This. I’ve been struggling recently on how to best have a civil conversation with the most important people in my life who (perhaps unknowingly) misunderstand how I (or anyone else) could possibly vote for Trump. Convicted of 94 felonies! He lies! He is immoral! I have finally accepted the fact that I must self-censor, avoid any discussion of Trump, and keep conversations on a more superficial level. We have lost the ability to “agree to disagree.” If we cannot communicate, indeed “how on earth can we rebuild trust?”
I sympathise. Same with my daughter. Part of their indoctrination involves not having a rational argument with which to discuss. Hence, no discussion. They have blind faith in the press. An independent reporter/journalist in UK said the MSM press is a cancer and the indies the cure.
No irony. They are indoctrinated. Not because they disagree with me but because they haven't the wherewithal to discuss - to explain their point of view.
In a discussion about how we gain trust you don't think that believing that everyone who disagrees with you is indoctrinated is not part of the problem?
O.K. let's put it another way. I will discuss anything with anyone and am open to having my mind changed. However. There are people who refuse to discuss. Indoctrinated people have this mindset where their belief brooks no argument. You tell me if this group is indoctrinated. If no, what other reason?
Tokyo is 2.5x the size of Los Angeles and is as clean as Lake Oswego, OR. No trash cans can be found anywhere. Get on over to Japan to really blow your mind.
Just home from Japan. The differences couldn’t be more blatant. Subway floors you could eat off of, $5000 Toto toilets on every train and in every station lavatory. One can ride the subway without fear. What’s the difference? Japan is a trust society, true, but they don’t have an indulged class that is allowed to behave like feral animals with no consequence. You know exactly what I’m talking about. We could start there. Yes, that is one of the corollaries of the MAGA movement.
It’s not because Japan is a high trust society. It’s not enough to just trust everyone around. It’s a low individualism society - from a young age, children are taught the world is not about you. You must be quiet, courteous, obedient, and respectful. Standing out is actively discouraged. Voicing opinions is discouraged. When everyone understands they are not Gods gift to the country, they all behave better. Americans will never be like this. Our teachings to our children are exactly the opposite. Everyone’s opinion must be validated and respected even when it’s garbage, and children are taught they basically can walk on water.
Japan is where I learned about nationalism. Sadly, it is a bad word here in the USA. How dare everyone pull in the same direction for the good of society?
That is all certainly correct. But add to that, we have a class of drugged up feral animals, created mostly by removing fathers from families in the ghettos. These creatures know no rules beyond the death penalty for being “dissed”. They comprise a underclass that dominates our cities. The only way to solve this is to remove children from the environment at birth and then level these failed experiments in public housing. I can hear the liberals screaming already.
FYI. In Buddhist epistemology, there are 3 main concepts of the nature of reality. 2 of them are commonly taught around the world and have been for 1,000 to 2,500 years. The other, is only taught in Japan by a group of 50,000 Buddhists although is began in India almost 2,000 years ago. It does out elsewhere. Their systems underscore Zen practice and of the 3, most closely align with modern western thought and psychological research. A man in your line of work might enjoy visit to a place where this is studies and practiced.
As a Zen teacher, I could look into it if you go, but you might do better to ask an Asian Studies professor (I bet you know one) for an English-speaking Hosso Shu Monk. They have famous temples in Kyoto, but they are more religious than philosophical you might do better with their small branch in Tokyo.
BTW. Berkeley used to be a legendary go to source of such information but the culture dumpster fire of American education has ended that tradition, as far as I can see.
Not only are there no trash cans in Japan, but there are no paper towels i. The public restrooms. Folks carry their own towels, dry their hands after washing, and carry the used towel with them. In our country, restrooms are painfully littered by "towel droppers" using the provided towels to open the door and simply dropping it on the ground. To my mind, there is a special place in hell for those turds.
We lived there 2.5 yrs and it was a real shock to all the foreigners we met. The Japanese people also would not touch second hand furniture etc as it was bad luck to move old furniture to new homes. When someone lived most of the furniture was left at the side of the street. Some foreign teachers had started "garage" sales and it was a novelty but beginning to catch on. English teachers furnished their whole homes with these free roadside cast offs. There was even a specific word for it.
