When I first left America, I disliked and felt disillusioned with the country. I've now spent more of my adult life outside the States than in the U.S., and I've also come to the opinion that the U.S. is one of the most amazing places in the world. Sometimes it's hard to point to exactly why America is so amazing. And the answer, maybe, is on display here. An undergraduate student at an elite university just innovati…
And I agree, in Asia, it's very absent. I used to be surprised when I'd see an interview with some very hard rock band in Asia and they'd spend the interview quietly bowing and talking more or less like the proper primped pop-idol they just had on. It felt like the rock image was just a costume rather than being the free spirit of the person coming out. I've seen so many occasions in Asia where a situation called for an American style go fuck yourself response and it never appeared. I think a great many of the social ills you find in Confucian countries could be resolved with a sprinkle of American style rock and roll.
You're right though, taking that kind of life approach in Asia can be a life destroyer. In America there's enough of a critical mass of people who have and understand that kind of approach to life, and accept it in others, that you can be that way and find enough of a support network to still live a good life.
Europeans, in my observation, have a different kind of attitude. It's more of a fuck the old guard, fuck the status quo attitude that's probably informed by the last couple hundred years of European history. It can take on many of the same kinds of symbols and stylings as the American rock n roll way, but I think it has different goals and expected outcomes.
I also agree that the American attitude, while good for some things, can become boring and tiresome when it turns into stupid contrariness for the sake of being oppositional.