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Can Nations be Judged?
History and the media often portray people as innocent and helpless victims of cruel and ruthless oppressors. However, some believe that people get what they deserve by the choices they make in life. Those who work more and sacrifice more to provide greater value to society will always expect more at the expense of those who provide less value to society.
I do not think you can generalize nations with absolutist thinking. To really understand each nation, you have to analyze them from their perspective. In other words you need to look at their society in context with what they see and feel and not compare them to absolutist ideals from your value system, i.e money bad, spiritualism good. Each nation has their own interpretation of values, which may be very different from yours.
If you are going to judge people, then do it from their perspective by putting yourself in their shoes. Any attempt to judge their value system based on yours is simply incorrect. People do what works for them, so if you were in their shoes you would likely do the same. I do not believe anybody thinks of themselves as backward, evil, dishonest or hypocritical.
It is just that educated people think there are absolute definitions of these traits which is not right. As you have probably heard, there is no reality, only perception. So you are free to perceive nations as evil and backward, but if you were to go inside them you would find their state of mind is no different from yours.
Furthuremore every nation is comprised of different classes of people dependent on money and education level. My observation is that people of same class, no matter what country they belong to, behave similarly. So there is no way a stereotype of a nation can be valid accross different classes of people.