It's far from exclusive, but I don't know enough about other cultures to definitively say universally strong in all existing ones. (It hasn't been historically.)
Feel free to point out the irrationality of any part of my post.
You are resolving your cognitive dissonance by ignoring documented differences among cultures, which is fundamentally illogical. This seems to be an increasingly common pattern "in the modern workplace" and outside of it too.
What you should instead be doing is accepting that cultures are varied, but individuals must be given the benefit of the doubt in an ethical society.
OP also conflated regions and countries. I read it as they were comparing US, EU, and India as a whole. Also curious where their perspective came from.
My point is that the presence or absence of cultural variation in one place does not equate to a lack thereof in another. Just because someone hasn't seen it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Culture isn't based on comparison, it's something in its own right
It's a claim you see bandied around pretty often. Like most overarching generalizations about all of humanity most evidence for or against it is more accurate for a given culture than humanity.
The negative reaction is probably because while you can argue this position from a perspective of wisdom (re impossibility to quantify cultural differences) many Europeans have plenty of prior experience with arguing this from a perspective of ignorance (i.e. failing to consider even basic things like the implications of language differences making you resort to sign language a few 100km from where you live.)
Technically your argument didn't necessarily show any signs of such ignorance, but statistically speaking it would have been quite likely.
It is actually fascinating how convinced you are that your worldview must be the prevailing one. Yes, you accept that it is possible for the "specific people" to have different preferences, but no way that these can be anything else but individual quirks of the few, and not embedded in a culture, despite you not knowing anything about the culture in question.
I agree for the most, but it might be better to phrase it as this culture differs from my culture because my value X is incompatible with my value y. Because otherwise you are only making a one sided statement, I can’t assume to know what your values are.
Most political debates here for instance would be a lot shorter if people stated their cultural values upfront, rather than concealing them and arguing about something tangential.
I'm not missing that point. I didn't address that point of individual choice at all. I was highlighting the cultural difference. If you would take two seconds to stop being so dismissive and pedantic maybe you could actually understand what other people are saying.
The debate doesn't even exist anywhere else.
reply