The Best Country, a Fairy Tale

by Geert Hofstede
On the island of Malaila there is an inn. It has been there for many generations. When this story
started, it was run by a couple who took good care of it and made their guests feel at home.
Foreign guests would come back year after year and send their friends.
The couple had five daughters who went to school and enjoyed meeting the guests of
the inn, who told them about foreign lands. On weekends the family would hold a party for the
guests, where the five girls would sing and dance.
When the oldest girl, Satu, had finished school she started to help at the inn. A young
foreigner, who had stayed with them several times with his family, fell in love with her and she
with him. When he came back to the inn the next year, they married, and she followed her
husband back to his country.
By that time the second daughter, Dua, had just completed school, and she took her
sister’s place at the inn. Some time later she also fell in love with a young man who was their
guest. She married him and went with him to his country.
The third girl, Tiga, took Dua’s place, but like her older sisters, she also fell in love with a
foreign guest, and after a time she too went abroad with her new husband.
And so it went with the fourth and fifth daughters, Ampat and Lima. The innkeeper and
his wife were now alone, their family spread all around the globe. The daughters sent their
friends to the inn, which their parents continued to run.
Many years later, when the daughters themselves had adult children in their different
countries, the old innkeeper died. The daughters all flew back with their families for his funeral
and wept over their beloved father. And after the funeral they sat together with their mother.
It was decided that their mother would sell the inn to a young couple who had presented
themselves and would come and live with one of her daughters. But with whom? Each
daughter and son-in-law offered their house for Grandma to retire to. And Grandma asked her
five eldest grandchildren to describe to her what life in each of the foreign countries would be
like.
Satu’s daughter said: “Grandma, you will love our country. We believe in the rights of
the individual. We believe all people are different, and they have a right to be different. I can
pursue my own interests, do my own thing, and nobody will stop me. I can have my own
opinions, and nobody can prevent me from expressing them. I can choose my own friends, and
I can vote for the leaders I like, and nobody can tell me otherwise”.
“But how can you be anybody in your country?” asked Aunt Lima. “Doesn’t who you are
depend on where you came from and on the groups you belong to? How can you expect your
people to be loyal to you if you are not loyal to them? And who will take care of Grandma when
she needs help? Who takes care of your father’s aged relatives?”
“And don’t you get into many conflicts?” said Aunt Ampat. “Do you really say everything
that is on your mind? Did you forget that maintaining harmony with your relatives and friends is
the foundation of a civilized society? How can you work together or even do business with
other people if you have not first established harmony with them?”
“In our country, we believe that honest people speak their mind,” said Satu’s daughter.
“We don’t waste time in social chitchat for harmony’s sake. And we believe that you are what
you make yourself to be. You are not what your family is or what your friends are. That also
means that we do not automatically expect our family to take care of us. My father’s relatives
will not expect us to look after them. We will be happy to look after Grandma, and of course we
take care of our children as long as they are small, but by the time they are grown, they will
have learned to look after themselves. And we do not expect them to look after us when we are
old”.
“But do children in your country at least learn to play and share with each other?” Aunt
Tiga looked shocked.
“Our children learn to be themselves,” said Satu’s daughter. “If they want to play with
their brothers and sisters, they are free to do so, and if they want to make other friends, they
are also free to do that. Each child has his or her own toys; that is the way they learn to be
responsible for themselves”.
“What a barbaric country!” said Aunt Dua, “but listen to my son now, Grandma, because
I think we really live in a good country”.
Dua’s son said, “You will love our country, Grandma. Our people treat everybody as
equal. All have the same rights, nobody has special privileges. Nobody is very rich, and nobody
is very poor. We elect our leaders, and the leaders walk the streets like everybody else. You can
go up to them and talk with them. If most people think that a leader is not effective anymore,
the leader will step back and the people will elect someone else”.
“It sounds like you have weak leaders”, said Aunt Satu sharply. “That would be fine if all
people were good. But what about bad people? I think people need strong leaders; otherwise
they will misbehave”.
“How do you educate young boys and girls in your country?” asked Aunt Tiga.
“In our schools, students and teachers treat one another like equals,” Dua’s son
explained. “In class, students may speak up whenever they want to, and teachers expect it.
Students take as much initiative in class as teachers do”.
“Is there no respect in your country?” said Aunt Ampat, visibly shocked. “How can you
maintain discipline this way? How will these students behave in their work when they have left
school? And how do they behave to their parents at home?”
“Of course we have masters and servants and bosses and subordinates in our country”,
said Dua’s son. “But a subordinate is not worth less than the boss, and if I disagree with my
boss, I will tell him so. As far as our home life goes, we treat our parents like equals, and they
discuss things with us as soon as we are big enough to understand, when we are two or three
years old”.
