Really interesting read. I love the specific juxtaposition of Japanese vs. Italian cultures to draw out the differences. And written in English, no less — how considerate! It reminds me of this...
Really interesting read. I love the specific juxtaposition of Japanese vs. Italian cultures to draw out the differences. And written in English, no less — how considerate! It reminds me of this sketch from awhile back comparing the “ask culture” of Germany with the “guess culture” of Ireland.
Thanks to Tildes surfacing content from Not Just Bikes I’ve become a lot more cognizant of the differences in urban planning and mass transportation goals (you could call it “car culture” vs. “bike and pedestrian culture” maybe) of the Netherlands, versus the US and Canada. Now I’d be really curious to see if Japan’s core value of “never stand out or make a fuss,” as Giancotti puts it, is also present in the Netherlands. Or how other social norms generally compare in those two countries.
Also, and this is a tangent (a political one, at that)… but nowadays I feel like there’s an elephant in the room whenever the subject of cultural norms comes up. Trumpism has revealed the ugly truth that our strongest institutions and the international order are held together by norms and conventions and good faith. Duct tape and a prayer, basically. A motivated individual willing to disregard and exploit those norms can cause serious harm to a system. I don’t know what to do with that observation, but the fragility of cultural consensus (whether at micro or macro scale) has never felt more apparent to me.
IMO this has always been and always will be true. In order for society to function at any level there has to be trust. And there will always be people who are willing and able to exploit that...
A motivated individual willing to disregard and exploit those norms can cause serious harm to a system
IMO this has always been and always will be true. In order for society to function at any level there has to be trust. And there will always be people who are willing and able to exploit that trust for their own purposes.
We can put in place rules and laws and safeguards to prevent an exploiter from succeeding, but if the people tasked with enforcing them are not willing to enforce them then they may as well never have existed.
I'm Dutch. Yes it is. We have a saying "Doe maar normaal, dan doe je al gek genoeg" which means "Just act normal, you're strange enough that way". We also have an idiom "je kop boven het maaiveld...
“never stand out or make a fuss,” as Giancotti puts it, is also present in the Netherlands.
I'm Dutch. Yes it is.
We have a saying "Doe maar normaal, dan doe je al gek genoeg" which means "Just act normal, you're strange enough that way". We also have an idiom "je kop boven het maaiveld uitsteken" which means "putting your head above the crops (which will be reaped.)"
Both mean to keep yourself in line with the rest of society as part of the social contract.
What @sparksbet says is also true but often misconstrued as bluntness when at its core the Dutch are egalitarian to a fault. Hierarchy does not play a part in how we communicate to each other, which is the above taken to the extreme "doe maar normaal because everyone is".
If I work with US counterparts, the higher ups are genuinely baffled I speak back to them in the way that I do.
I think that the type of "don't stand out" behavior exhibited by the Dutch here may not necessarily be the same behavior as the "don't stand out" behavior exhibited by the Japanese, though. This...
I think that the type of "don't stand out" behavior exhibited by the Dutch here may not necessarily be the same behavior as the "don't stand out" behavior exhibited by the Japanese, though. This isn't to slander either group (neither of which I'm an expert in), but more as an observation that standing out is very dependent on what the generally accepted (often arbitrary) cultural norms surrounding you actually are, and while you can contrast countries where standing out can be viewed more positively, like the US, I don't think this factor alone is enough for us to draw deeper comparisons between the Dutch and the Japanese, as this attitude towards standing out from the crowd exists in a lot of parts of the world while differing considerably in what is considered "standing out" in various contexts.
I think this is exemplified by what I brought up in my comment: the stark contrast between the Dutch characteristic bluntness due to lack of regard for hierarchy (and I use bluntness as a neutral descriptor here, not as a negative value judgement) and Japanese polite speech, which both places a LOT of emphasis on hierarchy and involves a TON of mincing words and beating around the bush. Behavior that is rude in one country would be polite in the other, and vice-versa, because the cultural backdrop is very different when it comes to this. The same can be true of what counts as "standing out" even if both cultures emphasize avoiding it, and it can be hard to compare those details unless you have experience living in both places (or learn about it from someone who does). Sometimes even if you do, these differences can be hard to notice. For example, Germans tend to hold eye contact slightly longer than US Americans, which can lead many US Americans to feel like Germans are staring at them and can lead Germans to think US Americans are being shifty-eyed. Yet I only know about this because I read about it somewhere, despite being from the US and living in Germany for years, because the difference is subtle enough that it's hard to consciously perceive it. Not all differences are quite so subtle, but I think a surprising number do fade into the background for a lot of people.
