We can't see our culture very well, because we see with it | Hacker News Reader

We can't see our culture very well, because we see with it

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One of my biggest eureka-moments I had when I moved to the states from Denmark — wasn't what I learned about the US — but what I learned about Denmark.

I suddenly saw things about my own culture clearly when I wasn't surrounded by confirmation bias of specific ways of looking at things.

One of the most eye-opening experiences for me; If you wan't to understand something you need to understand it through things that are related to it not the things themselves. I have applied this to many other things in live (want to understand design, read about the things that are related to design instead of design itself.

I think international travel should be mandatory, especially for US citizens. The longest I've stayed anywhere overseas is a month, but even a few days in another country can be eye-opening.

Agreed. Traveling internationally has been an eye opener for me, although it also confirmed many of my deeply held biases about my own country.

Americans will be shocked to learn that people in other countries don't walk around thinking about America or wondering what "the Americans" are going to do about stuff.

Americans will be shocked to learn that people in other countries don't walk around thinking about America or wondering what "the Americans" are going to do about stuff.

I don't know any Americans who do that.

I know plenty that think the US is the center of the world. This very discussion is about why you might not have noticed that part of American culture.

Why do you think that our democratically elected leaders feel so comfortable bombing, invading and murdering? They know much of the population ultimately feels that it is the US society's prerogative.

From discussions online, the average foreigner seems to know more US Senators than the average American citizen. I get most of my US news from my Australian friend. My three top sources for U.S politics are all sourced from the U.K.

I can only name the Prime Minister of Australia because I have an Australian friend. I'd wager the average American isn't even aware Australia has a Prime Minister, let alone what his name is.

I agree that US citizens think we're the "center of the world". They get that idea because we know nothing about other countries yet they know a lot about us. Under the reasoning of "A king doesn't learn a peasants favorite color." people look at their ignorance in a positive light rather than a negative one.

I never gave a damn about US politics until I started travelling internationally and having more international friends than national ones. It was embarrassing to speak about US politics and have someone from Australia know more about my countries internal politics than I did.

Edit:

I think a large part of this is that many countries are bilingual. Learning a second language is especially common and probably the most common language is English. Meaning they can actually read our local news. Meanwhile, few people in the U.S actually speak French/German beyond what they learned in a few years of high school.

I actually think a lot of Americans would be surprised how much people in other countries know about the US.

For example, a significant portion of Americans probably know basically nothing about France, and French government. France doesn't really affect their lives at all, and the mainstream news only mentions the country when a really major story happens.

But glancing at the front page of the Le Monde website, I see a story about Obama meeting with Netanyahu, a really interesting article about big data in American elections (with a lot about a tool called NationBuilder that I've never heard of), a blog about the search for extraterrestrial life that draws mainly from American research, and an article about Obama and Keystone XL.

There's a "Pixels" section full of American culture, with stuff about Fallout 4, YouTube stars, Microsoft, and an FBI hacking story.

A lot of this stuff could be considered "local" news; I'm not sure why anyone in France would care about Keystone XL.

Now obviously French people aren't walking around worrying about America, but in general, I think people in other countries know a lot more about us than we know about them. And that's not just because of the stereotypical ignorant American, the US just influences other countries more than they influence us.

In the past four days, the New York Times has published 36 news stories about Europe, plus various multimedia features and opinion pieces. http://www.nytimes.com/pages/world/europe/index.html

It still seems like many (not all) of those are major world events, or stories that involve the US (Volkswagen, the FBI, Jeb Bush, Libor, etc.) And that's a section about 50 different countries.

If I look at the Le Monde Americas section (http://www.lemonde.fr/ameriques/) I count 12 stories about the US in the last 4 days, the majority of which have very little relevance to the rest of the world. There's lots about Keystone, the University of Missouri racism scandal, the Seattle gum wall thing, etc.

