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Wellness Wednesday for April 26, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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If an American is afraid that the USA (or really anywhere) is becoming a low-trust society, and want to immigrate somewhere that will maintain/be a high trust society in the future (for future kids etc), where should they go?

Assume they have a bachelors degree, enough money to live in most places for a few years without income, and willing to learn languages/assimilate into local culture. Ideally there is a path to naturalization and that it doesn't take >10 years (i.e. rules out UAE), and ideally path to citizenship is reliable (probably rules out Singapore as hearing it's hard to acquire citizenship there now).

Where would you suggest?

Well, part of what keeps a high-trust society the way it is is distrust of outsiders, so you may be starting off on the wrong foot here. I would suggest first taking a look at your own roots or those of your significant other if you have one. Are you from an immigrant family or do you have relatives in or recent ancestors from a small town or rural area? Those are places where you already have a connection, where the locals are less likely to immediately reject you because your being there makes some sense in their eyes, and where you yourself may be less likely to bail out early. There are plenty of places still left in America where you can tune out the culture war just by turning off your computer or phone, and if you choose to get involved in things like town meetings and local government you can do your own part to build the kind of community you want to live in.

If that isn't an option or if you insist that you still want the lifestyle of a first world urbanite without the downsides of violent crime or social dysfunction, then the places I would suggest are Taiwan (more accepting of foreigners than Japan with a similar standard of living, but may only be a short-term solution for geopolitical reasons) or New Zealand (politics there might offend you if you are hardcore anti-woke, but it's probably the safest place to be during the apocalypse), in addition to Singapore which you mentioned.