As for @balooga's theory about transit, I know Norwegians, for example, also have an anti-standing-out cultural "rule" and even have a particular name for it (iirc it's called the Law of Jante or something like that?), and they are a much more car-oriented country with much worse trains than either Japan or the Netherlands. So I don't think the evidence of a correlation between transit-oriented development and this particular cultural attitude is very strong.
The Dutch variant is mentioned in that article so different not by much. Though I'd say the "doe maar normaal" is much more about conformity than egalitarianism and is different from the tall...
The Dutch variant is mentioned in that article so different not by much. Though I'd say the "doe maar normaal" is much more about conformity than egalitarianism and is different from the tall poppy syndrome.
I don't know a ton about Dutch culture, and what I do know comes mostly from watching the channel Double Dutch on Tiktok and on Youtube, since his whole shtick is comedy shorts about Dutch culture...
Now I’d be really curious to see if Japan’s core value of “never stand out or make a fuss,” as Giancotti puts it, is also present in the Netherlands
I don't know a ton about Dutch culture, and what I do know comes mostly from watching the channel Double Dutch on Tiktok and on Youtube, since his whole shtick is comedy shorts about Dutch culture vs English and/or American culture. The one thing I can attest to is that they're blunt af, to the point that they're often perceived as rude by people from other countries, which definitely isn't true of the Japanese. Like, even compared to the Germans, Dutch people are stereotyped as being blunt.
That's a great quote I'm going to file away for later. We've all observed at one time or another a group behavior that doesn't make sense, and is ineffective, inefficient, but ultimately harmless....
We have a built-in need to do what the people around us do, even when we know of better or less wasteful ways. This means that we can't even explain culture as something that, while starting from chance events, naturally progresses towards better and better behaviors. That's what science is for.
That's a great quote I'm going to file away for later. We've all observed at one time or another a group behavior that doesn't make sense, and is ineffective, inefficient, but ultimately harmless. And the reason the behavior has stuck isn't because anyone chose it, it's because it was the path of last resistance at the time, and then cultural inertia took over.
It seems to me that the part where he says this has nothing to do with whether someone is ethnically Japanese and that foreigners who move to Japan quickly adopt these same cultural behaviors with...
It seems to me that the part where he says this has nothing to do with whether someone is ethnically Japanese and that foreigners who move to Japan quickly adopt these same cultural behaviors with no problems would be contradictory with at least parts of nihonjinron philosophy, at least as far as I can understand it from your link.
He even theorizes at the end of the article that Japan's "more extreme examples of this" are possibly caused by how Japanese culture is framed on a meta-cultural level (which I'd love a more in-depth discussion on tbqh).
I admit that I don't quite understand the "framings" concept used here, and maybe it's a crucial part. Anyway, I wanted to add my perspective: The way I understand humans, the "not stand out"-rule...
I admit that I don't quite understand the "framings" concept used here, and maybe it's a crucial part.
Anyway, I wanted to add my perspective:
The way I understand humans, the "not stand out"-rule is the most basic threat for us as social creatures.
I theorise that getting kicked out is a more primal fear than getting eaten by lions.
Obviously what gets you kicked out differs from different cultures. And I'll also add that culture exists as soon as you have two or more persons in a place.
This reminds me of a conjecture that the fear of social isolation comes from the threat of getting eaten by a lion: https://meaningness.com/no-cosmic-meaning
This reminds me of a conjecture that the fear of social isolation comes from the threat of getting eaten by a lion:
Humans are obligatorily social animals. Before we killed off all the cave lions, an isolated human in Southern France was a snack. A band of humans with spears could usually intimidate predators into leaving them alone.
Being part of something bigger than yourself—a protective clan, at minimum—is essential to human survival, and the human way of being, and of relating to meaningness. Partly this pre-dates humanity; chimpanzees have similar social structures, as presumably did our common ancestors millions of years ago. It’s likely that our overgrown brains developed mainly to understand and exploit social relationships.
Especially critical is maintaining your social role within the clan. That is the basis of social significance: you are valued enough that the clan chief will risk his life, and his warriors’, to save you from cave hyenas. You are valued enough that the chief gives a meaningful purpose to your life, even if it is only sharpening spears and scraping hides.
