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lola's avatar

Additions:

the pact in south Asia for crossing traffic filled streets. the pedestrian sets a course and speed and never deviates while the traffic flows around her, like a school of fish. it's a form of ballet or a courtly dance where all know the rules.

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Dr Andreas Matthias's avatar

I'm not sure that it is even possible to extract particular features, beliefs or behaviours from one culture and embed them into another. As in nature's ecosystems, societies also develop as whole systems of interdependent parts, and taking an alien species away from its context and sticking it into a different ecosystem is rarely a good idea. It sounds like trying to create the "best novel" by taking the one best paragraph out of each of a hundred novels and pasting them together into a new book. Will this really bring about a better novel?

I'm myself a half-German, half-Greek, now living with my Chinese family in Hong Kong. I have the impression that the best features of each of these cultures are inextricably connected with their worst. The fierce individuality of Greeks, for example, has given them the strength to resist occupation and dictatorships and to fight for their freedom. But it also can, in less educated and younger men, lead to the macho behaviour often associated with the Mediterranean male. The Germans' Protestant work ethic brings about Mercedes cars and an ordered society, but also can make the experience of living in Germany stifling, dominated by abstract rules and unpleasant. I don't believe that you can have a culture that's somehow a collection of only the good bits.

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