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Comment by Mr_Shiba | Hacker News Reader

Lived for a couple of years in America and opted to return to my country for similar reasons as yours

Industrialized nations mistake comfort and wealth for happiness

Everyone does, not just Americans. People aren't born knowing what they want out of life. So the first instinct or the default setting, is to do what everyone else is doing. If everyone around you is chasing X you are likely to chase it too. The more connected the world gets the more that tendency is amplified. Everyone wants an iPhone and everyone wants to line up for Avengers 29 or whatever. If it was just the Americans Apple and Disney wouldn't be raking in the cash that they do. They are just taking advantage of that default setting.

People who have twiddled about with their own default settings, whether they are in China, America or Congo find different routes to happiness that have nothing to do with what the rest of herd is upto.

I don't know where in America you lived, but not everywhere is like that. It is a big and diverse place, after all.

Which places are different?

The non-opioid-epidemic portions of rural America are very much like that.

How about if you clearly look different?

My wife wears the hijab, and I’m sure she would be treated differently in a more rural area, especially in the current political climate...

Come to Canada. Hijab's are as common as hockey sticks.

In urban centres. We have similar issues with lack of tolerance in many rural areas.

Does a hijab plus a hockey stick send an adequate "mess with me and I'll check you into the wall" vibe?

As an openly transgender person, I had the same thought. Specifically, in the Bay Area I can be a walking pride flag, and in fact strike up conversations with all kinds of people in all kinds of places and feel very connected. There's all kinds of community here that I haven't found other places I've lived.

In a lot of parts of the country I have to be very careful about what I say and how I present.

In a lot of other countries, my very existence is criminalized.

If your wife wears a hijab, then you are right, you will need to stick to a few very specific parts of the US. The good news is that in those parts, you'll probably find a thriving Muslim community to interact with.

Michigan isn't a terribly dense state but has a large Muslim population.

My rural hometown had a population of around 2000 people, and supposedly around 10% or so are hmong. They weren't treated any differently as far as I knew; several were part of what passed for the preppy / popular clique in school.

I am a white male, and get plenty of stares, because I am unusually tall and have an unusual hair style. Wherever you go, if you stand out, people will notice. That isn't a bad thing, and it doesn't mean people don't like you.

Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_the_United_States

Looks like the oldest mosques in the united states are in places like Maine, North Dakota, and Iowa (in addition to obvious places like NYC). Like I said before, this is a big, diverse country.

Tell her to wear a MAGA hat over the hijab, then people will be too confused to harass her.

Plenty of women in hijabs in rural Minnesota these days. Depends on the town but in a lot of places it's no problem at all.

As a brown person who has spent plenty of time in more rural places in America—you’d be pleasantly surprised.

Wear a mossy oak hijab into the rotation if you want to go out of your way to fit in (or just don't any you'll probably be fine).

IMO you tend to get less racism in rural areas than you do in suburbs but when you get it it's not as obscured. It's a million times more about class and culture than it is about race.

Which places are different in the United States? That's a very board question but in general there are a handful of major regions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regions_of_the_United_...

Neither discomfort and misery give you happiness. But with wealth and in comfort you have more resources to focus on what is really important to you!

I find it so incredibly ironic that it was immigrants, fleeing countries utterly lacking in comfort, wealth, or happiness, in search of a better life for themselves and their children, that helped build the comfortable industrialized nation of the United States.

It seems life - human existence - is cyclical and has amnesia. We forget too quickly what real discomfort is. Or at least, fail to strike a proper balance.

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