Checking out of 'Hotel America'
news.bbc.co.uk
news.bbc.co.uk
Would this article describe San Francisco? New York? Seattle? Portland? Austin? New Orleans? Memphis?
I assure you that people buying a house in SF aren't surprised to find grout in the tiles or drafty windows. We're actually kind of hoping to find those things, because this means we're not paying for someone to stage and flip (even in this economy).
I think international borders are very over rated where it comes to culture shock. Not saying there's no difference, of course, I just suspect there's the opportunity for every bit as much culture shock within the US than between the US, Canada, or Australia, maybe more... try moving from central Manhattan to central London, then move from Manhattan to the outskirts of Toledo. Hell, you don't have to go that far, just go to the New York exurbs.
But don't underestimate international border culture shock either - especially non-Western countries. America was basically settled by and built on Western European traditions - England, Spain, and France mostly, with some Dutch and later the Irish, Italians, and other Western Europeans. But the ex-Soviet Bloc, Middle East, East Asia are lightyears different from America, and the culture shock is pretty supreme. Basically assumptions about how the world works and should work that I didn't know I had I had to re-check.
The craziest was the Japanese on work. Raised in America, I basically took for granted that doing work is something you don't like that you do for money. Okay, some really lucky people love their jobs, but they're pretty rare. And some people manage to have an "okay job", but all our media, movies, television, and culture ethos are that "work sucks and get it over with so I can get paid and do something else."
Japan? Not the case. People actually take pride in doing work, for working. We look at the Japanese hours and think Japanese people are bat shit crazy, and I mean, maybe they are, but they actually take pride and enjoyment out of working. Comparing an American employee at McDonalds to a Japanese employee at Mosburger or Yoshinoya, or even Japanese McDonalds is a head trip. Cross border culture shock, even. Words don't do it justice, seeing the expression and gesturing and presentation of people working in Japan really is something else, as are similar things in other very different places.
I've often felt that Americans tend to have a kind of naive optimism compared to folks from other countries. In fact, while living abroad I've felt judged by Western Europeans in particular for that quality in myself (some of my best friends are German and French, FWIW). But I think that attribute is what has contributed to much of the success in America, particularly in the entrepreneurial crowd.
Americans abroad are often elbowed about how young their country is (ugh, I lived in Beijing and they always trot out 4000 years of Chinese civilization. Nevermind the CCP is only 80 years old), but what this means is relatively less cultural baggage. Americans have less cultural memory to look backwards at and reference (and a lot we see back there like destruction of Native Americans, black slavery, etc is painful to examine), so as a result Americans have no choice but to look forwards.
The richer the culture the finer you might be.
Yet it explains almost all of our parents, grandparents, or great(^n)-grandparents. That's going to bias the culture.
And it's a wonderful thing :-)
To be fair, it's from the POV of someone who's managed to spend eight years in a society without learning how to tell a joke to a stranger, but there's a reason why they say, "Americans think 100 years is a long time, and the English think 100 miles is a long way."
A nation which will one day mass produce a cure for type one diabetes, could not, would not, save little Kara Neumann from the bovine idiocy of her religious parents.
An innocent eleven year old kid died because her parents are morons, and you respond to that with a wisecrack taken out of context.
<quote>
The night before she died - and she would have been in intense discomfort - her parents called the founder of a religious website and prayed with him on the telephone. But they did not call a doctor.
If Kara had been taken to hospital, even at that late stage, insulin could have saved her. She could have been home in a few days and chirpy by the end of the week, as my son was.
</quote>
So, yes, I think it was.
There are plenty of things to quote in the world, why you would chose that one in this place is beyond comprehension by a sane individual.
I don't believe any society has managed to prevent murder; all they manage to do is try and sentence the guilty when they catch them, as the state of Wisconsin did to the girl's parents.
My money's on the Chinese for that, actually.
That's patently unfair. Much of that superstition is Bronze Age. Credit where credit's due.