When you lose that purpose, when you lose your social significance, then the clan abandons you—and then you are alone in the night, and will die of cold, hunger, or predation within hours or days. That pitiless evolutionary selection pressure underlies our contemporary craving for purpose and significance. (Or that’s my story, anyway. I don’t have specific evidence for it.)
This is a link with lots of content that seems very interesting. It's a bit much to process atm but thanks for posting it. I'll keep at it and maybe I'll remember to reply here with my findings...
This is a link with lots of content that seems very interesting. It's a bit much to process atm but thanks for posting it.
I'll keep at it and maybe I'll remember to reply here with my findings...
While this is true, I think this article is more about how the self-perpetuating cultural "rules" for fitting in arise rather arbitrarily. People will switch from a more efficient approach to a...
The way I understand humans, the "not stand out"-rule is the most basic threat for us as social creatures.
While this is true, I think this article is more about how the self-perpetuating cultural "rules" for fitting in arise rather arbitrarily. People will switch from a more efficient approach to a less efficient one because others are doing it, for example, and what the norm ends up being often just happens on accident, and even when it's not purely arbitrary, arises from such a complex array of factors that we couldn't easily predict how it turns out.
In my mind it is about following the cool and/or powerful. It is not clear to me how groups decide who is it, but once it's decided it is very hard to change. I see it as the basis for bullying...
In my mind it is about following the cool and/or powerful.
It is not clear to me how groups decide who is it, but once it's decided it is very hard to change.
I see it as the basis for bullying (that's why you can't change what you do when you're bullied because it's not about that, it's about power) but also for who gives way when meeting someone on a sidewalk, path or in a corridor.
You can do an experiment of awkwardness... Just for one week try to go against your instinct on who gives way... So move over when you don't feel you should and stay when you don't want to. Its very enlightening in my experience.
He means framing the way one would frame a question. Implicit in any question asked (about anything) are underlying assumptions that both the asker and and answerer need to accept as true in order...
He means framing the way one would frame a question. Implicit in any question asked (about anything) are underlying assumptions that both the asker and and answerer need to accept as true in order for a question and answer dialog to be meaningful.
If you would like to look up the concept of the Overton window in wikipedia, this might be a good way to be introduced to the topic. Side note: investigating concepts like this and their effectiveness is a large part of how Noam Chomsky became famous in political circles.
This author takes this concept, and pushes it one step further. Every time we think about any concept for any abstract entity in this life, we are forming a mental model about what that concept is. This mental model is always incomplete and therefore at least a little wrong, because humans have limited brainpower and knowledge. This means that there are always simplifications, assumptions, and blindspots in every mental model you have about... everything. These, too, can be shared assumptions between two people trying to communicate, and these are what he refers to as framings.
Furthermore, the author delves into it a little bit, but it is understood in psychology that these framings are self-reinforcing. Here is a random picture of a color map I found online (http://itooktheredpill.irgendwo.org/2010/building-a-color-world-map/hsv.png). This is every color that the human eye can perceive. There are very obvious colors here (red, green, blue, etc). But if you were going to draw a circle around light blue, where would you draw it? What about teal? baby blue? Would it surprise you to learn that not all cultures draw their circles in the same places? That different cultures draw the circles in slightly different places? That different cultures have different numbers of words for each color, and subdivide the colors in different ways? Some languages don't even have words for colors 0.o.
It also turns out that if you take one culture that has 30 commonly used words for green, and another culture that has , say, 15, then members of the culture that have 30 will also be better at identifying the differences between different green colors when tested. Which means that even if these cultures are defining their colors in different, arbitrary manners, it ultimately reinforces real world skills and different mental abilities.
Very interesting "model" to how culture forms & is reinforced. Their discussion of framings & synchronization can also be used to explain how religion or ideologies 'work'. I found their other...
Very interesting "model" to how culture forms & is reinforced. Their discussion of framings & synchronization can also be used to explain how religion or ideologies 'work'. I found their other post on framings and found it to be a good read as well!
Really interesting read. I love the specific juxtaposition of Japanese vs. Italian cultures to draw out the differences. And written in English, no less — how considerate! It reminds me of this sketch from awhile back comparing the “ask culture” of Germany with the “guess culture” of Ireland.
Thanks to Tildes surfacing content from Not Just Bikes I’ve become a lot more cognizant of the differences in urban planning and mass transportation goals (you could call it “car culture” vs. “bike and pedestrian culture” maybe) of the Netherlands, versus the US and Canada. Now I’d be really curious to see if Japan’s core value of “never stand out or make a fuss,” as Giancotti puts it, is also present in the Netherlands. Or how other social norms generally compare in those two countries.
