The American-Western European Values Gap
pewglobal.org
pewglobal.org
On the whole, I just look at those figures and feel a deep amount of shame for my country (US). We'll catch up, but I think part of the reason for these figures is that the US is relatively rural.
Even just regional data could be useful to be a more accurate view.
I feel a deep shame for your comment. I can respect someone for believing in a socialist approach, why are you unable to do the same for those who believe in a laissez faire approach?
Although there are people like myself who think that the state does a very poor job of guaranteeing no one is in need, and that individuals are better at providing 'socialism' than governments.
Here in the UK we are slowly degenerating by allowing schools to have more freedom, so religious groups are having increased influence on standard state schools.
Treating school systems as the primary mechanism for transmitting cultural memes, and attributing social attitudes to its functions, seems a very bizarre position.
In fact, if anything, the exact reverse may be the case: by not permitting religion to have any state-supported expression, it ensures that religion is sustained and advanced by civil society itself, which yields a much more vigorous and energetic religious sphere in American culture than you'd see in countries where religion is mediated and subdued by politics.
If you can manage, check out the crowd shots in a modern televangelist audience. Lots of men, but many many more women: sometimes a shot will show 1 or 2 men, and 8-12 women.
Here's an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwMP2lEUP1E
It's not terribly surprising that women often assume a very conservative role in society, viewing themselves as keepers of tradition.
For example, the man in a western suit and woman in traditional clothes is very common all over the world, while you rarely see the opposite:
http://www.squarehe.com/images/0611/korean-wedding.jpg
http://www.ajewelrystyle.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/indi...
http://www.lassiwithlavina.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/ad...
http://hindtoday.com/blogs/images/USA/DEVENDRA_MAKKAR_Family...
http://www.lightfootfilms.org/Peruvian-Family_c.jpg
http://www.museevirtuel-virtualmuseum.ca/media/edu/EN/upload...
I'm sure it's some strange human expression having to do with who has which reproductive organs, but it's always seemed to me such a strange, interesting and repeatable pattern.
In Saudi Arabia, women must use black clothing covering almost everything. And the reason for that, is that they want to, there are no laws that say that, no religious rule that say that, and men don't enforce that, when a muslim visitor of another country wear muslim clothes but not black for example, Saudi women that will nag you to go change to something black. (or if a woman wear muslim clothing that does not cover the same things, they also get nagged by other women).
That said, I disagree with your statement that religion marginalize women. Maybe, because I am religious myself.
For example middle east people believe that women should not display themselves in public, on the other hand they DO should display themselves at home for their husbands, this led to some curious architecture, where homes have one "public" area, where visitors are welcome, and women show up covered, and a "private" area, that depending on the home not even male adult sons of the family is allowed, where women can stroll naked or almost naked. (this when dialed up to eleven that results into the "Harem" that for necessity reasons need male people working on it, thus the eunuchs)
In Egypt the reason for why a women should cover herself still apply: people (specially desert semi-nomads) still kidnap beautiful women. Since covered women you do not know if they are beautiful or not, they don't kidnap them.
Arabs are specially wary of Tuaregs, Arabs perceive them as women kidnappers, and I think that perception is not all illusion.
That is not true.
It is only as our planning horizon has shrunk from a thousand years to six months that we begin to look on motherhood as a form of slavery. Females are told that they must do anything but a traditional female role to have value in society. We cajole women to act like men. In a way, liberalism is ironically misogynist.
It is little surprise then that Western liberals no longer breed above replacement rates. Denigrating motherhood is not the way for a people to last the aeons of time. I believe the future of the West is profoundly more conservative than the present, because Darwin. Liberalism is a suicidal ideology.
There's your problem.
Equality means removing old sexist views about the role of men and women in society. "Women to act like men" or "men to act like women" is a farce.
Humans should be free to define their role for themselves.
Also, I don't know why you're worried about the amount of humans on the planet. It's already overpopulated.
How can there be the kind of equality that you are referring to when there is no equivalence?
There are always going to be some women who could have done better than the man that got the job that they both interviewed for. Same for men who were beat out by a women, but the idea that some preconceived notion that a man is going to be a better fighter pilot than a women is going to go away is pure fantasy. When something is true 99+% of the time, people are going to lean toward probability. It is human nature.
I guarantee that if anyone in this topic (man or women) was playing a game of deadly roulette and had to choose odds with who was more qualified and would do a better job in a field of men and women with certain careers, everyone here would be a "sexist".
So don't call out someone with There's your problem. If you consider it a problem then it is YOUR problem too. Maybe not on the same level, but you yourself are affected by it on some level (like it or not). You are a human - therefore have human nature.
American women are not told that they must do anything but being a housewife. They are actively encouraged to pursue careers that at one time women were basically forbidden to pursue. Most of those careers are compatible with motherhood as much as they are compatible with fatherhood.
Especially black American women who have to look forward to being a bitch, a mother, and a low wage worker. Liberation for the win. This rhetoric is about reducing people to workers and saying that because people can't serve a corporation they are not being themselves because the desire that corporations create for women to be something in the public sphere competes with similar jobs which they held in the private sphere.
Liberation is freedom from work to do whatever you choose. Liberation has not held up to this ideal as it's a lie. The whole point of women's lib was to increase the work force so that the capitalists can have more people in the economy and the government can tax those people and get richer and so on.
Of course, we are talking about distributions of traits and there are outliers in both sexes[2], and everyone ought to be judged individually on their own characteristics. But we need to recognize that the average woman and the average man are substantially different, and we should expect their behavior to diverge.
[1] http://bsb-lab.org/site/wp-content/uploads/DelGiudice_etal_2...
