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Comment by samfoo | Hacker News Reader

> Americans have the optimism and energy of youth, but they're also comparatively unsophisticated.

Aside from the obvious ambiguities of what defines sophistication of a culture: It feels like you're begging the question to me. "Americans are unsophisticated because they're a young culture so they're unsophisticated..."

Moreover I think suggesting that an entire culture is full of optimism and youth because it's only 300 some-odd years old strikes me quite sweeping. The modern nation state is barely as old, and it's not as if Americans don't have some cultural heritage that goes back much further than that.

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I didn't have a because in there. What I said was that Americans seem unsophisticated but energetic and optimistic, and that since all those qualities are associated with youth, you could compress them into one statement by saying American culture felt young.

Nor did I say that American culture has this quality of youthfulness because the US is a comparatively young country. In fact that seems unlikely to be the cause, because there are younger countries that don't have it.

I see your point, re-reading your original post. The phrase "young culture", to me, carries a heavy emphasis of literal age.

Ultimately -- and semantic quibbling aside -- I think you're right that American culture is (and by extension, typical Americans are) particularly energetic and optimistic.

I'm not sure I agree with unsophisticated, unless you mean "less formal".

Yeah. How can the US be exporting more culture than any other country, yet, have less of it? Something doesnt add up.

There is lots of influencal US culture. From rap to mcdonalds. We may look down upon it now, but all of tat will age into cherished cultural relics when they stop being relevant.

I think the point the OP wanted to make, is that the US has less dead culture, compared to say Europe.

Can you elaborate on what aspects of European culture you think are dead?

Well, everything from any of the previous empires, for starters.

I dont mean to suggest Europe has little culture, but unlike the states, it also has a lot of dead culture. Culture that may still inform our identity, and of which relics and remainders are embedded in the fabric of everything. Yet it is dead culture: most of us not even capable of imaging how life would be in such a culture.

Europeans (and Chinese, etc.) have a lot more historical culture. Entire large and well-documented civilizations which have passed. US culture is basically independent of pre-Colombian American culture, and most pre-Colombian cultures are badly documented and understood compared to the Greeks, Romans, various Chinese dynasties, etc.

You might also consider various fine arts to be "dead", in that their peak point has passed. Not sure if I'd argue that, but it's clearer to argue that specific schools of art meet that definition. e.g. I don't think anyone will surpass Bach in organ music.

Modern European culture isn't the part that's dead, it's that there are also "dead" cultural artifacts in Europe, while the US was basically a clean slate. That's a plus for Europe in some ways, but in some ways actually helps the US -- having to create everything from scratch, taking the best (well, maybe) of other cultures, is itself interesting. Look at Singapore for another example.

So pretty much the most Christian developed country in the world is free of what you term 'Pre-Columbian' culture?

Christianity is a fusion of Greek, Roman and Jewish thought.

The founding fathers of the US were profoundly Christian. Their politics of the day was largely what made sense to ex-British subjects. The revolution of 1688 affects the US vastly.

US political systems were created built on thousands of years of European History. Prior to 1492 US history is European History.

The US has altered and changed the ideals and beliefs that the people who founded it started with but it was not a Blank Slate.

Just because Jerusalem and Rome are not in Ohio it doesn't mean they affect the US any less than they do Sweden.

Pre-Columbian culture means the cultures of the peoples indigenous to the Americas prior to European colonization.

Think of cultures like the Sioux, Iriquois, Navajo, Mayans, Incas, Aztec, etc etc.

I meant that the Aztecs, Maya, Inca, and other Native Americans are largely irrelevant to how US culture developed (which is I think your point), not that US culture is independent of everything which happened before Europeans came to the US.

"Pre-Columbian American culture" being that of the various Native Americans, not of the world in general pre-Columbus.

(I wish I could s/Colombian/Columbian; so easy to get those confused in various contexts)

I'm guessing the dead is as in deadweight --not contributory. For example, royalty and its traditions, its cultural baggage. The British still endure what's called "the Norman yoke". That is the Normas took over a culture and imposed it on the locals. This resulted in a sharp divide between the rulers (initially foreign royals) and locals (now landless and considered lower class commoners). This division is entrenched in British culture to this day.

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