Chris Arnade on his blog Walking The World writes something that seems very true to me and would explain a lot:
This has been one of my pet theories that I’ve grown more and more confident of as I’ve walked the world, and read more, which is that cultures, like a video game, provide their citizens with a limited array of characters to play, each with different strengths and weaknesses. The selection and popularity of these characters changes with time […] These characters change from place to place (national stereotypes can be a simplified version of the most popular) and a successful society understands this, and does its best to encourage and promote healthy roles that are easy to access […] Having an array of celebrated heroic characters for men to fill, that are bound to the greater Good, is an absolute must for a functional society – rescue workers, military, carpenters, engineers, husbands, fathers, backhoe operators, truckers, etc – and if you diminish the status of those, unhealthy ones will bubble up from the bottom, because there are some universals that transcend cultural boundaries, and the need for men to feel useful is one of them.
Nehaveigur 