The Point of Whine

lIn a recent conversation with a Kiwi, an Irishman, and two Bulgarians, it was somehow came out that, despite our varying language skills and lengths of time spent in Germany, we had, independently of one another, all arrived at a particular feature of German culture.  I've been thinking a lot about the feature in question, which means that this blog post will be neither nice nor particularly fair, but it will be accurate.  The feature is this:  Germany is a nation of whiners.

Germany moans.  Germany complains.  German grouses, grumbles, wails, laments and snivels.  Germany gripes like an old man, sobs like a baby, and squawks like a truckload of baby macaws being illegally imported across federal borders while their rain forest homes are turned into a slightly charred cow pasture.  In short, Germany bitches like it's a goddamn job.

To be fair, bitching is a universal staff, and everyone is free to wield it.  In Bolivia, for example, they bitched about not having enough food to eat, lack of jobs due to marginalization, and the two buckets of water each family was allotted per week--all of which are actually issues.  In America, we bitch about selling grandma for gas money, Lana Del Rey, and whether my tax dollars should be used to pay for Chastity's abortion, and was she even in church last Sunday?--some of which are actually issues, some of which aren't.  In Germany, however, they bitch entirely about non-issues--things that are so trivial and stupid, they don't even register as ripples on my personal Bitch Radar.  This is a country that flips shit about jackets being left on chairs and "acclimates" small children to kindergarten in one-hour increments.  It's a nation that would prefer to see a bookshelf or cupboard look organized than actually be organized.  Accompanying this woe-is-me outlook on life is a wonderful array of audible irritation: loud groans when the train is five minutes late, angry clicks when you ride your bike on the wrong side of the street, and a terse "HAL-lo?" from the person behind you when, God forbid, your mind wanders and you're ten seconds behind in ordering at Burger King.  This is a country that uses the word "uncomfortable" to yammer about things as irrelevant as a neighbor across the street, or the lighting in someone else's dining room.

Why?  Why does Germany complain so, so much about things that are so, so stupid? Is it because it's such an awesome place to live, they're completely lacking in real problems to bitch about, so they just make them up?  Possibly.  But my personal theory is this: if Germans whine incessantly, it's because their own culture sets them up for it.  If it were a boat, it would require a certain water temperature, the moon to be in the seventh house, and a butterfly to flap its wings in Peking--and BOOM! we'd have a perfect storm of riotous complaining, and that's the end of the speediest ship in the Royal Navy.  Unfortunately for everyone driving ships these days, this perfect cultural storm happens all the goddamn time.  But instead of butterflies and sad astrologists, we're talking about a couple key features of German culture, these being:

--Precision
There is a reason really good cars, scientists, and beer come out of Germany--this country doesn't do anything half-assed.  It's a culture that places a lot of value on being decisive, punctual, saying exactly what you mean and doing exactly what you say.  Which lends quite a bit of (not undeserved) weight to the stereotype that Germans are rigid, unbending, and humorless.  Stereotyping is bad, yes yes, and while I don't believe in the whole "Well, stereotypes have to come from somewhere," in this case...well, the stereotype has to come from somewhere.  Germans rely on the precision of the book, the word, and the bus schedule, and when any of these are inaccurate or unclear, the German psyche can't deal.

--Speaking your mind
I've struggled with this for the past ten months, and I will probably continue to struggle with it for as long as I live here, but Germans speak their mind, no matter the situation or social context, and you're expected to do the same.  This is what German calls "communicating," but everyone else calls "fighting."  A German opinion is freely given, over and over and over and over, until you're either swinging with both fists, or grinding your teeth to stubs and saying "hmmm" a lot, while "I hate confrontation, I hate confrontation, I hate confrontation," is on loop in your brain.

--A need for everything to be "just so."
Germany is a culture that very strictly separates an individual's public and private lives, but whereas a literal precision runs the public sphere, I've found a slightly more metaphorical precision to reign supreme in the home.  This is an overwhelming need for everything to be just so, and only just so, all the time.  It also includes Gemütlichkeit, that untranslatable word that encompasses every positive adjective from happiness to comfort to social belonging and having more than two buckets of water per family, per week.  Americans may experience Gemütlichkeit as "Epic Boredom."

At the point where the loudness of the German opinion meets the low German tolerance for inaccuracy and imperfection, you get a German whine.  I have dubbed this point, "The Point of Whine."  And I have plotted it on a line graph.  Arbitrarily, of course, but data plotting is data plotting, even if the data is being made up by me.

To begin, let's critically look at the American whine.  I'm plotting "Exactness of the World" against the "Volume of Opinion," and marking the point where people start to whine, loudly, publicly, often to complete strangers.  This is also the point when I start glaring at you for being a whiny bitch.

As you can see, Americans don't really start whining audibly until we're three-quarters of the way to Armageddon.  That means that even though Rick Santorum is an epic tool, we don't open our mouths until popcorn chicken goes out forever.  In the meantime, we stick to the internal whine, which manifests itself in dirty looks and raised eyebrows.  It takes an awful lot of shit before someone actually says something.  

And now for the German chart!

Conclusions: Germans are faster to whine, and do it at a much greater volume, than their American counterparts.  

But why stop there?  Why not take a look at the Point of Whine charts for other cultures as well?

What, like England, where you step on their foot, and they apologize for being in your way?  Sure, why not!

...Yes.

I wonder how it looks in Portugal?

To summarize:

America whines audibly when things have gone to shit.

Germany whines audibly when things have not gone to shit, and are, in fact, quite nice.

Britain whines never, because they're sorry they were standing where you put your foot down.

It's not so much "whining" in Portugal as it is "Yelling All The Time."