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Reverse Culture Shock

state.gov

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Re: Reverse Culture Shock

#91

Post by paulcole »

JacobAldridge wrote: post #56

The old adage is that a man can never step into the same stream twice; for it is not the same stream, and he is not the same man. Stepping back home (in our case, moving back to Australia after 2+ years living in London) is much the same - you have changed, and home has changed, but you don't expect either to be different. I think a big part is expectations. When we left, we were expecting something different, unusua…

Just curious, did you read the article before commenting? Your comment isn't offering much that isn't in the article itself.

Re: Reverse Culture Shock

#92

Post by nebabyte »

nickbauman wrote: post #44

A German-born American with 11 years total living in Germany. Almost all of it with the iron curtain in place. A white guy, I now live in a neighborhood that's 3/4 black, 10% Hmong for 16 years, I feel very normal being permanently out-of-place. In Germany I am the "Amerikanischer". Here it's "he's German". But I'm permanently alone in a crowd, too. Always on the outside looking in. Suspicious of the herd. Skeptical…

Though it's a lonely frame of mind you describe, it's likely not rare, given modern globalization by the numbers. Even if most reform into cliques derivative of both parent cultures, some small percentage of singletons is still a fair number of people.

I can from experience say it's one that some children of immigrant parents (or parents that moved a lot, and/or both) identify as, when they don't identify with their own culture nor have complete familiarity with their surrounding one (nor have a 'derivative clique' of similar parents-of-immigrants to identify with - though even if they did, they'd likely have a common 'outsider' mindset w.r.t. 'everyone else').

It's funny, iirc the whole "thankful for the outsider's perspective" thing was essay/application fodder for me at one point, and something which I considered might be useful for a particular career path.

All this to say - thinking of yourself as "alone in a crowd" is likely a risky supposition if what you're after is the true state of things. https://xkcd.com/610/

Re: Reverse Culture Shock

#93

Post by peteretep »

trustfundbaby wrote: post #64

I've lived in the US for almost half my life. I went back to visit my home country in West Africa for less than a week just a few years back ... I was so stressed out by everything there that I fell sick for almost two days. Then I moved my departure date up by a day just to get out early. No credit card machines, nothing resembling customer service (I'm talking actively rude or disinterested store attendants), Night…

This sounds more like what we used to call "This Be Africa" when I lived there, rather than reverse culture shock per-se.

Re: Reverse Culture Shock

#94

Post by trustfundbaby »

peteretep wrote: post #93
trustfundbaby wrote: post #64

I've lived in the US for almost half my life. I went back to visit my home country in West Africa for less than a week just a few years back ... I was so stressed out by everything there that I fell sick for almost two days. Then I moved my departure date up by a day just to get out early. No credit card machines, nothing resembling customer service (I'm talking actively rude or disinterested store attendants), Night…

This sounds more like what we used to call "This Be Africa" when I lived there, rather than reverse culture shock per-se.

dunno about that. I grew up there, so at one point, all this was completely normal to me. It wasn't till I went back that I realized how INSANE it all was.

My family ask me every week, when I'm moving back. lol

Re: Reverse Culture Shock

#95

Post by peteretep »

holdenc wrote: post #35

Why call it reverse culture shock? It's simply a realization that the United States not the best country in every regard. And in many regards it's failing badly. Personally, I call it the I-can't-get-healthcare shock, or the I-can-only-find-chain-restaurants-in-flyover-country shock, or the NYC-subway-is-not-as-nice-as-the-Asian-country-train-system-I-just-left shock.

