People who say what they mean and call it like they see it are brave. They don’t cash in tomorrow for a little convenience today.
This does not seem like a good idea in practice. There are lots of thoughts we should keep to ourselves. If you see a friend with a new haircut, and you think it looks ugly, should you immediately just blurt out “hey, your new haircut looks awful”? Why? Just because it is how you feel doesn’t mean you need to tell everyone.
I find the people who insist on “telling it like it is” and who are “just being honest” are often just being assholes.
My friends would expect me to say this, yes, and I have the same expectation. If everyone thought my haircut looked bad, I would want to know.
There's a middle ground: you can be honest if asked, but not volunteer negative opinions.
The emotional reaction to harmless words is not an intrinsic aspect of human biology. If someone says mean things in a malicious attempt to hurt you, it is natural to be emotionally disturbed or upset at the fact that someone has malicious intent toward you. But in some cultures you can tell someone their haircut is messed up and they understand that you don’t have malicious intent. It’s a cultural artifact, albeit a widespread one. It tripped me up for a long time too because I was born in a country that doesn’t know any better.
Anecdotally, I've found Russians to be the frankest and corruption is rampant there, so I am not sure what the basis of your assertion is.
Politeness is about respecting others. You can communicate difficult things while still being polite.
And let’s not forget Korea. Korea where they have this little problem called “the highest suicide rate in the developed world.” And it’s no cake walk over there. Inequality is insane. What else would you expect from a place where people insanely ignore what is right in front of them for a little short-term gain?
Do frank, direct cultures like Denmark and the Netherlands suffer from these problems? You tell me.
And Russia? Are you kidding? They are completely a culture of respect. Everything is based on respect. It’s one of the most emotion-based societies in the developed world. They will happily overlook little niggling and inconvenient truths for the sake of respect or perceived virtue, as evidenced by their former system of government. Try learning something about Russia… I remember the founder of Scihub had a parasite named after her out of respect by an American biologist or something. She was super offended. Russia is perhaps one of the worst countries in that respect. Almost anything will upset a Russian, let alone the truth. It’s one of the most “never say anything even remotely offensive or else they will be upset” countries out there. The fact that you don’t know this really reflects poorly on your argument. You cite your “experience” but then don’t appear to have much.
And yes I realize she’s not Russian, there’s a huge amount of overlap in their cultures.
Singapore is less corrupt than the Netherlands.
Hong Kong is less corrupt than Austria and Belgium and Estonia.
Japan has less corruption than Poland.
Your claim seems based on cherry picking.
Imagine a spectrum where on one side you can’t say anything that would offend someone or put your immediate interests at risk, and on the other side you blurt out the truth even if you don’t want to.
In the former, corruption is inevitable. Nothing gets called out. In the latter, corruption is impossible. You obviously want to be closer to the latter. Just because you pull up some examples where they are pretty close but not all the way doesn’t really say anything about my argument. But thank you for calling out my hyperbolic use of the word “invariably,” like a good Scandinavian.
Sometimes it is both when you are speaking with the Dutch.