Second, the perfect equality hypothesis does not describe my beliefs. I guess it my describe some non-scientifically-minded liberals' beliefs, maybe even most, but that does not matter very much. What I believe is that perfectly equal opportunity ought to be available to both sexes, and that women should control their own reproductive choices. I believe that we should work to minimize any effects that would tend to accentuate the differences between the sexes. And I believe this independent of the magnitude of those differences. Fundamentally, it does not matter to me if a paper did demonstrate differences, even in a perfectly equal society. It would still be optimal under my value function to no further accentuate them.
But, to wrap it up, I think it's really far fetched to suggest that conservative social policy towards women is the way it is because it's good for women. I mean, just look at what and who women vote for. (Then again, perhaps this is a bad argument because poor people vote for conservatives all the time.)
Isn't the use of "optimal" here a contradiction, if in fact, we don't nurture certain innate differentiating factors in people to their full potential? For example, lets say we find evidence that developing perfect pitch is indeed something you have to be born with, and that you have a son/daughter born with it. Would you not want a bit more musical exposure for them than usual? Not 'pushing' them necessarily, but certainly emphasizing the difference enough to maybe intrigue them about the possibility of developing their full potential in that area?
We already know that people are born with certain 'limitations' (for the lack of a better word) in terms of IQ, so the idea of dealing with biological differences is nothing new in the realm of cognitive science, and sex/gender is but one of many variables that could affect personality/cognitive performance in an array of areas. So really, it would almost seem like denying this probability is the more conservative viewpoint, no?
Either way, this whole area is much too complicated to be simplifying it in such terms, and neuroscience is still much too young to help guide us thoroughly, but dismissing it outright seems like a mistake to me. After all, culture[1] is an emergent property of our individual personalities coming together, which are themselves emergent properties of our brains/genetics...
[1] As an interesting side-note, there have apparently been some attempts at converging neurology with anthropology recently, so hopefully this will help more research come along about any links between biological and cultural differences: https://brainsciencepodcast.squarespace.com/bsp/2013/neuroan...
No, because I specified that it was under a given value function (mine). You seem to be assuming that I'm optimizing economic production or something like that, which is where differentiating factors tend to come in. That is of course not what I think is most important.
Simple counter example: let's say there were some means of doubling half the population's output, assuming we only had to keep them miserable by telling them they are worth less for the duration of their childhood. I would not make that trade. Whether there are differentiating factors doesn't factor into the question for me.
> Either way, this whole area is much too complicated to be simplifying it in such terms
That will never fail to be the case in almost any complex subject you want to talk about, but it doesn't mean you can't say useful things. For example, "I value that women be as free to choose their way as I, and not be systematically diverted to choices that are convenient to males via their representation in the media, via social policies, etc. I value this more highly than whatever minor benefits I believe are likely to stem out of the socially regressive way of doing things."
Ok, but what's the benefit of defending a position on the basis of it being a personal belief? The greater context here is on how certain viewpoints shape society, so naturally I assumed that to be your point of reference. Opinions are all well and good, but when discussing effects on a population larger than oneself, it's generally more practical to deal with issues empirically, which means acknowledging additional context and not regressing to arbitrary value functions. What is the ideal value function here? If you have a notion of one, it'd be easier to understand your point of view if you were to explain that clearly first before giving us the end result of your logical conclusions. Then the discussion could turn into a rational productive one about whether or not that value function is actually a logical one.
> let's say there were some means of doubling half the population's output, assuming we only had to keep them miserable by telling them they are worth less for the duration of their childhood. I would not make that trade.
I wouldn't either, but I don't find this to be a realistic example. Adjusting for IQ for example, would ideally increase people's confidence, motivation, and happiness, because they would experience the same ratio of difficulty:reward throughout their lives as everyone else, not the highly unjust and disproportionate one (with way too much difficulty over reward) that they face now. The example I gave of perfect pitch is also a realistic situation, and I see no reason for not exposing your child to more areas he/she might be good at. If you have a value function that differs on these outcomes, please extrapolate on that, because I feel it would clear things up a bit.
> That will never fail to be the case in almost any complex subject you want to talk about
True, but I was talking with specific regards to the development of neurology when I stated that. Sorry, should've probably been more clear on that.
> "I value that women be as free to choose their way as I, and not be systematically diverted to choices that are convenient to males via their representation in the media, via social policies, etc. I value this more highly than whatever minor benefits I believe are likely to stem out of the socially regressive way of doing things."
See, I value this too, and I value it equally when you substitute "women" with "men" as well[1]. I just don't believe that what you're labeling as "socially regressive" is in fact, socially regressive; there is a fine distinction between oppression and well-informed difference optimization. Unfortunately, this has been given a bad reputation historically (e.g. 'separate but equal' nonsense), but the real problem seems to be a greater misunderstanding of what "equality" as a concept should even look like, because generally, differences are much too nuanced to totally nullify or account for, to really provide a truly equal environment.
[1] An important designation to make when dealing with human equality. Here's an interesting 'case study' that exemplafies this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eqYEVYZgdo
You have a particularly twisted idea of what women's lib was about, and also what 'liberation' means. Women in the workplace surged after WWII not because the capitalists went "awesome!", but because it became increasingly apparent that it was not true that women couldn't do 'work'.
Besides, women's liberation in the West stretches at least as far back as the suffragette movements, which is hardly something pushed by capitalists.
- Women had to take over many of the jobs and responsibilities of the men that went off to fight during the American Civil War. Unfortuently, it does not get recognized as having the same impact as WW2 did on women and freedom to choose one's own path in life, but it was the "catalyst" while WW2 was more of the "coup de grâce" in holding onto the outdated ideas.
- The Temperance Movement in America. Although there's much to dislike about the Temperance Movement, it was initially started by women that were fed up with alcohol tearing apart their families. Women realized that when they organized and stood up for what they believed in, that others would listen and rally behind them with many counties and states putting restrictions on alcohol long before the 18th Amendment. Many of the women, including Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony would go onto start the Women's Suffrage Movement in the United States.
