Gregory's Server@gardenpeach Japan is the most diligent, but the least flexible: you cannot put raisins or shaved coconut in curry rice, because “curry rice does not have raisins or coconut in it.” Korea is a relatively low-diligence society – everything is ppali-ppali, “hurry hurry” – but it’s buffered by a high degree of flexibility, adaptability and the expectation that you and a service provider will negotiate a modus vivendi.
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 @gardenpeach But maybe I actually prefer the Korean way? Like you can get a pair of prescription glasses made, same day, and even when the prescription’s complicated, for something like fifty bucks. They might not be Zeiss quality, but honestly, if they’re not, I can’t tell the difference (and while I’m not an expert, I’m the kind of person who would). There’s a kind of cheap-and-cheerful, LFG-ness to a lot of everyday process. The *flipside* is terrible, though - @gardenpeach things like the Sewol ferry disaster or the collapse of the Sampoong department store, where the systems and processes that a higher-diligence society would insist on being observed have just been blithely circumvented, at awful cost. |
@gardenpeach Finland is higher diligence, but stoic about defaults and shortfalls in a way that approaches the British. When people fuck up (and Finns generally assume they will, because people and life are disappointing), you’re just supposed to tough it out with lots of sisu and perkele. For all its many faults, and barring only its addiction to litigiousness, American culture actually balances these qualities reasonably well.