Kultur 2

I loved the first, third, and fourth articles. I feel like the first article is very revealing of German ideology: a sort of pessimistic, perfectionist ideology that is always striving for improvement and sees satisfaction as detrimental. The “Brutally Honest” article, specifically the quote “How is it rude to be truthful?”, also is an indicator of German philosophy, although an elaboration is beyond this blog. That is something that I ran into over and over in my family of German background. The final article, about obsession with statistics, also describes my family and was interesting. I do feel this highlights an important emphasis of German ideology, especially contrasted with say French, or even Eastern, philosophy. The Kultur texts in the book were not as engaging. I wish the German university section would have been more detailed as they did not really go into the specifics of what degrees are common in Germany or how many students attend what sorts of Universities, etc. I would also have liked to know what exactly a typical program entails and what instructors and universities are looking for. I am not sure exactly what to make of the staring article, possibly a curious observation? It seems greatly exaggerated, more so than the others.
Sam Engel
http://www.destatis.de/jetspeed/portal/cms/Sites/destatis/Internet/EN/Navigation/Statistics/Internationales/Internationales.psml
http://www.nationmaster.com/country/gm-germany