"US Americans" ?!
Yes, US Americans, as opposed to US Mexicans, or Canada Americans, Brasil Americans, or Columbia Americans.
See what I did there.
Getting to Know Americans
11–20 of 178 posts
Re: Getting to Know Americans
#12A shorter version would be: Americans are generally individualist Protestant technologist capitalists. Like any other culture these defining traits bring inherent strengths, and unavoidable weaknesses.
On a different note, Does anyone know the author of this essay? I've seen it around at least as far back as the early 1990's, and it's good to see it still in use.
Re: Getting to Know Americans
#13> Americans are taught that "all men are created equal." While they continually violate that idea in some aspects of life, in others they adhere to it. Boy, I wish more Americans understood that.
More accurately, Americans mostly adhere to the notion that "all men are equal" when it serves the interests of the top 1%. Voting, the military, taxes, college admissions, etc.
Re: Getting to Know Americans
#14> Americans are taught that "all men are created equal." While they continually violate that idea in some aspects of life, in others they adhere to it. Boy, I wish more Americans understood that.
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Re: Getting to Know Americans
#15"Be patient if Americans are ignorant of some aspect about your home country. Use the opportunity to educate and share, just do so in a polite and brief manner." Citizens of other countries always like to point out how Americans are ignorant of other nations and their cultures, oftentimes failing to realize that within their own nation poverty is rampant and the majority of the population remains illiterate (yes, alt…
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that there's noone on earth who grew up in one country, moved to another one, and managed to completely forget about salient facts like the poverty level in their original country.
Re: Getting to Know Americans
#16It's hard to tell what perspective this article is written from. There are many subjective qualifiers. For example: > Americans place considerable value on punctuality. From a German perspective, this is wildly untrue.
Place value != arrive on time
I know I'm doing something wrong when I'm late. Yet I'm sometimes late anyway.
Re: Getting to Know Americans
#17I have been in the US about ten times and I think one of the initial barriers is our that our perception of the US is formed through Hollywood.
Some things that did not match my expectations/assumptions:
- The average American is much poorer than I expected. Wealth is less evenly divided, than say West-Europe.
- Americans are extremely nice and warm. Some Europeans say it is superficial, but I really liked when eating at some place that a stranger would pass by and have a chat.
- Apart from the West coast and North-East, Americans are pretty conservative.
- Americans have a positive attitude towards life.
- Americans are prepared to take risks, where Europeans are for more risk-averse. This (IMO) has a bad effect on the social system, but a positive effect on entrepreneurism.
Re: Getting to Know Americans
#18Even as an American, I still love to read about others' views of America. A little narcissistic, maybe, but I think it's more like getting another pair of eyes on something you look at everyday.
It took centuries to come to the point of introspection - anthropologists apparently label the normal American kinship system as Inuit or some such, because it wasn't until studying another culture that we recognized our own.
Re: Getting to Know Americans
#19"Be patient if Americans are ignorant of some aspect about your home country. Use the opportunity to educate and share, just do so in a polite and brief manner." Citizens of other countries always like to point out how Americans are ignorant of other nations and their cultures, oftentimes failing to realize that within their own nation poverty is rampant and the majority of the population remains illiterate (yes, alt…
I agree with you.
My own "disappointment" is not with 'regular joe' Americans, but with educated Americans. Being from a large city in India, I know from personal experience that majority of the people with college education, especially technical education are knowledgeable about things outside their own country at least in a conversational level, if not they want to know more. I cannot assume the same with Americans. I felt astonished that people who have degrees from top technical universities have lop sided and often dated views of the rest of world.
Many time they are not even ready to acknowledge that things can and often are done better outside their own country. The sense of NIH is very strong.
Re: Getting to Know Americans
#20Is there a typo here?
Americans usually think of nature as something that can be altered, conquered, and controlled for people's comfort and use and in order to minimize the effects of fierce weather conditions. In contrast, many cultures accept nature as something they can change or control.