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Two things really jump out at me.. I grew up in America which is fairly rule-obeying. Lived in Australia and New Zealand which are disgustingly, obsequiously d

Two things really jump out at me.. I grew up in America which is fairly rule-obeying. Lived in Australia and New Zealand which are disgustingly, obsequiously devoted to following tiny guidelines. Spent a few weeks in Munich where I was shouted at for crossing a totally empty street against a crosswalk light. On the plus side, I lived in Argentina and Spain for a long time where basically there is no enforcement of anything. I will say I am proud of people there (in the Latin world) for being humans. mostly ... usually... trying not to make dumb decisions, but... well, having to make decisions, and making them. You see if you live in England or the US or Commonwealth for awhile, people have forgotten how to make any decisions if there isn't a rule for it. And yet the freest society I ever lived in, judged on the day to day freedom of individuals violating petty laws, was Vietnam. At the same time, it was the most totalitarian place I ever lived as far as what information you could access or what you could say. Still, if you wanted to drive the wrong way down a highway with an child on the back of your motorcycle, you can do that in Vietnam. Personally I don't like the UK / Australia model where everyone obeys some stupid rule written on the wall over their own intelligence. Of course, I also don't love the Argentinian model where everyone thinks they're smart enough to bang on the button that says "don't touch". Also, it's not cool to wantonly endanger your child while being terrified of mentioning the name of the dictator. But I am a fan of man... and I would definitely take the Turkish way of shrugging off rules when they don't suit you over the British way of following them to the point of worship. I think I was going to get to some great conclusion here, but I don't have one. I like when no one is watching me, but I also like when someone is watching other people. [edit] my conclusion! privacy and freedom come at the cost of people ignoring rules. People from rule-bound countries experience a burst of freedom when going somewhere that lives as people live, not by the rule-book. People from "chaotic societies" as you said, who have a mind for all the corruption they see around them, find some relief in escaping to ordered societies. Neither is good or bad, they are both modes of existence; both modes are necessary. If either were to disappear, we would have far too much chaos or far too much order, and no one would be able to escape to where they belong.

