of these, um, deep disagreements or, and that we show each other that we'll look out for you, um, and that we show each other that we'll be there for you, even when things are difficult. So as you think about the work that you've, you've done on friendship over the years, um, what do you wish more people did or knew, like, what would you, what would you want people to know about ideas in friendship? I guess I think the thing that I wish was more normal is that people had, like, a budget of time for friendship. I think that because it's been my experience as someone who, like, moves often, like, different professional environments, like, lived in a lot of countries that it's like, a lot of people just don't have time to make friends, right? It takes so much time to kind of develop a friendship, um, and, uh, Jordanian friend of mine called it rotting, that you sit and you rot with someone, like, for a long time, which is, like, you just do nothing, you just, you devote, like, a long time to just sitting in place, like, rotting on a log, um, to get to know someone. And I think that we don't take into account when we think about how our time unfolds and what makes, like, quality of life is how much, uh, care friendships need to develop and how that is something that, that we need, right? I think that we need for all sorts of reasons. But if you look at, like, friendship, cross-cultural, and friendship historically, it's, like, this is a big deal. People really care about it. They really value it. It's really important. And it's really old, great. You have, like, all these Aristotelian concepts of friendship is, like, a way to, um, find, like, a better version of yourself. If you look back, where they're all sorts of, sort of testimonials to how important friendship is, um, and right now, I think, you know, we, we don't live in that world where people are, kind of, like, friendship is a thing that takes the following, like, a really serious investments of whatever resources, and it is worthy of that sort of attention. Yeah. As you say that, it makes me wonder about going back to this idea of this separation. Um, that becomes that thing you just described about taking the time, becomes exacerbated, if we believe that our work and our friends and our family should all be three separate things. Yeah. And then it takes over and more and more of our time. And then if we want to have a family at a whole, our family takes quite a lot of time. And then there's just, it squeezes out the room to do a third thing. And it makes me wonder about this idea of what if we cultivated or, like, developed closeness with our family, with our work colleagues, with business partners. And sometimes you see that happen. But the more I just can imagine that the more we try to purposely keep those things separate, the more difficult it becomes to, to take that time to sit on the log and be together. Yeah, absolutely. And I think you see that other relationships are changing to adapt to that, right? I think, like, if you follow the way that marriage and, like, companion relationships that are meant to be romantic are now looked at, right? It's like this idea that you're in love with your spouse, that they're your number one source of support that you get along with them tremendously well and you share interest, right? It's like, this is pretty new historically. Like, previously it would be like, well, are you from the same social class? You, like, have the same expectations of what a family looks like and your parents get along. You're good, right? Whereas now it's like, no, this person should be, like, your soulmate and best friend, and you should also enjoy, like, doing the same sports, right? It's just really a pretty tall order, because we've kind of converted that to a friendship relationship in a lot of ways. And then work, I think, it, for a lot of people, it seems like there, many of their most fulfilling and rewarding relationships aren't work. And we see, like, encroaching and stuff like that, like, the, the, the people skills that you need to have to have good relationships at work are pretty, pretty intense, right? You need to be able to, to do a lot of this stuff that we've kind of referred to as hard work for friendship with your work colleagues to get things, to keep that livable environment. Yeah. Yeah. There's so much to this. It's almost like that, that economic separation is now coming full circle, and I'm noticing that as we, in these times, the number one thing I'm seeing from my, my clients is to learn how to bring our whole human selves to work, to refine their ways to connect with each other, to be able to be vulnerable with our own ways, like all of those things are part of what it means to be in friendship. Yeah. Fascinating. Yeah. Super fascinating. So, we've got a little over five minutes left. Why would you like to take us? What, what would you, what would you want us to know? What would I want you to know what's the thing to talk about? I think that for me, I think there's, I don't know. One thing that is always on my mind about friendships is that I think that we have right now, this kind of idea of, or a high dream of like a total integrated multicultural society of tolerance. Right. And I think that that's something that I really share. I think like through my own experiences of friendships, and what I know about how friendship can work, and like it is a wonderful thing to be able to learn about different, different people's experiences and different groups experiences, like having a friend who has different experiences from you. But I think that that's also, I mean, this is another thing that I think is much more complicated in a lot of ways, just like kind of expecting people who don't necessarily come from backgrounds where they share the same expectations about what friendship looks like, to just fall into friendships because they're sharing space or sharing responsibilities or in the same university or whatever. Yeah. I think that that's something that I would, because we know friendship is so complicated, kind of hanging all of this responsibility on it to happen magically that it's going to be this teaching tool is also unrealistic. Yeah. Yeah, if we're not even, and I can imagine in that, you know, if we're living in a world where we're not even taking the time to develop and percolate and enable friendships inside our own culture where we're more likely, not 100 percent, but more likely, to have similar views about what it means to be friends. If you then add on the layer of, we might have grown up an entirely different ideas about what it even means to be friends, like your friends in Jordan who believe that yelling at you is a part of what makes a good friend, then, you know, how do we, how do we be patient with ourselves and with each other? Yeah, of what it means to grow. Absolutely. Yeah, to like learn and be connected to people who come from different backgrounds from us. It requires a lot of understanding and openness that's, yeah, that I think it always more than you expect. And our big teacher of mine said she had worked with a lot of Americans and she was like, it's really interesting, like seeing you guys and how you act. She was like, it seems like everyone is friends with each other. They're friends with each other really immediately. We see people and they're kind of instantly connected, but then to like actually be friends with them is like really long haul. It's actually very difficult to be like a true friend to an American person, right? Like getting there takes like, she was like, it's amazing how hard it is to break in. And I was like, oh, I'd never thought about that before, but there probably is fear, obviously America means like a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And for me, I was like, oh, that's the kind of resonate that like there is this sort of instant rapport that Americans produce that seems like friendship, but that isn't as deep as I think some other people consider, and people from different backgrounds might consider friendship or income. Yeah, I can totally imagine that because it's almost like we create a veneer of liking, which is probably not fake. I mean, I easily tend to like people that I meet, but I don't know them very well. And they don't know me very well. And so that that rapport or that liking can kind of drag out for a long time and I imagine because of the ways that we hold liking equals friendship, but then the longer that extends that this more scared we become to break the liking in order to go deeper. Like if we go deeper, we might actually not like each other for a while. And then it becomes, you can kind of see this cycle get fed where it's easier to stay on the liking surface than it is to actually uncover the depth that and the complexity of each of us had to work through it. That's fascinating. I love how you put them stay on the liking surface, because I think it is true. It's really like I as an American, I feel really comfortable on that liking surface. I really like it there. It's like everyone's nice to each other and there's a lot of good feelings for me associated with being in that place. It's very comfortable. So yeah, it's fascinating, I appreciate how you framed it. So this has been super fun. I know that I have learned so many things, including just, it was right from the beginning, I opening to me to think our Western notion of friendship was born a couple hundred years ago, you know, a couple hundred years ago, along with the market economy, whoo, that just kind of blew me away. And also I find that I'm going to pay attention to that idea of the liking surface and the idea that to give each other grace and tolerance for when we rub up against each other and imagine that simply because it just gives me a new way to think about disagreement and a new way and I think about always agreeing might actually hinder us from developing the kind of friend relationships that we might otherwise build. And thank you so much for having me and I look forward to arguing with you. I look forward to it. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening. That simple is hosted by Wendy Bidner and produced by me Rebecca Scott. Our theme was composed by Dave McEllac. 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