When comparing their homelands to other parts of the world, it's clear that there is always something that can be improved upon.
But how much power do people actually have to make significant changes to deep-rooted brutal policies and customs in various countries?
Curious to hear examples of these, Redditor UtTeR_cArNaGe asked:
"What do you find most embarrassing about your country?"
Corruption abounds.
Notorious Autocrat
"The most embarrassing thing about my country is that we allowed Putin to run it for twenty years. Ridiculous."
– the_amateon
Under Incompetent Rule
"Corruption in Croatia. On all levels. And they blame war, which ended 27 years ago, for a bad situation. Truth is, politic parties (left, middle, right, all of them) hired incompetent people to work high position jobs (and all other jobs), so with their incompetence they are destroying everything, from economy to will for living."
– oriontrail
South Of The Border
"The fact that drug traffickers basically own the country, having 8 of the most dangerous Citys on the World. Be only known for southpark jokes."
"The previous president bought a mansion that cost 800 years of minimum wage."
"Oh, And also because one guy of our country extinguished the eternal flame under the triumphal arch in Paris, with his pee..."
"It's not that hard to find out what country it is ;)"
– trestristestigresy
Blame It On Colonization
"I come from India."
"The corruption is just aweful. We tend to blame things on colonisation but we aren’t evolving as people. Politics is the dirtiest thing in our country and fixing it could help with a lot of things."
– mrs_robpatt
The statistics are horrendous.
Caring About Our Veterans
"How everyone is all 'Support Our Troops!!' but as soon as they get home, no one gives a sh*t about them. Think about how much money is spent on the military and think about many veterans have severe mental health issues and/or live on the street when they get out."
"Also, many in the military don’t join for pride of country. They join because they’re targeted, recruiters going into schools and making all these empty promises."
– Odd_Sky7089
Treatment Of Children
"That children are being killed for the arguments and view points of previous generations. Yet no one can seem to understand that it is no one's land if the children in both sides are being killed before they can even grow up to inhabit it. Palestine."
– Mona_Moans
All About Perspective
"The fact that we're so focused on our differences with each other that we're not willing to look at how much we actually have in common with one another."
– TarheelTiger87
Immature Politicians
"That our politicians behave like children in kindergarden? 'Oh there was an illegal trade of 100.000.000€? I haven’t heard about it yet' 'What? I’m supposed to be the bad guy here? Look how bad the others are!' and this repeats every year. No content in their speeches besides ranting about each other."
– blanklikemybank
Highest Percentage Of Inflation
"You think 8% inflation is a lot? How about %60 and growing bigger inlation? That's what my country is facing. F'k anyone who's responsible for that f'k-up."
– yzrIsou
These Redditors discussed the unfair treatment of women in their countries.
Gender Disparity
"The fierce opposition to gender equality. We fall far behind our neighbors just in terms of legislation. I am a second class citizen in my own country and I get to live every day of my life knowing that the majority of people around me want it to remain that way."
– PonderingMyOptions
The majority of the complaints were about corruption.
Unsurprisingly we are not alone in that regard.
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While there are many things we have in common with people from around the world, there are as equally–if not more–customs and protocols that can be jarring.
Curious to hear from those who've seen how those in other parts of the world live, Redditor ElizaPaukova asked:
"Which is normal in your country, but strange in another?"Want to "know" more?
People's interactions with animals depend on where they live.
What's Hopping?
"Getting your car smashed in by a kangaroo one day, then having your suspension wrecked by a wombat two weeks later."
– QuantumTopology
Foul Fellows
"Being terrified of common neighbourhood birds every spring."
– Pseudonymico
Arach-NO
"Spiders the size of softballs that live in your house and are good at getting rid of bugs."
– I_hate_people69
A Tame Transport
"Bagged milk and riding a moose to the store."
– kotaska-
These foreign concepts may take a while getting used to.
Unattended Little Ones
"leaving babies outside!"
"It is common to put babies to sleep in a stroller and leave them in the garden or balcony, even outside a café (if you can sit next to the door or windows, so you can see the stroller)."
– PossiblyTrustworthy
They Tell Us When To Go
"Calling traffic lights 'robots.'"
– Upset-Sea6029
What's In A Name
"We call randoms mate and our mates c*nts."
– Skydome12
Effective Meds
"Custom meds. I recently found out that in most countries, you can't just go into a pharmacy / drug store with a prescription and have the pharmacist prepare a set of pills / ointment / cream for you."
"I used to have severe dandruff problems, went into a pharmacy and asked for something. The pharmacist asked how severe / for how long / what kind of shampoo I have and how greasy my hair is and told me to come back two days later. She handed me a container with a cream-like substance in it which just had a handwritten label on with saying '[My name] - Dandruff Shampoo'. I paid the equivalent of $4 and was told to use it twice a week for no longer than a month."
"Never had any problems with dandruff since. I made a post about it in r/tifu about how I'd been neglecting my dandruff problems for years while it had such an easy fix and people kept PMing me about the brand of the drug. Everyone was incredulous that the pharmacist made the shampoo for me, and I found out that this isn't the norm in a lot of countries."
– Corvus_Manufaktura
Bottoms Up
"Bringing the leftover alcohol you brought to a party home. I live in Norway and a beer is anywhere from £3 to £5. Hard liquor is atleast £40 per litre, but for something that doesn't taste like hand sanitizer it's around £50-60."
– jespersolost
Birthday Ritual
"Celebrating birthdays while sitting in a big circle in the living room, eating small blocks of cheese, little sausages and pickles, then going home on your bicycle."
– Vonne_F
Varying states of undress do not phase certain people in other countries.
