Values Dissonance/Real Life: Difference between revisions

== Miscellaneous ==

* Land use policies vary extremely between rural and urban areas in the US. Due to the rather different experiences someone who lives at the edge of a forest compared to someone who lives in a high rise you get huge value differences in how they not only view acceptable crowding, but also how much land should be use for agriculture or timber harvesting versus wilderness. This also leads to differences in environmental viewpoints. Urban-Suburban Americans often have the impression that wilderness is very nearly a thing of the past, while those living in rural areas are very familiar with the opposite: the country is actually quite sparsely populated outside major cities. In some areas, wilderness has rapidly encroached: the small towns of the Northeast that are now surrounded by forest were farming communities surrounded by fields a century ago. Even rural residents have a major differences in how they see nature depending on their area. Midwest/Southeast/Rockies= There is plenty of nature left so lets use it. West Coast= We should preserve that natural forest for future generations. Northeast= The natives burned the forest periodically and plained off hills for cornfields; we've cut down the trees three times and stripped it for coal but it has almost reached a climax forest again so let me cut down my trees if I want to.

** A form of this can come up and create misunderstandings when showing a character's private property. In very rural parts of the country, it's not uncommon, or at least not improbable, to have very large tracts of private land, which, when displayed in suburban or urban America, can mistakenly note a character as being very rich for having a large estate, land-wise.

* Naked kids on, say, beaches and in magazine photos of same were once widely considered innocent and asexual (the almost bare-bottomed Coppertone Baby is something of an artifact), rather than prey for the [[Paedo Hunt|pedophiles no doubt lurking behind the nearest tree]].

** In most parts of Europe it is still common.

*** In Portuguese tabloid magazines it's common for pictures of stars' young children running around on the beach topless or nude to appear with the child's face mosaiced or blurred (to protect their identity), and their chest and/or other areas left uncensored.

** In America the 'all kids are in danger of being nabbed by a pedo any second' paranoia has led to cases where people have actually attacked single adults in public with children. The adult in question usually turns out to be the child's parent (there are many, many single-parents in the country but no one seems to remember that when they see a small child with a single adult). There is an extreme gender bias in the paranoia, however, in that a child with an adult man is almost immediately assumed to be being kidnapped even if the child is going with him willingly, whereas a child, even a screaming and crying child, walking with an adult woman is usually only seen as a disobedient kid being handled by their mother. The latter is an assumption which has led to a handful of cases where a child was actually being kidnapped but no one intervened.

*** This same paranoia has led to another problem of fathers who are often ''afraid'' to be openly affectionate toward their own children, especially daughters, for fear of being seen as a child molester. Some fathers even refuse to feed or change diapers of their own children in public, or bathe them at home, for the same reason and leave all of these things for the mother to do.

** Even in the U.S., it was once common for high school boys to go naked for their indoor swim classes. (Girls' classes were held separately, in one-size-doesn't-fit-anybody swimwear provided by the school.) Imagine a school board's reaction to ''that'' proposal nowadays...

* There's the infamous 1976 exhibition "match" between boxing legend Muhammad Ali and Japanese wrestling icon (and [[Mixed Martial Arts]] pioneer) Antonio Inoki. Most in the West saw the fight as an embarrassing farce -- with Inoki spending virtually the entire 15 rounds on his back, in a defensive position, kicking at Ali whenever he approached. But in Asian countries, ''especially'' Japan, the fight is seen as a victory of brains over brawn. This is a P.O.V. somewhat supported by various rules changes in the months leading to the match that barred Inoki from using wrestling moves or standing kicks (Basically forcing Inoki to try and outpunch or [[Take a Third Option|get creative]]). There's also the fact that being kicked in the same muscle for 45 minutes caused blood clots which eventually required surgery. Ali's legs were never the same.

* [[Soccer]] can also suffer from the same kind of dissonance:

** On the technical front, the English are notoriously physical in their approach, as contrasted with the highly technical Italians, whom they continually mocked due to the strong defensive tradition. Italy's '80s great defender Claudio Gentile is the epitome of the dissonance. He was so good as virtually keeping the opposition's key player out of the game by marking him with extreme pressure: football fans of English leaning ([[English Premier League|and there are many nowadays]]) tend to write it off as anti-football, while others consider it to be tactically ingenious. A more recent example is Jose Mourinho's treble-winning Inter side, which were very divisive in their defensive approach.

*** Former footballer Gianluca Vialli, an Italian who achieved success in both Italy and England, noted that in England, even a skillful player wouldn't have much respect unless he runs all the time. Intelligent, highly efficient players like Dimitar Berbatov, then, are somewhat frowned upon.

** Off the field, the game is infamously unpopular in the USA. The complaint invariably revolves around the "WILL SOMEONE JUST SCORE ALREADY" question (see below). Of course, while scarce, the magnitude of scoring in ([[Insistent Terminology|association]]) football is far higher than in, say, basketball. If someone scores in football, the crowd goes nuts, the players are scattering around the field celebrating, and the celebration could last minutes. In the end, it's the same ratio, really. Canadians generally tend to have the same dim view of soccer as their American neighbors as well.

** In the US it seems to be mainly a women's game, whereas in much of the rest of the world it's predominantly seen as a man's game. Though in those countries it's a very popular sport for children to engage in too (and growing in popularity for women). Whereas the US is the only country where it seems to be only for women and children.

