He's better -
Sep. 26th, 2004 08:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kyburgBut I'm hungry and breakfast has to wait another half hour.
Switzerland shows it's conservative side when it comes to cultures outside its own. I was surprised that not only one, but two proposals on the subject had come to ballot, it's not that easy after all.
But they turned them both down flat, even when the original polling of the parties in government had been in favor of it, across the board - with only one party objecting to it.
The people flat didn't want it. Period. Not surprised.
This is the population that legalized abortion when their choice was to allow it and then look at having to pay for support. Uh, no. They're not going to pay to care for someone else's kid. Legal without question up to the 16th week, after that you're going to have it and that's that. Legally. (They also provide excellent health care as a basic right of citizenship.) But the regulation varies from canton to canton, and I don't know of any real hindrances, but then again, I might not ever hear of any. They manage to deal. Don't ask me exactly how, but they manage. Self-sufficiency being the basic rule - but with the understanding that the community, the town you live in, ultimately is the last place you can turn for assistance, and at that point, they can't refuse you.
It's no surprise that sex education gets a lot more attention there. Prevention is the rule.
You won't like it, but you won't go homeless if you do as you're told. If you can work, you will. If you can't, you'll be told where you can live. But you will have a roof to sleep under and something to eat. If you wish to be a drug user, yes, you will likely be homeless. And treated like a common criminal. One of the first things you have to do is stop using if you want assistance. Behave in the socially accepted fashion, and you'll get by. You won't live very high up, in any case. It's very expensive to live there - nobody lives very high up. The whole measurement of rich vs. poor gets very different. Just one car is exorbitant - a house with more than one bedroom - more than one of anything - it goes on. This is one of the richest nations in the world, but the amount of possessions I always found to be of minor importance.
Is it racial? Partly. As I was once told, "you take in people from other countries who are having problems, then they bring their problems with them - and then, they become your problems."
It then falls to the individual to win the community around them over. In some cases, it likely will never happen. It's one of those things you have to be aware of if you consider living there. Japan is an asian Switzerland - I kept saying that over and over, and I think my experience in Switzerland prepared me for visiting Japan. Citizenship being decided at the lowest levels - at the actual villages. Yessir.
And if they don't like you - you have to ask another village to take you, and only then can you move.
Conservative. Very, very conservative. But if you do what is asked, particularly if you're from the outside, they tend to be willing to assist you, as long as you realize you're the one at the disadvantage and know your place in the cogs and wheels of their culture. You don't have to be here. If you don't like it, leave. That is your choice. If you want to work within their system - you find that there is enough for everyone, if you are willing to share and accept your portion with any amount of grace.
Greed - hm. You're not rewarded for it nearly as well there as you are in the United States. But it still drives folks to work harder for the rewards hard work brings. Remember, the banks are full of money, but it doesn't always belong to the Swiss who live there. Very few people own the home they live in. Less than 15%, last I checked. I don't know what the percentage of real estate in the country is actually Swiss-owned, anymore - probably not as high as you'd think.
A complicated picture - but a useful one, from my POV as you see another culture deal with the same challenges my own faces. And the results are interesting as they apply different modalities to them.
Their suicide rate is higher. Their infant mortality rate is lower. Their birthrates are lower. Literacy rates are higher. Level of education completed, overall, is lower. Employment rates are higher. Religious affiliation is higher (you are confirmed in either a catholic or protestant faith as part of your education, I'm unsure what happens if you're jewish or muslim or buddhist, but you also might not be a citizen if you are...), but they tend to be very socialist in outlook. They are also almost always xenophobic.
But they remain neutral unless attacked. But they also keep a citizen's militia built out of every male between 15 and 52, two weeks a year. Every house has at least one rifle, and someone who knows how to shoot well enough to pass a military-level test. You don't, you go back to boot - at any time of your military career. (How can I claim every house has at least one rifle? There are very few single-family houses in Switzerland - mostly apartments, or townhouses. There's going to be someone in the block with a rifle. And if there is one, - yanno.) They also have the best locks on everything I've ever seen. The keys can't be copied.
I felt very safe in Switzerland. Sex was good; violence wasn't - and what a shock it was, coming back.
Buuuut - I always felt like I was in a race to keep up. Make the train schedule, make enough money to survive, save enough to hit the financial targets - keep the cogs turning.
