this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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[–] Pat12@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (21 children)

I'm not American but i've worked in Western Europe. I don't know why but there seems to be a lot of taxes for everything. You have to get govt permission for everything. People seem to rely on the govt to provide things rather than have some agencies fill niches that aren't filled by the govt (for example I saw signs like don't help homeless people, the govt is helping them).

I'm from an Asian country, we don't have much tax, we don't rely on the govt for anything (we can't), and we have many NGOs. I think it's similar in America.

As an Asian, there are a few things I can note about Europeans.

  • Europeans seem to have lost their sense of traditions, to me as an Asian it doesn't make sense since keeping our traditions and values is a huge part of our culture and society.

  • Europeans also accept blame for bad things they did in the past (which is a good thing) but I think they can go overboard to compensate for that (to their detriment). I don't think accepting blame for things in the past is a thing that's done in Asia; we rewrite history instead. It would help if we acknowledged what we did and can have better relations with others moving forward.

  • Europeans identify more with nationality than ethnicity. For example, someone from Czech Republic moving to France is considered French. In North America I think they would be considered Czech-French. In Asia they would be considered to be a Czech expat living in France. Our ethnicity matters a lot.

[–] novibe@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago (13 children)
  1. Most European countries are EXTREMELY conservative culturally. They are very concerned about preserving “tradition”. Specially in Southern and Easter Europe. Even Germans listen mostly to German music, French to French music etc.
  2. Talk to an avarage Portuguese or Dutch about colonialism… see how much they “regret” or “accept the blame” for the shit they did.
  3. Most countries in Europe are not mono-ethnical, and haven’t been for a long time, like hundreds and hundreds of years. This is also true of Asia in some parts, but mostly Asia has a lot of mono-ethnicity countries. Your example of France, it’s had the Bretons, Basque, Occitan, “French”, Belgians, Flemish and Germans since it’s inception as a country. It was born as a nation by subduing those identities for French maximalism. The same for Italy, Spain, Germany etc etc.
[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago (4 children)

For the shit they did? Who was alive 2 centuries ago? And taking responsibility for past actions is a huge thing in the Netherlands for at least since the past 5-10 years.

[–] neeeeDanke@feddit.de 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

2 centuries? European colonialism continued well into the mid 20th century. There are still people alive who directly participated in them. Besides that, even thought most alive today did not participate directly they still benifit immensly from the colonial past of their countries as anouther comment allready mentioned.

And taking responsibility has been very slow/late and limited, often being limeted to apologies without reperations. The Belgian Crown for example only apologized for its involvement in forced labor and exploitation in the Congo three years ago. Germany only recognized its genocide in Namibia two years ago and refuses to pay reperations.

So yes for the shit they did (or bear a responsibility for if you wanna be more percise).

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