[carbadtraingood]

Is it? Is the culture of Paris fairly homogenous? New York? London? Berlin?

I would imagine the place has some shared cultural understandings, generally, but that a big city is going to be much more heterogenous. But maybe I'm thinking too micro scale.

[carlmr]

This seems like the old lumpers vs splitters issue:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpers_and_splitters

There's definitely something different in Berlin vs New York culture, and me, a person that sees commonalities everywhere, i.e. a lumper, definitely sees a common/dominant culture in each of these places.

On the other side you have splitters that always find a reason to differentiate more.

There's no right and wrong on this discussion, it's subjective in essence, you can always lump or split by your own rules. That is a classification problem.

Darwin talked about it at length, because he was annoyed by splitters denying any kind of classification, making it really hard to make a taxonomy.

If you split too much, every human is an individual, you can't say anything about anything anymore.

If you lump too much, all humans are the same, you can't say anything about anything either.

The sweet spot is somewhere in between, where you can speak about Moscow, vs Berlin, vs New York culture. Because there's definitely something different about these places. And neither say they're all the same, or that you have to look at each individual before making a judgment.

But most people can't agree where exactly this sweet spot is.

[smsm42]

You need to realize though the West has embraced multiculturalism, largely. Russia has not. It does not mean there are no diverse cultures in Russia - or even Moscow, but it does mean there is one dominant culture, and closer you get to the places where power is accessible, the more dominant and more exclusive it becomes. There are various cultures found in Moscow (and any big city in Russia), but there is also the Culture. In the West, a lot of effort is taken for the old Western culture not to be the culture of Paris, New York, London, Berlin, etc. Some endorse these efforts, some decry them, but it is obvious they happen. In Russia, nothing of the sort happens, on the contrary, if you want to be in power, you will abandon whatever culture you came from and embrace the culture of power. If you do not, you'll never get to wield any power.

[TylerLives]

What is the "culture of power", can you give some examples? And what are your pronouns?