I'm not saying Americans don't care about the rest of the world or that the news doesn't report on stuff outside our borders, but comparing US news about Europe to European news about the US is sort of proving my point. I think Europeans tend to know more about the US than Americans know about any one European country.

Also, this discussion is specifically focused on culture. I see maybe one or two culture-related articles on that NYTimes page, and pretty much no non-US articles in the Arts section. I think all the articles there about foreign artists are specifically about what they're doing in the US.

Whereas Le Monde, while of course it's focused on French culture, has Fallout 4, YouTube, a couple American art auctions, James Bond (maybe that's cheating though), Justin Bieber, and more. US culture is everywhere, and no one country or even continent gets that much space in American newspapers.

Finally, since I'm now realizing that picking a newspaper called "The World" might have biased my results, L'Express and Le Figaro seem to have similar amounts of American politics and culture.

Non-Americans know a lot of facts about the US. However, the evidence that non-Americans know a lot about life in the US is much thinner; you get exactly, and I do mean exactly, the same sort of stereotyped impressions of a complex country that Americans have of others. It's exactly the same because it sources from the exact same human brain patterns. We're all just human in the end.

I'd also observe that since the US has had such a large footprint, the interesting question isn't whether the French know our President, vs. whether an American can name the French Prime Minister. That doesn't scale properly, as it implies a standard by which the non-American wins by knowing one name, but the American has to know everyone. The more interesting question is does the average Japanese person know the name of France's Prime Minister, or vice versa? And that's staying comfortably within the world's top ten economies, hardly an unfair question. I suspect by this standard the US would look a lot less bad, though I would still be completely unsurprised to see it at the bottom of such a measure. It just wouldn't be such an extreme difference.

Well I wasn't trying to criticize Americans, so no argument here. I think there are good reasons for this imbalance.

But I think it goes farther than French people knowing who Obama is. Yes, for every French article about Obama, there's an American article about some world leader. But French newspapers also have articles about a scandal at the University of Missouri, local police shooting stories, and again this Keystone stuff that frankly nobody should care about. US news doesn't carry that kind of story about other countries, because frankly I don't think anybody would care.

You don't really need to go overseas as a US citizen as a trip to a different region will do exactly the same thing. Its pretty amazing what a person from NYC can learn about themselves when they end up on a reservation in ND for a couple of months. Very enlightening for those students.

I had my eureka moment when I took a job in urban MN after working on the reservation for 5 years (and growing up there before that). They announced a noon meeting and I went and they didn't serve lunch. Everyone brought a bag lunch (expect me). I was pretty ticked off and insulted[1]. I was mad the rest of the day. It took a call home and the "your not on the rez anymore" speech to open my eyes to what we hold as truths spawned from culture.

1) have a lunch meeting on a reservation on the upper great plains and not serve lunch at your peril - never mind not accepting a gift as you leave - federal rules and local traditions can conflict a bit

It's not nearly the same magnitude of different.

Some examples: Pretty much all of the USA, Canada and Europe are heavily influenced by Christianity. So, come to Japan where there's almost zero Christian influence.

Or take Singapore (Japan as well) both places that are super safe. I never felt unsafe in the USA until I lived in Japan and Singapore. Things USA culture just takes for granted (your car will get broken into if you leave anything showing. Dark alleys are to be avoided. Losing your wallet means never getting it back. ...) all things that aren't actually true they're just so internalized in the culture we don't recognize the aren't actually facts of the world but rather facts of current western culture.

I'm sure India and China also different magnitudes of difference than US regions.

Transatlantic roundtrip airfare for a family of 4 at a time kids will have off from school is around $5500. That's before you start getting places to sleep for any appreciable amount of time, car rentals or train tickets (which are quite expensive), etc.

Median income in the US is around $50,000. $7-8k is a family car, most of somebody's student loan balance, the entire electronics budget for ~5 years. You want them to piss it all away on a week or two? Fuck no.

