[quote julieca]@onlychildhamster they are more collective societies where you help each other out. Britain is a very selfish and individualistic society. I hate how selfish our society is.[/quote]
I find comments like this very interesting. I've lived and worked in more collective and familial societies, and my impression is that you just replace one set of problems with another.
Familial societies inevitably end up with some type of economic exploitation of younger family members and those lower down the family hierarchy, and dangerous forms of nepotism running through society with people consistently turning a blind eye to abhorrent or corrupt behaviour. This is very true of my DH's mother culture, which is virtually impossible to navigate without a patron of some sorts, and feels unstable at the best of times.
Collectivist societies either tend to break down the social glue between citizens because, inevitably, people stop helping those that continually get themselves into a fix or who don't give back what they get out, or they seem to stifle individual excellence and eccentricity -- the old quip about the Swiss only ever inventing cheese and cuckoo clocks, for example.
Modern Britain, in my view, is split as a society between selfish twats and people who give a shit. But what I think is interesting about Britain is that there are quite a lot of people who do give a shit. I've not really seen that level of general civic benevolence in other countries.
A lot of people do things for no personal financial gain in Britain; you don't really find that in a lot of other cultures -- for example, I can't think of another country where you would get volunteer neighbourhood In Bloom groups, for example.