“Discussing with a child of two?” said Aunt Lima. “Now come on, nephew, aren’t you
joking? Is that parental love? We love our children and protect them and make them feel safe,
but we do not discuss adult topics with them. But let’s hear from Tiga’s daughter about life in
her country”.
And Tiga’s daughter said, “Come live with us, Grandma. In our country people care for
others regardless of whether they are friends or strangers. If someone needs help, she will get
it. If someone cannot provide for himself, the country provides for him. We feel responsible for
everybody”.
“Doesn’t that make people lazy?” asked Aunt Dua. “What’s the use of doing your best if
the country will take care of you anyway?”
“I don’t think so,” said Tiga’s daughter. “We expect people to do their best but not to try
overly hard to be the best – or to believe themselves to be better than others. We think that
small is beautiful, and we do not like people who make themselves important and assertive. As
children we learn to be modest and unassuming.”
“Even boys?” Aunt Satu sounded very surprised. “Caring for the weak and being modest
is natural for girls. Girls should be soft; we also do the crying, don’t we? Shouldn’t boys learn to
be tough and assertive and to fight?”
“Funny you would say that,” said Tiga’s daughter. “We don’t make so much of a
difference in educating boys or girls. We don’t like any child to fight – girls or boys. And in our
country boys may cry just as much as girls; their parents will comfort them in the same way. We
believe it makes everybody happier”.
“Do fathers also comfort children if they cry?” asked Aunt Lima. “Isn’t that for you to do,
Tiga?”
“They come to whoever is closest by,” said Aunt Tiga, somewhat upset. “What is wrong
with that? When the children were babies, their father played with them just as much as I did.
No, we do not make such a big thing about a person being a man or a woman. If my daughter
wants to learn carpentry, she is free to do so. If my son wants to play with dolls, we will not
stop him. Men and women wear the same clothes, go to the same places, and have the same
rights and duties. Many of our leaders are women, and they are respected just as much as the
men are”.
“What a decadent country!” Aunt Ampat cried out. “My son will tell you what a good
country I landed in, Grandma”.
And Ampat’s son began, “In our country we believe in order and self-discipline. There
are clear rules that everybody has to respect. Some of the stories you told about your countries
make me very nervous. What if our children won’t learn how to behave?”
“Isn’t the way you educate your children rigid and dogmatic, then?” said Aunt Dua.
“Isn’t the way you educate your children wishy-washy?” countered Ampat’s son. “Ours
is a principled country, that is true. We like to know the Truth and to teach it to the children.
We do not like people who do otherwise. Those who do not think or behave like we do, pose a
threat to our way of life”.
“You seem to forget that you are different yourself; your mother came in as a foreigner.
How did that go? How could a stranger ever be accepted in your country?” Aunt Tiga looked
very surprised.
“True, that was not easy,” confessed Aunt Ampat. “I had to learn a lot of rules and to be
very careful to behave like everybody else. But my husband helped me”.
“And you, children – how were you accepted, your mother being foreign?” asked Aunt
Tiga.
“No, we weren’t automatically accepted, that is so,” said Ampat’s son, visibly uneasy.
“Every now and then somebody embarrasses me and my sister for being different. But then we
make an extra effort to be real children of the country”.
“This is all very confusing”, Grandma said. “Your countries are each so different. But I
haven’t heard from Lima’s daughter yet. Maybe hers is a country that I will feel comfortable
living in”.
Lima’s daughter said, “Dear Grandma, you will really like our country. At home I never
saw anybody worrying about Truth with a big T. We value people for what they do. What we
learned as children was to work hard, to be enterprising, to save, and to never give up. We set
our sights on the future. If that means that we have to subordinate ourselves to others for a
time, we see nothing wrong with that”.
“Do your people always work and never have fun?” asked Aunt Dua. “If you keep
working for a future that moves away forever, you will never enjoy yourself. Is that what life is
about? Working for tomorrow is fine, but not if you forget today”.
“Working can be fun,” said Lima’s daughter. “We also have holidays, and we celebrate
weddings, but we don’t spend more than we can afford. We like to lend to our friends, not to
borrow from them. We don’t buy things just to keep up with the neighbors”.
“Your people must be stingy, calculating, and cold,” said Aunt Ampat disapprovingly. “I
wouldn’t feel comfortable in a country like that”.
 There was a long silence, and the five sisters looked at their mother and their families
and each other and felt very uneasy. They had really grown apart. None of the five countries
would please the other sisters.
Grandma shook her head. She didn’t like any of the countries – not Satu’s do-your-own-
thing country, Dua’s equal country, Tiga’s caring country, Ampat’s principled country, or Lima’s
enterprising country. She said, “I’m too old to move. I’m too old to change my country for any
country whose people I don’t understand. Our island of Malaila is an abandoned community of
seniors now. Only the old people remained. The younger ones have left for other countries.
We, the seniors, are scared to move. Other countries seem weird and frightening to us. We
don’t understand them”.