International travel is a luxury for the extremely privileged. Hell, I was pretty privileged - my parents made a total of around $110k in a low-cost-of-living city - and $3,500 for New York City was a once-in-a-lifetime treat.

Granted, there are ways to do it outside of the family, like study-abroad programs. But then in addition to the cost of the vacation you're paying full tuition to not take real classes and (if you're in a field like CS) delaying graduation by a semester or more because you're not making any progress on your major.

Analysts say current airline prices are hilariously, unsustainably low. It's only going to get far, far worse.

EDIT: I should say that vacations are important and we do take them. We drive 10-15 hours and stay at AirBnbs in other 3rd-string US cities that, while pleasant, are not high-end tourist destinations. Nashville, Lawrence, Raleigh-Durham, Cape Cod, far-flung D.C. suburbs, etc. With a Prius and more than 2 people, driving far is cheaper than flying pretty much everywhere in the continental US.

Without even getting into money - try taking 2 or 3 weeks off work and see if you still have your job in most places... taking time off is a rarity in the U.S for anything short of maternity leave. Meanwhile many other countries have mandatory time off. As in "you better take off at least 21 days this year."

Seriously, just take a look at this. [0] United States has 0 days off. Over half the list is >15 days. Those people have time off to go on a 2 week vacation.

You might note that US workers can "earn" up to 20 days. Taking off those days is usually looked down upon and can hurt chances of promotions. Being fired shortly after returning from an "extended leave" is not unheard of.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_statutory_minimum_empl...

Unfortunately, many people will look at this list and tell you that's why the United States is so much more prosperous. Vacation time and workers rights == laziness in many people's minds.

Maybe Americans could stand to think critically about where they work.

I work for a nonprofit here in the states. I make roughly half of what my friends who work for large companies make.

On the other hand, I recently spent 2 weeks of vacation in Europe, followed by a professional conference at a large European university. (20 days total). I was not expected to work or check email while on vacation, and my supervisors viewed my job at the conference itself to be to present my research and network with professionals who can assist with our mission, not sit around in a hotel room catching up on email.

As a bonus, I know my work helps people instead of lining the pockets of the upper classes.

Frankly, it astounds me that so many people fixate so much on salary. (Hourly rate is a better heuristic. Talk informally to your friends about their salary and hours, and do the math yourself.)

> Transatlantic roundtrip airfare ... is around $5500.

That sounds steep to me. On a lark I checked out Norwegian's [1] prices for 2 adults, 2 children roundtrip on dates around winter break:

LAX-CPH: $1,550

JFK-OSL: $1,400

Both non-stop. Of course, if you not near one of the larger transportation hubs, there'll be some additional cost.

[1] https://www.norwegian.no/us/

Those prices sound reasonable... per person. Unfortunately the link is broken for me (403).

Those prices are the totals, for all 4 people, including taxes and surcharges.

As for the link, try this one: https://www.norwegian.no/us. (I just copied it from Google, works if you from there, but not if from anywhere else — weird.)

I had the same revelation when I studied in the Netherlands for 4 months. You think you are going there to learn only about a new country and its people, and you come back having learned equally as much about your own.

I also happened to take a class on the Second Industrial Revolution, which compared Germany, Great Britain and the U.S. and in a class of mostly German students, it was quite an eye-opener and forced me to adjust my perspective.

Travel is invaluable. Well worth whatever debt I accumulated.

I had this moment when I moved out of my parents house to study. I still remember the moment clearly when I discovered that (some of) my thoughts were not strange, just different. I always thought that it was my fault, even though I never could ignore them.

What's an example of something you suddenly understood?

Thats hard to explain. But for instance I realized how few problems Denmark have.

I understood why americans was considered superficial while in reality it was just the danes who were shy because they didn't have to establish their own social networks outside of their childhood.

Lots of little things that are hard to explain.

> If you wan't to understand something you need to understand it through things that are related to it not the things themselves.

