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For example there's clear differences on secularism, gun-rights, access to abortion, universal healthcare, labour laws, privacy and regulation.
> The silent death of europe occured somewhere in the 00s
Sorry, how are we measuring this exactly? It's a significant reach of a statement by almost every measure. For example; if the EU is so "dead" then why do US manufacturers respect its regulations?
> secularism, gun-rights, access to abortion, universal healthcare, labour laws, privacy and regulation
At least 4 of those issues are american , not european. this just goes to show how much attention europeans pay to the US issues instead of our own issues (aging of population, demographic deficit, unaffordable housing, unemployment , lack of global competitiveness, old money, brain drain etc). And what about european tech? I only discuss about it on HN, a californian forum.
> privacy
While these are interesting issues, they are nowhere near the top of the mind of average european person. Nobody went out on the streets because they wanted cookie prompts. We are just letting bureaucrats run the show and tell us we should like it
This is wishful thinking. People pay a lot of attention to the US due to its cultural output and importance in geo-politics but when they open the door they still pay attention to their own locality which has its own context.
> At least 4 of those issues are american , not european.
I'm sorry, how are those issues not European? Do you think Europeans aren't human or something? They're social issues and its harmful to think the US has any sort of monopoly on them. I could easily pull concrete examples where those issues are relevant to European events that I might suggest you are unaware of.
> While these are interesting issues, they are nowhere near the top of the mind of average european.
I would argue that for an average European elector, privacy is a much greater expectation than it is for an American.
because they are not contested in europe, only in the US
> privacy is a much greater
It's nowhere near as important as housing or employment i think. Strict privacy was mainly championed by German Greens, not a pan-european issue
every single one of those issues gets discussed in Europe. The US does not have a monopoly on social issues, I fear you are just showing the limits of your perspective.
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Poland#Legal_sta...
Abortion is one of the few cultural topics which doesn't tend towards borad consensus. E.g. acceptance of gay rights has a tipping point and then drifts towards the 90s+%, but abortion does not.
Her husband begged the doctors to terminate her pregnancy in order to save her life but he was told "this is a Catholic country".
I marched myself on this dark day in Galway but Ireland still has a long way to go to become truly independent from its Catholic stranglehold. That caused so much pain especially to the youth.
But they are on their way yes, I was especially happy when the gay marriage made it through.
I would also suggest that considering the miserable failure of the mid-terms that the US has a similar strong average relatively set against limiting access to abortion too. Although I do appreciate that some areas of the US are more traditionally religious areas and more similar to the conservatives in Poland.
Would be interesting to have a distance metric for cultures , however
Where do you live? Are you not aware that there is a very active and ongoing war in Europe which was triggered by the desire of a certain country to be more "European", and opposition to that desire.
Note that in 2014 it was "Euro-maiden" not NATO-maiden, or West-maiden.
Umm I do advocate for privacy. And I know many people that do. Feelings about GDPR are generally very positive.
But nobody wanted cookie prompts. They are the result of a shortsighted compromise.
What the EU should have done is simply forbid user tracking or make the user take action if they want to be tracked, no not tracking should be the default. Pop-up questions should have been explicitly forbidden.
However the industry knows that nobody wants to be tracked. And feared a loss of income. So they campaigned to weaken the law. The EU officials in their stupidity agreed. Stupid yes because now the industry blames them for the abundant cookie walls.
Unfortunately this is nothing new. Democracy has its problems.
This is very apparent to me reading HN late at night my time, which is mid-morning Europe time. It's like there are two totally different groups here. (We don't all think alike, of course, but there are prevailing views that tend to get upvoted. What's interesting to me is how it shifts with time!)
I think most of these things are political rather than cultural. Specific laws take a variable amount of time to change/evolve, but are generally downstream of culture. Listing these kinds of political issues also tends to create a weird bias as you’re generally paying attention to the most extreme takes on all sides (e.g. you’ve listed access to abortion, but I would hardly consider this to be an indicator that the US was more culturally liberal than most of Europe pre-2022, just as I wouldn’t consider it an indicator that it is less culturally liberal post-2022,… it is more a political artifact than a genuine measure of culture).
French culture has very noticeably diluted in that relatively short time.
But when you see for instance the cooking section of some French media renamed 'Food' that means something... or at least that the editor is an idiot.
I'm not sure how one even defines these. As an example, most of the examples you give have a near 50/50 (+/-10%) split here in the US.
That's what I mean. Many of those issues don't have anywhere near a 50/50 split in Europe, which is part of the definition of social norms, expectations and cultural values.
What does culture have to do with companies wanting the European money?
I don't want to take a side on this one, but is your argument here really that US capitalists have high philosophical standards on what market they'll enter?