All I can guess is that there has been a cultural revolution in the last 30 years or Tokyo etc were very different from our smaller city(850thous)
Our students even explained that personal cleanliness was truly next to godliness but the streets etc were not part of that. Men urinated on the streets anywhere. We would sometime see elderly women yelling at them and one even reached between a man's legs and twisted. He jumped a foot and our four kids watched in awe before we could destract them. If you ask my kids that is one of their prominent memories. Garbage piled up esp at roadside stops and in the mountains and men peeing in public! That was just our experience of 2.5 years many years ago. I am glad yours was different
Same as Hong Kong under British rule. Note during 1970’d seldom saw UK soldiers or sailors.
I believe in all of 1970 HK had 16 murders. How many in a typical US city of several million residents?
Streets clean; streets clean, street cleaners not obvious, population incredibly polite, I walked around single in the early hours, no attacks or even aggressive stares.
I compared this to cities in US and HK was well ahead.
Ship’s captain told crew that no bad behavior would be acceptable. He also stated that most crimes resulted in a caning ie whipping of 16-20 lashes and no jail time. He stated that when the miscreant got back to ship he would add further punishments. Crew behaved.
I am so glad to hear this about Japan. My family lived in a city on the southern island of Kyushu in the 1990s for 2.5 years
We were stunned by how dirty all the cities were and even our favourite swimming spots in the countryside were extremely dirty.
Every car/truck stop had a metre high pile of garbage ringing the edges. There were no public garbage receptacles and the ground was the accepted place to put all garbage. The public toilet seats were often covered in feces esp the traditional floor seats. When we drove through the beautiful mountains we would see what we thought were waterfalls only to find it was a trail down the side of the mountain of disposed fridges and stoves etc.
Most other foreigners we met said it was the hardest thing to reconcile in their minds. Their view of Japanese cleanliness and the public dirtiness. My students explained that Japanese deeply valued personal cleanliness but did not care about outward dirtiness. In the homes, one guest room was kept spotless but often the rest of the house was not clean.
We started picking up the garbage where the kids swam as it was dangerous but also littered with very violent pornography in children's comic books! People were very surprised that we bothered!
I do not know if Tokyo is different or if there has been a revolution since the mid nineties. If it is a change in thinking then that gives great hope that societies can change.
We loved our time there and found it to be a friendly and beautiful country but clean streets and toilets was not something we personally experienced!
I have been to Japan for a total of 5 weeks and have seen most of the country since 2017. Just about every place I've been has been equally clean, so it's interesting to read your experience. The cleanliness is so tied to Shintoism that I assumed it was always clean and was easy to keep clean because it was so ingrained in their culture and up-bringing. Interesting.
Yes. I think it's likely Taiwan got the custom from the Japanese occupation. You're responsible for your own trash in Tokyo. Bonus tip : don't eat anything while walking down the street/sidewalk
I lived in Portland from 1997-2019. For the last six years, I lived in the Eliot, four blocks south of work (Central Library), one block north of Safeway, and about five blocks north of what I now call PisS on yoU (The students were revolting since before I moved there...) As somebody who is hard of hearing and legally blind since birth, the last six years saw an incredible decline in the city. I went from walking with no tents in my neighborhood, to having every square covered by tents from work to home. My family convinced me to move back home when they realized the plaid pantry was a open air drug market. As a Jew, I also experienced quite a bit of antisemitism whenever Hamas attacked Israel. I've never considered Portland friendly; ideologues destroy society.
Move. I did. It was one of the best decisions I ever made. Now, when the President of PSU lets radicals destroy the library and sends tax payers the tab, I don’t care.
I moved back in 2019; I've seen videos of the Safeway with everything under lock and key. My former co-workers still insist that everything's fine there, despite no stores in the downtown core, and everything is boarded up.
I lived in Portland for 9 years until 2022 when I could no longer face the filth, the homelessness, the so-called compassion for the poor homeless that led to the streets being used to shoot up and to eliminate whatever was in your body that needed to be eliminated. The government of the city was nothing more than a bunch of progressive commissioners who had no idea about what to do except to try the same failed experiments over and over again. I lived pretty close to downtown where I had enjoyed the museum the symphony the movies and the general vibe when I first moved there. But at the end of my 9-year stay I never went down there. Covid was the final nail in an already rotten coffin so I left.
