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Values Dissonance/Real Life: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
== Guns, Drugs, and Alcohol ==
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** Teenagers drinking is seen as a huge problem in most of the US. In Germany, for example, most parents are fine with their 14- or 15-year old having the occasional drink, even if it's not fully legal, as long as they don't get shitfaced every weekend. Legal drinking age is 16.
*** Being drunk has different connotations in different countries as well. With young people in the US, getting drunk is cool. Even some older people don't see the point in drinking unless they intend to get all-out drunk. In European countries, though, drunkenness is not very acceptable<ref>unless you are in Scotland and it is Hogmanay, in which case it is not only acceptable but practically required</ref>.
** This also creates many problems for 18-20-year-old foreigners in the
*** Not to mention problems from state-to-state. For instance, in Wisconsin (who used to be huge beer-producers and still have a rich culture in alcoholic beverages), a minor under 18 can drink with permission from a parent; in neighboring states it's strictly 21+, and north in Ontario is 19.
*** In reverse, many teens in Michigan, especially in the Detroit area, cross over to nearby Canada to drink, because the legal age there is 19. This has become such a widespread phenomenon that its kind of assumed teens going over to Canada for a day trip are interested in alcohol.
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*** "Called BS" is an understatement considering what a [[Berserk Button]] the Srebrenica Massacre is in the Netherlands (an investigation into it brought down the government in 2002) - then-PM Jan Peter Balkenende condemned Sheehan's remark as "outrageous, wrong and beneath contempt", and other Dutch reactions were only slightly less polite (the AFMP military union said it was "out of the realm of fiction" while the SHK called it "the ridiculous convulsion of a loner").
*** Now that the ban on openly gay servicemembers in the US has been lifted, gay troops are openly forming support groups and the like, and, as predicted by people who've served in other militaries with openly gay members, there's been absolutely no significant negative effect whatsoever. Well, except if you remind the people who were predicting doom that they now look like idiots.
** Somehow, as of 2018 [[Kissing Cousins|marrying your cousin]] is legal in 31 US states, while gay marriage has to wait until 2015 to be declared legal in all American territory <ref>Before that it has been independently declared legal in 38 states, the district of Columbia and Guam as of June 2015</ref>, and yet still there are counties that doesn't issue same-sex marriage licenses or give legal benefits to same-sex married couples despite that being declared unconstitutional.
* The tendency towards the [[Manly Gay]] was one of many things about Greco-Roman culture that [[Squick|Squicked]] out some other cultures. For instance, this is the context for the [[The Bible|New Testament]]; the Jewish establishment of that day were pretty squicked out by polytheism, homosexuality, hedonism, and the Roman school of slavery among other things, and pretty shocked or dismayed that some (including [[Jesus]]) would ''ever'' associate in any way with those disgusting people. Of course, Pompey was equally disturbed when he entered the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem after conquering it. ''Most'' religions of the time [[Nothing Is Scarier|kept some image of their god in theirs, you see]]....
** Additionally, Romans completely failed to grasp the difference between circumcision and castration. So they not only thought the Jews were a xenophobic cult that worshiped an [[Eldritch Abomination]], but that said abomination commanded them to chop off their newborn sons' genitals. At one point the Romans banned the practice on purely ethical grounds, and when the Jews revolted it just convinced them that Jews were ''so'' into mutilating their own children that they would sooner die than stop. This is one reason the only form of Christianity that ever took off among Romans was the kind that ignored Jewish law (Pauline Christianity), and even then it took a while.
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* When Brits are formally introduced, it is a common courtesy for the man to greet the woman with a light kiss on the cheek. In Australia and New Zealand this action will likely result in a denial, a polite rebuke and an offer to shake hands (the normal ettiquette).
* In the audio commentary for ''[[Alone in the Dark (2005 film)|Alone in The Dark]]'', [[Uwe Boll]] mentions that he tried to get Tara Reid to go topless during her sex scene with Christian Slater, but she refused. He then tries to blame Reid's refusal to show her breasts for the film's failure, complaining about how uptight American actresses are and that he wouldn't have had this problem in Europe. That's at least a couple kinds of dissonance, right?