Different.
But I get to participate. For now.
Switzerland shows it's conservative side when it comes to cultures outside its own. I was surprised that not only one, but two proposals on the subject had come to ballot, it's not that easy after all.
But they turned them both down flat, even when the original polling of the parties in government had been in favor of it, across the board - with only one party objecting to it.
The people flat didn't want it. Period. Not surprised.
This is the population that legalized abortion when their choice was to allow it and then look at having to pay for support. Uh, no. They're not going to pay to care for someone else's kid. Legal without question up to the 16th week, after that you're going to have it and that's that. Legally. (They also provide excellent health care as a basic right of citizenship.) But the regulation varies from canton to canton, and I don't know of any real hindrances, but then again, I might not ever hear of any. They manage to deal. Don't ask me exactly how, but they manage. Self-sufficiency being the basic rule - but with the understanding that the community, the town you live in, ultimately is the last place you can turn for assistance, and at that point, they can't refuse you.
It's no surprise that sex education gets a lot more attention there. Prevention is the rule.
You won't like it, but you won't go homeless if you do as you're told. If you can work, you will. If you can't, you'll be told where you can live. But you will have a roof to sleep under and something to eat. If you wish to be a drug user, yes, you will likely be homeless. And treated like a common criminal. One of the first things you have to do is stop using if you want assistance. Behave in the socially accepted fashion, and you'll get by. You won't live very high up, in any case. It's very expensive to live there - nobody lives very high up. The whole measurement of rich vs. poor gets very different. Just one car is exorbitant - a house with more than one bedroom - more than one of anything - it goes on. This is one of the richest nations in the world, but the amount of possessions I always found to be of minor importance.
Is it racial? Partly. As I was once told, "you take in people from other countries who are having problems, then they bring their problems with them - and then, they become your problems."
It then falls to the individual to win the community around them over. In some cases, it likely will never happen. It's one of those things you have to be aware of if you consider living there. Japan is an asian Switzerland - I kept saying that over and over, and I think my experience in Switzerland prepared me for visiting Japan. Citizenship being decided at the lowest levels - at the actual villages. Yessir.
And if they don't like you - you have to ask another village to take you, and only then can you move.
Conservative. Very, very conservative. But if you do what is asked, particularly if you're from the outside, they tend to be willing to assist you, as long as you realize you're the one at the disadvantage and know your place in the cogs and wheels of their culture. You don't have to be here. If you don't like it, leave. That is your choice. If you want to work within their system - you find that there is enough for everyone, if you are willing to share and accept your portion with any amount of grace.
Greed - hm. You're not rewarded for it nearly as well there as you are in the United States. But it still drives folks to work harder for the rewards hard work brings. Remember, the banks are full of money, but it doesn't always belong to the Swiss who live there. Very few people own the home they live in. Less than 15%, last I checked. I don't know what the percentage of real estate in the country is actually Swiss-owned, anymore - probably not as high as you'd think.
A complicated picture - but a useful one, from my POV as you see another culture deal with the same challenges my own faces. And the results are interesting as they apply different modalities to them.
Their suicide rate is higher. Their infant mortality rate is lower. Their birthrates are lower. Literacy rates are higher. Level of education completed, overall, is lower. Employment rates are higher. Religious affiliation is higher (you are confirmed in either a catholic or protestant faith as part of your education, I'm unsure what happens if you're jewish or muslim or buddhist, but you also might not be a citizen if you are...), but they tend to be very socialist in outlook. They are also almost always xenophobic.
But they remain neutral unless attacked. But they also keep a citizen's militia built out of every male between 15 and 52, two weeks a year. Every house has at least one rifle, and someone who knows how to shoot well enough to pass a military-level test. You don't, you go back to boot - at any time of your military career. (How can I claim every house has at least one rifle? There are very few single-family houses in Switzerland - mostly apartments, or townhouses. There's going to be someone in the block with a rifle. And if there is one, - yanno.) They also have the best locks on everything I've ever seen. The keys can't be copied.
I felt very safe in Switzerland. Sex was good; violence wasn't - and what a shock it was, coming back.
Buuuut - I always felt like I was in a race to keep up. Make the train schedule, make enough money to survive, save enough to hit the financial targets - keep the cogs turning.
Different.
But I get to participate. For now.
