Quote:
Originally Posted by Ducimus
We always just assume we're the best because that's what we've been brought up to believe, and we ride on the coat tails of our forefathers success, while we have yet to make similar achievements ourselves.
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My thoughts exactly, only concerning Finland and not America. I see this especially on the Independence day every year. "Patriotism" is boasting how great our former generations were (understandable to a point on that day, of course), but never asking: "Hey guys, how could we improve this?"
Instead we often ask: "This sucks, why doesn't anyone do anything about it?" That's in general a big problem at least with us Finns. We are always talking about
: "Yeah, I'm in...if someone else goes first". It's all empty talk in the Internet and in the magazines, but when it would be time to do something, "it's raining", "I have to work", "My favorite soap opera is on TV"...
Commenting the thread title a little, I have always had a problem understanding the concept of "the greatest country in the world", no matter which country we are talking about. I like Finland. It's a fine country. But is it the best? I have lived abroad and seen that some things are better there, some are worse and some are just different. I see no reason to call any country I have lived in "the best". Whenever I'm in one, I miss some things from some of the others. I suppose I could start ranking them, but I'd be more interested in bringing the good things from one country to another instead of that.