** While the main issue of dissonance there is Uwe Boll's dissonance with reality, truth is that European actors actually tend to accept roles with nudity more easily than American or Asian actors of equivalent experience and fame. An American starlet could do something risqué as a [[Nipple-and-Dimed|no nipples showing]] topless scene early on their career, and from then on demand nude doubles or even opt out of the film if such an scene would appear in the script, because the general conception is that an actress who does too much nudes can't advance into more "serious" jobs. An European starlet would do full frontal nudity with less damage to her career, even moving to major roles, and if a major role still requires nudity it will be her own body in screen. One of the reasons behind this was that American cinema suffered the
== Food ==
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** In regions where insects are eaten, they are either very large or occur in huge numbers, which makes it very easy to get a good meal with a reasonable amount of effort. In Europe and North America, where insects are much smaller and very hard to find, they don't represent an efficient source of nutrients, so they don't make it on the list that the local people regard as "food".
** Whether or not killing and eating non-human animals at all is considered completely acceptable or barbaric and cruel depends on the culture, and even individual ethics.
** Guinea pigs are a delicacy in parts of South America. Capybaras too: a famous seasonal Venezuelan dish is "pisillo de chigüire", shreded capybara meat prepared in the same style of pulled pork.
** Cats are also quite popular as food among certain groups in Switzerland and South-Eastern Chinese provinces like Guandong, in Northern China however, eating cat is considered very much unacceptable. Even to other Chinese, Cantonese cuisine is disgusting.
* Australian supermarkets proudly stock, in gigantic letters, COON cheese. It's named after the guy who invented the process for fast maturing cheddar cheese.
* When there was a [[wikipedia:2013_horse_meat_scandal|European recalling of some meat products]] because it was discovered that it contained horse meat instead of beef, many people in the Americas were surprised that with some Europeans the issue wasn't that they were eating horse meat but that the products weren't correctly labelled as such. Horse meat happens to be a delicacy in some European and Central Asia countries.
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* Aztec religion tends to horrify people from most other cultures, given that it involved an incredible number of [[Human Sacrifice|Human Sacrifices]], often in very gory ways.<ref>[[Beat Still My Heart|Ripping out hearts]] was a perpetual favorite</ref> However, from their perspective, this was absolutely necessary to prevent [[The End of the World as We Know It]], and as such people who were sacrificed wound up in one of the nicer heavens.
* In Eastern European countries, if a cop harasses you for anything milder than a killing spree he probably just wants a handout. So bribing is considered very normal and part of the system (think of it as being like tipping). In Western countries bribing a policeman seems grossly [[Screw the Rules, I Have Money|privileged]] and corrupt. There was some kerfuffle about an athlete of Polish origin who tried to bribe the cops to help out his friend (who was having a party in the hotel and things got out of hand). From an Eastern perspective he was just being a good friend.
** Latinamerican countries have a sightly similar perspective, where bribing cops and order agents is an unwelcome and unwanted but somewhat normal part of life, to the point that in Venezuela there is the very common phrase "pedir para el fresco" (translatable as "ask some money for buying soda") to describe the most common modus operandi of National Guards and road police along the country.
* This is perhaps the biggest reason why Liu Shan is such a [[Base Breaker]] even today. When Wei laid siege to Nanzhong, at the end Liu Shan chose to surrender. This action is seen as the actions of either a man [[Know When to Fold'Em|who chose to protect his people from possible death than continuing a war that could not be won]] or [[Suck Sessor|a disgrace to his legacy who]] [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog|rendered the sacrifices and contributions of his father and followers worthless]]. Most of this mindset is enforced by the above mentioned belief of honor (That it's better to die with honor than to live in disgrace) while others believe if Liu Shan was more competent then perhaps Shu would've been the one to unite China. It doesn't help that some materials based on the Three Kingdoms Era portray Liu Shan as incompetent (If not a complete idiot).
* Going to church can be this. In the U.S. South, going to church is something ''everybody'' does. It doesn't matter what they actually do or believe outside of church, come Sunday and Wednesday (for bible study) everybody and their mother is in church. But in other countries (and even in other parts of the U.S.) anybody who goes to church regularly is seen as a bible thumping conservative weirdo. Also, because of everybody going to church, churches are everywhere. In Georgia, it is common to see 3 churches all within a few yards, and also to see churches in strip malls.