Also, and this is a tangent (a political one, at that)… but nowadays I feel like there’s an elephant in the room whenever the subject of cultural norms comes up. Trumpism has revealed the ugly truth that our strongest institutions and the international order are held together by norms and conventions and good faith. Duct tape and a prayer, basically. A motivated individual willing to disregard and exploit those norms can cause serious harm to a system. I don’t know what to do with that observation, but the fragility of cultural consensus (whether at micro or macro scale) has never felt more apparent to me.
IMO this has always been and always will be true. In order for society to function at any level there has to be trust. And there will always be people who are willing and able to exploit that trust for their own purposes.
We can put in place rules and laws and safeguards to prevent an exploiter from succeeding, but if the people tasked with enforcing them are not willing to enforce them then they may as well never have existed.
I'm Dutch. Yes it is.
We have a saying "Doe maar normaal, dan doe je al gek genoeg" which means "Just act normal, you're strange enough that way". We also have an idiom "je kop boven het maaiveld uitsteken" which means "putting your head above the crops (which will be reaped.)"
Both mean to keep yourself in line with the rest of society as part of the social contract.
What @sparksbet says is also true but often misconstrued as bluntness when at its core the Dutch are egalitarian to a fault. Hierarchy does not play a part in how we communicate to each other, which is the above taken to the extreme "doe maar normaal because everyone is".
If I work with US counterparts, the higher ups are genuinely baffled I speak back to them in the way that I do.
Edit: closing parentheses.
I think that the type of "don't stand out" behavior exhibited by the Dutch here may not necessarily be the same behavior as the "don't stand out" behavior exhibited by the Japanese, though. This isn't to slander either group (neither of which I'm an expert in), but more as an observation that standing out is very dependent on what the generally accepted (often arbitrary) cultural norms surrounding you actually are, and while you can contrast countries where standing out can be viewed more positively, like the US, I don't think this factor alone is enough for us to draw deeper comparisons between the Dutch and the Japanese, as this attitude towards standing out from the crowd exists in a lot of parts of the world while differing considerably in what is considered "standing out" in various contexts.
I think this is exemplified by what I brought up in my comment: the stark contrast between the Dutch characteristic bluntness due to lack of regard for hierarchy (and I use bluntness as a neutral descriptor here, not as a negative value judgement) and Japanese polite speech, which both places a LOT of emphasis on hierarchy and involves a TON of mincing words and beating around the bush. Behavior that is rude in one country would be polite in the other, and vice-versa, because the cultural backdrop is very different when it comes to this. The same can be true of what counts as "standing out" even if both cultures emphasize avoiding it, and it can be hard to compare those details unless you have experience living in both places (or learn about it from someone who does). Sometimes even if you do, these differences can be hard to notice. For example, Germans tend to hold eye contact slightly longer than US Americans, which can lead many US Americans to feel like Germans are staring at them and can lead Germans to think US Americans are being shifty-eyed. Yet I only know about this because I read about it somewhere, despite being from the US and living in Germany for years, because the difference is subtle enough that it's hard to consciously perceive it. Not all differences are quite so subtle, but I think a surprising number do fade into the background for a lot of people.
As for @balooga's theory about transit, I know Norwegians, for example, also have an anti-standing-out cultural "rule" and even have a particular name for it (iirc it's called the Law of Jante or something like that?), and they are a much more car-oriented country with much worse trains than either Japan or the Netherlands. So I don't think the evidence of a correlation between transit-oriented development and this particular cultural attitude is very strong.
As a Belgian (Flemish), I would say it's even more present here.
I've heard that in Australia, this is called tall poppy syndrome. Maybe that's subtly different, though?
The Dutch variant is mentioned in that article so different not by much. Though I'd say the "doe maar normaal" is much more about conformity than egalitarianism and is different from the tall poppy syndrome.
I don't know a ton about Dutch culture, and what I do know comes mostly from watching the channel Double Dutch on Tiktok and on Youtube, since his whole shtick is comedy shorts about Dutch culture vs English and/or American culture. The one thing I can attest to is that they're blunt af, to the point that they're often perceived as rude by people from other countries, which definitely isn't true of the Japanese. Like, even compared to the Germans, Dutch people are stereotyped as being blunt.
