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.
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no subject
Date: 2004-09-26 12:10 pm (UTC)With drug users, Switzerland is actually pretty liberal. The hardcore users who can't kick the addiction are given scripts for heroin. There are centers where people can shoot up using clean needles and a sterile atmosphere. There's one not far from us, right on the bus route to the center of town. They congregate there, particularly when it is open - I've even seen some of them shooting up right outside the place. Most of the hardcore users aren't homeless, but they're not doing so well, either :)
The level of education completed is lower - but that's because high school ends at about age 15 or 16. A good portion of those leaving high school go on to an apprenticeships - not all that many (percentage-wise) go on to University. And, until this term, when you went to University here, you were going for a minimum of a Master's degree (equivalent, it wasn't called that). Now they're standardizing with a bachelor's program, but that's meeting with a lot of controversy at the Universities.
My experiences with cars and houses. It seems that where we've lived, having a car isn't such an extravagance - but it is a small luxury. Then again, learning to drive over here is extremely expensive (over 5k CHF, IIRC). People think we're living beyond our means when they hear we have a car - until they hear das Boot described - but hey, a 22 year old car in damned good condition can only happen in a place like Switzerland on a regular basis!;) Most couples seem to live in 2.5 or 3+ room flats (so at least one bedroom), but many singles make due in flats that have roughly 30 square meters, total.
I think I'm lucky to have so far avoided the race to keep up. We are scraping by, due to good fortune and hard work - but our standard of living with scraping by is still far better than our standard would be in the States.
Fortunately, I won't have my citizenship decided at the local level. Because I married a Swiss, I am eligible for state-decided citizenship, thank goodness!
Perhaps foolishly, I feel safe here. There have been recent issues with violence in Basel over the past few months (and, sadly, I believe all of them were with immigrants from the baltic region and non-random incidents), but I don't feel like I'm going to be mugged, killed, etc. just because I'm walking down the street or that someone will try and grab my bag out of the car at a stoplight. Maybe I'm foolish for believing I'm safer, but I do...
BTW, I know your mom's illness may have changed things - are you still considering coming over here this year?
no subject
Date: 2004-09-26 01:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-26 02:45 pm (UTC)Gotta love the Swiss, they won't ask the impossible from you - if you can't kick the heroin gig, they'll make it possible for you to quick smacking the community around with it. As long as you're willing to cooperate and work at it, they'll support you. Just make you sure you do it their way, neh?
Yes, level of education is lower because well, they don't send everyone to college. Which is entirely paid for, if you do make it.
I married my citizenship too - now, the question I have since I've retained it as a widow and remarried, how long does Jim have to wait before it attains it?
no subject
Date: 2004-09-26 02:49 pm (UTC)Or they want more kids born of Swiss parents. They're going our way with the need for two incomes to make the bills - if you want kids, you gotta find a way to pay for them. Even when I was there, having one or two was a huge undertaking. The families that had *gasp* three or four were HUGE families! Unbelievable! (The disbelief compares to meeting someone here with 14 children...honest.)
Link if you wish, but keep in mind it's only my impressions - and I'm clearly an outsider, adopted by marriage. My late husband loved his father's country more than anything I can remember - cherished his citizenship and considered it a gift. How could I turn my back on that?
no subject
Date: 2004-09-26 03:48 pm (UTC)What has surprised me is how intensive the apprenticeship program is. Josef's program, which is one of the higher levels since he's getting certified in two languages, has him learning accounting/economic practices, French, German, English and a couple of other classes. When he had his one month intensive immersion in school, he had more homework every night than I used to get at University!
As for citizenship, here's the lowdown:
Foreign spouses of Swiss citizens who have been resident in Switzerland for one year may apply for Swiss citizenship under a facilitated procedure if they have been married for three years and have lived in Switzerland for a total of five years. Other spouses with close ties to Switzerland may apply for naturalisation under the facilitated procedure, even if they live abroad, provided they have been married to a Swiss citizen for at least six years.
December sounds good, just keep me posted :)
Recht ist Recht
Date: 2004-09-26 06:05 pm (UTC)As for the military training, drug policies, and support for the extremely poor, I would tend to side with the Swiss position more than most of my fellow American conservatives would. I am not a believer in laisser-faire — it's an anti-Christian, anti-Catholic, and anti-communiarian doctrine.
(Isn't it true that every Swiss home is also required to have a fallout shelter?)
I would never give up my US passport, but Switzerland is one of only two countries I've ever considered having dual citizenship in. (Singapore is the other — another very conservative country!) Although I've never been closer to Switzerland than Füßen (southern Bavaria), I've always found it fascinating to read about. I speak fair German and bad French, I'm a big fan of law and order, and Lord knows Mrs B. and I work hard. Unfortunately, I see no practical way to talk the Swiss into giving me a free pass, so it's probably just a pipe dream. Still, I hope to visit soon.
Anyway, thanks for an interesting post and discussion. Gruß Gott or whatever the equivalent is in Schwyzdeutsch…
Re: Recht ist Recht
Date: 2004-09-27 07:49 am (UTC)A country so exposed to war wants peace at home. And it's been my experience that they approach it from a preventative stance, not an offensive one. (Fallout shelters were discussed once, briefly in passing as I recall - the Swiss aren't really keen on trying to support life when the quality isn't worth the effort. I believe the the attitude was is if the basement wasn't going to cut it, why bother?)
I still remember some very clever digs the two communities took at each other. You know the typical Swiss cow is that nice little brown with horns variety (they're as smart as dogs with wicked senses of humor, BTW) - they often call the black and white holstein variety "catholic" - and you don't see many of them. I can only imagine what they think of Gateway computer boxes. Splashy and prideful, if I remember my Swingli -
It's been my experience that the Swiss accept anything "alien" only after it has been given plenty of consideration. Women got the vote in 1975, but they've elected three (more now?) female presidents since then. With a demand for foreign labor upwards of 16% of their residency, multi-culturalism isn't a system that "works" or "doesn't work." It's a challenge to manage. And I like the way they do it - by being honest and up-front about the whole experience.
This is our country. These are our rules. We work daily to make them as fair as we can, and we apply them to everyone. You don't like it, leave. We'll understand, we know it's hard. You are encouraged to participate to the limit of your ability, matter of fact, we insist. If you want to join our family and behave as we do, we'll do everything we can to accept you.
But you must change. Not us.
The biggest difference between the pressures living in a Swiss society vs. the American model? In the American model, the stressors are placed squarely on the individual - we decide everything on that unit. The Swiss model places the stressors on the society at large, making the individual conform - but once that is done, the stress on the individual is less. And not in any kind of associative manner - we didn't belong to clubs or any kind of church while we were there, but if we worked, paid our taxes and were basically law-abiding, we were accepted. Having a dog helped a lot - she was proof of the pudding, so to say. If we cared for her well, we were capable of caring, period. That was more valued, I think.
Tshuess!
Re: Recht ist Recht
Date: 2004-09-27 02:48 pm (UTC)But you must change. Not us.”
That sounds eminently fair. Would that our own government would adopt that credo.
Anyway, thank for the info. I’m glad your mom is feeling better. Tschuß!
no subject
Date: 2004-09-28 12:12 am (UTC)