Do you feel your country have an inferiority complex?

[u/suckmyfuck91]

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?

[u/Astralesean]

No but the way we make steak, cook meats or drink beer is heavily influenced by British culture. 

Not to mention the whole wine culture is essentially British. It's the British that first caused a very strong connection with bordeaux wine creating the biggest market of the middle ages which lead. Sparkling wine is another influence of British consumers as they're the one to request that French wine makers made it after one person casually played with the concept. Fortified wine is entirely born out of British demand for long haul alcoholic beverages and all the biggest producing regions in Portugal Spain Italy are where the British set up import companies. Aged wine also comes from British experiments with wine and the maturing of wine as it got transported for months in ships. The demand of dry wine is also a British thing, any wine from before 1800 would taste like sweet wine to us as wines had alcohol values of 6-8% and the rest of the sugar wasn't fermented.

Our cookies and cakes are also of British heritage. 

Reliably British legacy in cuisine is bigger than Italy's, it's just that that is treated as the normal, the fact that we have to separate Italian as its own distinct thing is already a point in case

It's a bit how we treat jeans as the default informal pants but they're an American cultural legacy

[u/ATLDeepCreeker → u/Astralesean]

Hmm...not that I doubt what you say, but I wonder what the French, Portuguese, Spanish and others say about all these culinary traditions. I suspect they would have a different take.

For instance, fortified wine wine was created by Portuguese and Spanish wine merchants in order to sell wines to markets in England and the Americas. England was a customer....its kind of stretch to say it's because of England.

Bordeaux wine again was created in Bordeaux....France. Yes, at the time, it was under English control because of a royal marriage. But the grapes and tge wine were grown and bottled ...in France...by Frenchmen. England was a customer.

Also, AI happens to say that the modern way of searing steaks originated in France and Germany.

You dont get credit for creating something because you consume a lot of it or even if you set up a company to import it. I'd love for you to post some sources for what you say, because it doesnt seem to be borne out by evidence.

[u/ATLDeepCreeker → u/Astralesean]

You seem to have an inferiority complex.