Modern technologies mean a smaller group of people can have vastly superior industry and military.
Human cloning and artificial general intelligence have the potential to far outproduce any traditional society.
My guess would be that they don't actually believe their own ad copy.
Because different sexes perform different roles in different species? Even watched a nature documentary?
Nobody blinks an eye when some women doesn't have kids and choose career. On the other hand being a "house husband" that doesn't work and "only" deal with house and kids is still considered weird and people think you are "not 100% man".
See the whole "real men" stereotype. There's no "real women" stereotype. We have one sex that have a choice, and one that doesn't. It's even visible in fashion. Women wear what they want. Men doesn't wear dresses.
BTW at least part of the differences in salaries is direct consequence of that. People expect men to keep working no matter the family situation, because "man should work". With women there's significant probability that they'll eventually choose kids, and salary reflects that belief.
Feminists try to deal with the salary gap by regulation - I don't think it will work. You need to change society so men have same choice women have. It will be even harder.
[1] Nor do I necessarily agree, either, but I don't want to get sidetracked.
Because it doesn't work. Women prefer uncaring[1], unpredictable[2] guys over dutiful housemates[3][4].
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22517110
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/opinion/sunday/i-heart-unp...
[3] http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-01/asa-shw012413...
[4] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/9572187/Cou...
It doesn't really work like that. India has over 1 billion people, and I'm sure "traditional" lower caste women there "breed above replacement rates" as you put it.
On the other side you might have an upper middle class, white, historically mainline Protestant couple living in the US. Both have a sibling, both have advanced degrees, both have parents who went to college. Their families have slowly been acquiring wealth for generations. The couple will have two "replacement rate" kids.
On the other hand, the lower caste Indian woman has more than one child die in infancy. The family does not always have enough food to eat every day.
Yet in your mind, the Indian family is a winner because of "Darwin", because the western liberals have a "suicidal ideology". But who would doubt the upper middle class American son would not want to trade places with the Indian kid, and there's a much more significant chance that the Indian kid would trade places with the white kid.
You seem to see some "contempt" and a "misogynist" tone in the parent which I do not. You're advocating a way of life and morality and such that belongs to history, and to rural farmers in that history. The US is losing its industrial jobs never mind its agricultural jobs. Traditional life in the US is Michael Moore's "Roger & Me" vision of 1950s blue collar unionized industrial workers driving their cars back to the suburbs. A way of life going away with Detroit's bankruptcy. Your vision of women only raising kids, and more than two as you say, is not traditional, it's almost ancient tradition. It's like, Pennsylvania farmers circa late 17th century. The Amish and Mennonites in Pennyslvania live like you're talking. But most of America considers it rather antiquated.
Fertility rate for white female with college degree (liberal dream) is 1.6 in US. What it means? It means that it takes only 10 generations (180-250 years) to go from 150 million species to 15 million (10x reduction). That means that current model of liberal society just does not work from evolutional perspective. Being educated white female is a negative trait from evolutionary perspective.
I am saying this as somebody who has highly educated girlfriend and who is very unlikely to have more than two kids (one reason being that it takes 200k to send one kid to college).
[1] http://jaymans.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/tfr-us-by-lib-con...
[2] http://jaymans.wordpress.com/2013/07/12/whos-having-the-babi...
Just look at Siege of Baghdad by mongolian hordes or depopulation and fall of Roman Empire.
Ironically, Darwin's work and ideas will be banned as a result.
Only if they follow a certain line. Those lines are defined by the nature of society, and being from a country that has a middle-class which resonates between being mildly conservative to ultra-conservative, these lines can be anything, but in the end they are nothing more than a tool to control women. For mildly conservatives, they are happy if their daughter goes to a medical school, but then the same girls are put into marriages even before they complete their medical school. For the ultra-conservatives, women are supposed to be hidden behind those hideous burqas and must be married off as soon as it can be. Again under the pretense of Honor.
The only thing common between them is of course mothers and wives are honored. If only they do not challenge the status-quo, do not ask for their rights, are an honor to a family.
This is not honor. This is a vile way to justify objectification of half of the population.
The implication here seems to be that politics is a major independent predictor of fertility rates, i.e. liberal views on gender depress fertility rates, independently of, say, socioeconomic status. Is that true? If we look across countries, the lowest birth rates aren't in places particularly famed for the dominance of their feminist movements: South Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan.
It should be noted that regardless of one's political beliefs, our modern culture can broadly be considered "liberal" and it is an extreme conservative indeed that doesn't guzzle down liberal books, movies, and television. Thus, while conservatism increases your fertility at the margin, white Americans of all political persuasions are having fewer kids than they used to[3].
[1] http://jaymans.wordpress.com/2013/07/12/whos-having-the-babi...
[2a] http://jaymans.wordpress.com/2013/07/12/whos-having-the-babi...
[2b] http://jaymans.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/conserv-by-iq-kid...
[3] http://jaymans.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/lib-cons-cohorte....
Quote: After Mongol rule had been ended by the Ming Dynasty in 1368, [there was] a violent Chinese backlash against West and Central Asians. In order to contain the violence, the Ming administration instituted a policy where all West and Central Asian males were required to intermarry with native Chinese females, hence assimilating them into the local population.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscegenation#China
Please also note that in most other culture, the way to fix ethnic violence is in the "remove them away" to "kill them all" range. In the above example, the solution found was "merge them through our girls", which actually worked not that bad (Hui people still exist, and are relatively well integrated).
Also there is no need to 'breed above replacement rates'. For thousands of years humans in Europe were living in much smaller numbers. There is no need to add more millions to the 500+ million people we already have here. To get to more sustainable levels of population, we'll some downsizing can be necessary.