If I do not understand 'x,' then how would I know what is related to 'x'?

"I already am eating from the trashcan all the time. The name of this trashcan is ideology.

The material force of ideology makes me not see what I am effectively eating. It’s not only our reality which enslaves us. The tragedy of our predicament when we are within ideology is that when we think that we escape it into our dreams, at that point we are within ideology."[1]

This is a really nice documentary about all the unspoken assumptions that permeate our day to day lives, I would really recommend everybody to see it.

None of this is scientific or empirical, but the thing is, neither are the myriad of day-to-day assumptions that we usually take as obvious or common sense.

[1] The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (2012)

I thoroughly enjoy Zizek, and to actually understand him I would recommend reading his work, because the Zizek of cinema or Youtube really is a confusing, tiny glimpse of his thought.

I'll also note that he's pretty unpopular in this forum. He can be pretty brutal to thinkers popular here, such as Steven Pinker. [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kugiufHh800&feature=youtu.be...

I wouldn't say he's unpopular around here: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Zizek&sort=byPopularity&type=c...

Too many entries to sift through if you sort by all time, but I recall him being called a charlatan here, which is what Chomsky once called him (which might explain it).

Otherwise I feel the tech community in general rejects the field of critical theory. I don't think Zizek is just a critical theory guy - he identifies primarily as a scholar of Hegel - but he's certainly the best known among critical/ literary theory types.

Otherwise I feel the tech community in general rejects the field of critical theory.

What else would you expect when someone's entire experience with critical theory is some wanker using it to poorly advocate a pet cause?

Now that wanker's position may be well founded in critical theory and have good arguments supporting it, but that doesn't matter. When someone uses critical theory as a magic "I'm right" box, rather than helping their detractors acquire the tool-set with which to criticize (or come to agree with) their position, that behavior just makes them an even bigger wanker.

I both agree and disagree with both of your points. Heh : )

a) I think that The Pervert's Guide to Ideology is quite self-contained and digestible without the need to read his (entire) work. There are YouTube clips of some of his talks/lectures that are pretty standalone as well.

b) I like Zizek. So he's popular with me for what it's worth. I like Pinker too though. Hmm. Can we not just all get along?

a) I disagree still... let's put it this way, on a forum like r/zizek where people discuss Zizek's positions, it's patently obvious who hasn't actually read Zizek and who just watches YouTube and the Pervert's Guides, which is what a lot of Zizek fans do because they find the reading intimidating (it certainly is, at first). Don't read his entire work, just Less than Nothing, or one of his self-proclaimned important works.

b) We can like and appreciate both (I do too). They are compatible to an extent, but some facets of behavior described from a pure evo psych or cog sci perspective conflict with a Lacanian-Hegelian one. My friend is a Steven Pinker fanatic, and we are in constant debate anytime we meet up for beers.

Some of my friends report how eating certain mushrooms made the super creative. I have asked what they created? Nothing. The reason why they think they we're creative is because they felt creative.

This article made similar thing for me with respect to learning. I feel like I learned something. But I really don't remember what.

I actually buy that psychedelics make people more creative. People fall into more predictable mental ruts than random exploration would, so anything that kicks the brain out of the patterns it wants to match to is going to help.

Agree. "Creative," may be a misleading term if interpreted literally and nothing tangible has been created, but colloquially, I think we use the term more to refer to patterns of thought and behavior that derail the self or others from their normal patterns.

Agree. Maybe it comes down to the relationship between "creative" and "productive". They're related without being synonymous. I think "chemically" is just one way of accomplishing the goal of thinking differently but as it's a pretty reliable method (albeit an occasionally overpowered one) it comes up a lot.

I'll leave the discussions of whether the various drawbacks outweigh the benefits for another conversation but it's hard to deny that treating yourself chemically can be a very direct and effective way to ensure your thought patterns and processes are temporarily changed.

