From ‘The Subtle Art of Not giving a Fuck. A counterintuitive approach to living a good life’ by Mark Manson

There is a bluntness to Russian culture that generally rubs Westerners the wrong way. Gone are the fake niceties and verbal webs of politeness. You don't smile at strangers or pretend to like anything you don't. In Russia, if something is stupid, you say it's stupid. If someone is being an asshole you tell him he's being an asshole. If you really like someone and are having a great time, you tell her that you like her and are having a great time. It doesn't matter if this person is your friend, a stranger, or someone you met five minutes ago on the street……….

I remember discussing this dynamic with my Russian teacher one day, and he had an interesting theory. Having lived under communism for so many generations, with little to no economic opportunity and caged by a culture of fear, Russian society found the most valuable currency to be trust. And to build trust you have to be honest. That means when things suck, you say so openly and without apology. People’s displays of unpleasant honesty were rewarded for the simple fact that they were necessary for survival - you had to know whom you could rely on and whom you couldn't, and you needed to know quickly.

But in the “free” West, my Russian teacher continued, there existed an abundance of economic opportunity - so much economic opportunity that it became far more valuable to present yourself in a certain way, even if it was false, then to actually be that way. Trust lost its value. Appearances and salesmanship became more advantages forms of expression. Knowing a lot of people superficially was more beneficial than knowing a few people closely.

This is why it became the norm in western cultures to smile and say polite things even when you don't feel like it, to tell little white lies and agree with someone whom you don't actually agree with. This is why people learn to pretend to be friends with people they don't actually like, to buy things they don't actually want. The economic system promotes such deception.

The downside of this is that you never know, in the West, if you can completely trust the person you're talking to. Sometimes this is the case even among good friends or family members. There is such pressure in the West to be likable that people often reconfigure their entire personality depending on the person they're dealing with.