| ▲ | sys32768 2 hours ago |
| #4 "Maintain Manners" is hardly simple. |
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| ▲ | PaulRobinson an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| It needs critical mass, but then it cascades. If you read through the description, what they talk about is that the culture is built around the idea of the individual being part of something bigger, and that consideration and respect for that something bigger (other people), is core to your own identity. That's not hard for a lot of cultures, but it's almost impossible for most cultures in the Western hemisphere, and to change it would require a cultural reset that would run against the grain of many things that make those cultures what they are. If it were possible though - and there are times when certain subcultures had standards of etiquette different to those widely accepted today in the West - it wouldn't need 100% of people to "sign up", just enough to make it ostracising to not conform. And then the outliers would conform. We do this already: it's OK (albeit illegal), to cycle through a red light where I live, because lots of people do it, but if you were to try and get served ahead of your turn in a pub, you might get into an argument, because nobody does that without expecting a problem. |
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| ▲ | busterarm an hour ago | parent [-] | | The cracks are already there though in Japan where this is starting to fall apart and has fueled a substantial rise in anti-immigration sentiment there. Particularly at specific groups that are not assimilating (but affecting basically every immigrant). I feel like half your post is dancing around not saying this. | | |
| ▲ | ifwinterco 3 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | This is the flip side of East Asian societies where everything is polite and orderly: they're also extremely conformist (sometimes stifling so), and the conformity and good manners are maintained by strict social policing (it's not much fun to stand out and be different) | |
| ▲ | PaulRobinson 10 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | I'm not saying this, because I'm not aware of this. I have a friend who is enjoying living in Osaka, but I wouldn't feel qualified to talk about Japanese sentiment towards him or any other group of non-natives. I'm saying that culture spreads through fear of being ostracized and the cost of not conforming to that culture. This is true in any country. It seems Japan has a "broader" and "firmer" culture that is rooted in respect to others, but it would take some serious effort for a similar culture to take hold in Europe or the US, I think. A sense of "non conformity" leading to issues is not unique to Japan though, in Europe it is described as a problem with "multiculturalism". The British (of which I am one), have spent thousands of years stealing the best bits of immigrant culture but seem to have forgotten that (or have been unable to absorb, for whatever reason), for the last ~60 years. That's leading to a rise in far-right sentiment and a growing desire for mono-culturalism. I can see evidence of that in Germany, France and other European nations. I could easily imagine it appearing more in Japan. |
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| ▲ | billfor an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| That's the key one -- it should be first and maybe the only one on the list. Japan is mono-culture and high-trust. They are all on the same page. You can't replicate that in western cities any more, such as the US or Europe. In some ways it's at odds with the idea of globalization and multiculturalism. |
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| ▲ | bryanlarsen 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| simple and easy aren't synonyms. It's a simple rule, but very difficult to implement. |
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| ▲ | wat10000 an hour ago | parent [-] | | It's brief but it's not simple. "Manners" is an extremely complicated concept. | | |
| ▲ | thereisnospork an hour ago | parent [-] | | What qualifies as good manners varies from situation to situation, but the concept of acting with good manners is hardly complicated (conform to the expected behavior of the situation). Enforcment is a matter of encoding the rules and then applying a carrot and/or stick -- same as any other rule. | | |
| ▲ | wat10000 31 minutes ago | parent [-] | | "Conform to the expected behavior of the situation" is incredibly complicated. What is the situation? How do you determine what the expected behavior is? What exactly does conforming consist of? It takes humans years to learn how to do this. Entire books are written on the subject. A major medical disorder affecting millions of people includes a persistent difficulty doing this specific thing. Even normal people have to put serious effort into this if they visit a place where societal norms are different from what they're used to. If it's not complicated, then I'm sure you can write down the rules for some specific situation real quick. Go ahead.... |
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| ▲ | everdrive an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It's been done before, and continues to be done in some places. It requires high group trust, and a strong group identity. |
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| ▲ | EbNar 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| In some places it is something sadly absent or overlooked... |
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| ▲ | mc32 an hour ago | parent [-] | | And with countries with lots of newcomers it can take decades (well, generations) to take on the host countries manners rather than sticking to home country manners that may not mesh with host country’s manners/customs. |
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| ▲ | bpodgursky 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It's simple if your city is full of Japanese people. |
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| ▲ | cm11 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I don’t know. I, the individual, can maintain a lot of manners fairly simply if I really wanted to. |
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| ▲ | its_ethan an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | I think they are saying that it's difficult to "maintain manners" for hundreds of thousands to millions of diverse "I, the individual" 's. It's great that you don't struggle with that yourself, but your manners can be made entirely irrelevant by 1 person in a public place who has anti-social behaviors (doesn't share the same set of "required" values for that society). | |
| ▲ | WarmWash an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | The actual question is if you could move to another country with a very different system of "manners" (read: culture) and throw out your learned behavior and adopt theirs. My experience living in an incredibly multi-cultural immigrant dense area, is overwhelmingly "No". People like their "home" cultures (generally they believe its the best), and they tend to carry some degree of resentment for their new society for not recognizing that. It creates endless friction at the edges (whereas core values tend to be pretty similar globally). Japan doesn't really deal with this at all, and what immigrant ingress they have is usually fueled by people trying to live a Japanese like life. | | |
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