FeepingCreature 3y ago
> Spent a few weeks in Munich where I was shouted at for crossing a totally empty street against a crosswalk light. I don't understand this. I live near Munich, people cross against a red light all the time. Maybe you were doing it near children? That's a real social faux-pas, because they're not supposed to normalize jaywalking.
- snovv_crash 3y ago
  Exactly! I like to explain this kind of casual rulebreaking to US/UK people as being the German equivalent of using disgusting swearwords. Fine to do with your friends if nobody is around, or if you want to look tough or whatever, but don't do it in crowds and especially not in front of children.
  - noduerme 3y ago
    I think this is strange. What is the example you're setting... that we all follow the rules? And when they find out that you don't follow the rules, will that not be a disappointment? Here is an incident that happened the second day I got to Vietnam (long before I was ever in Germany). My girlfriend was really sick in the hotel. I was vomiting too, but I went out to find medicine. I got to the corner of a huge boulevard, maybe 8 lanes wide. There was a pharmacy on the other side. But the traffic never stopped when the light turned red. On and on the traffic just kept going, weaving around all the other cars on the cross-street. The boulevard was maybe 1 meter below the level of the sidewalk. I stood there for 5 minutes waiting for some time to step into the street. Finally, a 6-year-old boy walked up alone, paused next to me, and started crossing the boulevard in the middle of the traffic. And all the cars and motorcycles just went around him. I was like, well fuck, if that kid can do it then I can do it... So what value are you teaching children? How to cross a street or how to follow orders? Crossing a street when it's possible may be illegal but it's not immoral. The idea that neglecting formalities leads to immorality can only be true if the morality isn't implanted. Worse, it implies that formalities are the only thing that holds back man's immoral nature... which should not be the lesson. If a man jaywalks, it doesn't make him more liable to commit other criminal acts.
XorNot 3y ago
As an Australian it is news to me that we are obsessed with obeying "tiny guidelines".
- GianFabien 3y ago
  Fair dinkum? I've lived in Oz for many decades and travelled widely. I have never seen obedience as a common trait. In fact, rule breaking with a shrug is far more prevalent.
  - noduerme 3y ago
    ehhh ok. I'll take my crack at Australia. I spent a year there, mostly in SA and the NT. A six pack of beer and a pack of smokes will set you back $50. When it comes to road signs, the "are you feeling sleepy" every few kilometers really makes you... sleepy. Police presence is heavier than in America. There are checkpoints going into towns. Then of course there's the separate window for alcohol for Aboriginals, who line up early in the morning, the scanning of your driver's license every time you buy beer... When I first got there, I stayed in King's Cross, Sydney, and it was fairly wild. I heard that neighborhood isn't there anymore, and hasn't been for some time. [edit] Also, maybe this was just a rumor, but I was told by a mechanic in Adelaide that if you squeal your tires they'll fine you, and if you do it twice they'll impound your car and crush it. I was told by a roofer that his job was almost impossible because he now had to spend an hour putting on harnesses to do a simple job. I was told by an old fellow who owned a motel in Inverell that the licenses for his inn and his restaurant were putting him out of business. And everywhere I heard people complaining about licenses and fees making work harder. What I mostly saw were a lot of old folks at the ANZAC halls in small towns complaining that things weren't like they used to be, so maybe that colored my vision a bit.
    - wildfire 3y ago
      Your comment does not highlight anything which indicates that Australians blindly follow the rules. I'm Australian, currently live in Sydney and I feel as you do, but none of your examples explain your claim. No, I don't have time to list the ways Australians follow rules (more so that Germans), it is 1:15am, and I'm going to bed.
aranelsurion 3y ago
> I would definitely take the Turkish way of shrugging off rules Having lived most of my life in Turkey, it gets old really fast. For one thing, there's a certain culture that is a mixture of extreme fatalism, not giving a shit about anything that doesn't immediately benefit you, low respect to other people, and the worst part of it, seeing other people who care as weak, unmanly and naive, that is so pervasive in Turkey. When this culture is given a lax rule structure, what you get is a chaotic, every man for himself, free-for-all place devolving further and further into a low CGI Mad Max movie. Only reason why it still hasn't completely collapsed into chaos is because people are still afraid of the punishment. If you think I'm exaggerating, next time you're there ask a restaurant owner if you can smoke, right under the no-smoking sign and pay attention to what they say: do they tell you that'd disturb other customers? or do they tell you of the ₺20k fine they got that one time and they can't let you because of that. I can tell for you as a lived experience that significantly more people in Turkey cut in lines than people in Germany. Why do they do that I ask myself, the only explanation I could find until now is because fuck you, that's why. If you were as cunning, as manly, as bold as they are you'd be at the front of the line, but you aren't, so fuck you. They know there won't be repercussions for that action, and that's the only bar to clear for them to do it. Maybe this way of living fits some, I myself find this despicable. I know that cutting in lines is not the most important metric for life quality in the world, but I fully believe it seeps into everything else in the society and over time makes it unlivable. -- Even in an imaginary ideal environment, if act of obeying existing rules is debatable, there'll be the problem of everyone considering themselves as a sufficient authority on making judgements with a limited context and a huge bias on interpretations that benefit them. At one point it just makes sense to ask people to use the right channels to push change instead of 80 million people making individual judgements on every issue every day and hope for the best.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  > the worst part of it, seeing other people who care as weak, unmanly and naive, that is so pervasive in Turkey pervasice in Russia too. Most non-democratic societies are indivifualistic and highly cynical. That's why I say American brain is' a prison - they think in 'Socialist countries everyone cares about each. other too much, and that why they are poor
sokoloff 3y ago
> I grew up in America which is fairly rule-obeying. I also grew up there. I think there’s a low level compliance with what I’d call daily/minor rules. Cigarette butts tossed wherever you are when you finish one, speed limits are barely even advisory, jaywalking widely practiced, etc.
- noduerme 3y ago
  >> jaywalking widely practiced Depends. In NYC, jaywalking is normal. In Santa Monica, you get a ticket. Speeding is mostly enforced everywhere. What sets the US apart from countries like Argentina, in this department, is that the cops won't just ask you for a bribe when they stop you. You actually end up with a ticket and have to deal with it.
  - reaperducer 3y ago
    In NYC, jaywalking is normal. In Santa Monica, you get a ticket. In some American cities (Chicago), crossing against the light is how muggers and pickpockets tell the tourists apart from the locals. People who live in downtown Chicago wait for the light because they know that there's very often a car ready to make a left turn right into the crosswalk. Tourists are often from places where, if there is a crosswalk, there's no traffic to worry about.
    - crysin 3y ago
      As a person who lived in Chicago for 4 years, Chicagoans don't give a damn about the crosswalk signal. If there's no visible cars, they're walking.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    > Speeding is mostly enforced everywhere. MA highways are moving 75-80mph when traffic permits, regardless of whether they have a posted 55 or 65mph speed limit. NH is only a few mph less typically.
    - noduerme 3y ago
throw240623 3y ago
I'm Argentinian. I love breaking the rules and I love living in a place where rules are rarely enforced. It's almost a sport for me. "Why? Why should go along with this? Fuck that"
- noduerme 3y ago
  Overall, this is why I love Argentina. It's also why Argentina is a fucking mess, but I love it. When I'm there it feels like the people will never, ever be conquered. This is true in a lot of countries that had a dictatorship. Weirdly, it is not true for Chile, where everyone still acts like they're in a dictatorship.. also the US, which never had a dictatorship but created and supported dictatorships all over the world.
  - throw240623 3y ago
    Haha that's true. Like you said in another post, there are benefits and drawbacks to everything. I'd personally rather have corruption and chaos than "too much order." But, different strokes for different folks.
    - noduerme 3y ago
      A lot of Estadounidenses won't get this story. When I bought a car in Argentina, I walked into a Volkswagen dealership in San Antonio Oeste and bought the least fucked up of the 3 used cars for $3000. It died on us about 30 miles out in the desert in some place called Choele Choel. I kept fixing it and eventually we made it to Mendoza and after all this time, the license plate on the car was a Xerox paper, and the targeta verde was a picture of some lady. We went through probably 20 checkpoints, and no one said anything. We finally made it up to the Chilean border in that car, and the Chileans were like, this is a stolen car. You need to go back down the mountain. We ended up at a police station in Mendoza where the cops did not want to handle our paperwork. A few months later, I parked the car in Buenos Aires and my girlfriend left a sandwich inside. It rained and the car got moldy. I wanted to sell it. So I called a number in the newspaper that said they buy cars. Some guys showed up, took it on a test drive, and didn't come back. They just took the car. So I called my friend who knew a cop and she said, meet us in Plaza Serrano at 12:00, those guys will be there, and bring $100 for the policeman. I did, the guys showed up, they paid me $1500 for the car and everything worked out. The cop just stood there watching. Argentina is sort of how life is supposed to work. If you had the amount of guns like in the US it would much more fucked up. Also in a weird way people still have morals there, at least they are not as nihilistic as in the US. People still read fucking books and are educated. I think a lot has to do with having late night dinners and talking for hours instead of being on your phone. Taking your kids out to dinner and wine at 11pm is a really good value. Teaching them to talk and listen and be adults.
Freedom2 3y ago
I grew up overseas, moved to America and I have felt absolutely liberated by the freedom I now have when it comes to following rules. I think it's productive that people can definitely choose to follow their own gut and conscience when it comes to their own lives.
- Aeolun 3y ago
  I moved to Japan. I think we’re almost at the level where I’m confortable with the level of rule following here. Some people don’t follow the unimportant rules, but almost never when it’d inconvenience someone else.
wnc3141 3y ago
I think what you are noticing is the difference between a liberal democracy and autocracy. Where in one there exists a social construct of rules, where in the other rules require enforcement to exist, as they do not exist in the social consciousness
PlunderBunny 3y ago
"Lived in Australia and New Zealand which are disgustingly, obsequiously devoted to following tiny guidelines." As someone born in, and having spent most of my life in New Zealand, I have no idea what this means. I'm not being defensive, but I just don't understand. Maybe I'm 'too close' to see it. Perhaps I'm thinking about civic rules (e.g. jay-walking, speeding) and you're thinking of, e.g. industry like construction?