I'm from Detroit originally; I was about 10 years old when Coleman Young took office. He destroyed the police department, and Detroit's murder rate went over700 in 1974. The Left pretends that they support the victims, but they're clueless as to whom the real victims are. The wealthy never pay for the ideas they inflict upon the masses.
I bought Peter’s book "How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide” in 2019. Sadly, I need a refresher read to deal with the ongoing problem of effective and honest communication.
Can confirm your observations about Portland (we actually met once at the 24 on McGloughlin). When you walk around, no one is smiling, no one will make eye contact. I tried saying good morning or afternoon during my last stay there, and very few people even acknowledged me. It’s too bad because it was once a very friendly, safe, and welcoming city! https://getbettersoon.substack.com/p/why-im-leaving-portland
Portland is a lot like Berkeley, CA, or what it's become. My sister was living there, so I'd visit, and walking around there, people literally sneer at you or ignore you completely. It's a high-snitch area and sadly even though my sister moved from there, she and her wife years later decided they are now queer and trans and moved to Portland to be with "their people," which I don't get, given that Portland is like Berkeley on steroids, I mean, the bad stuff. But I'm no longer in contact with her so I don't know what their new experience is. I'm sure they'd gloss over someone masturbating on their front lawn as a "valid fluid experience" or somesuch.
The stories I have about those two ladies. They have a million dollars to retire on and instead of enjoying their "escape" house at the foot of Mt. Ranier in WA state, they got bored and moved to garbage heap Portland.
You should have done a direct correlation analysis of the difference in punishment in Portland vs Taiwan - there's your answer. It's not a "trust society"; it's trust us, you'll face severe consequences for selfish, abhorrent behavior.
First, thank you for taking comments from non-payers. We are the same age (my knees also hurt sometimes). In my youth in rural Michigan, my parents would pick up trash while out for a walk on our road. Tipping was still treated as a crime. We took great pride in our tidy lawn. The vegetable garden was weeded and the rows straight. Today I live in a fancy suburb of Chicago with a famous private university. I routinely see people in fancy cars and clunkers throw trash out the window. People eat fast food in their cars on side streets and drop their empty containers out the door before driving off. Stores have dirty awning that nevet get maintained. The lakefront parks are a mess on Monday morning. People who pick up after themselves have a very different sense of space than those who don't. Also, littering is a reflection of hostility with racial and social overtones.
Husband just returned from a work trip to Singapore. It's alluringly civilized. Clean, friendly, gracious, polite. People leave their wallets on tables to save them at counter order restaurants. Homes are small but third spaces are plentiful and immaculate and filled with families. Everyone has an apartment but this is tolerable when the guy above you isn't blasting obscene music and the guy below you isn't smoking weed. Something to be said for enforced decent behavior.
I was pleasantly surprised by how clean and orderly Kuala Lumpur was when I spent a week there. I walked all around that city, and, while it was not Tokyo clean, it was in better shape than any major American city I have been to.
This sums up my business travel over the years. As a Londoner in the 70s-90's we had to deal with the IRA and antifur people blowing things up or setting places on fire. In the 70s it was common to still find phone boxes with phone books. Gradually lower trust has crept in, and with it, ego centric behaviour. The cult of "I" has a lot to answer for. I can drop litter, I can do anything I like, its my right. Well okay but can you not rip up the phone book please? Where people are self obsessed and only caring about themselves you will see litter and decay spread everywhere. With it trust will drop, violence and vandalism will follow. I want 70s London back please.
Thank you. As an NYC parent, whenever I tour schools, I always insist on checking out the bathrooms. It tells you everything you need to know about the school. People wonder why kids can't learn and yet their schools don't even provide toilet paper. You can blame the kids and their parents, but it's the lousy janitors and superintendents too. They just don't care any more
Very interesting observations, Peter. I am not surprised about the seating situation in Seattle, meaning, especially women now have been trained to see all men as predatory, an extreme overreaction, IMHO. Now I wish I lived in Budapest!