We need to see that the religious fundamentalistic views will die out over the next decades, with its proponents. At least in Europe.
Please read: http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm
Completely not true. It's the nature of work and power in human societies since the Neolithic revolution, that put man in control.
As an aside, I find your reaction amusing. Why should anyone be ashamed that Americans think it's necessary to use force to preserve order in the world, or that Americans believe our culture to be superior? We are coming off a 60 year run in which:
1) The U.S. subsidized the military defense of Europe through NATO against the Soviet Union;
2) America dominated nearly every major field of technological development;
3) Europe, after economic dysfunction in the 1970's and 1980s, took pages out of the American playbook and enjoyed resurgent economies in the 1990's and 2000's as a result of economic liberalization and deregulation.
Over the last 60 years, America has given the world: peace, the transistor, computers, the cell phone, and the internet. People in France watch American media (Hollywood) on an American platform (Youtube), then talk about it all on an American website (Facebook). America has reshaped world culture and technology to a degree that only a few countries can claim: Great Britain and Rome. There is nothing to be ashamed of in taking a little credit for that.
Well, for people outside America it does seem both arrogant and amusing in fairly equal parts.
By the way, about your list.
Peace - bwahahahaha
Transistor - The Canadian Julius Edgar Lilienfeld first patented the FET.
Computer - The first programmable electronic computer was built by Tommy Flowers in the UK for WWII codebreaking.
Cell phone - Yep, american's built the first cell phones.
Internet - Certainly a hell of a lot of the initial work was done in the States, but the protocols were knocked out between groups in Stanford and University College London and the bit of it that most people use was designed by Tim Berners-Lee while at CERN.
how many global conflicts, or even local conflicts between any two major powers, have there been in the past 60 years? While "Pax Americana" obviously isn't perfect, it's hard to deny that it doesn't exist.
>Transistor - The Canadian Julius Edgar Lilienfeld first patented the FET.
He was actually Hungarian, (and emigrated to the US shortly afterward) but that's besides the point. He never actually created his design, only patented it. It took another 20 years for a design to actually be implemented by Shockley and others at Bell labs.
>Computer - The first programmable electronic computer was built by Tommy Flowers in the UK for WWII code breaking.
Fair... Although it was IBM, Intel, RCA, DEC and eventually Apple which made computing what it is today.
>Internet - Certainly a hell of a lot of the initial work was done in the States, but the protocols were knocked out between groups in Stanford and University College London and the bit of it that most people use was designed by Tim Berners-Lee while at CERN.
Fair
You are trying to redefine the word peace to fit your rhetoric.
I prefer to define peace as an absence of war, in which case we definitely have not seen anything like peace, and certainly not because of US involvement. The US has been involved in, and started, many wars over the last 60 years where millions died, has backed many brutal dictatorships (and continues to back them - see Bahrain), and has pioneered in the last decades new ways to perform targeted assassinations far beyond its borders, including innocent civilians far from any war zone. Hardly a force for peace. There are many good things about US culture but promoting global peace or human rights is not one of them.
Pax Americana is an old comforting lie, as was Pax Britannica, and the Pax Romana before it.
The absence of war is relative. The late 20th century was remarkably free of the kinds of conflicts between major powers that defined the 17th, 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries.
What relative peace coincident with the ascendancy of Rome, Britain, and America have in common is that a global with overwhelming military power keeps major wars from breaking out between lesser powers.
After all, do you think Europe suddenly just got religion in the 1950's after hundreds of years of infighting? Human nature didn't change that suddenly--what changed was the political balance of power: there was no room for Britain to war with France or Germany when the Soviet Union and the U.S. were internationally dominant.
There have been many wars all over the globe, including some in progress still involving the US, we've been on the edge of global nuclear war due to brinkmanship between the US and USSR, we've seen genocide in various African countries, Syria, Iran-Iraq, Iraq, Iraq II, civil war across the middle east. There is no Pax Americana.
That is not relative peace, that is a state of constant warfare, much like the rest of global history.
The Z3 predates Colossus. [1][2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z3_%28computer%29
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_hardware
peace
Ah, yes. It was all America's doing. No-one else has done anything of note since the end of WWII.
Hang on... who instigated that unnecessary war in the Middle East ten years ago? Oh, and who propped up a puppet regime in South East Asia before that? Hrm... where was this clarion call for peace in the Second Congo War?
The US should be proud of its achievements, but for the love of god, stop doing that all-too-American thing of taking all the credit.
Pretty much every major conflict in the second half of the 20th century was instigated or at least participated in by the US (Korea, Vietnam, both Gulf wars, Afghanistan, numerous conflicts in South America and SE Asia where the US tried to topple local governments etc). How about supporting various local militia groups all over the world to fight local regimes (Al-Qaeda and the Taliban come to mind).
As for technological inventions, America has definitely given the world the gift of numerous technological breakthroughs in the recent history, but so have other nations, and let's not forget that no nation has ever achieved anything without relying on the foundations laid out by somebody else before them. To quote Isaac Newton, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants". If it hadn't been for the European civilization, America wouldn't even exist. And likewise, Europeans would still be savage barbarians if it hadn't been for the Roman Empire and Greece beforehand... and those empires would've had nothing without the ancient cultures of Mesopotamia and Egypt. The way the human civilization works is through constant collaboration and migration of human intellect, goods and people.
So before you turn this into a pissing contest about how much better the US is than the rest of the world (which you have already done, judging by other posts in this thread), consider what I wrote above.
The U.S. spent decades and trillions of dollars fighting the Soviet Union so Europe didn't have to. You can send the thank-you cards in the mail.
Now, before anyone says that Europeans have inflicted much more violence on the world over the course of history, I do agree with that. As a civilization, we've done some really atrocious things to various indigenous cultures, each other and even our own citizens at times. The thing is, most of us don't have a problem looking ourselves in the mirror and admitting this.
