Word: norms
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...particularly unpleasant kind of unofficial intimidation is something the Swedes call den kungliga Svenska avundsjukan (the royal Swedish envy): a near universal disapproval of anyone who jumps too far outside the norm, either in the quantity of his material possessions or, by extension, the quality of his ideas. It is, moreover, nearly impossible for anyone to hide from a neighbor's scrutiny: all income-tax data, birth records and other personal documents are matters of public information, available for inspection at public records offices...
...improbable becomes the norm in Albee's hands. Even when he seems to violate the plausible, he doesn't break the dramatic spell, but enhances it by adding to the brutel vacuity of the situation. And always the play does not depend solely on grotesque twists of plot for its effect. Albee's mastery of the English language at times can disper any incredulity with its beauty...
Schecter eventually grew disillusioned with the Soviet system as he saw it. "Under their system, life is very uniform and almost unexciting. There are no incentives to be creative, to do new things, to do any better than you are doing. If you overfulfill your norm, they'll just give you a bigger norm the next time. It's that kind of mentality you develop." Schecter emphasizes that if confronted with a choice, he would "definitely" prefer to live under the American system because of the freedom it allows...
Obedience to masculine law is still sanctioned by Islam and symbolized by the veil. Although the future preponderance of the veil is dubious, it still prevails as the norm. Most young women in the cities wear Western clothes, but the vast majority in rural areas retain the veil and traditional caftan. In certain instances the veil seems ridiculous, such as on a long bus ride...
...SAME time The Moneychangers is meant to be thoroughly realistic. Hailey writes as if he knows a great deal about the way banks work, how mafiosi behave, and what life is like in the slums ("with survival a daily challenge and with crime--petty and otherwise--a surrounding norm"), among other things. Whole scenes and chunks of dialogue have obviously been put in solely because Hailey, the restless chronicler, wanted to illuminate some little-known aspect of banking. His approach is microcosmic--dealing with banks by writing about one bank, with bankers by creating two of them--but that seems...