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Because it's neigh impossible for an individual to meaningfully change parts of the culture they dislike which are ingrained for hundreds of years.
How am I supposed to change one of the major issues plaguing my home country: corruption? It's ingrained at all levels, from politicians to the police, and people participate in it because it's simply the way it is. By rejecting corruption I just made my life harder at all levels, it took me months longer to fix tax issues because I didn't want to pay someone who knew someone and could have it fixed in a matter of days; registering my car at the time took a whole week of visiting different offices, paying government fees in-person at banks so I could get receipts officially stamped, ordering a plate was a 2-day endeavour, I could have paid a person who would have fixed everything in a day but that involves being part of corruption so I rejected it.
I cannot change that, it's part of the culture, it annoyed me to no end, and my individual actions didn't matter at all while making my life harder.
It was much better for my life to emigrate, and live at a place where society is fundamentally more aligned to my values and ways of living.
How do you imagine that me staying in Brazil would have helped fixing major issues with corruption and violence? It's my life, I won't waste it living in a fantasy that as an individual I will have any meaningful impact on lowering corruption, homicides, robberies, so on and so forth.
I'm just a person trying to live a good life, my home country didn't provide it while I tried to live with my values, I decided to move on and had the privilege to be able to do so, of course I will take it.
The difference is: Some people are willing incredibly hard to fight for this, even though it is obvious to them that they will have no meaningful impact. Shouldn't you rather be willing to fight magnitudes harder if you know that you will have no meaningful impact because:
- Realizing that you will have no meaningful impact rather makes you realize how important the fight is.
- When you know that you won't have any chance of a meaningful impact, you will much less held back by having any kind of mercy with any person that is part of the corrupt system.
I'm not one of those, I just commented somewhere else in this thread that I spent 10 years of my life engaged in political activities, from 18-28 (right before I moved out) I participated in organisations that tried to have some impact with nothing to show for it. It's not my passion to do that, I got tired, and there was nothing tethering me to that society after feeling like a fish out of water since I was a teenager.
In that case it's much better for my life to simply give up, I had my run while youth energy existed, nearing my 30s (which was more than a decade ago) I simply didn't want to waste more of my life swimming against the current.
I don't think many people understand how disheartening it is to run a civics education project for 2 years to try to educate people to vote better just to see they go to "church"* and vote on whomever their "pastor"* told them to.
* (Evangelicalism is not church for me, it's a money-grab scam to exploit poor desperate people)
That's never true, countries changed extremely, also cultural-wise. If talking Germany the basic example is changing from a very militaristic society (far before the Nazis) to a rather pacifist society.
If talking corruption, my own country has progressively became far less corrupt over my lifetime
After suffering a massive defeat, losing millions of lives, and being occupied for decades.
Otherwise culture changes slowly, I won't waste my lifetime to see 5-10% improvements, you are totally free to move to Brazil and fix it for us since it seems to be an easy task for you.
> If talking corruption, my own country has progressively became far less corrupt over my lifetime
In mine it only got worse, religious nuts like Evangelicals only accumulated more power over my life there, in my almost 30 years living there progress outside of economical terms got stuck.
Corruption is only one issue, violence is another major one, macho-culture and sexism is yet another, religiousness in the form of Evangelicalism with tele-pastors only grew to become >50% of the population.
It's an absolute fantasy that me staying there for my next 30-50 years of life would've made any difference. I only have one life, I won't waste it at a place where I always felt like a fish out of water with no power to change it. My life won't be dedicated to politics and power plays to the point where I could have any meaningful impact, I'm just a normal person trying to live a decent life, not an agent of change, lol.
You are completely invited to move there and change it though.
I seem to recall that this was not the result of Germans staying put and changing things for the better, but rather due to external forces reducing the majority of their country to rumble and and spending 2 decades reeducating them.
Not sure what "your country" is, but here in Germany that's the general consensus of Germany's progression to a "rather" pacifist society. You might want to take pacifist with a grain of salt though, considering how excited many Germans were about being able to deploy the Army for non defensive reasons in the Balkans, Afghanistan, etc. and how giddy everyone was that we were once again allowed to export arms to Ukraine. Not to mention the current rise of far right, xenophobic parties.