FeepingCreature 3y ago

> Spent a few weeks in Munich where I was shouted at for crossing a totally empty street against a crosswalk light. I don't understand this. I live near Munich, people cross against a red light all the time. Maybe you were doing it near children? That's a real social faux-pas, because they're not supposed to normalize jaywalking.

snovv_crash 3y ago
Exactly! I like to explain this kind of casual rulebreaking to US/UK people as being the German equivalent of using disgusting swearwords. Fine to do with your friends if nobody is around, or if you want to look tough or whatever, but don't do it in crowds and especially not in front of children.
- noduerme 3y ago
  I think this is strange. What is the example you're setting... that we all follow the rules? And when they find out that you don't follow the rules, will that not be a disappointment? Here is an incident that happened the second day I got to Vietnam (long before I was ever in Germany). My girlfriend was really sick in the hotel. I was vomiting too, but I went out to find medicine. I got to the corner of a huge boulevard, maybe 8 lanes wide. There was a pharmacy on the other side. But the traffic never stopped when the light turned red. On and on the traffic just kept going, weaving around all the other cars on the cross-street. The boulevard was maybe 1 meter below the level of the sidewalk. I stood there for 5 minutes waiting for some time to step into the street. Finally, a 6-year-old boy walked up alone, paused next to me, and started crossing the boulevard in the middle of the traffic. And all the cars and motorcycles just went around him. I was like, well fuck, if that kid can do it then I can do it... So what value are you teaching children? How to cross a street or how to follow orders? Crossing a street when it's possible may be illegal but it's not immoral. The idea that neglecting formalities leads to immorality can only be true if the morality isn't implanted. Worse, it implies that formalities are the only thing that holds back man's immoral nature... which should not be the lesson. If a man jaywalks, it doesn't make him more liable to commit other criminal acts.

