Re:You Can't Have Denmark Without Danes
by paganel on Saturday February 24, 2018 @11:38AM
(#16453985)
> Teaching a Romanian immigrant, or a refugee from the middle east that it's completely safe to trust others is extremely hard
Am Romanian, reading how the author was robbed on the bus because he had the invalid impression that because it was a Danish bus there would be no thieves in it almost made me start out laughing. One of the first reflexes I developed when I moved to Bucharest as a freshman student almost 20 years ago was to always check my back-pocket for my wallet (and later my front-left pocket for the phone). I still do that gesture up to the present day. I could also tell you how about 10-12 years ago a woman tried to convince me, my ex-wife and my ex-MIL that her son was badly injured in a Bucharest hospital, about to die, and that she needed some money in that very moment, she was crying out in the middle of the street just in front of us. My ex-wife would have given said lady money, but something seemed suspicious to both me and to my ex-MIL and we didn't. We returned to the same area about 15-20 minutes later and said women was still in the same place, this time not crying, calm, waiting for another "victim" to pick.
Not trusting people by default is not bad, it's an evolutionary trait that has helped us as a social species over the millennia. I'm just reading a wonderful book that it's based on not trusting people and which, nevertheless, has had an immense positive influence, I'm talking about the collection of articles called "The Federalist Papers" by Madison, Hamilton and Jay.
Am Romanian, reading how the author was robbed on the bus because he had the invalid impression that because it was a Danish bus there would be no thieves in it almost made me start out laughing. One of the first reflexes I developed when I moved to Bucharest as a freshman student almost 20 years ago was to always check my back-pocket for my wallet (and later my front-left pocket for the phone). I still do that gesture up to the present day. I could also tell you how about 10-12 years ago a woman tried to convince me, my ex-wife and my ex-MIL that her son was badly injured in a Bucharest hospital, about to die, and that she needed some money in that very moment, she was crying out in the middle of the street just in front of us. My ex-wife would have given said lady money, but something seemed suspicious to both me and to my ex-MIL and we didn't. We returned to the same area about 15-20 minutes later and said women was still in the same place, this time not crying, calm, waiting for another "victim" to pick.
Not trusting people by default is not bad, it's an evolutionary trait that has helped us as a social species over the millennia. I'm just reading a wonderful book that it's based on not trusting people and which, nevertheless, has had an immense positive influence, I'm talking about the collection of articles called "The Federalist Papers" by Madison, Hamilton and Jay.