Why are the Germans so tidy?

The question should be: “… have becomeneat “.Because that wasn’t always the case.

In Shakespeare’s time, they were considered savage drunkards, filling their bellies with beer and the air with wild chants.Over the course of four centuries, this behaviour has been reduced to exclaves such as the Ballermann Mile, with serious British competition. Ah, the irony!

In early modern times, order was more associated with absolutist France, europe the legacy of abstract Cartesian logic, as well as Vauban’s straight country roads, dizzyingly precise fortress bastions, and the triumph of baroque horticulture. the ultimate expression of human natural taming.At that time, the wolves were still howling between Berlin and Potsdam.

A little later, the precision of the eight avenues, which emanate from the Place de l’Etoile at precise angles, as well as the regularity of Haussmann’s buildings, so characteristic of Paris, impressed.The perfect etiquette in social behaviour, at least certain social strata in France, is also… ordre par excellence.

In Germany, similar things initially existed only in cultural parts such as music: Bach’s compositions are pure order.Kant and Schopenhauer contributed to theirs to consolidate the idea of the German intellect as enlightened, but with a certain tendency to alien idealistic speculation and barren scholarship.

What one imagines as a German orderwith a broad effect, on the other hand, is a young date.Pusesen’s influence in Europe was completely disproportionate to its modest size, and was based on Protestant virtues, early compulsory schooling and a place of all military service that previously existed only in France. When Pzusen dominated the newly formed small German empire from the age of high industrialization, these idiosyncrasies came to bear in full, very soon to the horror of the rest of Europe.

This development was by no means inevitable, but it led first to the exaggeration of the supposed order-fim mel and then, especially after 1968, to emphasized, not always successful, sometimes slightly neurotic distancing from it: Excessive Thoroughness, pedantry as well as above all a focus on social order must be historically pre-loaded in Germany.

Although understandable, such connotations mask a circumstance of a rather pragmatic nature that united all modern industrial nations considered to be “ordinary”, besides Germany in particular the Nordic countries, Switzerland and Japan: they were in fact at the beginning of the Modern times and well into the industrial age, all have-nots.It is hard to imagine, but Sweden and Switzerland were begging-poor until the last third of the 19th century, Japan closed off, and Germany a pre-modern political anachronism. With the exception of Swedish ore and, for almost forty years, Norwegian oil, none of these countries possessed significant natural resources which, as in the case of France and later Russia and the United States, had a relatively large population. could feed. One was therefore dependent on pure added value through human abilities, or on sufficient frugality to achieve sustainable growth through this.

And so far, they have all been successful in this endeavor.So one can speak to some extent of a survival value.This becomes a problem only through distancelessness and ignorance of one’s own culture, if one considers addiction to order absolute rather than as a strategic resource. It is precisely from such carelessness that the Germans and Swiss sometimes rightly admit their penchant for spiessertum, bebraism (D), B眉nzli (CH), as one might call it.

The Scandinavians, for their part, have the notorious Janteloven (DK, N) or –lagen (S) while 鈥?somewhat rabidly 鈥?the angled proverb “The nail that sticks out gets the hammer!” is considered characteristic of Japan, also known as Tall Poppy Syndrome well-known.

Of course, these are all clich茅s, but as the dark side of ordinaryness they testify to a penchant for social conformism that all these societies are clearly aware of, collectively and internally.

Interestingly, the countries mentioned close to the Protestant cultural circle of Europe, as well as Confucian-influenced Japan, are close to each other in the so-called Inglehart Values Map, which classifies different cultures of the world along two scales; from survival values to self-expression and another from traditionalism to secular-rational worldview.According to this view, the countries mentioned all tend towards self-expression and secularism.

(Source: World Values Survey)

Interestingly, the entire Anglosphere 鈥?I myself live in Canada 鈥?is attributed to more traditional values.

It is difficult for me to judge this; However, I see this perception confirmed in the design culture , where the occupational disease speaks.

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