I've heard house mates talking when high on cannabis - while I was not high. They had incredible ideas and were really enthusiastic. The only problem was that it was impossible to make any sense of the ideas they expressed.

Cannabis often makes me more creative in terms of ideas, but not usually execution.

I'd be happy with ideas. But those dudes didn't even remember what ideas they had. Then maybe it was just a feeling.

For some reason I can't edit that comment. But I'd like to add that I still upvoted that article. Not because of that article itself, but because of comments here. A decent conversation starter.

Marshall McLuhan once said that the last thing a fish would ever notice in it’s habitat is the water. Likewise, the most obvious and powerful realities of our human culture seem to also be the most unrecognised.

http://stoweboyd.com/2013/07/12/marshall-mcluhan-once-said-t...

Donna Haraway makes a similar point with the concept of "situated knowledge" [1] - the fact that we are all situated in our own practices, and as a result, objectivity becomes hard to claim.

[1] https://faculty.washington.edu/pembina/all_articles/Haraway1...

It's possible to recognize it, just watch old commercials or look at old home videos with clothing and hair styles. Make a list of differences then look for the differences in contemporary terms.

Those are superficial examples. It's things more like social pressures that exist that you may not even be aware of. Acting and thinking in certain ways without fully knowing why.

My pet peeve is people who see or read about a single festival in another culture, then talk about how "we have no culture, not like those people over there and their rich one". Yet we still go and see movies, wear certain kinds of fashion, go to sportsball events, celebrate the birth days of those near and dear, participate in office kris kringles, learn to play a particular set of musical instruments, eat out at restaurants, live in nuclear families, argue over how to set the cutlery for a dinner party... so on and so forth.

The academic definition of culture isn't the one implied when most people say "culture". The common and daily usage of "culture" is more linked to explicit "expressions" of culture.

Like how we never notice air.

Oh wait...

Today we know what air is, but for ancient people it was far from obvious.

Plato describes it thus:

"There are similar differences in the air; of which the brightest part is called the aether, and the most turbid sort mist and darkness; and there are various other nameless kinds which arise from the inequality of the triangles."

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html

Mist, darkness and aether are completely unrelated to any modern definition of air.

But they noticed it. Their accuracy is not really the point - they did notice their own environment.

They observed effects within the medium like moisture and darkness, but did ancient people really "notice" the medium itself? Depends on the definition of "notice", I guess.

It's like I have glasses, and most of the time I don't see them and I forget about them. That's a good thing I guess. Sometimes I wonder if I haven't forgot my glasses, while I am wearing them. Then I have to look for them, really look for the frame until I'm assured they are there. Stupid, but this is how it works over here! ;-)

And how often do you think about/are you aware how the fact that you are wearing glasses changes the way people think about you, and the way they interact with you?

It often surprises me when other people are resistant to wearing glasses later in life. I've had them since second grade, they are just a fact of life!

I seldom think about that. My father has glasses, thick ones. What I remember is that his eyes were much bigger when he had his glasses on. That may affect how other people see you. Then the frame changes your looks. German people and especially women have a specific taste for frames that doesn't make them look more sympathetic.

Reminds me of David Foster Wallace's piece "This is Water", powerful stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI

NB: I'm finding this article impossible to read, even in Reader Mode, due to the animated images within its main body.

1. Do. Not. Fucking. Do. This.

2. Firefox: include element blocking / image removal, or at the very fucking least, animation blocking/suppression, in Reader Mode.

The animated images are ridiculous. When I read your comment I thought "Oh great another article using one second gifs of popular tv shows to seem funny". But it's worse than that. It's literally just text.

Jitter-type images are among the more staggeringly annoying.

I'll admit I've been known to abuse animations myself. When G+ introduced "cover photos" always visible on profile pages which couldn't be hidden and filled upwards of half the screen, I compiled a set of the most annoying animated gifs I could find. Out of protest.

