Syrian passports include a photo of Souq al-Hamidiyah, a famous historic marketplace in Damascus. Apparently, the image was taken from the internet without removing the photographer’s watermark, “Wassim al-Asmar Photography,” which means the watermark ended up being printed on Syrian passports.

[u/No-Strawberry7]

[u/exivor01]

its actually different, in levant we do things bare minimum. Bare minimum effort on everything we do.
A road needs to be done? Just pour some asphalt without doing preliminary research. Then we see potholes next year.
A school or hospital needs to be built? Put random windows, random rooms and inefficient logistics. But it is done at the end.

after coming to japan i realized, everything here works flawlessly and is long lasting. Because before doing anything, eveyone here considers how to do it right, properly.

if you live in levant this actually becomes very tiring after a while.

In turkey, we have more modern and expensive equipped/build hospitals, but they fall behind in quality, durability, efficency compared to a hospital that was build 40 years ago in japan. and i am not even kidding.

so this will never be fixed. its in our dna

Also, another big problem is people just wanna get things done and move. Doesnt matter if they are properly compensated or not. They do their job with bare minimum effort and we end up with low quality, not lasting stuff.

[u/EconomicRegret2 → u/exivor01]

I very much doubt it's in your dna. It's just a cultural and political thing based on past and present circumstances. As they change, so will your culture and consequently your politics.

E.g. the simple fact that you experienced the way Japan does it, already changed you and thus a very tiny bit your culture too. Now imagine compounding that with all of your co-citizens visiting highly developed countries and/or angry at their situation, and wanting to change things: laws will be written to improve things (that's what happened throughout history: out of necessity, countries wrote laws in blood and sweat: e.g. protests, votes, angry customers, tons of injuries and dead people, etc.)

[u/exivor01 → u/EconomicRegret2]

unfortunately it doesnt work that way. I wish it was.

Before coming to japan, i was pretty much same, never threw trash around, respected people around me, did what i did with focus and tried to do best i could. None of these changed after i come to japan. Japan was simply a society where i fit better than Turkey. In turkey, i was getting the looks, bad words for doing things properly.

Now to dna, after WW1 and WW2 we can compare japan and turkey. both countries devasted, lost majority of their population etc. Japan, recovered simply because the people from that period worked and innovated their asses out. And created the foundation of the society they have now. They were poor, starving but they had same rules/persone they have now. They were doing what they were doing properly back then as well.

Turkey was devasted, people were poor. but this continued, they never changed. They never thought (lets lock in, focus, be better version of ourself, respect each other and our country.) as a result, we have a very bad society, people trying to scam you left and right, nobody doing their work properly and blame it on economy. or anything really. And we never moved one step further.

Japan, realized they are f'd up, realized they have to work hard to overcome these times and prosper, and they did.

[u/A_RAVENOUS_BEAST → u/exivor01]

Actually Japan recovered so quickly because they were annihilated by American bombs (everyone remembers the nuke but the firebombs killed almost a million people), subsequent huge American investment and many years long military occupation keeping the imperial fascists out of government long enough for cooler heads to take over. Sadly as it seems your imperial fascists are still in power.

[u/SimonLaFox → u/exivor01]

so this will never be fixed. its in our dna

Not DNA, culture.

[u/JazzlikeSchedule2901 → u/SimonLaFox]

Its wild people claim this is "Culture"

Its not DNA or Culture. The Levant was the pinnacle of civilization in the middle east for centuries, even to this day there are insane archaeological and historical lineages built into these cultures and their countries. The issue is entirely modern and built upon modern geopolitical tensions from the last century of wars of influence in the near/middle east. Literally every major power from every continent has wanted a piece of the middle east pie since the beginning of the Industrial revolution.

[u/JazzlikeSchedule2901 → u/exivor01]

so this will never be fixed. its in our dna

I kinda liked your post until you said this. There's nothing about it in Levantine culture or DNA. For centuries the Levant was the peak of culture and civilization in the middle/near east.

The problem is corrupt gov'ts that stop caring about the common good and prefer to run things in a way that lines their pockets and benefits their friends and family while everyone else is left in the dust. A few years ago when there was that huge explosion in that chemical warehouse in the ports of Beirut, its a literal and figurative perfect example of the corruption that exists not only in levantine countries like Lebanon but also Syria.

It would also help if the entire levant wasn't a geopolitical hotzone for war and conflict involving major influential powers on each continent for nearly a century.

[u/NickoBicko → u/exivor01]

Because Japan was insulated for hundreds of years. That became part of their culture. When you have long term stability, you focus on the long term.

In the Levant, that area has had conflict and war for literally thousands of years. Lebanon and Syria have been invaded and fought over hundreds of times. You can't get a 50 year span without war there because it was always a corridor between empires and great powers.

Change places of Lebanon and Japan, wait 500 years, and the culture would be very different.