This is so true, and it only dawned on me recently.
In Spain you’re not encouraged to be intellectually curious, bold in your convictions, nor obsessed with a life mission. It’s quite the opposite: the system pushes you to fit a mold. Curiosity degrades into people gossip, convictions are about football teams, and baseline aspiration is a conventional life arc of education > work > family > kids, etc. Nobody ever dreams of doing something big, at least not seriously. And if you do, you’re the weird one, and you either adapt and stagnate, or leave and pursue stimuli elsewhere.
My first real encounter with SF culture was
@protocollabs. At socials,
@juanbenet liked to soft-ban small talk and seed big questions to elicit unconventional ideas. I used to think: “man, how intense, I just want to chill after a long day”, but now I wouldn’t have it any other way.
And yeah, I tend to be the odd one out in my Spanish circles nowadays, surprise 😅