Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stop Generalizing About Europe

jonasbentzen.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 369 posts

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#251

Post by _pferreir_ »

gudukassa wrote: post #194

I am from Africa - a continent of more than a billion people speaking around two thousand languages. In Africa, you find one of the first Christian nations in the word as well as communities practicing ancient forms of traditional belief systems. Climate ranges from scorching heat and arid desert to tropical rain forests. You find the very wealthy elite monopolizing all the resources as well as mass poverty. I could…

Well, it's not uncommon to hear the expression "Sub-saharan Africa". That's better than nothing.

At least in Europe, we usually differentiate between Mediterranean/Maghreb/Islamic Africa and "everything below".

Actually, I believe most southern Europeans refer to "Africa" in the loosest sense of the word as being the sub-Saharan part, since the northern countries are seen as Mediterranean and are just too close to home to be thought of as in another continent. Likewise, no-one will refer to the Near East as being "Asia".

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#252

Post by _pferreir_ »

arethuza wrote: post #246
_pferreir_ wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Former USSR countries are mostly unified by the same language, religion (or lack of) and culture. They used to be the same country... much alike the USA. Wrong. There are significant Russian-speaking minorities in most of those countries, but they all have their own official language (with the exception of Russia [doh...] and Belarus, I believe). They all had them before WWII, Russian having been an imposition of t…

Iceland is actively trying to join the EU: http://www.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/daily_news/Icelan...

Ah, OK, I didn't know that. Public support seems to be shifting again, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Iceland_to_the_Eur...

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#253

Post by helloboy111 »

crazygringo wrote: post #34

This post feels awfully pedantic. While it may not be clear to non-Americans, when Americans talk about "Europe", they're generally talking about Western Europe, not Eastern, and are excluding the UK too. They almost certainly aren't including Russia. (Just like when Americans talk about Asia, they aren't usually thinking of India.) Of course, that's geographically inaccurate -- but it's what we usually mean. The Eur…

This post feels awfully insular, self-righteous and US-centric. Note I say US-centric, not America-centric. Why and how did US people start referring to themselves as Americans (though they of course are that, in the subset sense), when they often mean "a person from USA"?

Just because a statement is used a lot, though inaccurate, doesn't mean you should use it.

Perhaps the main point of my comment should be, stop being so insular, stop thinking the USA (note again: USA is not the same as America, which is actually two continents, or one) is the center of the world, realize there is great diversity everywhere, and explore and celebrate it?

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#254

Post by klibertp »

cristianpascu wrote: post #181
jwr wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just proved OP's point. What's "Eastern Europe"? I'm guessing you'd consider anything east of Germany/Austria/Italy to be "Eastern", right? Well, in Poland and the Czech Republic people consider themselves "Central Europe", which makes sense given that geographically Europe extends to the Ural mountains. Don't generalize.

I live in Romania, so I can tell what we consider West: Austria, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, France, UK, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Belgium. If one goes to one of these countries, one feels like going west. Otherwise, it's less and less. So when Americans speak about Europe, it's safe to assume that they might refer to these countries. Rock bands will always have a hard time to tell Bucharest…

Err.. that's curious, you mean that going almost exactly NORTH (Sweden, Finland) is considered going west? I'm not sure if I like this, even if only because it's so obviously, factually wrong :)

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#255

Post by _pferreir_ »

ajuc wrote: post #226
jonascopenhagen wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of Eastern European countries were not part of the USSR. They were USSR's allies in the Warsaw Pact - in the same way that the Western European countries were USA's allies in NATO - but they were independent nations. I'm talking about countries such as Poland, The Czech Republic + Slovakia (Czechoslovakia), Hungary, the countries that were formerly Yugoslavia, etc. > Former USSR countries are mostly unif…

Nitpicking: Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and other satelittes of USSR weren't really independent. Certainly not in same way that UK or France were allies of USA. Maybe Yugoslavia was independent, but others for sure not. Moscow made all the decisions, elections were rigged, there were uprisings, etc, etc. I know you probably know that, but just in case.

Well, they were "de jure" independent, I guess that's what (s)he means. They had their own anthem, flag, currency, government, etc...

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#257

Post by readme »

Vivtek wrote: post #4

Hmm. Perhaps you could stop generalizing about people generalizing about Europe. Varsavsky has lived and built businesses in Madrid since 1995, so I think that his contrasts between the European market and the American market from the entrepreneur's point of view are really pretty trustworthy. Your points about European diversity are quite valid, although I think they're beside the point. But your ad hominem "Oh my,…

Too much meta-generalizations!

