Saturday, October 10, 2020
Two opposite observations
Just a couple of opposite observations after 'bingewatching' Quora for a few hours.
1. Russians and Americans are more alike than either side wants to admit. Soviet life was far more normal than we were taught. Even some Russians don't seem to realize how normal it was. They complain about 'horrible' Soviet situations that sound like ordinary '50s America to me. Some aspects were worse, but free medical care and excellent free education and zero crime might compensate for the harder parts. (As I've noted before, correct information about Soviet life was nominally available in the '50s and '60s, but it wasn't publicized and never mentioned in media. Unless you spent your days browsing the government document section of the library, you'd never have a chance to find it. Might as well have been secret.)
2. Germans are WEIRD and Germany has always been WEIRD. Most Germans don't realize how WEIRD they are, because part of their WEIRDNESS is the automatic assumption that everyone in the world is precisely identical to Germans down to the 548256776.511.901.11009th decimal.decimal.decimal. place.place.place.
Labels: Natural law = Soviet law
¶ 9:30 AM
