"The most basic, most rudimentary spiritual need of the Russian people is the need for suffering, ever-present and unquenchable, everywhere and in everything."

Said the Russian father of a NYT op-ed writer trying to explain why Russians don't get the American answer to the question "How are you?" The father was rejecting her offer of an explanation which was that the Soviets had "devalued 'fine'" with propaganda pushing you as "a citizen of a Communist utopia... to feel fine all the time (never mind the time you spent squabbling over the communal stove or waiting in a two-hour line to buy toilet paper)."

Is the American culture of answering "fine" pervasive? Are there not regional pockets of answering "Not dead yet" or some such thing? Certainly, there are numerous American eccentrics who take the question seriously and frankly tell you about travails and ailments. And there are others who take the relationship seriously and come up with something distinctive to make the social interaction come alive. Some of us are scrupulously honest and find it hard to say the ritualistic "fine." We may feel that we're displaying some humanity simply through using a few more words, like: "I'm doing very well, thanks."

The op-ed writer — Alina Simone — says the American-style "fine" "makes Russians think that Americans have no soul." I've known some subgroups of American culture where people look down on other Americans because of their rituals of pleasantry upon first or short meeting. There's something off about imagining that other people have no soul. Anyone who thinks that must regard himself as deep and the other as shallow. Is that not shallow?