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#258

Post by klibertp »

artimaeis wrote: post #188
erebrus wrote: post #107

It's amazing how many from the USA insist that the inner diversity in the USA is comparable to the one in Europe. I've heard this many times, namely here in HN. It is not comparable. PERIOD. Even if the poster goes a bit to the extreme of bringing Russia in to the conversation, even inside the EU, there is still no comparison on how how diverse Europe is (e.g. Portugal to Norway, Greece to France, Spain to Germany) c…

Perhaps the diversity of the USA is not the extreme of Europe, but I would be quick to point out that the regional differences in the US are quite notable even to an outside observer. There are 5 major regions of the US: Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Southwest, and West. Each of these regions has noted differences in: dialect, culture, food, general behavior, economy, and quality of life. Now regardless of US or Eur…

There are many more such regions in Poland, for example - I have no time at the moment to look up their translations, but we have, among others: Mazowsze, Slask, Pomorze, Lubelszczyzna, Warmia i Mazury. That's five, too. And each of these regions has noted differences in: dialect (to the point of using language completely incomprehensible to others, which at least three(!) of this regions do), culture, food, general behavior, economy, and quality of life.

These differences between regions inside one country is exactly what is comparable to differences between Midwest and Northeast.

Now think about the fact that Europe consists of tens of countries, many of which are significantly more diverse internally than Poland. And try to compare this monstrous complexity to differences between USA regions.

For me it seems to be daunting and impossible task because of huge difference in scale, yet you have no problem with it. I can only admire your courage :)

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#259

Post by tylee78 »

popee wrote: post #217
pointernil wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" I can assure you that there are no ambivalent feelings against 'entrepreneurs'. " quite often this is believed to be true: start-up == entrepreneurship Well, I disagree here and it looks like you are mixing up 'entrepreneurs' and the "Mittelstand" you mentioned. I don't know if this is generally true, but i'm under the impression that there is some negative sentiment towards 'entrepreneurship' as it is connected wi…

People are afraid of changes or just don't get it. I'm from micro mid/east country in Europe and i can tell you that most people here think that computers are used only as support for other businesses. When you tell them that web/internet/... is also great business you'll get blank looks all over the place. Btw they're all using google/fb/... but only as consumers. Hmmm, thank god on that :-)

...my experience (originally from Germany, in the US since 2005) as well. It's a question of mentality. While in the US a vast number of people want to create their own business or already did when they are quite young, running a business or starting one is a herculian task in Germany. And you get punished when you fail. And you get taxed to death when you don't. Running a company can easily become a social stigma too. Even if starting your company happens to be easier now then it was 10 years ago, still the majority of people are rather focused on finding a secure position in a larger company with lots of benefits then "creating" something "new". Numerous reasons I guess for why that came to be (I don't think it was like that in the 50s/60s) - maybe as society ages there is less of a "drive" for radical innovation and a risk-averse mentality becomes mainstream. Either way, before I came to the US I had heard about "the difference in mentality" but I could not believe how "different" it really was and how much of an impact that meant on a daily basis: the biggest eye-opener was the completely different attitude towards things that needed to be changed and people just "did it".

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#260

Post by lispm »

PoliticsJunkie wrote: post #248
lispm wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Germany has always been goods producer. UK has always been a trading nation Yeah, why has the UK then stopped trading? Btw., I live in a German Hansestadt, which for centuries has been trading with all the known world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League The UK can't trade with the US? Haha, what a joke. Let's face it: the UK has focused on its financial 'industry' and has sold products of questionable qu…

Wasn't it Hitler who called Brits 'a nation of shop-keepers' ? What a trading nation would do is make a living of - for example - buying tea from India to sell across Europe. Not some low-level, small scale enterprise. That has never been the engine of the German economy. German trade has always been a by-product of craftsmanship and not its replacement.

Funny that you say that. Just a ten kilometers from where I live is this: http://www.haelssen-lyon.de/index.php?id=22&L=1

Also this: http://www.teaandcoffee.net/1107/tea.htm

> The Port of Hamburg is Europe’s tea capital number and handles more than 70% of all German tea imports, as well as some 50% of the European-wide traded teas.

Germany has been for centuries been heavy into international trade. The city where I live operates a large part of the world container fleet...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ship

> The vast majority of the capacity of fully cellular container ships used in the liner trade is owned by German shipowners, with approximately 75% owned by Hamburg brokers

Post reply on HN