Comment by olau
3 years ago
You might be interested in reading the classical book about cultural difference by Geert Hofstede as it provides another perspective on this.
He describes what he calls uncertainty avoidance cultures that try to reduce uncertainty by making lots of rules. These end up being impossible to follow, so it's generally expected that you don't. He contrasts this with cultures that are low on uncertainty avoidance that have fewer rules, but on the other hand it's expected that they are followed.
This is probably to some degree a caricature.
Thanks, I should check it out.
How do they explain Germany though?
In a park in Stuttgart a man approached us as we were walking the dog, and after realising we spoke English politely said "You must not be aware, dogs must be on lead here".
That's kind of a funny example, because my go-to on the subject is that if you visit a park in Washington State (or most of the US) you are immediately hit with a wall of text that starts with "no alcohol" but goes on to describe every annoying boom box cruising fireworks soliciting vending way you could potentially annoy someone. In Germany you can just sit on the grass, crack a beer, and watch the river roll by.
I think it's a great example of social policing, which IMHO better than anorganic, artificial traditional policing. But I'm still not 100% percent sure what he meant because I don't speak german.
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So would a person from any country who supports that specific law would do...
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Good Q.
From my own short stint in Germany, n=1, the rules often did tend to make sense, so it actually seemed like a good idea to follow them.
(I've also had friends complain that Germany wasn't actually as tidy or rules based as they were lead to believe. So take with a grain of salt!)
To clarify, are you categorising German culture as low uncertainty avoidance? I am not sure that I would.