One of the things I love about the French is their readiness to take abstract reasoning and theory seriously. It allows them to use that reasoning to penetrate much more deeply into the nature of reality - to think strategically.
The Anglosphere often disdains this kind of reasoning and prefer heuristic arguements and common sense. While this is great at cutting through the bullshit it gets caught in provincial thinking and struggles to adapt once the low hanging fruit has been picked.
The French attitude (broadly speaking) might fall into ideology more often than the English/American, but they have to tools to parse between ideologies and meaningfully develop them.
Anglos remain flexible in the face of the matter at hand but we're often subtly beholden to many values which we don't have the tools to meaningfully analyse. I think these values are generally speaking good but their development tends to occur organically and over a long period of time.
Don't get me started on the Germans.
@FailForward
The Germans are much harder to put ones finger on tbh, probably why I left them out.
The idea of Europe being a tripartite of Britain, France and Germany is obviously nonsense and these are simplifications based on limited personal experience; most French, Germans and British don't resemble these clumsy strokes. Also, the more cosmopolitan the individual the more these features may fade into the background.
Caveats aside, the Germans appear unequalled in mastering the nuances of a given field but can suffer from tunnel vision because of it. They are precise and it comes from a steadfast discipline that you don't see in British resourcefulness or French élan. It's a cliché but they do take rules quite seriously without the ability to "play" with them quite like the French do (or ignore them like the British.) This makes them less creative but also more reliable.
All that being said... the British can be flexible because they don't reflect much on values; the French can be nimble because they don't have profound commitments. From my limited experience the Germans have a much deeper, instinctual relationship with their values. A Frenchman or a Brit might shrug off some internal inconsistency but a German may become either deeply conflicted or unreasonably dogmatic about it - you'd probably never see it though, just someone steadfastly doing it "their own way."
Interested to hear other people's thoughts, particularly French or Germans telling me why I'm an idiot.
+bonifartius 𒂼𒄄
as german:
> It's a cliché but they do take rules quite seriously without the ability to "play" with them quite like the French do (or ignore them like the British.)
i'm pissed if i consider rules to be bullshit, on the other hand i value rules very much and am _really_ pissed if someone doesn't adhere to them, especially if those actions bother/harm others, like littering. i have a soft spot in my heart though for creative use (in the classical hacker sense) of rules.
> a German may become either deeply conflicted or unreasonably dogmatic about it - you'd probably never see it though, just someone steadfastly doing it "their own way."
yes, and it's fucking exausting. i can't just do things if it is against my values. that said, i have heard that i'm rather extreme in this. i can't stand for example doing work which is obvious bullshit, it really drives me mad, while others seem to have no problem doing it for the money.
