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Stop Generalizing About Europe

jonasbentzen.com

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Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#211

Post by sameerp1 »

gyardley wrote: post #96
loxs wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, we are going deep down the rabbit hole now :). Please excuse me if I say lots of stupid things. How far apart are Louisiana and California? How far apart are Romania and Bulgaria? Yet, the two USA states share the same language (at least on official level), the same currency and the same "american" culture. Neither of these is true for BG and RO. And we are neighbours, mind that. As an added "benefit", we have…

Your ignorance of the respective areas is showing. It's hard to talk about a common culture between California and Louisiana when neither California nor Louisiana has a common internal culture. In Louisiana, spend some time in Houma, and then some time in Shreveport. Louisiana has a Cajun-dominated region and a region that's very much part of the Old South, and they're not much alike. In California, spend some time i…

Umm, there is very little American cultural diversity. Slight differences in lifestyle don't make for cultural diversity. At least not in comparison to the various countries of Europe.

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#212

Post by crucialfelix »

alexchamberlain wrote: post #141
nhebb wrote: post #54

I think a lot of us need to admit that the author is right. I, for one, do generalize about Europe. I think of social democracies with high taxes. I think of arcane rules and regulations to start and run a business. And most of all, I limit the term "Europe" to include about 20 of the 50 European countries. I will never think of Russia as a European country. If I entered a contest and won a vacation to "Europe" - and…

Most British people would struggle to tell you the difference between Great Britain and the UK.

> Most English people would struggle to tell you the difference between Great Britain and the UK.

FTFY

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#213

Post by unconed »

artimaeis wrote: post #188
erebrus wrote: post #107

It's amazing how many from the USA insist that the inner diversity in the USA is comparable to the one in Europe. I've heard this many times, namely here in HN. It is not comparable. PERIOD. Even if the poster goes a bit to the extreme of bringing Russia in to the conversation, even inside the EU, there is still no comparison on how how diverse Europe is (e.g. Portugal to Norway, Greece to France, Spain to Germany) c…

Perhaps the diversity of the USA is not the extreme of Europe, but I would be quick to point out that the regional differences in the US are quite notable even to an outside observer. There are 5 major regions of the US: Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Southwest, and West. Each of these regions has noted differences in: dialect, culture, food, general behavior, economy, and quality of life. Now regardless of US or Eur…

If you focus on 'diversity', you miss the bigger picture, because of course every place is unique. The US has for example far more pronounced extremes of urban vs rural (which many too forget). The real issue is distance, and how Europeans and Americans in general have vastly different concepts of what's far.

If you're in the US or Canada, driving for 10 hours means you're going to visit your aunt. Doing the same anywhere in Europe means you're likely 2 countries over, and it becomes a 'huge trip' in people's heads. Heck, I know several people who have driven more than halfway across Canada, in Europe no-one who drove e.g. from Paris to Istanbul.

And while the European market is supposedly unified, in practice there are significant variations in pricing and availability as soon as you cross a border, simply because that's something few people do. And of course the language difference means most local media is opaque to outsiders.

So I would say that the US is definitely diverse, but it's a gradual diversity, that transitions smoothly from ultra-urban to no-one-for-miles rural. It works on very large distances, and is mediated by a shared media, politics and language. European countries meanwhile are much more homogenous on the inside, but there are a lot of forces keeping each one unique.

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#215

Post by lobster_johnson »

jlgreco wrote: post #200
lobster_johnson wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you asked most Americans ... they would say How do you know what they would say? Aren't you wildly speculating, while at the same time inventing answers to imaginary surveys? I really dislike this kind of argumentation. This thread has a huge amount of Malcolm Gladwell-esque gut-feeling-generalization-disguised-as-indisputable-fact, but it adds nothing and only serves to validate the OP's point, which is that ge…

I am extrapolating from myself. Ask a kid to "Draw Africa" and you will get a wildly different picture than if you ask the kid to "Draw Egypt". Clearly the child is not generalizing all of Africa; the child does not include Egypt in the internalized perception of what Africa "is" even though they know full well that Egypt is in Africa. This isn't some sort of strange emergent phenomenon, it is nothing more than the r…

I don't doubt that people walk around with conflicting, internalized geographies in their heads, I'm just pointing out that it's disingenuous to frame your own biases as something "most Americans" think when you don't have the data to back up such a statement. It's a very specific extrapolation to make.