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* For a sports-related example involving three different cultures, look at the issue of the [http://olympics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/spanish-ad-spurs-charges-of-racism/ Spanish Basketball Team's photo] with their eyes slit to give themselves an "Asian" look some days before the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The image was heavily criticized in the British and North American press, claiming that it was racist and the team should apologize to their Chinese hosts. The Spanish press meanwhile presented the issue as an example of Anglo-Saxon overreaction to a good-hearted joke, ''obviously'' derived from these countries being afraid of their own racism. Finally, when Chinese authorities were asked if they were offended, their reaction was something like "''...are you kidding me?'' Why the hell would we be offended?"
** However, Chinese people resident in China presumably don't have the issue of non-Chinese people mocking them by making similar faces, as British and American Chinese people might.
* In 2015 there was a controversy when the Museum of Fine Arts of Boston, as part of an exposition of Claude Monet more "oriental" inspired paintings, has an small event for visitors to try on a kimono and mimic Monet's famous painting "La Japonaise" (also known as "Camille Monet in Japanese Costume"). That inspired a backslash of Asian- and Japanese-Americans against the kimono-trying shtick, calling the whole thing "racist" and "race-fetishistic". When the MFA decided to cancel the kimono event to quell the question, a counterprotest of people defending it erupted immediately. Several people noticed that the ones protesting against the kimono event where majorly white and second (and further)-generation Asian-Americans of college age, while the ones protesting in favor of it where native Japanese and older immigrants (the Japanese Embassy were the ones lending the kimonos in first place).
* The Cultural Appropriation debate outside of academic circles. It seems that for some Millennial Americans and Europeans, anything that could be taken as sightly unequal consuming of foreign culture (even stuff as innocent as WASP-looking people dining in a ethnic restaurant or trying in local clothing while visiting a foreign country) is appropriation and must be shunned on amounts of racism, while for similarly aged natives of the country being "culturally appropriated" the exchange should be blatantly unequal and insulting to be actually considered appropriation, and the above people are basically gate-keeping normal cultural exchange in a equally racist [[White Man's Burden]] way.
== Beauty and fashion standards ==
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** On most part of Latin America is seen as obligatory to pierce your baby girl's ears as soon as possible. Piercing your baby ''boy's'' ears, however, is just not done. In many places, adult men with ear piercings are regarded as either criminals or homosexuals.
* Tattoos. If you're at a public pool in Japan, tattoos are often seen as a signifier that you are a gang member, while in (for example) the US, the quality and content of the tattoo are usually the only issue with all but the most conservative.
** The western acceptance of tattoos is [[Newer Than They Think|a very recent phenomenon]]. As late as the 1990's,
== Miscellaneous ==
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** In the U.S., getting a traffic ticket involves not only paying the ticket, but taking the time to get the ticket 'fixed.' Failure to get the ticket fixed means that it goes on a record that can be accessed by insurance companies. Very few people have so much money that they're eager to say [[Screw the Rules, I Have Money]] to a lifetime of higher auto insurance payments. On the other hand, this means that anyone who can't afford to have a lawyer get the ticket fixed is in for a high cost in the long run.
** On the other side, in France the driving license is held for life - inability to remove it altogether pushed the government to impose strict penalties for dangerous driving, including huge fines, license suspension from 3 months to 3 years and even imprisonment.
** Japan ought to be the most extreme case because you have to renew your license every ten years. This includes driving school all over again. That's probably because roads in Japan are insanely narrow. This causes another [[Values Dissonance]] - cars like Volkswagen Golf, for example, that are considered smallish by US standards would be considered normal-sized in Japan.
*** Romanian law also states the driving license has to be renewed each 10 years - either before the 10-year term ends (which mean simply trading the old license for a new one) or afterwards (which needs the usual medical examination to be performed again before getting a new license).
** As to drunk driving, it varies, but is not tolerated in most places. However the extent varies. In some parts of the United States if a death results from drunk driving it's a separate crime called vehicular homicide or a form of manslaughter, with jail from 3-10 years or so. In others it's [[Three Degrees of Murder|Murder 2]] with ''life'' (on the grounds that drinking and driving in itself constitutes depraved indifference to life, so if you kill someone while driving drunk, it's just as bad as having to intended to kill them in the first place).
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