A big uncomfortable reality is that these things seem mostly driven by heritage, lineage, ethnicity. There are many places in America populated almost exclusively by folks of NW European ancestry and they are, unsurprisingly, clean, safe, and very civil places.
To your point, once on a run on the westside of Cincinnati, I watched a mom with two kids throw trash from her child’s snack on the ground while waiting for the bus. There was a trash can about 2 feet from her.
This is the ghetto mentality that I complain about. No respect for themselves, their neighbors or the community.
I'm not sure it's just about trust. In a couple of the "high trust" countries you named, there is swift and severe punishment for littering and stealing. Perhaps the trust is knowing that such behavior has painful repercussions. Also I can't help wonder if the seating you observed in Seattle is residue left from the masking and 6 ft. distancing mandated during Covid when the message was, "your fellow humans are filthy germ-ridden beings and are to be avoided."
Maybe swift and sever punishment isn't the worst thing in the world. Maybe don't make excuses for bad behavior by blaming it on others or the government. Maybe encourage accountability.
If one cannot offer another point of view in a discussion among “friends,” without being unfriended, how on earth can we rebuild trust?
This. I’ve been struggling recently on how to best have a civil conversation with the most important people in my life who (perhaps unknowingly) misunderstand how I (or anyone else) could possibly vote for Trump. Convicted of 94 felonies! He lies! He is immoral! I have finally accepted the fact that I must self-censor, avoid any discussion of Trump, and keep conversations on a more superficial level. We have lost the ability to “agree to disagree.” If we cannot communicate, indeed “how on earth can we rebuild trust?”
I sympathise. Same with my daughter. Part of their indoctrination involves not having a rational argument with which to discuss. Hence, no discussion. They have blind faith in the press. An independent reporter/journalist in UK said the MSM press is a cancer and the indies the cure.
That reads like you think all those who disagree with you are lndoctrinated. Do you any irony here?
No irony. They are indoctrinated. Not because they disagree with me but because they haven't the wherewithal to discuss - to explain their point of view.
In a discussion about how we gain trust you don't think that believing that everyone who disagrees with you is indoctrinated is not part of the problem?
O.K. let's put it another way. I will discuss anything with anyone and am open to having my mind changed. However. There are people who refuse to discuss. Indoctrinated people have this mindset where their belief brooks no argument. You tell me if this group is indoctrinated. If no, what other reason?
It's a real pain in the ass trying to avoid offending the Party of Tolerance these days.
Thank you for this lovely story, I enjoyed it so much and got me thinking about something I've never thought about before.
Was that reply meant for me, or someone else in this thread?
Sorry Chuck, my comment was indeed in the wrong place as it was meant for the author. But your comment here is brilliant, so thanks to you too!
Tokyo is 2.5x the size of Los Angeles and is as clean as Lake Oswego, OR. No trash cans can be found anywhere. Get on over to Japan to really blow your mind.
Just home from Japan. The differences couldn’t be more blatant. Subway floors you could eat off of, $5000 Toto toilets on every train and in every station lavatory. One can ride the subway without fear. What’s the difference? Japan is a trust society, true, but they don’t have an indulged class that is allowed to behave like feral animals with no consequence. You know exactly what I’m talking about. We could start there. Yes, that is one of the corollaries of the MAGA movement.
It’s not because Japan is a high trust society. It’s not enough to just trust everyone around. It’s a low individualism society - from a young age, children are taught the world is not about you. You must be quiet, courteous, obedient, and respectful. Standing out is actively discouraged. Voicing opinions is discouraged. When everyone understands they are not Gods gift to the country, they all behave better. Americans will never be like this. Our teachings to our children are exactly the opposite. Everyone’s opinion must be validated and respected even when it’s garbage, and children are taught they basically can walk on water.
Japan is where I learned about nationalism. Sadly, it is a bad word here in the USA. How dare everyone pull in the same direction for the good of society?
That is all certainly correct. But add to that, we have a class of drugged up feral animals, created mostly by removing fathers from families in the ghettos. These creatures know no rules beyond the death penalty for being “dissed”. They comprise a underclass that dominates our cities. The only way to solve this is to remove children from the environment at birth and then level these failed experiments in public housing. I can hear the liberals screaming already.
This is an excellent point
People keep telling me that. I’m game to go!!