XorNot 3y ago

As an Australian it is news to me that we are obsessed with obeying "tiny guidelines".

GianFabien 3y ago
Fair dinkum? I've lived in Oz for many decades and travelled widely. I have never seen obedience as a common trait. In fact, rule breaking with a shrug is far more prevalent.
- noduerme 3y ago
  ehhh ok. I'll take my crack at Australia. I spent a year there, mostly in SA and the NT. A six pack of beer and a pack of smokes will set you back $50. When it comes to road signs, the "are you feeling sleepy" every few kilometers really makes you... sleepy. Police presence is heavier than in America. There are checkpoints going into towns. Then of course there's the separate window for alcohol for Aboriginals, who line up early in the morning, the scanning of your driver's license every time you buy beer... When I first got there, I stayed in King's Cross, Sydney, and it was fairly wild. I heard that neighborhood isn't there anymore, and hasn't been for some time. [edit] Also, maybe this was just a rumor, but I was told by a mechanic in Adelaide that if you squeal your tires they'll fine you, and if you do it twice they'll impound your car and crush it. I was told by a roofer that his job was almost impossible because he now had to spend an hour putting on harnesses to do a simple job. I was told by an old fellow who owned a motel in Inverell that the licenses for his inn and his restaurant were putting him out of business. And everywhere I heard people complaining about licenses and fees making work harder. What I mostly saw were a lot of old folks at the ANZAC halls in small towns complaining that things weren't like they used to be, so maybe that colored my vision a bit.
  - wildfire 3y ago
    Your comment does not highlight anything which indicates that Australians blindly follow the rules. I'm Australian, currently live in Sydney and I feel as you do, but none of your examples explain your claim. No, I don't have time to list the ways Australians follow rules (more so that Germans), it is 1:15am, and I'm going to bed.

aranelsurion 3y ago

> I would definitely take the Turkish way of shrugging off rules Having lived most of my life in Turkey, it gets old really fast. For one thing, there's a certain culture that is a mixture of extreme fatalism, not giving a shit about anything that doesn't immediately benefit you, low respect to other people, and the worst part of it, seeing other people who care as weak, unmanly and naive, that is so pervasive in Turkey. When this culture is given a lax rule structure, what you get is a chaotic, every man for himself, free-for-all place devolving further and further into a low CGI Mad Max movie. Only reason why it still hasn't completely collapsed into chaos is because people are still afraid of the punishment. If you think I'm exaggerating, next time you're there ask a restaurant owner if you can smoke, right under the no-smoking sign and pay attention to what they say: do they tell you that'd disturb other customers? or do they tell you of the ₺20k fine they got that one time and they can't let you because of that. I can tell for you as a lived experience that significantly more people in Turkey cut in lines than people in Germany. Why do they do that I ask myself, the only explanation I could find until now is because fuck you, that's why. If you were as cunning, as manly, as bold as they are you'd be at the front of the line, but you aren't, so fuck you. They know there won't be repercussions for that action, and that's the only bar to clear for them to do it. Maybe this way of living fits some, I myself find this despicable. I know that cutting in lines is not the most important metric for life quality in the world, but I fully believe it seeps into everything else in the society and over time makes it unlivable. -- Even in an imaginary ideal environment, if act of obeying existing rules is debatable, there'll be the problem of everyone considering themselves as a sufficient authority on making judgements with a limited context and a huge bias on interpretations that benefit them. At one point it just makes sense to ask people to use the right channels to push change instead of 80 million people making individual judgements on every issue every day and hope for the best.

