Observation of my Russian friend.

A few months ago, when me and my one (Russian) friend were having drinks, he admitted that he really, really dislikes Germans, which I found surprising, since he’s studied so much German and has even lived there for a while, I think.

He said that for Germans, God’s this bubbling, inconceivable, overwhelming divine force, and in their minds it’s their people’s ordained mission to put limits on and restrain and channel God for the world.

“That’s scary,” he was like, “To be so certain!”.

For him, that’s the ethos of the German people, at least since the 19^th c.