America has done wonderful things for the world and I'm sure everyone is thankful for that. But it doesn't change the fact that it has and still does act like a gang of murderous self serving international criminals. If you can take credit for the good things that you've done, you should also be able to take responsibility for the bad things. No one is perfect and I don't see why Americans get so freaking defensive every time someone points out a flaw with their country. You're not perfect, it's a part of the human condition and just learn to accept it.
The U.S. does act in its own national interest, but it has taken a broader view of national interest than any major power in modern times. Rhetoric aside, it doesn't act on some abstract love of democracy. Rather, it acts on a practical commitment to preserving the status quo of the ascendency of the western democracies. And that just happens to be in the interest of much of Europe too.
> Now, before anyone says that Europeans have inflicted much more violence on the world over the course of history, I do agree with that
The tendency in Europe right now is to think that you're outside of history. That the forces that existed in Europe, embroiling it in nearly perpetual war for hundreds of years before World War II no longer exist. I'd posit that this isn't really the case. You're not different or better people now than you ever were. Something else is in play.
> No one is perfect and I don't see why Americans get so freaking defensive every time someone points out a flaw with their country.
I'm not trying to be defensive. I'm pointing out something Europeans tend to gloss over: it's easy to feel like you've turned the corner on violence and war when the U.S.'s foreign policy just happens to involve clearing all your brush fires for you. Let's not pretend. It's not like Europe doesn't benefit tremendously from U.S. attempts to maintain stability in the middle east and keep the oil flowing. It's not like Europe could afford to spend relatively little on their militaries in the face of continued Russian military power if the U.S. didn't exist as a foil. Going back further, it's not like no European country had anything to do with Vietnam...
How about "we realize that freedom tends to lead to positive outcomes not only for those who are being granted freedom, but those they interact with, including us. But even if we don't particularly share in the direct material benefits, we enjoy the warm fuzzy feeling we get from knowing that people in other parts of the world are enjoying certain freedoms we also cherish"?
It's not all propaganda and platitudes.
And pretty much every destructive building fire was instigated or at least participated in by the fire department, and every deadly epidemic was instigated or at least participated in by the medical community.
Comparatively speaking, the world has enjoyed almost-unprecedented peace and prosperity since 1945. It's all the more remarkable when you consider the destruction wrought by World War II, together with the relentless drive for conquest by the USSR and other communist states, notably North Korea and North Vietnam. The U.S.'s contributions of blood and treasure were a necessary component of that peace and prosperity; the era really should be called the Pax Americana.
Sure, we made some misjudgments along the way, some of them truly terrible. But Colin Powell, former U.S. secretary of state (and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), put it well [1]: "And when all those conflicts were over, what did we do? Did we stay and conquer? ... No, the only land we ever asked for was enough land to bury our dead."
I for one am glad that we don't share the same views on the whole as Western Europe, especially the self-reliance and choose-your-own-adventure. It's the over-reliance on the government that has Western Europe in the terrible economic shape that it is.
While we have gone a bit overboard in letting corporations dictate so much of our rules and regulations, all in all, the capitalist system we have gives people more opportunities than our European counterparts. Our culture may not be superior (how could it be when we've only been around for ~250 years), but our economics most certainly are.
I think the Europeans' smugness and looking down their noses at the "upstarts" in the colonies has gotten to you.
>Opinions are just that - opinions.
Except when they're not in line with yours apparently. wow.
That's kind of funny when you consider this graph: http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2011/11/2011-VALUES0010.png
Abused/brainwashed is pretty much similar, except one might have physical traces.
"Brainwashing" is a term too lightly used - although it can happen, the average religious person is not brainwashed. They simply just grow up with a certain cultural mindset.
I'm not saying science is equivalent to a religion, but rather that a religious worldview is just as unshakable as a non-religious worldview.
A closeminded person would say, "Yeah, so what if it shows it has 200HP for a 1.8l engine, that's still not real power. I mean, you're using turbos and DI unlike me. I'm using `pure` engine power".
[I shifted gears (no pun intended) to something else because in my experience debate/discussion on religion NEVER ends well)
Not really - 82.4% of the US population lives in urban areas, which is a bit higher than the UK (79.6%) and quite a bit higher than Germany (73.9%), Italy (68.4%) or Ireland (62.2%):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_by_country
[NB France, Sweden and Finland are even more urban that the US]
Although a family may be relatively liberal, they feel pressured by neighbors to control their daughters. In some cases they even are shamed by neighbors calling their more conservative families back home.
The interesting fact is that this "morality police" is driven by more women than men.
Get over it. As an American living in Western Europe, there are plenty of things to be ashamed about everywhere. And there is a lot of good stuff in the US, too. Forget about this so quickly?
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html
The important thing is to try and identify things that your country doesn't do so well, and try and import the good stuff from elsewhere. This is a long and slow process that requires lots of hard work. And it's also complicated, because sometimes the good things are mixed up with the bad things.
Humans are not evil because when people are different, they tend to group them all together. This is human nature. This affects everyone's decision making (including yours). If you were in a game of deadly roulette where you had to pick the outcome of certain peoples lives, how certain people would react to certain challenges or situations, how well certain people would do in certain jobs - you would go with the numbers too. You would not treat these people equally. Therefore you yourself are sexist, bigoted, and stereotype people just as those you criticize.
Just knowing this this fact means that these probabilities do have an affect on you.
I am not condoning the mistreatment of anyone - I am merely saying that blindly ignoring peoples strengths and weaknesses is foolishness. Also, giving resources or opportunity which was not earned or deserved to someone will not usually result in a better outcome. Negative side effects create more problems to this scenario than the original solution was meant to solve (and it too fails).