ClumsyPilot 3y ago
> the worst part of it, seeing other people who care as weak, unmanly and naive, that is so pervasive in Turkey pervasice in Russia too. Most non-democratic societies are indivifualistic and highly cynical. That's why I say American brain is' a prison - they think in 'Socialist countries everyone cares about each. other too much, and that why they are poor

sokoloff 3y ago

> I grew up in America which is fairly rule-obeying. I also grew up there. I think there’s a low level compliance with what I’d call daily/minor rules. Cigarette butts tossed wherever you are when you finish one, speed limits are barely even advisory, jaywalking widely practiced, etc.

noduerme 3y ago
>> jaywalking widely practiced Depends. In NYC, jaywalking is normal. In Santa Monica, you get a ticket. Speeding is mostly enforced everywhere. What sets the US apart from countries like Argentina, in this department, is that the cops won't just ask you for a bribe when they stop you. You actually end up with a ticket and have to deal with it.
- reaperducer 3y ago
  In NYC, jaywalking is normal. In Santa Monica, you get a ticket. In some American cities (Chicago), crossing against the light is how muggers and pickpockets tell the tourists apart from the locals. People who live in downtown Chicago wait for the light because they know that there's very often a car ready to make a left turn right into the crosswalk. Tourists are often from places where, if there is a crosswalk, there's no traffic to worry about.
  - crysin 3y ago
    As a person who lived in Chicago for 4 years, Chicagoans don't give a damn about the crosswalk signal. If there's no visible cars, they're walking.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  > Speeding is mostly enforced everywhere. MA highways are moving 75-80mph when traffic permits, regardless of whether they have a posted 55 or 65mph speed limit. NH is only a few mph less typically.
  - noduerme 3y ago

throw240623 3y ago

I'm Argentinian. I love breaking the rules and I love living in a place where rules are rarely enforced. It's almost a sport for me. "Why? Why should go along with this? Fuck that"

noduerme 3y ago
Overall, this is why I love Argentina. It's also why Argentina is a fucking mess, but I love it. When I'm there it feels like the people will never, ever be conquered. This is true in a lot of countries that had a dictatorship. Weirdly, it is not true for Chile, where everyone still acts like they're in a dictatorship.. also the US, which never had a dictatorship but created and supported dictatorships all over the world.
- throw240623 3y ago
  Haha that's true. Like you said in another post, there are benefits and drawbacks to everything. I'd personally rather have corruption and chaos than "too much order." But, different strokes for different folks.
  - noduerme 3y ago
    A lot of Estadounidenses won't get this story. When I bought a car in Argentina, I walked into a Volkswagen dealership in San Antonio Oeste and bought the least fucked up of the 3 used cars for $3000. It died on us about 30 miles out in the desert in some place called Choele Choel. I kept fixing it and eventually we made it to Mendoza and after all this time, the license plate on the car was a Xerox paper, and the targeta verde was a picture of some lady. We went through probably 20 checkpoints, and no one said anything. We finally made it up to the Chilean border in that car, and the Chileans were like, this is a stolen car. You need to go back down the mountain. We ended up at a police station in Mendoza where the cops did not want to handle our paperwork. A few months later, I parked the car in Buenos Aires and my girlfriend left a sandwich inside. It rained and the car got moldy. I wanted to sell it. So I called a number in the newspaper that said they buy cars. Some guys showed up, took it on a test drive, and didn't come back. They just took the car. So I called my friend who knew a cop and she said, meet us in Plaza Serrano at 12:00, those guys will be there, and bring $100 for the policeman. I did, the guys showed up, they paid me $1500 for the car and everything worked out. The cop just stood there watching. Argentina is sort of how life is supposed to work. If you had the amount of guns like in the US it would much more fucked up. Also in a weird way people still have morals there, at least they are not as nihilistic as in the US. People still read fucking books and are educated. I think a lot has to do with having late night dinners and talking for hours instead of being on your phone. Taking your kids out to dinner and wine at 11pm is a really good value. Teaching them to talk and listen and be adults.

Freedom2 3y ago

I grew up overseas, moved to America and I have felt absolutely liberated by the freedom I now have when it comes to following rules. I think it's productive that people can definitely choose to follow their own gut and conscience when it comes to their own lives.

Aeolun 3y ago
I moved to Japan. I think we’re almost at the level where I’m confortable with the level of rule following here. Some people don’t follow the unimportant rules, but almost never when it’d inconvenience someone else.

wnc3141 3y ago

I think what you are noticing is the difference between a liberal democracy and autocracy. Where in one there exists a social construct of rules, where in the other rules require enforcement to exist, as they do not exist in the social consciousness

PlunderBunny 3y ago

"Lived in Australia and New Zealand which are disgustingly, obsequiously devoted to following tiny guidelines." As someone born in, and having spent most of my life in New Zealand, I have no idea what this means. I'm not being defensive, but I just don't understand. Maybe I'm 'too close' to see it. Perhaps I'm thinking about civic rules (e.g. jay-walking, speeding) and you're thinking of, e.g. industry like construction?