Kultur 2

Hallo!

I had two major impressions from these readings. First, I immediately became hostile towards the author of "The German National Pastime". Yes, Mr. Colberg, everyone complains. This is a fact. Americans may be more likely to complain to their friends and to themselves, rather than to anyone around, but everyone is dissatisfied with life. No one ever responds to the question "how is everything?" with "everything is perfect!" Perhaps Mr. Colberg has simply been speaking to a disproportionately large number of optimists (of which most Americans are not).

My second impression had two parts. Upon reading "Brutally Honest", I was at first somewhat accepting. "Ok," I thought, "its a different culture with different mores." So what if Germans are more forthright about things, instead of beating around the bush as Americans tend to? However, then I realized that the reason Americans are typically so circumspect is that they actually care about the person to whom they speak's feelings. That lead me to the conclusion that Germans really don't give a $%*@ about other people, at least at some subconscious level. Then I got caught in between these two opinions, and cannot really make up my mind as to which is more likely to be valid (I'm leaning towards the first at this point, but...).

As for the 'staring' article, I feel like this is just leftovers from cold war era mentalities. Although, now that I think of it, were the KGB active in Germany? Were Germans encouraged to rat out their neighbor? My knowledge of recent european history is quite sparse... The 'statistics' article just seemed weird... Are generalities not good enough...?

Overall, I'm just a little bit weirded out...

Auf Wiedersehen!