    >  It's simply
From your description, it's clearly something you've never experienced, and the only thing uniquely American about this phenomenon is that you're reading about it from a State Department page rather than, say, a page on the Le ministère des Affaires étrangères website

Re: Reverse Culture Shock

#96

Post by charlesism »

lokedhs wrote: post #12

I have lived overseas for over a decade, and while I have no current plans to move back to my country of origin, I think I know what moving back would feel like, and it matches what other people have told me. The article talks about things having changed when you get back. I'm not so sure that's the big issue. I think the biggest problem is that you yourself have changed so much, and your views are greatly expanded.…

    >  things having changed when you get back. 
    > I'm not so sure that's the big issue.
If you spend enough time abroad, it will always change your personality.

As for handling changes to your home country upon your return, it really depends on the situation. A San Francisco native who leaves in 1972 and returns in 1979 wouldn't have much trouble, compared to one who who leaves in 1962 and returns in 1969. It would be pretty disorienting to find your hometown now has a radically different culture.

That said, I have no opinion on which is a bigger issue.

Re: Reverse Culture Shock

#97

Post by nomadic_09 »

nickbauman wrote: post #44

A German-born American with 11 years total living in Germany. Almost all of it with the iron curtain in place. A white guy, I now live in a neighborhood that's 3/4 black, 10% Hmong for 16 years, I feel very normal being permanently out-of-place. In Germany I am the "Amerikanischer". Here it's "he's German". But I'm permanently alone in a crowd, too. Always on the outside looking in. Suspicious of the herd. Skeptical…

It's nice to know that there are other "third-culture" people out there.

As an American-born Saudi, living most of my life to and fro between the two countries I'm from, I had quite the same experience.

Re: Reverse Culture Shock

#98

Post by golergka »

jessaustin wrote: post #66
rhizome wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Man..." you'll keep saying, "Americans really love breakfast cereal..." Though it's true to some degree, I wouldn't go that far. My sense is that the higher the margin on a product or product-line, the more money the manufacturer and distributors have to purchase shelf space. Cereal, Chips, Crackers, Ice Cream, Mayonnaise. The last time I was at the store I counted 21 separate varieties of Triscuit, 10-12 flavors ov…

That explains too much... why aren't high-margin products in other developed nations' grocery stores treated the same way? Or, if they are, why isn't breakfast cereal one of them? Perhaps because Americans really love breakfast cereal ?

I suspect that US producers have higher margins on sugary products because of corn subsidies.

Re: Reverse Culture Shock

#99

Post by hawkice »

golergka wrote: post #98
jessaustin wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That explains too much... why aren't high-margin products in other developed nations' grocery stores treated the same way? Or, if they are, why isn't breakfast cereal one of them? Perhaps because Americans really love breakfast cereal ?

I suspect that US producers have higher margins on sugary products because of corn subsidies.

I'd say you're correct, but in a slightly more indirect way than many might assume (they might read it as, gov. gives money to company, therefore company has more money -- but they still compete with each other on price, so that doesn't totally make sense). But because corn is subsidized, the food is cheap on a $/calorie basis, which means customers can be less price sensitive, because it's all easier and cheaper than eating a non-corn-based meal. We see this reflected in the fact that cereal (a very generic term for a certain type of staple) is emphatically _not_ a commodity. People have types they like more -- so they can compete on something other than price, which lets profits go up. A good line of research to verify is to compare cereal demand elasticity to e.g. meat, where there are variations people like more than others, and it's semi-interchangeable, but because of price people treat it largely as a commodity.

Re: Reverse Culture Shock

#100

Post by brewdad »

komali2 wrote: post #42

I disagree that the jarring bit about home is that it's changed. For me, it was that so little had changed. At the supermarket I worked at when I was 16 were some of the same people, working the same cashier job. Friends were still talking about "getting back into college," doing the same thing they had done every weekend for years. It depressed me.

This. I grew up in a medium sized town in Michigan. Haven't lived in MI for 20 years and haven't visited my hometown much since then since my parents now spend most of the year elsewhere. I spent almost a week there this Xmas and came to see how a community with strong union labor ties could vote for a candidate like Trump. Almost nothing had changed there in 20 years and what little had changed was almost exclusively for the worse.
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