Fighting corruption is very difficult. A good way to go about it is to sent some of your young people to countries that don't have massive problems in order come back home viscerally convinced it's not a necessary evil you need to put up with.
Having lived at that time in Germany, I can tell you how excited many Germans rather were to openly name the responsible politicians "war criminals" (and would have been insanely happy if these politicians were brought before a war crimes tribunal) and the compatriot soldiers to participated in this campaign "murderers". I know this very well because I was among these people.
Even on the schoolyard there was a deep divide between the boys who were not completely rejecting the idea to do their (at that time near-compulsory) military service instead of considering at most doing alternative service as the only acceptable alternative, and those who did alternative service did then use every available opportunity to spread their opinion about wars and the military (they often had to work their alternative service in some welfare facility or retirement homes - places where you meet lots of people to whom you could tell your "soldiers are murderers" opinions).
Regarding the current day pacifist state of Germany, in my mind it is still very drastic anti-militaristic compared to the vast majority of the world.
Regarding corruption, countries changed drastically during the 20th century due to ideologies and individual action, sometimes resulting in disaster but also often not. Trying to say nothing can change is a defeatist deterministic attitude that has no anchor in recent history.
Presuming we are talking about migration, most of these source countries were able to fight and win European colonization in the past, why do you think that's easier than fighting corruption?
While I neither claimed "nothing can change" corruption nor that fighting corruption is more difficult than fighting European colonization, here are some arguments to your straw man:
Corruption is very insidious to combat because you don't have a clearly demarcated enemy to unite against. Corruption spreads through all layers of society and most people in deeply corrupt societies will be both victims and beneficiaries of corruption: you want your house built and saved up enough dough? Sure you grease the wheels a bit so you can start building right away. Also, your brother who's helping you finance the house is a civil servant and a good chunk of his income is a result of taking bribes. The government itself sees it as "tips" that justify lower wages, and you sure as shit don't want taxes to go up with all the baksheesh you need to hand out...
At best you're in a "glass house" scenarios, it's very difficult to break out of without a general amnesty and serious external pressure, because all the parties that are actually qualified to run a government (or similar corrupt organization) are implicated.
That essentialism is exactly the notion the poster I was replying to was echoing
Western countries were also corrupt at a time, bribery was common, yet things can change
But the "Prussian elites lost power" because of the rise of the National Socialists who are universally not considered pacifist.
It might be a "major cultural change" but it was not affected by people staying at home and changing things for the better.
The Prussians losing power is not the reason why Germany changed, but because Germany changed its values (militarism wasn't sacred anymore) the Prussians lost power post-war.
That change was a change in the collective opinions of the entire country, and that did not happen because the allies took everyone to school but because people saw the effect of that ideology and the disaster with their own eyes, and their decision was not the same decision they collectively reached post-WW1
I haven't suggested someone should wait it out, but the notion that nothing can ever change because it's "culture" sounds absurd to me and as an excuse to not try
I simply did not want to waste more of time by feeling powerless, I spent 10 years in civics organisations from 18-28 which didn't effect any change whatsoever even though we organised protests, education outreach for people to understand how government systems worked at each level for more conscious voting, one of my closest friends is a constitutional lawyer and helped to write motions to the state assembly.
Nothing of that ever helped anything, I wasted 10 years participating in civics for absolutely no gain. Much the contrary, I've been beaten by police, tear gas'ed, had a rubber bullet shot on my thigh (with a visible mark still there, 15 years later).
At some point you run out of steam, you are more than welcome to pick up the fight I gave up though.
I can only imagine you are a troll, but in case you're not, I'm very sad you are not mature enough to realize the extreme privilege you received in the lottery of life by no effort of your own. Maybe it's time to move out of your parents' house, provide for yourself and change things for the better in your community, maybe travel a bit and generally learn to have some compassion and empathy for those less fortunate than yourself.
> Many Germans have told me I'm more German than many Germans