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#216

Post by _b8r0 »

cristianpascu wrote: post #181
jwr wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just proved OP's point. What's "Eastern Europe"? I'm guessing you'd consider anything east of Germany/Austria/Italy to be "Eastern", right? Well, in Poland and the Czech Republic people consider themselves "Central Europe", which makes sense given that geographically Europe extends to the Ural mountains. Don't generalize.

I live in Romania, so I can tell what we consider West: Austria, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, France, UK, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Belgium. If one goes to one of these countries, one feels like going west. Otherwise, it's less and less. So when Americans speak about Europe, it's safe to assume that they might refer to these countries. Rock bands will always have a hard time to tell Bucharest…

As someone from the UK, I see your list as mostly similar to mine, except I'd put Austria in the Central Europe camp. I'd also put Switzerland and Italy as Central Europe in location but Western Europe in culture. There's definitely parts of Germany I'd class as western in location but eastern in culture.

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#217

Post by popee »

pointernil wrote: post #172
lispm wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ambivalent feelings toward entrepreneurs Germany has over three millions SMEs (small and medium enterprises, called 'Mittelstand'). I can assure you that there are no ambivalent feelings against 'entrepreneurs'. Exactly the opposite. You find world-market leaders in small towns all across rural Germany. You can guess that people are extremely proud to work for these companies. 99% of all companies are in the Mittel…

" I can assure you that there are no ambivalent feelings against 'entrepreneurs'. " quite often this is believed to be true: start-up == entrepreneurship Well, I disagree here and it looks like you are mixing up 'entrepreneurs' and the "Mittelstand" you mentioned. I don't know if this is generally true, but i'm under the impression that there is some negative sentiment towards 'entrepreneurship' as it is connected wi…

People are afraid of changes or just don't get it. I'm from micro mid/east country in Europe and i can tell you that most people here think that computers are used only as support for other businesses. When you tell them that web/internet/... is also great business you'll get blank looks all over the place. Btw they're all using google/fb/... but only as consumers. Hmmm, thank god on that :-)

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#218

Post by wolfgke »

VeejayRampay wrote: post #153
conradfr wrote: post #18

If you think of it, pop culture shared amongst Europeans have a greater chance to be American than European.

As a French dude, I've always dreamt of a more unified European culture. As in producing movies, TV shows with European money, catering to a European audience. England already produces some more-than-decent TV shows as it is. We should also make English the official language, that would help us all move forward.

> We should also make English the official language, that would help us all move forward.

We should better create an entirely new artificial official language so that nobody feels discriminated.

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#219

Post by arethuza »

unconed wrote: post #213
artimaeis wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the diversity of the USA is not the extreme of Europe, but I would be quick to point out that the regional differences in the US are quite notable even to an outside observer. There are 5 major regions of the US: Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Southwest, and West. Each of these regions has noted differences in: dialect, culture, food, general behavior, economy, and quality of life. Now regardless of US or Eur…

If you focus on 'diversity', you miss the bigger picture, because of course every place is unique. The US has for example far more pronounced extremes of urban vs rural (which many too forget). The real issue is distance, and how Europeans and Americans in general have vastly different concepts of what's far. If you're in the US or Canada, driving for 10 hours means you're going to visit your aunt. Doing the same any…

Why drive that distance when there are decent trains or, much more common these days, excellent low cost airlines? [Pretty common for people to fly for 4+ hours to go on vacation from the UK to Turkey].

Re: Stop Generalizing About Europe

#220

Post by arethuza »

VeejayRampay wrote: post #151
cllns wrote: post #2

I was curious so here are some population figures (from wikipedia) Eurozone: 332,839,084 EU: 503,492,041 Europe: 739,165,030 So 45% of Europeans (66% of EU citizens) are in the Eurozone.

Can't stress enough that the 740 million figures includes Russia and Kazakhstan in the bunch. Two countries that are more Asian than they are European.

That is based on the European populations of those countries - not their entire populations!!
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