4 ms·

> If you like how a country does things, why not change the country you originate from instead of going to that other country? Because it's neigh impossible fo

by piva00 2mo ago

> If you like how a country does things, why not change the country you originate from instead of going to that other country? 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.

kmijyiyxfbklao 2mo ago
You are supposed to fixed the same way the first world countries fixed it, by staying there are improving things with the other people that want to improve things. Oh wait they all left for other countries, oops I guess people that couldn't leave get to stay and rot in unfixable corruption.
- graemep 2mo ago
  That is a bit silly. In any given country most who can leave choose to stay. Even in country with a very high per capita rate most people will stay. People will leave and return after a few years. Many people are better off in many ways staying. If you have capital it goes further in a poorer country. Your income might be lower in absoluter terms but low costs might mean you have a better lifestyle. Other people leaving might make your skills rarer, so you have well paid and secure employment. You might have connections. You may not want to leave family, friends and a familiar environment.
- piva00 2mo ago
  That's what happens when a culture is broken to the point of requiring generations of work to fix it: people who are unhappy will leave because there's no hope for enough to change to keep them there. 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.
  - aleph_minus_one 2mo ago
    > 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. 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.
    - piva00 2mo ago
      Sure, if they are extremely passionate about it and make it their life's purpose they will keep fighting even against hugely unfavourable odds. 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)
breppp 2mo ago
> 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. 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
- a2800276 2mo ago
  > If talking Germany the basic example is changing from a very militaristic society (far before the Nazis) to a rather pacifist society. 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.
  - breppp 2mo ago
    The way I see it is the cultural change happened after the Prussian elites lost power and the general German public understood their recent history as far from the eternal victory they were promised. That's a major cultural change however you want to spin it, and there are enough examples in history where countries haven't gone through the same changes in similar situations (Weimar Republic also comes to mind) 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?

by piva00 2mo ago

kmijyiyxfbklao 2mo ago

You are supposed to fixed the same way the first world countries fixed it, by staying there are improving things with the other people that want to improve things. Oh wait they all left for other countries, oops I guess people that couldn't leave get to stay and rot in unfixable corruption.

graemep 2mo ago
That is a bit silly. In any given country most who can leave choose to stay. Even in country with a very high per capita rate most people will stay. People will leave and return after a few years. Many people are better off in many ways staying. If you have capital it goes further in a poorer country. Your income might be lower in absoluter terms but low costs might mean you have a better lifestyle. Other people leaving might make your skills rarer, so you have well paid and secure employment. You might have connections. You may not want to leave family, friends and a familiar environment.
piva00 2mo ago
That's what happens when a culture is broken to the point of requiring generations of work to fix it: people who are unhappy will leave because there's no hope for enough to change to keep them there. 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.
- aleph_minus_one 2mo ago
  > 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. 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.
  - piva00 2mo ago
    Sure, if they are extremely passionate about it and make it their life's purpose they will keep fighting even against hugely unfavourable odds. 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)

breppp 2mo ago

> 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. 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

a2800276 2mo ago
> If talking Germany the basic example is changing from a very militaristic society (far before the Nazis) to a rather pacifist society. 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.
- breppp 2mo ago
  The way I see it is the cultural change happened after the Prussian elites lost power and the general German public understood their recent history as far from the eternal victory they were promised. That's a major cultural change however you want to spin it, and there are enough examples in history where countries haven't gone through the same changes in similar situations (Weimar Republic also comes to mind) 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?