How can we understand this country and the people in it?

To counterbalance some of the harsher observations I will make below, well, most Swiss are NOT a) aggressive drunkards looking for fights most evening of the week, b) mindless idiots with no knowledge beyond their four walls c) obese d) flat screen addicts e) burnt out, and f) only interested in football. Nor do they often utter sentences along the lines “we are wasting valuable drinking time”.

However, a lot of Swiss (most?) are selfish, rude, spoilt, full of themselves, not afraid of much. Difficult to reign in. Give them a small position of power, and they lord it with the know-it-all attitude of a 20 year old. Why is that so?

I think one reason is that as a country Switzerland has never been forced to grow up. No wake up calls from WW1 or WW2. No real destruction, no deep suffering, no lasting common trauma. 1315 the last war? When I grew up in Zürich in the 50s, our supermarkets had good cakes, coffee, bread, chocolate, milk, cheese – uncannily similar to what you find in today’s Migro or Coop. No hardship. Same shops as today, same shelves, same sausages, same people (well, not quite..). Tried a coffee in the UK at that time? Or a sausage? When a pint of ale reached 1 pound, we decided to stop drinking…and look at the UK now – changed a hundred times. Not so Switzerland. Having come back last year after 30 years abroad, I am truly surprised how much is the same. Have you seen the advertisement here along the lines “Good news – we are going back to the old”? In the UK and US the mantra is “the only constant is change” not here it isn’t.

So what are we to make of this? They had it good 50 years ago and ever since? That’s why they are spoilt? Yes, there is some truth in this. But not only did they not have the destructive wars, internally they weren’t overwhelmingly suppressed by an Upper Class either, so no real suffering here and hence no need for a Revolution. No major earth quakes, floods, dangerous animals, hurricanes or other horrors in the national psyche. Somehow this gave rise to the attitude that the way to success is and has always been to “take it ‘slow and steady’, follow the rules and to do it properly”. And somehow this recipe of success (based on luck rather than on cause and effect) had led to an utter lack of humour, as the healing effect of humour is not really required for this clockwork approach.

Like in the playground, if no-one kicks your sandcastle down, and the tide does not come in at the wrong time, you start to think there are no limits to what can be done with a proper building approach. Sheltered like this you never have to deal with conflict, and as a result you miss out in valuable lessons in growing up.

This can also be seen in many of the dangers in Switzerland – here you are allowed to kill yourself. We went horse riding in the mountains - no helmets supplied by the riding school and suddenly it got a bit rough to say the least…we live in Basel, fancy jumping in the Rhein and playing with these great big cargo boats? People do it. Want to climb up the Matterhorn? There are “recommendations” but you are free to give it a go anyhow, and you are also allowed to cross the glaciers near by (try to avoid the hidden crevices). All in all, there is very little common sense of dangers despite the many accidents. One good thing – very few signs forbidding things, less of a nanny state.

To end on a good note: people are not afraid of much. That in a way is liberating.