Culture, Micro-Culture and Personality

I live in a country that's quite different from where I grew up, yet it's not that easy to pinpoint any great difference in culture. Apart from the difference in language, there's not much that stands out. It's all very subtle. People greet each other a little more than where I grew up. People talk a little more. People sit down for a coffee a little more often. The food is different.

There are all sorts of subtle differences, many of which can be explained by the fact that the weather is better where I now live. Going out to enjoy a stroll down to the local pastry shop is therefore more natural. The food is different for a similar reason. It boils down to what's available locally.

History plays a part as well. I live in a Catholic country with a feudal past, while I grew up in a protestant country with very little feudalism in its history. This makes a difference when it comes to politics. But here too, the differences are subtle.

Yet, culture is no doubt very important. Countries end up taking divergent paths, so much so that some end up wealthy while others never manage to rise. There are also moments of glory, and decay. This can affect entire countries or cities. There are town that have a different culture than their surrounding areas. People talk more and longer in Bergen than in the rest of Norway. Bergen is an old Hansa town. It's full of descendants from Germany and Holland.

But even inside a town, there are different cultures. There is the working class mentality, and the upper class mentality. Workers tend to make bets in the hope that they may get rich. The rich are more concerned about staying rich. They make long term investments. They don't gamble as much as the working class.

The rich can again be divided into clans and families, all with their own particular micro-culture. This is in turn tied up to the industry that the family or clan dominates. The publishing industry operates in a different way than manufacturing. Breweries are run different from transportation companies.

In all cases, the culture is remarkably stable. The so called old money wealthy can trace their wealth and ancestry back for centuries. My personal wealth can be traced back 500 years. Every single individual in that long chain could have made a terminal mistake. Yet it never happened. When mistakes were made, they were fixed. Everyone managed to scramble back to where they started. Every individual in the chain had both the personality and the culture to move on.

Culture is a strange mix of personality and circumstances. When looking around for alternative places to live, it's a good idea to read up on the history of different places. I ended up in Portugal through a strange series of events. However, it was not without a feeling that the Portuguese culture was right for me. That it had the right balance so that I could more fully be myself.

By jpvargas - Boardwalk, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link