Barefootin'
"Doing P.E barefoot, I'm from South Africa and moved to Scotland 3 years ago as I left the changing room they were like 'you forgot your shoes my guy' and I was like 'oh yeah, you guys wear shoes for p.e?' And the guy said 'Uhm of course' then I realised they were indoors majority of the time which was f'king bonkers to me because p.e in South Africa is done on the grass, outside and stuff and shoes were optional unless you were doing a sport or something."
"I mean even during sports events some people do that sh*t barefoot like long jump or high jump or even running and I feel like I run faster barefoot than with shoes so if I did a race I would always go 'alright well I'm up time to get my shoes off.'"
–jaknuggetf'k
Comfy In The Buff
"Nudity among strangers."
"I'm Finnish."
"#sauna"
– LupusCutis
Shoe-Free Zone
"Walking around bare foot, or in your pyjamas."
– Genderless_mystery
Not tipping will still be very confusing to me when traveling abroad.
I caught myself leaving a tip for the excellent service at a restaurant in Japan, and remembering the country–and most other parts of the world–do not accept tips.
Yet, their service was exceptional compared to that of the servers at some establishments in the US–where service is incentivized with the promise of a tip. Go figure.
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They will just feign ignorance or pretend certain events never happened.
But here on Reddit, where participants are under the veil of anonymity, strangers spoke freely about the things in their country's history that left them feeling a deep lack of pride.
Redditor CloudsExpert asked:
"What are the 'we don't talk about these things' history of your country?"
European countries are rich in history–but not everyone recognizes these regretful events.
Romanian Peasant Uprisings
"In Romania we don't talk about the pre WW1 and interwar peasant uprisings that have been violently put down. Everybody gives the image of a perfect Romanian state and society in this time, but many forget that in our Independence War we had more frontline deaths from diseases that should've been relatively easy for us to treat at that time than from enemy gunfire. Not the mention the 1907 peasant uprisings."
"Also the Second World War and the politics in our country at the time."
– El_scauno
Romanian Holocaust.
"Romanian people deny that we had mass murders during WW2, that Jewish and Gipsy were killed and that we sent lot of them in concentration camps, like Auschwitz."
– Wooden-King-7949
A "Neutral" Country's Child Slavery History
"Switzerland: We don't talk about 'Verdingkinder!' it's basically child slavery as recently as 1960! You cant imagine the horror of poor people's children being sold to farmers for fieldwork, getting abused in the richest country in the world! Yeah, we don't talk about that!"
– Fripser ·
Sweden And Eugenics
"People in Sweden get really uncomfortable when you point out that we, as a country, were really into eugenics. The Race Biological Institution was founded in 1922, supported by every political party and the king at the time. It existed until 1958 and, as you might expect, did some really f**ked up things."
– PanickingTastefully
The South American war–also known as the War of the Triple Alliance, which lasted from 1864 to 1870–is not a topic that is frequently brought up by Brazilians.
So Much Bloodshed
"Brazil DESTROYED Paraguay, killing almost every man and a lot of its women and children. It was a proper massacre."
– heitorrsa
Another Member Of The Alliance
"Argentina was involved, too. Paraguay ended up with a 7:1 women-to-men ratio. But it's taught openly in Argentina, as far as I can tell."
– Tinchotesk
An American's Perspective
"American who lived in Paraguay for a couple months here! The truly, truly disturbing thing is that many Paraguayans don't really know this either..."
"I had read up about the Triple Alliance War (la guerra de la triple alliance) before I went to Paraguay for the summer, and knew historians considered it a bloodbath, mostly caused by (f'k him) Francisco Solano Lopez, dictator of Paraguay. He did in fact order that they start sending male children into battle near the end when they were losing. He was a f'king idiot. F'k that guy."
"So imagine my surprise when I got to Paraguay and TONS of stuff was named after him. I asked my host dad about it and he said it was because he 'won Paraguay the war'. He called him a hero. I was pretty horrified."
"Fwiw, I checked with the local high school principal to see how far this miseducation rose and he said Paraguay was 'annihilated' in that war, so at least the true history isn't completely buried. Fascinating, terrible war."
– toast_is_ghost
Are these topics relating to the following Commonwealth Nations taught in their classrooms?
South African Natives
"Here in South Africa the true native people, the Khoikhoi, are the most politically and economically disadvantaged people and NO ONE gives a sh*t. Not locally, not internationally."
"When the remains of Saartjie Baartman, a Khoikhoi woman (read her story, it's pretty awful), were returned to South Africa not only were Khoikhoi people not invited to her burial, they were actively kept out."
– Wahooney
A Shameful Legislation
"New Zealand very nearly had legal eugenics. In 1928 a bill nearly passed parliament that forced sterilisation for 'the mentally defective' and the Ministry of Education was required by law to give names of 'defective' children to the Ministry of Health. A separate part of the law said that such people weren't allowed to get married."
"The Opposition lobbied for these sections to be cut out, not because Eugenics was immoral and insane, but because there was no evidence that it changed the gene pool in any way."
– LampWickGirl
When I was a kid, I learned about the Japanese concentration camps from my great uncle.
I thought his story about him and his wife relocating to live in barracks located in Heart Mountain in Wyoming during World War II wasn't real.
Here's why. As a California student, I was never taught in my school district about President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066–which was drafted out of fear of espionage on American shores following the attack on Pearl Harbor.
This led to the cruel eviction of 120,000 innocent Americans of Japanese ancestry–including my great aunt and uncle– from their homes.
Countries have their shameful secrets. But until they can recognize and own mistakes from the past and make reparations, we are doomed to living in a perpetual cycle of fear and uncertainty.
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