*** This may have to do with soccer's perceived relative simplicity to other American sports. Throwing children on a field and telling them to kick a ball around for a few hours is easier than teaching them baseball or American football, which take years to learn to play properly. Outside of their native soil American sports tend to get similar treatment when soccer is the dominate sport.

** Baseball also sees its share of dissonance. With the popularity of the WBC and international little league events, baseball has grown in popularity nearly everywhere in the world. Yet in Western Europe and Australia, baseball is a dead sport, seen as something no one but the Americans play.

** Whereas in New Zealand, both footballs (American and soccer), baseball, and basketball are all fairly dead in comparison to rugby, cricket, and netball.

** The second most watched sport after soccer is, of all things, [http://www.economist.com/blogs/gametheory/2011/09/ranking-sports%E2%80%99-popularity ''cricket'']. This causes dissonance as most wouldn't consider it to eclipse other allegedly more "popular" sports. However considering the sport is massive in the likes of the UK, India, Pakistan and Australia to name but a few, it's suddenly not so surprising.

** Values dissonance is evident even in the above troper's use of the phrase "of all things". For this English troper who was raised with cricket as the second most high-profile sport after football/"soccer" (my compulsion to use air quotes around the word soccer is also indicative of values dissonance), implying that cricket is unusual is how it might be for an American if someone said "of all things, the 2nd most popular is basketball".

* "Bastard" is considered far more insulting in Germany than it is in America. There is likewise a divide between the Australian and British usage of 'bastard'. It is much more insulting to Brits than Aussies, the latter using it quite affectionately much of the time. The most well known example of this probably being the response of then Australian cricket-team captain Bill Woodfull to Brit captain Douglas Jardine's complaint that he had been called a bastard by one of the Aussie team. Woodfull turned to the team and said "Which one of you bastards called this bastard a bastard?"

** And 'bollocks' seems to be fairly mild in US English compared to its use in the UK.

*** This is likely because the word just isn't used much in the US, similar to "wanker", and when it is it's usually mistaken for a funny foreign euphemism for "bullshit".

* For a recent 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.

* Views on racism vary from country to country, most notably in Ireland. The Irish have always been slightly conservative in the case of foreign people in the country and for years were not used to other cultures in the same way that the British or the Americans are. This can lead to large amounts of discrimination towards people from other countries, notably the Polish people who immigrated to Ireland in the 2000s. There was a lot of hatred towards these Polish people as many Irish felt that all their jobs were being taken by the Polish workers who would work harder for less money, ignoring the fact that these were jobs in cleaning, fast food and kinds of jobs nobody really likes to do.

** It's exactly the same thing that happens in the USA in regards to Latin American people... except that in the USA, the Latinos can and ''will'' get shot dead in occasions, especially in the conservative states.

** To return to the Irish example, Polish migrants into Northern Ireland ran into a different but potent form of Irish bigotry. Poles coming to Belfast in search of jobs and who were not aware of what might be called ''local sensitivities'' were naive enough to think they could rent houses and flats just ''anywhere'', including Protestant East Belfast. Poland is, along with the Irish Republic, one of the most Roman Catholic countries in the world. This was a disaster waiting to happen. The local morons and psychos, having spent most of the previous thirty-odd years burning native Irish Catholics out of Protestant areas, soon rediscovered old craft skills in the face of a new Fenian threat to their Loyalist sensibilities...

*** Being a country with major class disparities, uniforms are universal in South Africa, at least in part to "equalize" students and minimize bullying. Venezuela's universal uniform school regulations were instituted for the same reasons.

* Beauty standards. In most Western countries or countries with a particular Western influence, being slim is regarded as most desirable, because it stands for a healthy way of life, often also coupled with success and inner strength. In other countries, even nowadays, a fuller figure is more desirable. Can also be Values Dissonance between two generations.

** Similarly, a healthy tan is considered attractive in many parts of the western world while in most of Asia pale skin is preferred. Another example is that when a western woman gets plastic surgery on her nose, it's typically to make it smaller; when an east Asian women gets it done, it's usually to make her nose larger ("taller").

* Views on piercings vary wildly from culture and person. In the most parts of the USA and Europe it is only really acceptable for a woman to get lobal piercings in or after adolescence and maybe for a man to have one ear pierced. However in India most girls and some boys get their ears pierced very young, and the same is true in Hispanic countries. In India it is also common for women to have a nose piercing. Some people are fine with non-ear piercings (eg, eye-brow or nose piercings), other people regard it as a sign of being a deliquent.

** In the UK, ear-piercing of young- even baby- girls is fairly common, at least enough to be unremarkable, although it's seen as somewhat low-class (and schools most likely won't allow it).

** In Germany ear-piercing of 2 to 3-year-old girlsit is pretty much standard and earpiercing of boys is getting more and more popular. No schools, except for a few ''very'' conservative cathloic ones, prohibit wearing ear rings.

** 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.

* What is considered "appropriate dress" can vary wildly even in one country. In some parts of the American South, where temperatures in the summer can frequently surpass 100 degrees Farenheit, the general consensus seems to be "It's too damn hot to cover up," and you can frequently see rather young children wearing things like short shorts and spaghetti strap tops without anybody batting an eye. In other parts of the country, it's usually met with "You're not leaving the house like that, go put some clothes on!"

** To that end, much of the US is utterly dumbfounded by what they see as unnecessarily heavy clothing in the Middle East, parts of Africa, and India. Said clothing is actually more helpful in preventing sunburn, dehydration and, you know, death than shorts and a T-Shirt would be.

* 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.