That's a great quote I'm going to file away for later. We've all observed at one time or another a group behavior that doesn't make sense, and is ineffective, inefficient, but ultimately harmless. And the reason the behavior has stuck isn't because anyone chose it, it's because it was the path of last resistance at the time, and then cultural inertia took over.
this is a really interesting essay, but I really can’t get over his weird gringo nihonjinron framing.
It seems to me that the part where he says this has nothing to do with whether someone is ethnically Japanese and that foreigners who move to Japan quickly adopt these same cultural behaviors with no problems would be contradictory with at least parts of nihonjinron philosophy, at least as far as I can understand it from your link.
He even theorizes at the end of the article that Japan's "more extreme examples of this" are possibly caused by how Japanese culture is framed on a meta-cultural level (which I'd love a more in-depth discussion on tbqh).
I admit that I don't quite understand the "framings" concept used here, and maybe it's a crucial part.
Anyway, I wanted to add my perspective:
The way I understand humans, the "not stand out"-rule is the most basic threat for us as social creatures.
I theorise that getting kicked out is a more primal fear than getting eaten by lions.
Obviously what gets you kicked out differs from different cultures. And I'll also add that culture exists as soon as you have two or more persons in a place.
This reminds me of a conjecture that the fear of social isolation comes from the threat of getting eaten by a lion:
https://meaningness.com/no-cosmic-meaning
This is a link with lots of content that seems very interesting. It's a bit much to process atm but thanks for posting it.
I'll keep at it and maybe I'll remember to reply here with my findings...
Yeah, the article is really about something else entirely, but I thought the story was too good not to share.
While this is true, I think this article is more about how the self-perpetuating cultural "rules" for fitting in arise rather arbitrarily. People will switch from a more efficient approach to a less efficient one because others are doing it, for example, and what the norm ends up being often just happens on accident, and even when it's not purely arbitrary, arises from such a complex array of factors that we couldn't easily predict how it turns out.
In my mind it is about following the cool and/or powerful.
It is not clear to me how groups decide who is it, but once it's decided it is very hard to change.
I see it as the basis for bullying (that's why you can't change what you do when you're bullied because it's not about that, it's about power) but also for who gives way when meeting someone on a sidewalk, path or in a corridor.
You can do an experiment of awkwardness... Just for one week try to go against your instinct on who gives way... So move over when you don't feel you should and stay when you don't want to. Its very enlightening in my experience.
He means framing the way one would frame a question. Implicit in any question asked (about anything) are underlying assumptions that both the asker and and answerer need to accept as true in order for a question and answer dialog to be meaningful.
If you would like to look up the concept of the Overton window in wikipedia, this might be a good way to be introduced to the topic. Side note: investigating concepts like this and their effectiveness is a large part of how Noam Chomsky became famous in political circles.
This author takes this concept, and pushes it one step further. Every time we think about any concept for any abstract entity in this life, we are forming a mental model about what that concept is. This mental model is always incomplete and therefore at least a little wrong, because humans have limited brainpower and knowledge. This means that there are always simplifications, assumptions, and blindspots in every mental model you have about... everything. These, too, can be shared assumptions between two people trying to communicate, and these are what he refers to as framings.
Furthermore, the author delves into it a little bit, but it is understood in psychology that these framings are self-reinforcing. Here is a random picture of a color map I found online (http://itooktheredpill.irgendwo.org/2010/building-a-color-world-map/hsv.png). This is every color that the human eye can perceive. There are very obvious colors here (red, green, blue, etc). But if you were going to draw a circle around light blue, where would you draw it? What about teal? baby blue? Would it surprise you to learn that not all cultures draw their circles in the same places? That different cultures draw the circles in slightly different places? That different cultures have different numbers of words for each color, and subdivide the colors in different ways? Some languages don't even have words for colors 0.o.
It also turns out that if you take one culture that has 30 commonly used words for green, and another culture that has , say, 15, then members of the culture that have 30 will also be better at identifying the differences between different green colors when tested. Which means that even if these cultures are defining their colors in different, arbitrary manners, it ultimately reinforces real world skills and different mental abilities.
So, this is what he is referring to as framing.
Very interesting "model" to how culture forms & is reinforced. Their discussion of framings & synchronization can also be used to explain how religion or ideologies 'work'. I found their other post on framings and found it to be a good read as well!
https://aethermug.com/posts/a-framing-and-model-about-framings-and-models
Nice! I will now reread the first article :)
Also: there is an extra " at the end of the URL of the link you posted.
No matter what i do it adds an extra %22 at the end of my url.. very strange. But thanks for pointing it out