Similar, but on another level, is how we can't see our mind very well, because, well yeah...

That's one of the things meditation leads to, a sort or meta-mind state where you can observe the workings of your mind. A very subtle yet profound experience.

This concept has been developed very well, imo, by people like Zizek. I honestly don't care much for his political follies or his real academic research- when it comes to discussing ideology, he's doing the best outreach bar none.

Here's him giving a talk at Google: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x0eyNkNpL0

A friend of mine also parsed it well like this:

> "I think there is something to be said to the effect that laziness is actually where we can find a lot of insight - as it's when we're lazy, when we cannot be bothered, or at least where we think it is not essential to focus our attention for the sake of the work at least, that we tend to defer to the implicit shared attitudes or beliefs about the world to do the lifting for us."

Sartre described this on a more abstract level in his essay "La transcendence de l'ego: Esquisse d'une description phénomenologique"[0], which essentially says that the active level of consciousness can never be reflected upon because the moment we reflect upon it it becomes passive, being reflected upon by a higher level of consciousness.

[0] english wp article about the essay: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transcendence_of_the_Ego

In the Quran, it states "We have made you into nations and tribes, so that you may know one another [... not that you may despise one another]."

We can only see ourselves once we see someone who is different.

I suppose I have an "outsider's" view on cultural matters but I've always been highly skeptical of framing culture in such absolute terms. While it is true culture is a nebulous concept that has a tendency to leak everywhere doesn't mean that it's so smoke-and-mirrors that you can never sit back and examine things. Many people are forced to do this through talk therapy via the development of unhealthy thinking patterns because of a life circumstance in which they developed them.

I don't know what this article is trying to say or what it's trying to teach. It seems to be the word version of a pastel grunge aesthetic blogger.

Terence McKenna - Culture is Not Your Friend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw_lS6IuLeQ

I think this is great.

He says pretty convincingly that collectivity is bad for us as individuals. And that individualism is bad for us as society.

Then he suggests that we should abandon society so we could act as individuals. And abandon our individual habits to form dream society.

This perfectly shows that he is unable to really understand society or individualism. Which are also essential blocks of our existence. I feel I understand it better, but probably so did he. Maybe none of us understands it.

This is the obvious answer to the fundamental question of epistemology: would I think what I think if I didn't think the way I think?

The answer is obviously "no", but the next questions that arise from that are more complicated ("What would I think if I thought differently?" "Is there a 'correct' way to think?" "How can I validate my thinking?" "Is there a way to move my thinking towards a more 'correct' way?").

The study of criticism teaches one to crack open cultural artifacts like novels, paintings, plays, movies, etc. and look for the motivations and influences of their creators. It is a very useful way to examine a culture, including a culture you might find yourself in, even if it is a culture that you grew up in and would therefore be sort of blind to.

And it provides a set of mental tools that can be useful for the rest of your life, to answer questions like "why did he write that email?" or "why did that politician say that?" or "what does this news article really mean?" This is why I recommend that even technical track students like engineers take a few liberal arts classes if they can.

> We can't see our culture very well, because we see with it

Sounds like a theorem of incompleteness :).

I wouldn't read too much into that. In that vein, I think it makes more sense to look at culture as the lossy compression we use to store value judgements of our experience -- accepting that we can only store a fraction of the "raw" data.

The best way to combat the natural narrow-mindedness that any culture forces on you, is to travel -- and if possible live for a long time (6-12 months) submerged in a different culture. The best time to do this, is probably before you fully become an adult -- living with a host-family as the "child" of a foreign culture allows/requires a degree of acceptance that is very valuable if the goal is to widen the idea of culture. Having two cultures that are sometimes contrasting, but also accepted as "real" allows one to introspect -- and realize that one really have to question everything -- there are very few universal truths.

