Reversion to type (this sounds like a section from Minima Moralia): this is not always an 'unhealthy' phenomenon. Yesterday when you were rude to the young (Indian) employee at the bank, this struck you as radically ambiguous act: on the one hand racist and classist: her English was not fluent and she had difficulty understanding you; on the other, a wholly healthy reaction against anonymous corporate structures by which our lives are governed, and behind which people like her (lowly employees 'threatened' by customers) are obliged to hide. The two are not completely separable, and provide an illustration of how, on the one hand, a 'politically correct' radical act is not possible, and, on the other, of how reactionary powers and institutions (in this case banks) have appropriated the terminology of progressive modernity (in this case anti-racism). Incidentally, they also exemplify the attractions of a certain variety of populist, anti-corporate neo-fascism, which rejects the tyranny of these institutions and the thought policing involved in political correctness. It is also worth remembering that your rudeness, had you not been cut off (by her?) might actually have been effective: she was about to connect you to the relevant department. Why, though, this should involve a 'reversion' is perhaps questionable: 'there is a little racist in all of us' may well be true, but does it really constitute a kind of ur-self, a basic, reptilian social brain of which the others are mere outgrowths? Here, then, is exemplified one of the 'pleasures' of coming here: that of escaping the pacifying, anaesthetising and - at least as you experience it - paralysing effect of late capitalist social structures, among which you must include the family (keep in mind here the family as an economic unit, a regulator and shaper of consumption patterns). All of these do not so much disappear, but are attenuated on coming here, and that constant, gnawing anxiety and the depredations of the superego, which seems to keep you passive in order the better to deliver its kicking, seem to have almost gone completely. The ability to concentrate, that other great casualty of it, has improved here somewhat but is still far from what it might be (or is that merely a persistent illusion?)
It may be good to relate some of these phenomena - those pertaining to the superego especially, and the sense of being 'unqualified' to do certain things - to the division of labour more generally. The connection may not be a direct one, and the division certainly cannot constitute their only cause, but it certainly seems to be there. The passage from a society where labour is strictly divided, and has been for some time, to one where it is less so, is instructive and seems to open up possibilities. It also explains such ideological phenomena as 'nationalism', in so far as, for example, people here still 'seem' to be Georgians before they are bankers (see below), whereas in the west it is the other way round: their 'social role' (ie position within the system of production) has precedence, while their (national, cultural etc) identity takes second place to it - becomes an adjunct to it, even an ornament; becomes, in other words, just so much 'cultural junk'. Hence certain modern novels (and not only Mathews') with their 'cargoes of cultural junk'. What becomes of interest in these is how that cultural junk - the redundant residues of past ages that we have been (apparently arbitrarily) left with - now gets shifted around, manipulated, disassembled, reassembled, shaped into new patterns and how, through these processes, the system (including the libidinal system) delineates, manifests itself (given that it cannot manifest itself 'directly').
Note regarding the banker you met today the sense of someone still playing a role, someone whose mask does not yet completely fit. Also note, regarding the Georgianness of employees, that the same organisational chaos - at least in terms of finding information, of contacting individuals - and of superfluous and underemployed labour, was as evident at the bank as it was everywhere else. The large numbers of young men hanging around in lobbies and corridors talking to each other animatedly but not apparently doing anything, while certain cool, air-conditioned offices remained empty, reminded you very much of the parliament building fifteen years ago (that other centre of power) - in conditions that, in almost every other circumstance, are very different.
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