Definitely go you need to have that under your belt and please then write about it. Enjoyed this piece very much.
FYI. In Buddhist epistemology, there are 3 main concepts of the nature of reality. 2 of them are commonly taught around the world and have been for 1,000 to 2,500 years. The other, is only taught in Japan by a group of 50,000 Buddhists although is began in India almost 2,000 years ago. It does out elsewhere. Their systems underscore Zen practice and of the 3, most closely align with modern western thought and psychological research. A man in your line of work might enjoy visit to a place where this is studies and practiced.
As a Zen teacher, I could look into it if you go, but you might do better to ask an Asian Studies professor (I bet you know one) for an English-speaking Hosso Shu Monk. They have famous temples in Kyoto, but they are more religious than philosophical you might do better with their small branch in Tokyo.
BTW. Berkeley used to be a legendary go to source of such information but the culture dumpster fire of American education has ended that tradition, as far as I can see.
The Japanese believe in personal responsibility, your trash, not any one else's to deal with.
Personal responsibility and shame. These are two things that do not exist in the US anymore.
My 85yo dad would tell me you it’s all because of Democrats LOL
I will say I do believe the decay is partly do to progressive ideals that have permeated deep in our society, in schools, etc.
Not only are there no trash cans in Japan, but there are no paper towels i. The public restrooms. Folks carry their own towels, dry their hands after washing, and carry the used towel with them. In our country, restrooms are painfully littered by "towel droppers" using the provided towels to open the door and simply dropping it on the ground. To my mind, there is a special place in hell for those turds.
We lived there 2.5 yrs and it was a real shock to all the foreigners we met. The Japanese people also would not touch second hand furniture etc as it was bad luck to move old furniture to new homes. When someone lived most of the furniture was left at the side of the street. Some foreign teachers had started "garage" sales and it was a novelty but beginning to catch on. English teachers furnished their whole homes with these free roadside cast offs. There was even a specific word for it.
All I can guess is that there has been a cultural revolution in the last 30 years or Tokyo etc were very different from our smaller city(850thous)
Our students even explained that personal cleanliness was truly next to godliness but the streets etc were not part of that. Men urinated on the streets anywhere. We would sometime see elderly women yelling at them and one even reached between a man's legs and twisted. He jumped a foot and our four kids watched in awe before we could destract them. If you ask my kids that is one of their prominent memories. Garbage piled up esp at roadside stops and in the mountains and men peeing in public! That was just our experience of 2.5 years many years ago. I am glad yours was different
Same as Hong Kong under British rule. Note during 1970’d seldom saw UK soldiers or sailors.
I believe in all of 1970 HK had 16 murders. How many in a typical US city of several million residents?
Streets clean; streets clean, street cleaners not obvious, population incredibly polite, I walked around single in the early hours, no attacks or even aggressive stares.
I compared this to cities in US and HK was well ahead.
Ship’s captain told crew that no bad behavior would be acceptable. He also stated that most crimes resulted in a caning ie whipping of 16-20 lashes and no jail time. He stated that when the miscreant got back to ship he would add further punishments. Crew behaved.
I am so glad to hear this about Japan. My family lived in a city on the southern island of Kyushu in the 1990s for 2.5 years
We were stunned by how dirty all the cities were and even our favourite swimming spots in the countryside were extremely dirty.
Every car/truck stop had a metre high pile of garbage ringing the edges. There were no public garbage receptacles and the ground was the accepted place to put all garbage. The public toilet seats were often covered in feces esp the traditional floor seats. When we drove through the beautiful mountains we would see what we thought were waterfalls only to find it was a trail down the side of the mountain of disposed fridges and stoves etc.
Most other foreigners we met said it was the hardest thing to reconcile in their minds. Their view of Japanese cleanliness and the public dirtiness. My students explained that Japanese deeply valued personal cleanliness but did not care about outward dirtiness. In the homes, one guest room was kept spotless but often the rest of the house was not clean.
We started picking up the garbage where the kids swam as it was dangerous but also littered with very violent pornography in children's comic books! People were very surprised that we bothered!
I do not know if Tokyo is different or if there has been a revolution since the mid nineties. If it is a change in thinking then that gives great hope that societies can change.
