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Living outside America

ryancarson.com

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Re: Living outside America

#151

Post by jules »

robomartin wrote: post #147
jules wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I see it from the outside, USA's greatest strength it its culture of ambition: the belief that an individual can achieve great things through good ideas, skills, and hard work. Whereas in Europe Gates or Jobs might have finished college and become a cog in the system, in the USA they dropped out and had a huge impact. FYI, homosexuality is not genetic. Although genes play a large role, they are generally thought t…

I stand corrected. At least the play a large role. It certainly isn't an abomination as the religious like to see them. It's the year 2012 and we still show respect for this kind of thinking rather than laughing them out of the room.

Certainly. Personally I do not like the "it's not bad because it's not a choice" argument, although pragmatically that argument seems to be most effective. It can be interpreted like "it's still evil, but they can't help it so we'll let them". Even if it were a choice, it would still be OK; what matters is that it doesn't harm anybody, and it certainly doesn't harm somebody who's condemning it from afar. Fortunately things are moving in the right direction, especially in the US, but cultural changes take a long time.

Re: Living outside America

#152

Post by waterlesscloud »

il wrote: post #145
biotech wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 40% of voters believe the Rapture/end of the world will occur in their lifetime. This is unprecendented in any secular country This is unprecedented because it's simply not true. The best statistic I could find for this is 11%. Even 11% seems like a very high number based on my personal experience. As an American who has lived in different parts of America my whole life (and currently living in a high-tourist city…

Your personal experience living in a high-tourist city does not represent the rural, Evangelical majority that actually votes. Here's one poll with the 41% number: http://pewresearch.org/databank/dailynumber/?NumberID=1043

And here's another poll from the same organization, this one focused only on Christians, that says 20% of them believe in the rapture in their lifetimes.

http://www.pewforum.org/uploadedfiles/Topics/Issues/Politics...

41% in no way jibes with my experience, even as someone who grew up attending white rural evangelical churches. You might get 41% (or much higher) to say it might occur, but I am seriously skeptical of "definitely" percentages.

The survey I linked has some interesting facts about American Christian beliefs about science. Strong (79%+) majority believes global warming is a serious problem, for example. Even a slim majority believes in evolution.

Re: Living outside America

#153

Post by Xcelerate »

sneak wrote: post #46
jwilliams wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a lot more subtlety to #1. I'm Australian, and despite numerous cultural shifts, when you graduate the natural place to go is Europe. The thing young Aus/NZ people do is backpack around Europe. When I was growing up, I knew a lot about the US from Mass Media, but it was pretty shallow. I saw the US as a mono-culture. When I finally visited the states that's what shocked me most - it's a diverse, comp…

> I saw the US as a mono-culture. I think the problem is that all the non-boring places to live in the US _are_ a monoculture, mostly due to the network. (Then again, most non-boring places on Earth are all converging to this point anyway.) The parts that diverge from the monoculture are places that would be horrible to live (e.g. the south, the rust belt, etc).

The south is a horrible place to live? Why do you say this? I live in Georgia and am quite happy with my residence.

Re: Living outside America

#154

Post by jules »

rdl wrote: post #124
ralfn wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, its not. From history, to language, to culture, one would claim Europe the center. But if you look at population, production volume, China would look like the center, with the rest of the world as fringe exotic life on its borders.

Historically, Europe was the center; it went from Rome to Paris to London to the US, at least for the past 2000 years. Center of population is somewhere near Afghanistan I think, but that's kind of a silly measure (like "the average person is 50% male"). US manufacturing production was #1 from 1895-2010. China is #1 now, but the US numbers are far more certain than China. If you look at total industrial base, the US…

The center of population is somewhere near the center of the Earth. The standard map with Europe in the middle is just an historical influence too!

Re: Living outside America

#155

Post by einhverfr »

mixmax wrote: post #9

This is a great article, and as a European I can relate to all of his points. Here are some comments from the other side of the pond; they're of course my personal opinion but I think they're somewhat representative of the European view. I don’t view the USA as the center of the world - i see America as an overreaching empire that has had it's heyday. If you take a historical perspective this is how many empires fall…

You might find Prof. Joseph Tainter's assessment of Rome interesting. he has a very different view of what caused the Roman collapse.

In his view, the problem was that Rome based their economy on conquest and pillage. As they'd conquer places, theyd bring back gold into their economy and this would allow them to lower or eliminate taxes. During this time of expansion they did well, and the complexity of their culture increased quite a bit, but in the end, this phase had to come to an end, and Rome was unable to sustain their economy internally. Their attempts to do so involved additional complexity and a great deal of additional attempts to regulate their way out including quantitative easing of their currency.

In the end, the problems were too great and the society collapsed from within, through the very process by which they expanded (greater and greater complexity of society).

