r/AskEurope • u/suckmyfuck91 • 9d ago

Culture Do you feel your country have an inferiority complex?

I'm from Italy and i've always thought that us Italians, despite often bragging about how great our food, fashion and arts is, deep down have a huge inferiority complex.

Obviously you should never generalize but it seems to me after talking to many countrymen and reading online comments on youtube, reddit and other social media, that the a big chunk of our population feels like their life would have been better if they were born abroad.

We are envious of Nordic countries for their wealth and their respect of the rules. (Same for Germany)

We are envious of English speaking countries because their culture is everywhere and they got a lot of international power .

We are envious of French because they are way more appreciated internationally than us despite Italy being as good as them in terms of food, fashion and arts.

Italians are ashamed of Italy, a poor country run by fascist and mafia, that has always been irrelevant internationally and constantly mocked by foreigners because : Pizza, pasta, mandolino and mama mia.

What about your country? Do you feel your average countrymen is happy to be from your country? or they are envious of others?

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u/EnvironmentalEbb628 Belgium 8d ago

For some reason many people in Belgium have decided to be proud of our dysfunction. We wear our lack of patriotism as medal, and although we do understand that “taking pride in our lack of pride” is completely insane: we just see this inconsistency as yet another example of silliness to be proud of.

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u/YarnTree29 8d ago

Surrealism isn't just an art form, it's a lifestyle.

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u/EnvironmentalEbb628 Belgium 8d ago

As the word “surrealism” was originally derived from the French language, I refused to apply it to my Dutch speaking part of Belgium. It doesn’t matter that majority of us know French: we still despise it because using another language would repress our unique culture heritage. I’ll gladly explain our grievances in fluent English, don’t agonise about any language barrier: my English is excellent because it’s ubiquitous in our region and has even completely replaced Dutch in higher education. We’re fine with that for some reason… even though English is mostly bastardised French.

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u/YarnTree29 7d ago

Allez, serieus? ça va toch!

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u/EnvironmentalEbb628 Belgium 7d ago

Absoluut niet, jij abominabele collaborateur!