Defaults-embracing cultures
I’ve lived half of my life outside of the country I was born in. I have some experience in immigration, and I’d like to talk about one topic that I haven’t seen discussed much: how some cultures are more into “defaults”.
In anthropology there is a notion of high-context and low-context cultures.
A high-context culture is a culture or society that communicates dominantly through the use of contextual elements, such as specific forms of body language, the status of an individual, and the tone of voice employed during speech. Rules are not directly or explicitly written or stated. By contrast, a low-context culture enjoys communications that take place most often through written or spoken (verbal) speech and rules are directly and explicitly stated. High-context cultures include close-knit groups of people, while low-context cultures are generally more diverse.
I’ve lived in Canada (Ontario & Quebec) for 5 years, and more than 10 years in Finland. Finland is a more high-context culture compared to other western countries. It’s not about body language (there almost isn’t any in Nordic cultures 😀). It’s about everybody, everywhere, in all situations, knowing exactly how to act and what to do.
People rarely look or behave confused. People are rarely late. I almost never see someone running to a bus stop. There’s very little discussion when ordering food. Consultants in stores don’t get asked difficult questions.
There are multiple factors at play here:
Most things are standardized, and there’s very little variation. There are like 2 types of door keys in the entire country. 2 major supermarket chains. If something isn’t widely sold (like, proper mosquito-net doors), you will not find it, ever.
Things are over-documented. Sometimes to a fault. Open a website of any business: mall, museum, health center, parking garage — there will be pages and pages of text. It’s often very inefficient, with unnecessarily long descriptions and meandering explanations. But if you manage to read it all, you’ll be mostly prepared.
Things rarely change.
Most things work.
There are interesting consequences to this.
Employees cannot handle non-standard situations. If your situation is standard, i.e. it was considered as a use case and documented for the training purposes, then you’ll get good service. If your situation is slightly off the standard path, most workers would struggle.
There is very little competition. People aren’t seeking new things or experiences. They are mostly content with the status quo. For an outsider, it may seem like, for example, the market is ripe for a new type of donut, because there’s basically a single type of donut being sold in the whole country; but that’s because people (I believe) are just ok with having that one type of donut.
Rules shape reality. I came across a very apt description by a reddit user fraxbo:
Because of their [Finland’s and Sweden’s] technocratic and modernist approaches to life, those cultures let rules shape reality. Once the rules are in place, they dictate what must be done and what is done. One protests by advocating for the rules to be changed, not by skirting or negotiating exceptions. Norway approaches rules as more an attempt to describe or sketch out how reality works, and when things don’t quite fit or work, there is wiggle room to negotiate a solution.
This isn’t good or bad, it’s just a property of some cultures. The question to any immigrant is whether that is actually compatible with you. Can you live “by default”?
My “new” books
I have published a new book “Foundations of Clojure”. It’s available on Leanpub in a variety of formats (epub, mobi, pdf, web view, etc.)
It’s based on an online course I made a few years ago for Codexpanse. Email me if you can’t afford the full price, and I’ll send you a discount coupon.
I also published “Conscious Attention”, it’s pay-as-you-want, so feel free to pick it up for free or any price above $7.
Will things ever be normal again?
I was a university student when 2008 financial crisis happened. I can genuinely say I hadn’t noticed it. Like, at all. I’ve learned about it maybe a decade later? And it’s not like I was unaffected. I still had to pay the bills. Get summer jobs and internships.
I wonder how much of the current mess — the wars, the politics, the economics — can be ignored. Ignorance wasn’t just bliss for me, it was something that allowed to just live, be interested in things, learn and build. I may have felt anxiety for different reasons, but not because I felt the world is burning down. The doom-and-gloom of the modern society is the ultimate defeat of spirit. Late 19th century was the time god died. Is it now man’s turn?
Oh, look, a funny cat!