We loved our time there and found it to be a friendly and beautiful country but clean streets and toilets was not something we personally experienced!
I have been to Japan for a total of 5 weeks and have seen most of the country since 2017. Just about every place I've been has been equally clean, so it's interesting to read your experience. The cleanliness is so tied to Shintoism that I assumed it was always clean and was easy to keep clean because it was so ingrained in their culture and up-bringing. Interesting.
Yes. I think it's likely Taiwan got the custom from the Japanese occupation. You're responsible for your own trash in Tokyo. Bonus tip : don't eat anything while walking down the street/sidewalk
I lived in Portland from 1997-2019. For the last six years, I lived in the Eliot, four blocks south of work (Central Library), one block north of Safeway, and about five blocks north of what I now call PisS on yoU (The students were revolting since before I moved there...) As somebody who is hard of hearing and legally blind since birth, the last six years saw an incredible decline in the city. I went from walking with no tents in my neighborhood, to having every square covered by tents from work to home. My family convinced me to move back home when they realized the plaid pantry was a open air drug market. As a Jew, I also experienced quite a bit of antisemitism whenever Hamas attacked Israel. I've never considered Portland friendly; ideologues destroy society.
Move. I did. It was one of the best decisions I ever made. Now, when the President of PSU lets radicals destroy the library and sends tax payers the tab, I don’t care.
I moved back in 2019; I've seen videos of the Safeway with everything under lock and key. My former co-workers still insist that everything's fine there, despite no stores in the downtown core, and everything is boarded up.
I lived in Portland for 9 years until 2022 when I could no longer face the filth, the homelessness, the so-called compassion for the poor homeless that led to the streets being used to shoot up and to eliminate whatever was in your body that needed to be eliminated. The government of the city was nothing more than a bunch of progressive commissioners who had no idea about what to do except to try the same failed experiments over and over again. I lived pretty close to downtown where I had enjoyed the museum the symphony the movies and the general vibe when I first moved there. But at the end of my 9-year stay I never went down there. Covid was the final nail in an already rotten coffin so I left.
I'm from Detroit originally; I was about 10 years old when Coleman Young took office. He destroyed the police department, and Detroit's murder rate went over700 in 1974. The Left pretends that they support the victims, but they're clueless as to whom the real victims are. The wealthy never pay for the ideas they inflict upon the masses.
It has a name: Luxury Beliefs. Rob Henderson coined the phrase for us, and we immediately understood.
Thank you for all you do Peter Boghossian. Your work has certainly impacted my life and I am sure others as well.
I bought Peter’s book "How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide” in 2019. Sadly, I need a refresher read to deal with the ongoing problem of effective and honest communication.
I have this book as well. Very utilitarian. Naturally I am fond of all of Peter's work. I don't know anyone else like him.
Thank you.
Can confirm your observations about Portland (we actually met once at the 24 on McGloughlin). When you walk around, no one is smiling, no one will make eye contact. I tried saying good morning or afternoon during my last stay there, and very few people even acknowledged me. It’s too bad because it was once a very friendly, safe, and welcoming city! https://getbettersoon.substack.com/p/why-im-leaving-portland
I am very, very happy I moved.
Portland is a lot like Berkeley, CA, or what it's become. My sister was living there, so I'd visit, and walking around there, people literally sneer at you or ignore you completely. It's a high-snitch area and sadly even though my sister moved from there, she and her wife years later decided they are now queer and trans and moved to Portland to be with "their people," which I don't get, given that Portland is like Berkeley on steroids, I mean, the bad stuff. But I'm no longer in contact with her so I don't know what their new experience is. I'm sure they'd gloss over someone masturbating on their front lawn as a "valid fluid experience" or somesuch.
LOL'd at your "valid fluid experience". Indeed, some libs can deftly use word salad to somehow legitimize anything.
The stories I have about those two ladies. They have a million dollars to retire on and instead of enjoying their "escape" house at the foot of Mt. Ranier in WA state, they got bored and moved to garbage heap Portland.
😂😂😂😂
You should have done a direct correlation analysis of the difference in punishment in Portland vs Taiwan - there's your answer. It's not a "trust society"; it's trust us, you'll face severe consequences for selfish, abhorrent behavior.
