Not So Different/Real Life

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Not So Different in Real Life include:

  • While 2000 years may separate ourselves and the people of Pompeii, a study comparing graffiti found the excavated Bathroom Stall Graffiti and the graffiti from contemporary 1960s (at the the time of the study) graffiti shows rather remarkable similarity. Well, good to know people were always like that.
    • Likewise, it's one of the major reasons behind the view that History Repeats. Despite our supposed progress, we may not be as different from our supposedly less-enlightened ancestors as we might like to believe we are.
  • One person on Deviant ART pointed out that it seemed kind of weird when gay people would be so Pro-Gay-lesbian-Transgender-Bisexual rights, yet proclaim Het Is Ew.
  • Sometimes remarked upon as France and England. Both have Barbarian/Germanic origins for their cultures, with massive amounts of immigration. Both have had periods of complete military dominance. Both have seen their countries invaded and desolated, be it the Romans or the Nazis, and their languages have evolved so closely that words such as 'regard' and 'W.C' mean exactly the same thing. It's almost as if the two countries are so similar as to be defensive of each other to outsiders...
  • The "Communist Rules for Revolution" conspiracy theory in America and the "Dulles' Doctrine" conspiracy theory in Russia are almost mirror images of each other. Each side of the Cold War was thinking the other side is secretly corrupting their young, spreading sex and vanity and undermining the nation's salt-of-the-earth ruggedness.
    • Well, we were both genuinely trying to undermine each other by fair means and foul, so this is an amusing example of both sides being correct on principle but wrong on details.
  • We love to demonize certain companies for doing business practices... however, many other companies do the exact same things and regularly get away with it.
  • Victim mentality. Because we're the poor innocent victims, we use this as justification on doing whatever we want - even if it's Not So Different than the people we claim to be victimized by.
  • The general principle of the "horseshoe theory" is that political/ideological extremes have much more in common with one another than their proponents would ever admit or acknowledge. Hence why the far-right and far-left seem fundamentally similar.
    • George Orwell in particular over time became fond of pointing out how polar-opposite ideologues are more similar than they realize. His essay Notes On Nationalism, which goes much further than what the title implies, is devoted to it.

"The Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent."

  • Ironically, one of humanity's similarities is to quarrel and fight over the same things as well as over differences.
  • This comic highlights not only how Political Correctness Gone Mad persists in various forms over time, but also how ironically similar the Moral Guardians of yesteryear and today's activists are.
  • Philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah observed how universalists can ironically be just as intolerant and hypocritical as the fervent nationalists they despise. And on that note, how Islamic fundamentalists are hauntingly similar to their secular, globally-minded idealist "rivals;" both groups for instance want to make the world a better place and help their fellow man...under various interpretations of those words.
  • For all the buzzwords and developments, the 21st Century is shaping up to be reminiscent of the late 19th-early 20th Centuries (e. g. The Edwardian Era) in a number of surprising if unsettling ways. Whether it's in advancements in technology, familiar rhetoric around things like globalization or progress and more ominously the presence of hotspots that could flare up with unpredictable results. Like a certain crisis gone horribly wrong in 1914.
  • In David Hackett Fischer's biography of Samuel Champlain (the founder of New France and explorer of the Great Lakes region), the writer notes that the subject's experience governing the colony and those lobbying in Paris reinforced each other because both the Indian chiefs and the Parisian courtiers were superficicially polite. And both were scheming, treacherous, and murderous.
  • The people infamous for "Everyone I Disagree With Is Hitler!" school of argumentation often turn out hilariously vulnerable to pranks inviting them to support quotes from the founder of German National Socialist Worker Party. Perhaps unsurprising, seeing as the latter started as a branch of Fabian socialists, but grew bolder, which brought them closer to more aggressive socialist movements.
  • Subverted by C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity: Of course the English are not much different from Nazis. They are both humans. They are both even sinners. If they were so alien to each other, how could the English condemn them? That would be as futile as condemning germs.
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