As a person from the US who recently moved to Sweden, this article has finally given me some words to explain the cultural "clash" I experience at work that I could never quite explain to myself or others.
Ask vs. Guess Culture
281–290 of 493 posts
Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I am from the northern US (Protestant Scandinavian/German) and my wife is from the southern US (Protestant English/German) You're American, your wife is American.
Outside America, this is true. Inside America, if you are unaware of pronounced regional cultural differences arising from the settler groups that form your ancestry and local culture, you're either ignorant, or not American.
But you’re already using perfectly good American regional identifiers for those regional differences in your original post.
Pet peeve from a European: the American habit of using their distant ancestor’s European ethnicity as a shorthand for stereotypical personality and culture today a) undervalues the massive political and cultural changes in Europe since their ancestor’s emigration und b) undervalues the regional differences inside their ancestor’s origin country. Being german I find both Ask and Guess culture here, just 50 km apart. And often in the same place, differing by class or the rural/urban divide. Describing „German“ as just Ask culture is rather wrong from my perspective. I know the outside and Hollywood stereotypes differ.
(And c), I think, distant ancestors ethnic stereotypes undervalues the melting pot/salad bowl effect over generations of the US itself.)
Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
FWIW the data agrees with you, for milder cases of anxiety and depression, which often correlate with interpersonal issues, talk therapy (e.g. dissecting childhood trauma) is much less effective than cognitive behavioral therapy (analyzing behavioral and emotional patterns, trying to catch and redirect cycles of thought and action that lead to negative outcomes).
CBT is designed around outcomes that can be easily measured. It can also be actually harmful in cases where there’s actual trauma or neglect underlying the behavior or thought patterns. It has a tendency to paper over them. It helps a lot of people, but it’t also a trap for those who have more deep things to work through, having spend 6 years stalled out in CBT before coming to grips with the deep trauma and neglect,…
> It has a tendency to paper over them.
Yeah. That's one of the dangers the book I had talked about. CBT is a tool for rewiring the brain. If you have deep things to work out and don't recognize it, CBT will do exactly what it says on the tin and rewire around things that need to be explored.
That's very not good.
I'm bipolar and use CBT a lot. Identifying if the problem is logic-based is key to its application. Logic cannot override depression or mania, which means CBT doesn't work and alternative strategies are needed. Usually I switch to some variant of DBT techniques. (It's so automatic at this point it's hard to identify all of what I'm doing.)
In my experience, learning when to apply CBT is much harder than learning CBT.
Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
In college we hit that age where classmates started losing grandparents. I was one of the oldest grandchildren so I had a few years yet. Some of these people absolutely fell apart. It was the first time they’d ever lost anyone and they couldn’t process it. When gently pressed, we would find out they had no pets growing up. They had not lost so much as a goldfish. A painless life can set you up for failure when real a…
I went to a Waldorf school and now my daughter does. At around age 10-11 children learn about death and practices around it (Norse, Egyptian, local practices) and what it means. The Waldorf philosophy holds that children start to understand that death is a permanent loss at about that age, and aims to teach them about it. Having a kid lose a pet at that age is a major thing for them to process. I love the school, but…
Is it true what they say that Waldorf is based in irrational teachings about the supernatural, and let's children go several courses without learning basic rational stuff like reading well and doing math?
I'm all for growing children with creative teaching and avoiding rote memorization, but I'd be horrified if that was at the cost of missing the best years for setting the pillars of rational thought.
Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is fascinating to me, because I'm from the southern US and strongly align to "ask culture" and my wife is from the northwest and strongly aligns to "guess" culture. I wonder how much it's about individual family background and not strongly regional?
yeah im from the south and there is definitely a level of up-front-ness that i'm not sure the parent comment is talking about. like a level of exuberance and get-it-out-ness that often borders on belligerence "yall doin okay?"
Couldn’t help but listen it in Ted Lasso’s voice. Thanks for that beautiful moment.
Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture
#286"It’s rude to put someone in a position where they have to say no to you" I feel this in my bones. When I was a kid my dad went off on me after we visited someone's house and I saw cake on the counter and asked for a slice. That was just unacceptable. (Context: He was raised by people who lived through the depression. Food scarcity was a real thing in living memory.) Even though his reaction was way overboard, I stil…
And a polite way to do this is to suggest the thing you want, rather than directly asking for it. You could complement the cake - oh, that looks delicious; what's the occasion? Or, "I'm moving next weekend - looking forward to the new place, but it's going to be a big job!" It is uncomfortable being asked something that you have to say no to, but that doesn't mean we have to just hope people will guess our needs unas…
In "guess culture" they can't offer you help unless they're certain you won't decline the offer. So they'd have to figure out first if you're hiring movers, and if not ascertain whether you already have enough friends helping you, and if not _then_ they'd offer to help you.
I agree with the other commenters who say that guess culture is exhausting.
Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture
#287The "Ask vs Guess" name rhetorically frames it in favor of the Askers. Asking sounds reasonable, guessing does not! But really it's not about "Guessing", it's about understanding. It's about community, and relationship, and trust. What this culture really wants is for you to pay attention and understand the people around you, rather than treating everything as a transaction.
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Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're clearly a Guess :)
I consider myself a staunch centrist on the "ask" vs. "guess" scale. :-) I ask all the time! And I'm totally comfortable with "no." But I try to consider the other person first because I think making unreasonable requests repeatedly , which is the subtext of their description of an "asker," blows social capital and just bugs people.
I think that's a given that needn't be mentioned in the article. The author isn't stupid, and clearly wouldn't advocate for making outlandish or completely unreasonable requests even for the "askers" mindset.
Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
Outside America, this is true. Inside America, if you are unaware of pronounced regional cultural differences arising from the settler groups that form your ancestry and local culture, you're either ignorant, or not American.
But you’re already using perfectly good American regional identifiers for those regional differences in your original post. Pet peeve from a European: the American habit of using their distant ancestor’s European ethnicity as a shorthand for stereotypical personality and culture today a) undervalues the massive political and cultural changes in Europe since their ancestor’s emigration und b) undervalues the regional…
Ditto with Spaniards. Most of the "Hispanic coulture with flamenco, sun and beaches" won't apply to a whole 80% of the country. The North has beaches, but the Sun it's an English tabloid.
The middle Spain has Sun, but water is something you see in rivers in reservoirs. Also, cold as hell winters.
Now try to figure that across the pond with zillions of native cultures merged with an (older than North America itself) Southern Hispanic culture from Mexico to the Patagonia close to the South Pole.
Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I am from the northern US (Protestant Scandinavian/German) and my wife is from the southern US (Protestant English/German) You're American, your wife is American.
You underestimate how vastly cultures can differ based on location or background. Also keep in mind the US is young and most of its inhabitants have a migrant background / family history. The US is the opposite of a monolithic culture.
Even been into Spain? Half of the Andalusian culture around flamenco it's alien to the rest of the country. Basque and the Nort-Western cultures related to the Celtic lore it's similarly alien to the Castilles, Andalusia, Catalonia and Valencia.
And even in regions themselves you can find alien customs to each other. For instance, in the Basque Country from valley to valley. Or in Andalusia with huge differences between East and West. Yes, like a Mandelbrot fractal. Spain it's like that.
You can find here any climate. Desserts? Glaciars? Tundra like climates? Cold winters down to -30C on high peaks? Dry heat? Windy heat? Dry cold? Windy cold? Rainy weather, like London if not more? All of them across the country. Now, from these megadiverse climate diffs you can guess you will find zillions of cultures and subcultures because, you know, traditions and architecture change a lot if you live between ponds in Cantabria with more mist than in a Stephen King novel compared to a dry dessert in Almeria were "Spagetthi Westerns" were filmed here and white homes with Arabic architecture reflecting the Sun was a must in order to just survive the Summer.