It comes down to optimism again I think. A European devout Christian would certainly pray for their sick child - but they would not expect their prayer to be necessarily answered, so they would also take the kid to the doctor. If the doctor cured the child, they may attribute the good luck to a form of divine intervention whose instrument was the doctor.
The problem in the US is that many local forms of Christianity have set themselves in opposition to science - either/or - and so the doctors are not instruments of God but His antagonists. I don't have a really good explanation as to how this came about.
People whose religion is sincere will inevitably come into conflict with religious and secular authorities from time to time. Over several centuries, most of them left Europe and went to the US, where there were no religious authorities, and the secular authorities were much more hands-off. It's not particularly surprising that their descendants still take religion seriously.
It's always strange and interesting to hear people harp on one particular minority group of colonists as exemplars. Contemporary conservative religious groups have little or no connection to Puritanism at all.
If we had sent all the criminals to the US and all the puritans to Australia then perhaps the results would have been switched.
From what I understand you will be quite left-out of society in most of US if you don't go to church. Here in Sweden, as a member of church, you can have funerals, marriages and baptising at church, but the church will never really bother you to come to the Sunday service.
The Swedish church was slightly decoupled from the government a number of years ago, but fees from members are still collected by the tax office, something like half a percent at most, it varies by region (diocese?).
Also, members of the Swedish church get to participate in elections for the primary positions. See http://www.svenskakyrkan.se/default.aspx?di=272326 I don't know if that happens for US churches.
Mormons and other US free-churches do come here and have head quarters. I find that they pray on the poor and unfortunate ones by knocking doors and stopping people on the streets to offer their solutions. They're very much considered fringe groups though, since the Swedish church is so much moderate and yet provide ceremonies that are in demand even in the world's most secularized country.
Not really. I don't. Maybe you're talking about people that belong to a particular church being pressured into regular attendance? But I belong to no church and even when I have in the past the only times I went regularly were when I was forced to as a child.
{edit} Maybe I've just managed to avoid areas like this but I've lived in the Detroit, Portland and Toronto (Canada, which I guess doesn't count). {/edit}
My opinion on the religious makeup of America: 10-20% of our recognized religions increase peace, tolerance, community, create a common bond, shared interest, and good community with good people, and are a strong force for the world. Half of the religions are good and bad - they create a community and inspire some good works, but also a lot of hypocrisy, missing the "bigger picture", and some other faults. 30% of religions here are really ugly - they actively cultivate an "us vs. them" dynamic: Very enemy centered, trying to whip their flock into an angry frenzy against other faiths and people with different beliefs. Some good works - really - but a lot of hate speech and creating distance and intolerance and generally being bad for the world. Finally, the worst 10% have all that plus prohibitions on life-saving things, or permission or encouragement of things that destroy mental and physical health and life of the members in addition to the intolerance, hatred, hypocrisy.
I love freedom of religion, and the "good to okay" 50-70% of faiths do some great things in the community and for their members. The other branches, sects, divisions, and religions are really bad news though. I'm not sure how anything could be done about it that wouldn't be twisted into targeting unpopular faiths rather than "bad" ones, though.
Am I delusional? This seems so clear to me, and yet I haven't heard it anywhere.
*I'm not talking about "class", exactly. This is not about social standing or money, but the ability to influence the world, and not necessarily in a highly visible way.
Both of my grandfathers sacrificed everything to come here so that I could have a better life. They knew 100 years ago what many, sadly, still don't understand. The "poverty of alternative" transcends time as well as space.
They created the drive. It's my job to make sure it continues.
Sounds a bit Nazi, a nation over all others ...
God bless America, we, the people of the Earth are proud of seeing it, understanding it and learning from. And (now as the world order is changing) we are inviting Americans to see us, understand us and learn from us.
And God bless we are living fast times. Our grandchilds won't ever think in terms of nations, borders and states
But you can never leave"
Unless you're Maher Arar or one of an unknown number of other people who shared his fate but couldn't fire off a text first to inform their family.
Too bad we can't ask the girl.