For those that are, or have, teenagers in the house, and have the means -- I strongly advice to look into international volunteer inter-cultural programs, like:

https://www.afs.org

https://www.yfu.org

> We do tend to have this unexamined assumption that the individual is a huge fucking deal. Because it feels to use that we are. Because our neurological equipment seems to demonstrate to each of us that we are quite obviously the exact center of the universe.

Taking time to practise stepping outside one's own POV and attempting to measure your life objectively against whatever scale of value you hold is one of the most worthwhile and fulfilling disciplines I know.

It is exactly what 'prayer' is, though that word comes with the baggage of traditional religion which may be offputting.

But in reality you don't have to be religious to pray.

> It is exactly what 'prayer' is

Huh? Using what definition?

Perhaps you confused "prayer" with "meditation" or something else?

There are many different kinds of prayer in the (for example) Christian tradition. You might be thinking of intercessionary prayer, but there is also contemplative prayer which is indeed a lot more like meditation.

I think the real deal is to examine the confines of your perspective, not to try and abandon it.

If you notice you are biased, trying really hard not to be will more likely to result lying to oneself than unbiasing oneself.

Best you can do is to learn the signs. And when you can check the boxes look for help. After all, we are all here for each other.

Meanwhile my perspective is incomplete, biased and ugly. But it's mine and I love it.

I was born and brought up in India and have lived in the U.S for around 6+ years before finally returning back home recently.

Living outside your own country for a significant length time is pretty mind expanding. This is what I have realized:

Culture is a very real thing. A lot of the thoughts that we have are not really our own. They are a product of the culture around you. It is pretty incredible to observe.

This is just from my perspective.

America values rugged individualism while most asian countries including India, China, Japan, Philippines value the opposite. Here are some things I found pretty interesting.

America: Family

1. Your child doesn't owe anything to you. No child asks to be born. You made the choice to have a baby and so it is your duty and responsibility to educate them well and provide basic comfort and security. It is your responsibility to meet your own emotional needs. American parents feel like they are failures if their kid continues to stay in their home after they reach adulthood. Even the adult children feel the same way. I remember Travis Kalanick mentioning the time he was living with his parents as pretty depressing (after his startup Redswoosh failed) If you want to insult someone here you can say, "Are you still staying with your parents?. You need to move out of your parent's basement!"

Once the kids move out, the parents reconnect with each other and will try and pursue their own interests.

India

Your life is a gift from your parents who will be the number one priority in your life. You owe your parents everything. Indian parents will do ANYTHING and everything for their kids. They will sell their property and get into a lot of debt, if it comes to that, to educate their kids and to make sure they have a great life. Kids are expected to honor and listen to their parents. Even after marriage there is a tug of war between the mom/dad who feels that their kid is being stolen from them by the spouse. If you want to insult an Indian you can just say, "He/she doesn't respect elders". In India parents work hard so their kids can enjoy their money and property. People admire kids who stay and live with their parents. Even celebrities who are worth many millions of dollars stay together with their parents as a family and there is nothing disrespectful about it. The children are an extension of their selves and there is a deep life long attachment. The kids will take care of their parents in their old age. People get very offended if you ask them if their parents are living in an old age home/retirement/assisted facilities.

"A marriage is considered to be a union between two families and not two people!", is a common dialogue heard everywhere in India. Most people say this as if it is the most obvious truth. It's almost like saying the sky is blue. In the US, a marriage is considered a union between two individuals and not two families.

Again, here is the question. How come most Americans feel exactly the same way? How come most Indians feel the opposite?

2. The need to learn a foreign language.

Most Indians know three languages. 1. Their own native language (like, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Gujarati etc) 2. Hindi 3. English. A lot of people know and understand upto 4 or even 5 languages. So, there is nothing special about knowing different languages. People won't be impressed if you tell them you know French, Spanish or Mandarin. It's like telling someone that you can hop on one leg for a few miles. A difficult but pointless achievement.