Portland is screwed. They just cut funds for the police—again.
First, thank you for taking comments from non-payers. We are the same age (my knees also hurt sometimes). In my youth in rural Michigan, my parents would pick up trash while out for a walk on our road. Tipping was still treated as a crime. We took great pride in our tidy lawn. The vegetable garden was weeded and the rows straight. Today I live in a fancy suburb of Chicago with a famous private university. I routinely see people in fancy cars and clunkers throw trash out the window. People eat fast food in their cars on side streets and drop their empty containers out the door before driving off. Stores have dirty awning that nevet get maintained. The lakefront parks are a mess on Monday morning. People who pick up after themselves have a very different sense of space than those who don't. Also, littering is a reflection of hostility with racial and social overtones.
Husband just returned from a work trip to Singapore. It's alluringly civilized. Clean, friendly, gracious, polite. People leave their wallets on tables to save them at counter order restaurants. Homes are small but third spaces are plentiful and immaculate and filled with families. Everyone has an apartment but this is tolerable when the guy above you isn't blasting obscene music and the guy below you isn't smoking weed. Something to be said for enforced decent behavior.
I was pleasantly surprised by how clean and orderly Kuala Lumpur was when I spent a week there. I walked all around that city, and, while it was not Tokyo clean, it was in better shape than any major American city I have been to.
This sums up my business travel over the years. As a Londoner in the 70s-90's we had to deal with the IRA and antifur people blowing things up or setting places on fire. In the 70s it was common to still find phone boxes with phone books. Gradually lower trust has crept in, and with it, ego centric behaviour. The cult of "I" has a lot to answer for. I can drop litter, I can do anything I like, its my right. Well okay but can you not rip up the phone book please? Where people are self obsessed and only caring about themselves you will see litter and decay spread everywhere. With it trust will drop, violence and vandalism will follow. I want 70s London back please.
Thank you. As an NYC parent, whenever I tour schools, I always insist on checking out the bathrooms. It tells you everything you need to know about the school. People wonder why kids can't learn and yet their schools don't even provide toilet paper. You can blame the kids and their parents, but it's the lousy janitors and superintendents too. They just don't care any more
The entire system is in crisis, and almost nobody is being honest about it. We are reaping what we have sown.
Duchess, same with Nursing Facilities.
~Princess
30 years ago in Budapest it was very much different. It was DIRTY.
Yes, under communist rule, buildings were crumbling. Better now?
Very interesting observations, Peter. I am not surprised about the seating situation in Seattle, meaning, especially women now have been trained to see all men as predatory, an extreme overreaction, IMHO. Now I wish I lived in Budapest!
Life is AMAZING here.
Was it hard for you to move there?
Great article
If only more North Americans travelled the world they might See how bad there Societies have become
Thanks and I agree. More people should leave NA and see the rest of the world.
for so many reasons
Yup
Agree with you both. Un-worldliness is an especially bad look on politicians.
A big uncomfortable reality is that these things seem mostly driven by heritage, lineage, ethnicity. There are many places in America populated almost exclusively by folks of NW European ancestry and they are, unsurprisingly, clean, safe, and very civil places.
But, hey, diversity is our strength, right?
To your point, once on a run on the westside of Cincinnati, I watched a mom with two kids throw trash from her child’s snack on the ground while waiting for the bus. There was a trash can about 2 feet from her.
This is the ghetto mentality that I complain about. No respect for themselves, their neighbors or the community.
At a public park one day I watched a woman change her baby's diaper on a median strip, with a bathroom not ten feet away.
I'm not sure it's just about trust. In a couple of the "high trust" countries you named, there is swift and severe punishment for littering and stealing. Perhaps the trust is knowing that such behavior has painful repercussions. Also I can't help wonder if the seating you observed in Seattle is residue left from the masking and 6 ft. distancing mandated during Covid when the message was, "your fellow humans are filthy germ-ridden beings and are to be avoided."
Maybe swift and sever punishment isn't the worst thing in the world. Maybe don't make excuses for bad behavior by blaming it on others or the government. Maybe encourage accountability.
There is a quote from an old source, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is older he will not depart from it.”