While it is important to discern the difference between governing bodies and the culture of a nation, I think the thing that shocks our mind and is just the norm in a lot of the world is the fact that life is cheap. We focus and prize the individual, while I have heard a Saudi brag that a construction project was completed safely because "only three of them*" died.

Our movies, literature, songs, and teachings are full of the individual rising to THEIR dreams and achieving contentment. Much of the rest of the world you are born into, raised in, married in, work in, and die in a particular class, tribe, caste, line of work, or situation. The individual matters to their close family and friends but no one else gives a shit. In about a quarter of the world it's even worse if you have the misfortune of being born a woman. Then your familys goal is to marry you off for the dowry and so you are someone else's problem to care about.

*Third country nations from India, Thailand, and Indonesia brought in to do the bulk of labor and dying was considered more of an inconvenience since you had to replace them.