What a wonderful insight.

My father was born in Slovakia, but came to Canada when he was a child. One inconsistent idiosyncacy was his use of heat & electricity. He was religousily fervent that lights always be turned off when no one was using them. "Costs too much money" he would say. Yet he liked the house to be kept at 75 degrees F in the winter.

When I went to live in Slovakia, most of the people had the same attitude. If the house gets too hot in the winter, open a window. But keep the lights low, very low.

From my perspective, westerners have this illogical idiosyncracy: they complain like hell about current democracy, yet cannot investigate alternatives.