(a) "freedom to pursue one’s goals without state interference."
vs
(b) "State guarantees nobody is in need".
The formulation shows an American understanding/bias on the issue. For a lot of Europeans (a) is not about real freedom, because it translates to big corporations and private interests shaping your life and be given free pass to exploit people.
That is, we don't see "state" as an enemy that restricts us, but as the (imperfect of course) embodiment of our collective will, as stated through democracy, that helps set the stage for our personal freedom.
So those same questions are also read as:
(a) Do you want to forgo a lot of democratic procedures, and have society be a jungle where you are supposedly "free" but in practice the "big fish" can crush you at will, or have you starve to work for them cheaper?
vs
(b) You want people to vote and use the state power to restrict exploitation and need in the interests of the majority, and thus be able to enjoy your individual freedom better.
So it's not really about valuing "freedom" vs "state", it's about how different peoples see how freedom works and what state does.
The difference seems to be in the scale and scope of that concentration and assertion of power. So, if you're inclined to minimize the capacity of any external institution to shape your life or to exploit you, which option is most optimal? Do you prefer option (a), which admits at most a haphazard and ad hoc system of institutional control - one which can, with some effort, be evaded - or option (b), which establishes a universal and de jure system of institutional control, evading which requires resources inaccessible to most?
I've always found it odd that so many think the solution to the concentration of power in the hands of a plurality organized institutions is to concentrate all power in the hands of a single organized institution.
Yes there are exceptions when the reverse is true. (but note that I am calling large corporations)
I'm pretty sure there is no large corporation whose management is democratically elected by all the people it employs and whose life they affect, with each vote counting the same, be it a janitor or a CEO.
I know the above idealistic view of a democratic government is also not true in the real world, but governments do get a lot closer to that ideal than giant corporations ever have.
In terms of the ability to assert one's freedom, I'd regard exit as being of far greater importance than voice.
> but governments do get a lot closer to that ideal
Why do you believe that the "ideal" you're positing is the best one to maximize human freedom? Democracy is still a kind of uniform, monopolistic rule.
I'll also point out, as an aside, that you're channeling this conversation into a debate opposite sides of a false dichotomy: the existing forms of centralized government and commercial corporation are hardly the only two viable models for social institutions: there's a vast range of alternatives that offer a variety of risk-reward tradeoffs.
That false dichotomy is also based on the presumption that people must outsource responsibility for a wide range of elements of their lives to some external institution. But what about people who want to take direct responsibility for their lives, or create their own social institutions in conjunction with like-minded others for that purpose? How are they not hamstrung by attempts to create universal monopolies?
You really ought to qualify that with "where" in practice there isn't much difference.
In the US, yes, obviously your government is pretty much entirely bought by corporations to such extent that I'd be hard-pressed to even call it a de facto democracy.
There's other parts in the world however, that have multiple political parties, that actually have radically different viewpoints on a wide variety of topics, which are not merely deemed "the lesser evil" by many[0] of their supporters ... some (this depends on the party) even depend on their supporters for input on what policy course to take.
Sounds pretty utopian, but such places do exist.
[0] you can never please everyone, of course
> Why do you believe that the "ideal" you're positing is the best one to maximize human freedom?
I don't. Nor do I believe it is right to merely maximize human freedom. You need to maximize both freedom and happiness, didn't you ever take a course on ethics? If you only have one but not the other you get terrible badwrong things.
To clarify further, it felt weird to defend democracy in my previous post. I don't usually do that, I think it's a very imperfect solution, but it's still the best option that I know of.
> Democracy is still a kind of uniform, monopolistic rule.
Sure, it's just that most alternatives that I know or heard of generally fail on the "who's going to take care of the elderly and the disabled?" criterion. In particular the ones that aim at purely maximizing freedom are generally proposed by young and healthy individuals that either don't realize or don't care that part of society will be left rotting in the streets that way.
You cannot judge a society by how it treats the average individual, you can only judge it by how it treats those who are worst off.
> I'll also point out, as an aside, that you're channeling this conversation into a debate opposite sides of a false dichotomy: the existing forms of centralized government and commercial corporation are hardly the only two viable models for social institutions: there's a vast range of alternatives that offer a variety of risk-reward tradeoffs.
I didn't mean to do that, I'm not even sure that I did.
> That false dichotomy is also based on the presumption that people must outsource responsibility for a wide range of elements of their lives to some external institution. But what about people who want to take direct responsibility for their lives
Yeah usually that means these people want to be free of the burden to also take responsibility for the lives of those who cannot (or not to a useful extent).
There are exceptions of course, but people that do this by their own motivations, are pretty rare, definitely not enough to take care of the problem. Even if you take into account that most (but definitely not all) will take care of their own families (but not everybody has that luxury either).
> or create their own social institutions in conjunction with like-minded others for that purpose? How are they not hamstrung by attempts to create universal monopolies?
It is my experience that, unless such social institutions are in fact governments (or something very similar, religion, giant computer, etc), these communities will fail after about 30+ years when generation-churn sets in and the amount of "like-minded others" in the community starts to dwindle.
It's perfectly possible to start some beautiful communal living project where everybody knows what's what because they all believe the same thing, and it can go very well for a while, make a beautiful space to live, etc. However, as soon as the original founders start to disappear (or can't do their part anymore), and if there is no "construct" that is somehow bigger than the individuals that makes sure the values of the society are kept as they were intended, it'll fall apart. Such a construct is called a government (or something very similar).
For a real-life example of this happening, see Christiania in Kopenhagen, Denmark. Beautiful idea, really fallen apart. If you ever visit Kopenhagen, check it out, not for what's left of the hippie art and community ideals, but for the broken roads, windows and alcoholics. It's very educational. Fortunately there's an actual state just a few blocks away.