I think this is a common Anglo-American outlook that thinks that generic European is the ultimate expression of Democrat (or Blairite Labour/LibDem). There are plenty of reactionary Europeans, and since they're not completely bound to US right-left ideologies there are plenty of examples of e.g. race-realist environmentalists, or anti-abortion socialists.
edit: I mean, you've offered a literal list of US wedge issues, and assumed that Europe takes the Democratic Party position on them.
I'd say the french protests are a good testament to the french culture being alive and kicking when basically every other country accept slaving their lives away until 67+
The real problems are the unfortunate contradictions in end of politics style liberalism: growing wealth inequality, wage stagnation, increased worker efficiency and record profits, the media can only do so much to hide it. So protesters are under the impression that their demands are realistic, of course thats at the root of the argument and your outlook on it depends on your degree of faith in liberalism.
and it can. Bear in mind that these were hard fought social structures that Europe sacrificed generations for in the war, which toppled the greatest empires and ravaged our lands, they came at great expense. It might be easy for a modern American to scoff at the concept of "70's style social democracy", but it is our version of "liberty" which we would protect as much as any American might the bits of the constitution that they like.
Remember that the totality of European GDP rivals US GDP (its in the big top 3 with the US and China), we will make social democracy work because to us, its the lowest acceptable bar. While one half of American news reels will continue to peddle the concept that its impossible because its within their vested interest to do so, it remains a stalwart part of European social expectations.
Perhaps when the US suffers a crippling loss on its lands once more and is forced to face the worst outcomes of the human experience, it might consider building a kinder social state too.
I’ve been online for 17 years and so I’ve been very aware of the trend of “wokeism” and other things like that. I also live in the country known as Europe. Yet in “real life” I have never, ever encountered a woke, virtue-signalling stereotype. The closest I came was some other guy’s experience that he relayed to me.
And that goes for other American (or not) things that also are “online”: those things might be something that I can read about every day while online, but I might never hear it come up in “real life”.
> The media is generally importing american anxieties and US domestic issues are even adopted as local
Aside from some fringe people who are immediately made fun of by us normal baguette-eaters, no.
In fact this is absurd on its face: high speed internet (thanks America?) made it clear to all of us too-online citizens of the country of Europe that Americans have concerns and opinions that are completely alien to us:
- Trigger-happy police
- Dying because lack of health insurance
- Circumcision
- Individualism of the type “I’m against taxes because it’s involuntary; people should give out of their own free will”, and yet also when they are facing hardships themselves: “I’m not gonna accept no charity!” (…makes sense)
- Opinions on abortion
- Etc.
And people argue a lot about that. (In my experience English message boards are often split 50% between the US and 50% the rest of the world, so there are a fair few Europeans to argue with). That’s what happens 95% of the time; the other 5% is your version: “Oh wow, those things are so cool; I’m gonna adopt and argue for them here in the country of Europe.”
I can’t imagine most Americans have either (though the numbers may be different on this particular board).
I think most Americans are aware that the primary culture wars going on right now are fairly divorced from everyday life.
Compared to rich nations, however, it looks downright awful.
When me and my wife where choosing where to live, given we were planning to have kids, the idea of school shootings really scared us, so we had to pass on the U.S. entirely.
> > Etc.
A lot of the good films I saw the past years were from europe. I really enjoyed the contemporary scandinavian scene recently, you could try to enlarge your vision and watch different things (recommendation [0]) There's a crazy amount of artistic domains, and I can't believe that someone (as you just did) can think of having scanned successfully the whole Europe cultural practices to be allowed to say " european culture is gone". Music, dance and visual arts are being created everyday : does it constitutes a part of what you call "culture" ? Concerning the public intellectuals you talk about, well, they were only a diffusion channel for one part of the european culture , and I don't think their death implies the death of culture, but rather the lowering of the signal amplitude perception from USA.
While homogenization is at work, the cultural divide is blatant to the point of being highly visible here.
Having a foot in both worlds, I don't see it. If anything national cultures are giving way to European culture (which does have some inherited traits from the US) more than anything else.
Honest question in good faith, as even some individual EU countries don't have a consistent culture (think e.g. Germany) and at least for my very tiny slice of Europe, the culture and regional customs are still very much alive! :D
I sympathize with concerns of mythologizing culture into existence, as is usually done in the process of nation state formation, but that only succeeds because culture is such a crucial component of human life. This sort of pedantry can get in the way of engaging with its importance.
Europe has tons of intellectuals. It doesn't need the US to defend it. There is tons of culture that is incredibly different in Europe compared to the US, just look at Urbanism and Public Transit for example. And the political issues are imported because they are issues here to and young people in the West generally point in the same direction, but even then many of the issues are quite individual as well.
Emigration to the US is not that common, and immigration to places like Germany is very common. Its mostly Eastern Europe that are emigrating both to Western Europe and the US.
The same 8 lane stroads with the same super box stores and fast food chains. All connected with the same type of highway to a bunch of single family homes with little low level commercial or cultural activity.