For many Americans, knowing a foreign language is a big deal. They will go to great lengths to learn Spanish, French or Mandarin. Mark Zuckerberg showed off his ability to speak Mandarin a while back. I read one answer in Quora (which an elderly person wrote) mentioning that he regrets not being able to learn a foreign language. Tim Ferris shows off his foreign language acquisition skills to impress visitors to his blog and tv shows.

Again I have to ask the same question: How come most people in the US feel this way? To an outsider it seems really silly and absurd.

3. "4 people". In India, many people live for the sake of society. This is true everywhere. Most people want to impress others but it is at a completely different level in India. People make life changing decisions not based on their own interests but for the sake of society. There are 20+ plus languages in India and interestingly, almost every single language has this phrase "4 people". Are you planning to quit your job at Google to do your own startup? What will the "4 people" around you think? What do you mean you are not getting married? What will the "4 people" say? Conformity is everything. If your older sibling or younger sibling marries someone from a different race/caste/religion then it means that your family doesn't have a value system and it will be difficult for you to find a spouse because you come from a family with no values.

4. Inquisitiveness. Indian people are very inquisitive. If you are overweight, they will advise you to start dieting. "Looks like you've been eating a lot. You need to lose weight", is a common refrain. They will ask you how much something costs, how much money you make per year and enquire about your properties and other assets. If you tell them you booked a flight from L.A to Delhi, the first question they will ask is about the flight cost. If you are their friend they will quiz you about your savings. Again, this is not just one person or two but most people in India.

Again, the same question, why do most people born in a certain culture all behave in a certain way? It's almost like people are hypnotized en-masse into believing some things as fundamental truths. Pretty surreal to experience it.

In Finland one of the surefire offensive things to ask a person is "how much do you make?". The person cannot answer that "right" even if he lies. Any income threshold will make you either capitalist pig, or poor loser in someones eye. And you never know when and who thinks that.

Our independence started with communist vs. capitalist war and continued with Finns vs. Soviet war. Some people still think that if you belong to the wrong class, you are almost a murderer. (Asking about party affiliation is taboo too.)

So people find it very interesting because it's taboo. Older generation of men assume that you spend your excess income in cars. And they talk a lot about cars.

EDIT: It's still nice place to visit. But if you are filthy Audi man, stay home! :P

Do you think either culture can make a case for itself being superior? I have witnessed firsthand the abuse and corruption that stems from Asian "family-first, materialistic" approach and honestly believe the American way stands a far better chance of creating someone who has self respect while still being able to function in groups.

Noting before reading that 15mb of animated GIF's is not a great way for an article to make a first impression.

With sufficient advances in NLP & ML, i dream that one day you will be replaced by a bot able to generate snarky comments about slow/mobile-unfriendly/ad-riddled webpages automatically.

Or better yet, Medium could place a warning that the user has uploaded files with a hefty file-size and how it could cause performance or data issues for their readers.

What a bot would be better for is people complaining about people complaining. That'd knock out a good 50% of all HN comments.

touche :p

Speaking of culture, this comment reminds me of how other communities see HN. We seem to be unaware of our own culture while outsiders can see it quite well.

- "Ad hominem"

- Causation/correlation

- Complaining about ads

- Complaining about font color and size

- Complaining

- "This." (We pinched the laziest one-liner Reddit has to offer)

- Anything regarding logical fallacies

Add:

- confirmation bias

- strawman

- bubble or not

- why disable mobile zoom?

its not like those gifs add anything of value which a still frame couldnt.

And in this case, their being gifs or images add nothing of value to the article. They're just quotes superimposed over faces with blinking text. Aesthetics over functionality.

This whole article is something you would normally see on Tumblr. Also, I can't read text on GIFs, it's very unpleasant and makes me feel dizzy.

ie, Culture.

Not to mention the animations - jittery text on a grainy image - adds absolutely 0 useful information, does it at the expense of a huge download and a headache.

Also they give me a headache so bonus points for that.

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