What I don't see is why it had to have an anti-American bias. It doesn't help make your point, and all it does is antagonize your American readers. I am an American, I also take walks.
I think part of the point is that there is something deep-seeded in our culture that punishes idleness. That is the social anxiety he describes. I do have a little anxiety when I'm going for a walk, alone, not particularly doing or thinking anything. Will people think I'm some sort of weirdo? The observation that this worry is itself worrisome is an observation I can identify with.
I observed the same thing. I have lived half my life here, half in Eastern Europe. I remember we used to take walks with my family after dinner growing up. Here in US it is harder because it is so unusual. I guess life is faster paced, but I think at some point it becomes counter-productive.
Being fast-paced works very well for manual labor, not for problem solving. Hard problems can only be solved on a clear, rested mind, sometime a walk does just that.
It seems more like it's tied to the importance placed on property ownership and lack of public common spaces. (Well, there's probably a feedback loop going on) We convince ourselves that owning a home in the suburb is so important and so wonderful that naturally we stay at home and enjoy our house.
Needless to say, all of us back home were appalled by this apparently fearful and paranoid US cultural trait.
The incident began at 5 p.m. when a resident reported a man wandering around a low-income, predominantly minority neighbourhood several blocks from the oceanfront, looking at houses.
(...)
"What is your name, sir?" the officer asked.
"Bob Dylan," Dylan said.
"OK, what are you doing here?" the officer asked.
"I'm on tour," the singer replied.
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/music/story/2009/08/15/dylan-police.h...
The very concept of a lake closing, never mind at 6pm on a summer evening (easily light out until 10:30), was alien to my Irish mind.
Meanwhile, there was an article in the Guardian, about whether or not it's OK to go wild camping:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/09/holidays-w...
Similarly, the notion that going to a campsite could be described as camping was weird. I view campsites as more like unpleasant cheap muddy hotels - I grew up understanding one of the appeals of camping is being in the middle of nowhere, with nobody around. The idea of having other people, music, barbequeues, people drinking etc. all around sounds horrible to me.
Just about everywhere else in the Highlands I've never had any problems wild camping or staying in bothies (http://www.mountainbothies.org.uk/).
The US is a big place, about 100 times the size of Ireland. Neighborhoods differ. Please don't judge an entire population because of what happened in one suburb. In other places in the US you'd have people waving hello to you.
I'm sure I could walk through parts of Derry and have a dismal experience, but that shouldn't be used to judge all of the Irish.
I have no idea what it's like in Derry, FWIW, as I've never been up north.
I wonder if he thinks he looks like a native-born or an immigrant?
Conversely, take a native born person of Japanese or Indian descent, and send them to Japan or India. The natives there will be able to tell he isn't native born.
A friend of mine who traveled to Central Asia was struck by how balanced people appeared; he found Westerners take up "too much space" in their movements, and East Asian people tended to do the opposite. But at least during his stay in Central Asia, he noticed the people there repeatedly showed an unconscious balance in their body language: neither too loud and aggressive, nor too quiet and subdued.
If you see me on the street, I believe you will see my family culture (Chinese) and where I was brought up (American Midwest). You will not see where I was born (East Coast).
And I'm talking about a relatively easy case of Chinese vs American. Are you going to tell me you can tell a Canadian-born person from an American-born at a glance?
Yes, many times you can tell where someone is from because of stereotypical cultural things that are difficult to hide. But to assume you can go for a walk and identify with certainty who is American born and who is not is ridiculous.
There are studies (see Robert Levine, "Geography of Time") that use normal walking pace as a very characteristic indicator of geographic origin.
The FBI caught Adolf Eichmann in Argentina partly because they noticed his dissonant walking pace :)
Venkat
I am not offended, that sentence rubbed me the wrong way. I agree that most certainly culture affects our activities, even to the point of how we do seemingly simple things. But the culture you have and the place where you are born are very different things. Ask anyone who is born into a displaced family that preserves their original culture.
I am an American-born Chinese person that takes walks. When you see me and my wife strolling, at that moment, you are seeing my culture (that enjoys "san-bu") not my birth place.
Abraham Cahan, _The Rise of David Delinsky_, published 1920s, set in the New York of the late 1800s & early 1900s.