Hacker News Reader

Comment by Youden | Hacker News Reader

I disagree. Switzerland is another example of a high-trust society yet roughly a quarter of its residents are foreign. A majority of those foreigners are from the EU/EFTA but if you think that means they're culturally homogenous, I challenge you to feed a German pizza to an Italian or give someone from Suisse romande a Gipfeli and tell them it's a croissant.

I'm not accusing you of this in particular but a common pattern I see is Americans making comments like this because they assume that homogeneity of ethnicity or race means homogeneity of culture. There are in fact very large differences, resulting in conflicts such as WWI and WWII. Things aren't peaceful because everyone is the same, they're peaceful because people have learned to live together peacefully despite those differences.

View on HN

The choice to deemphasize the differences is part of the culture that's being spoken of here. Eastern Europe went through the same world wars as Western Europe and yet many parts of it are or recently were still riven with ethnic conflict. The Danes and Swiss, especially the native-born and -raised ones, but also those who've joined and assimilated by choice, have broad agreement on the questions of societal organization, conflict resolution, etc. That is a cultural fabric which many other countries lack and which may not always be there even in Denmark and Switzerland.

Is there more homogeneity in their values instead of saying culture?

But the word "culture" is what was used. Not the word "values".

There can be a discussion about whether or not "values" would be a better term. I think that's fair. But switching to a discussion based on values moves the goal posts a bit and we should acknowledge that fact.

I consider them both to be fairly interchangeable in this context, it's obvious that crime isn't linked to whether someone prefers croissants or bratwurst.

So by "homogeneous" you don't really mean homogeneous, you mean upstanding people who don't commit a lot of crime or problems?

Eastern Europe is much more homogeneous than western Europe, there is also more crime and problems there, so I don't see a strong link between the two at all.

I think it's both. If you have two communities that believe they are acting in an upstanding manner, but both have different values, then neither trusts the other.

I do also think though that some cultures, religions etc have "better" moral standards.

I'm British, not American.

The culture I am speaking of here is not whether Italians put pineapples on pizza or not.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com