It's true everywhere to some extent. I'd suspect that extent is likely a function of scale; the broader the scope and greater the impact of political power, the more likely it is to be disconnected from any viable mechanism of restraint or accountability.
> In the US, yes, obviously your government is pretty much entirely bought by corporations to such extent that I'd be hard-pressed to even call it a de facto democracy.
I don't understand this obsession with corporations. Any political system of sufficiently concentrated power is going to be controlled by whatever faction has the means to manipulate it. Whether that manipulation is expressed via money, social connections, Machiavellian ruthlessness, or some other mechanism, the end result is the same. There's simply no such thing as a government that's uniformly accountable to every person in equal measure.
If you think your own country - whichever it is - is immune to this, you're probably not looking closely enough.
> Yeah usually that means these people want to be free of the burden to also take responsibility for the lives of those who cannot (or not to a useful extent).
No, I don't think it does. Again, that false dichotomy is showing up; it's implicit in your viewpoint, even if you're not consciously articulating it. People's duties toward others are a function of their actual relationships with those others; the mutual obligations and the mechanisms of reciprocal accountability by which people involve themselves in each other's lives are properly defined by those people themselves.
In other words, every particular relationship or community is a society unto itself, and its members have the right to make their own rules and set their own standards, in the manner that they choose, without being shoehorned into conformity with abstract universals imposed by some external institution. The political state is properly a failsafe mechanism, to be invoked if and when disputes and controversies that arise within substantive social contexts aren't contained and resolved within those social contexts; its legitimate role is judicial, not legislative. The state is not properly the a priori driver of social norms or the definer of mutual obligations.
What you're calling "democracy" is a bit of a misnomer, because it doesn't have its roots in any substantive demos that actually exists; it gets its theoretical mandate from an abstraction of society, not the actual thing.
> There are exceptions of course, but people that do this by their own motivations, are pretty rare, definitely not enough to take care of the problem. Even if you take into account that most (but definitely not all) will take care of their own families (but not everybody has that luxury either).
Then your own system isn't enough to take care of the problem either, because no matter what institutional forms you create within society, that society is always composed of the same people, bearing the same motivations.
The logic of "people are too stupid/selfish/evil to manage things on their own, so lets put some institution controlled by those same people in charge of everything!" is quite obviously broken.
If anything, the existence of political will sufficient to create policy in aim of certain social objectives is evidence that there indeed is sufficient will for society to just work towards those objectives directly, without using politics, and without people misdirecting their energies and resources into dysfunctional institutions that generate unnecessary conflict. And when people eschew politics, and just work to address the problems they care about, they'll probably be a lot more successful at it.
> It is my experience that, unless such social institutions are in fact governments (or something very similar, religion, giant computer, etc), these communities will fail after about 30+ years when generation-churn sets in and the amount of "like-minded others" in the community starts to dwindle.
I'm glad you've managed to gain experience of social institutions administered by giant computers - that solid empirical data will surely reveal some important truths :)
In seriousness, though, this doesn't appear to be the general case at all. The vast majority of our social infrastructure - language, art, commerce, law itself - has been developed and sustained over millennia by bottom-up emergence, not by institutional fiat. If anything, the rise of centralized state power over the past century or so has eroded them and made them more susceptible to failure, not less so. It's actually given us the worst of both worlds with respect to the conservative/radical dichotomy: by imposing top-down uniformity on society, it eliminates the opportunities for experimentation and innovation at the micro level, which are the source of all real progress, while forcing everyone into patterns defined entirely according to abstractions and rationalizations at the macro level, denying us the ability to refine our social infrastructure against real experience.
> For a real-life example of this happening, see Christiania in Kopenhagen, Denmark.
I'm well aware of Christiania; and I'll say that I'm not sure that the organizing principles of that particular community were necessarily the most suited to long-term survival - which is fine; we learn from failed experiments - but I'm also aware that its decline wasn't entirely a matter of its own defects, but that it was in part actively undermined by the "official authorities".
The difference is in the use, origin and organization of such "capacity". Which makes all the difference in the world.
For one, state power comes from elections and laws passed by elected representatives of the majority. Corporate and private interest power on the other hand is arbitrary.
Second, the democratic state (however imperfect) was founded to serve the people. And in most cases it was founded BY the people, through bloody struggles against opressors (feudalism, colonial powers, the King, etc). Corporate and private interest power on the other hand is self serving.
To put it in another way, "private interests" amount to a dictatorial state (or, to be more presice, to a constellation of dictatorial regions of control). Something people fight to get rid of, and establish democratic states.
>The difference seems to be in the scale and scope of that concentration and assertion of power.
Private interests, if left unguarded, can drawf states in scale and scope (and have done so, in tons of historical examples, especially for less powerful countries. The term "Banana Republic" is an example of that).
So, nope, the difference is in the origin and check of that power, as well as the purpose of it.
>So, if you're inclined to minimize the capacity of any external institution to shape your life or to exploit you, which option is most optimal?
No question about it: stump private interests at every opportunity.
In a democracy, its called an election. They happen regularly and you have a direct say on them. The directors of large companies however you have absolutely no say on.
Also, its not always possible to just "join or found a better" company for many, many reasons. Perhaps my comparative advantage isn't in building up companies against entrenched competition. Perhaps there isn't capital available to start a company in a particularly capital intensive or regulated industry. Perhaps the company tactics are awful enough to destroy me even if I tried (eg. mafia visits, suppliers refuse to deal, FUD campaigns).
Even if a market is hard to enter, it's better than having armed officers show up and charge you with treason for trying to overthrow the government. Reflect on the political situation leading up to the American Civil War. Even with that many people who felt that strongly about the issue of states' rights, they were not able to change the structure of the government.
