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Comment by mothballed | Hacker News Reader

Understanding other cultures and giving me a chance to experience them has always been the quickest way to get me to become far more stereotypical / bigoted. I am willing to be open and idealistic about most any idea / ethnicity / culture but once I actually face it in real life and question if I want my kids exposed to that, then the rubber hits the road.

The internet has accelerated this.

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I've found the opposite of that. I've found good people from all sorts of cultures and countries.

I'm like you and with you.

I've lived in several countries in 3 continents now, and the more I get to know different peoples, the more I feel we're all the same—albeit stuck in these almost kaleidoscopic ways of outwardly displaying the very same humanity.

Perhaps OP got fixated on the collective differences instead of seeing through them. Perhaps.

The major difference in the more extreme case were I was shot at, or had a gun put to my head, or was caught in between a knife fight, or systematically on a regular basis saw people getting the shit beat out of them. Which I acknowledge can happen anywhere, but such trauma is not so easily rationalized when considering what I'd like my kids exposed to and after viscerally experiencing it in real life.

In any case, "I've found good people from all sorts of cultures and countries" is something I've definitely found to be true, and I don't view that as mutually exclusive. The trouble being, the amount of bad things a certain sector of people get away with can vary a lot depending on where you are and what the cultural response and incentives to that is.

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