One interesting thing I would add that Herwig Wolfram suggests is that the Western Empire was particularly poorly suited because of the concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands, which limited the tax base and made taxes harder to collect.

The Byzantine Empire listed much longer but a couple hundred years after the Roman Empire fell, they too experienced a massive simplification when faced with the Arab invasions. They did so in a more controlled way however and survived but in doing so, Tainter suggests, transitioned from a Roman society to a medieval one.

Re: Living outside America

#156

Post by waterlesscloud »

intellegacy wrote: post #79

To really understand America, you must not only live in it, but also live outside it. Note: I am from the USA, and "we" or "our" refers to us Americans. I spent 3 years abroad, recently returning to the USA this summer, and I will try to outline some of what I learned, although it is somewhat difficult as this knowledge has become ingrained in me and obvious as to seem to require no explanation. - English as lingua f…

"New York, America's supposed mecca of culture and a truly international city, has airports whose decrepitness puts lesser cities to shame."

Living in Los Angeles, I notice the same sort of thing about our freeways. I think part of it is that they were the among the first built, and they haven't really updated.

Interchanges are a particular sore point. The 101 north to 405 south interchange is a joke. One lane, 270 degree turn. Traffic crawls through it. And it's literally at the busiest interchange in the world.

Or the 110 north to the 5 north. It's like a theme park ride it's so narrow and curvy and hilly.

Of course, the 134 east to the 5 north has no interchange ramp. You have to leave the freeways and get on surface streets to change over. There's a few of those around.

Re: Living outside America

#157

Post by Xcelerate »

bapbap wrote: post #6
rdl wrote: post #3

Living and traveling outside the US (Europe, Middle East, Asia) for ~15 years convinced me of the inherent superiority of the US (culturally, economically, etc.). Our government is broken, but generally the US lets problems get really inefficiently bad, then overcorrects, so I hope that will happen in the next 20 years. The threats to the US are not other countries getting better than us, but the decline of the natio…

I've never really understood the notion that any one country is better than another one. It just seems way too subjective and people seem to generally favour the country they were born or brought up in. I think it's much like picking a car. You can argue the pros/cons all day and night but it just boils down to what you personally prefer and what evidence you feel justifies your decision. Declaring a country is bette…

I could be wrong here, but I think most people would consider the US a better country than Liberia.

You can sort subjective preferences to get an objective rating.

Re: Living outside America

#158

Post by petercooper »

tzs wrote: post #94

> When I moved to the UK, most people I met didn’t believe in God or Christianity. The UK is largely a non-Christian country. No, you've went into a field whose practitioners are largely non-Christian, and since you've probably acquired most of your social circle directly or indirectly through that you mostly meet non-Christians. If a kid who grew up in a religious family in London and went to a religious school most…

Broadly speaking, the UK is a Christian country in a cultural sense. I think the confusion sets in because the British who identify as Christian are also broadly impious in relation to their more devoted American counterparts.

Even amongst Brits who would willingly tick "Church of England" on a census form, it seems to be only a minority who attend church, perform religious rituals, proselytize, or attempt to defend their faith.

I caught my wife ready to tick CofE on a form once and asked her if she believed in God. She thought and said "Well, no. Not really." Yet, culturally, she was brought up to just say she was CofE and a Christian because, culturally, she lived that way without ever being pious or knowledgable about the theology of it.

Re: Living outside America

#159

Post by il »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #152
il wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your personal experience living in a high-tourist city does not represent the rural, Evangelical majority that actually votes. Here's one poll with the 41% number: http://pewresearch.org/databank/dailynumber/?NumberID=1043

And here's another poll from the same organization, this one focused only on Christians, that says 20% of them believe in the rapture in their lifetimes. http://www.pewforum.org/uploadedfiles/Topics/Issues/Politics... 41% in no way jibes with my experience, even as someone who grew up attending white rural evangelical churches. You might get 41% (or much higher) to say it might occur, but I am seriously skeptical of…

Yes, but my poll is from 2010 and yours is from 2006. Whether the actual number is 40% or 20% or 11%, I'm sure it's much higher than other modern, secular countries. That's all I'm saying.

In any case, that's not the scary poll. It's polls like this one that are scary: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/12/interracial-marriag...

Re: Living outside America

#160

Post by astrofinch »

pg wrote: post #22

I've been able to do the first 3 without leaving (perhaps because I wasn't born here), and number 4 doesn't seem so certain. What I noticed about living outside America when I did it later as an adult was that it made it clearer what was distinctive about the US. Many of the distinctive things I noticed could be summed up by describing America as a young culture. Americans have the optimism and energy of youth, but t…

How much of this could be due to the fact that Americans got all their genetic material from immigrants?
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