It’s exposed a fundamental flaw in US culture. Americans aren’t capable of dealing with a problem where their actions impact others more than themselves.
Individualism breaks down when you have to do something more for everyone else than yourself.
Individualism breaks down when you have to do something more for everyone else than yourself.
When the pandemic first got started in China and my Chinese friends started buying particle filter masks en masse, it did not feel like they were doing it for the benefit of others. Same with individual municipalities setting up road blocks or requiring quarantine for travelers from other parts of the country. They were just selfishly trying to keep the virus away.
In contrast to that, once the pandemic reached Germany, I assumed the government would handle it somehow. Turns out a large part of the government response is just telling people to behave as if they were trying really hard not to get infected.
A lot of the things the Chinese government did was only possible because they're not a democracy which has to answer to the courts
Lol, what a crock of shit. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-us-is-the-most-generou...
The issue is not individualism, it’s that a significant portion of the country literally thinks COVID is overblown and that we are shutting down for “a bad flu”. I’m extremely individualist but I take covid seriously and don’t spread it to others.
Individualist != selfish.
While it's true USA'ians are probably more individualistic than many other cultures and that may translate some way even to selfishness, the above quote is a gross, incorrect and offensive description, and I'm a brit.
Please don't broadbrush entire cultures.