Some friends and i had a discussion the other day – we discussed the facts that US citizens can be pretty self-righteous, and in your face about it. If they see you doing something that doesn’t fit in their value system, they’ll have more of a tendency to tell you off, which can be quite irritating.
Now that set me thinking. Here in Belgium, we tend to have the opposite attitude. It’s none of our business, really. Liberty for all: they do their stuff, i do mine.
But that, to me, is the other extreme. In some cases, the excuse of ‘none of my business’ becomes laziness and cowardice. When seeing someone getting bullied, someone’s car getting broken into, someone’s property getting stolen, stepping in might get you in trouble. But it’s also ethically unavoidable.
So before getting all contemptuous on the WASP attitude, maybe we ought to look closely at ourselves. There must be a middle way.</rant>
Anyway, in that theme, a small movie:
Just a few miles up north, the Dutch are pretty much like Americans in that respect
.
(or, I should say: the Americans are more like the Dutch, since it’s the protestant/calvinist culture of the a.o. the Dutch pioneers…)
True, i hadn’t thought about that