(PS. I am not aware of the US Civil War (beyond the Ironclad battle) so I can not comment on that)
The use, origin, and organization of power is an expression of human nature, and is substantively the same within all human institutions. Differences in form do little to differentiate the range of potential abuses that concentrated power might enable.
> To put it in another way, "private interests" amount to a dictatorial state
Everything is a "private interest" - even a putative "democratic state" is administered and controlled by a specific set of people at any given time, and the mechanisms that are intended to hold those people accountable to some general public interest are, like all mechanisms, subject to being gamed and manipulated by people pursuing divergent purposes for the use of their power. (And even an ideal "democratic state" is still "dictatorial" in the way it operates - it creates universal top-down rules that everyone is expected to obey, irrespective of divergent particulars.)
In the United States, there are exactly 537 elected officials in the federal government. Do you think there's a viable mechanism in existence that could keep those 537 individuals accountable in equal measure to each of 300,000,000 citizens?
Do you think it even makes sense to regard there as being a single "general public interest" applicable equally to that entire population of 300,000,000?
The French only say that because they disagree with the "our culture is not perfect" bit.
- our culture is superior to some others
- our culture is superior to most others
- our culture is superior to all others
My answer would change depending on which of these I thought the question was asking. Would a native French speaker make a different assumption from a native English speaker? Would linguistic differences make all three equally possible in Spanish but only one possible in German? In other words, is it possible that language difference is significantly distorting our ability to spot attitude difference on this question?
What I'm trying to say is that as part of the study, asking people who responded what they thought culture meant might be really valuable to gauging the value of this question.
>3. WE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THE REST OF THE WORLD in this article : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6037848
So, for people who only know France through Pepé le Pew, that is a good joke !
The UK is made up of constituent kingdoms, but not all of these are on the island of Great Britain. Thus you can be technically British (i.e. of the UK) without being British (i.e. of the island of Great Britain). This most notably manifests itself amongst the Northern Irish, some of whom see themselves as Irish (ethnicity, or wanting to be of a united Irish state) or British (of the United Kingdom, but of island of Ireland).
To confuse things further, there's a debate going on over whether or not Scotland should stay part of the United Kingdom or become a separate country. Scottish nationalism is a very strange creature. Thus some people may identify with being Scottish first, or solely as Scottish. This occurs to a lesser extent in Wales and in England (being Welsh and English, not Scottish, that would just be silly).
Additionally there are many people who are first or second generation British with foreign parents or grandparents, particularly from former colonial territories. I have friends who identify with being both British and Indian, despite being born and raised on the island of Great Britain.
It all makes for a big, typically British mess. Finally, my wife was born in Turkey, moved to England and became a British citizen, but she can never become English because there's no English citizenship status.
Why? We already have seperate legal, educational and health systems and a government that deals with a lot of domestic policies.
We have a clear national identity and seem to be immune to the swing towards the far right that seems to be happening in England. Personally, I would far rather be in a Scotland that is independent, free of Trident and part of the EU than left as an appendage to London in the Former UK.
[Sadly, I suspect we won't get indepedence, but I rankle a bit at this being described as "strange"]
[The "re-apply to the EU" thing is a bit of a red herring - membership is usually held up by legal compliance and Scotland's laws obviously already comply with EU legislation.]
That seems fair to me - especially as RBS has most of its UK operations in England, not in Scotland.
Trying to backdate things would rapidly get very silly indeed (e.g. Scotland asking for North Sea Oil tax revenue back?).
As I understand it, relocating the infrastructure of the Naval base might well prove prohibitively expensive. Furthermore, its continued presence would provide a considerable boon to the local scottish community in terms of jobs and the presence of British armed forces personnel.
To be clear, I hold no strong opinion on the continuation of the Trident programme or Scotland's membership in the Union. The part of me that is proud to be British would be sad to see it break up I suppose. I do however support the requirement for a Binary referendum whole-heartedly... no more self-determination.
[NB I believe the French (our occasional ancient allies) - had a saying along the lines of "As touchy as a Scotsman"!]
I think it might also be because Britain is simply not a very religious country any more and is much more secular than the U.S.
For example, the 2011 census for England and Wales showed a big jump in the number of people who said they had "no religion" compared with the 2001 census (a jump from 15% in 2001 to 25% in 2011).
Religion as it is practiced is not the bogeyman of liberals' dreams.
It comes from the Pew Reasearch Center, an US think tank chaired by former Bill Clinton's secretary of States, funded by a very wealthy conservative entity, and scanning the other surveys I get the same feeling of being very transparent on the methodology while strongly aiming for a given output. Like this one the NSA for instance: http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/10/majority-views-nsa-ph...
PS: even for a selected target, what does questions like 'Our people are not perfect, but our culture is superior to others' point to ? They surveyed that short of half of the Christinans think themself as Christian first and citizen of a country second. For these people, what does 'our culture' even point to ?
Glad to know that my generation has a sprinkling of modesty.
1. A sane test design. Before trying to pull an MVP here, please take some psychology classes on that topic since there's already a huge body of work on how to design a test in a way that lets you infer reliable data, even if participants think the test is nuts (and try to sabotage it), or if they try to second-guess "desired" answers ("Of course I'm not racist").
2. Comparable data sets over time/regions. People are interested in how things change. That's the incumbent advantage in this market, they have all that stuff.
#2 also helps to get _some_ useful information out of insane questions (since they're consistently insane over the years).
Additionally I'd like to see the breakdown of each political party in each country.
Some "North Eastern America" with a selection of blue states would give you pretty different results to the USA mean as well. The question people would ask though is: what justification do you have for putting that geographical constraint on your study?
The three axes are: - Civilization/barbarism - Oppressor/oppressed - Freedom/coercion
The idea is that people will have different attitudes on issues and that these attitudes can be "plotted" on these three axes.
It is only a model, but I think it is a good one.