The jist of this article: "Hey, look at me! I'm cool because I am not patriotic, nor do I respect several of the rockbeds of American culture. I'm multinational."
As real Americans would say, "Whoop-de-doo!"
Living outside America
51–60 of 216 posts
Re: Living outside America
#52Earlier 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).
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Re: Living outside America
#53"...could’ve gotten a job at any tech company in the USA. I was offered ridiculous salaries with signing bonuses of luxury cars. Pretty tempting."
Thank you!
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Re: Living outside America
#54I'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…
In some ways living abroad for a decade after school made me feel more like the US is the center of the world. I specifically looked for something as different and far away as possible, and I ended up meeting people who were learning English and familiar with the same music, television and movies I saw in college. Many of my European friends really could go weeks without seeing anything from home, but I couldn't.
That said, I was probably extremely unusual amongst my peers in thinking the US was just one of many countries when I left. Also, at that time I had thought that China would be dominating everything by 2020. Now, after having lived in China, I'm more bullish on the US than ever. Not only is it continuing to attract the smartest and most ambitious people in the world, but there's a huge demographic advantage, too. Whatever the babyboomer retirement does to the US, it will be far harder on Europe. Japan and China will be even older.
That doesn't make me doubt #4, though. Lifespans are going to increase.
Re: Living outside America
#55> I stopped calling myself a Christian Specific to this point as someone that has lived in England forever I find it really strange how on the reddit atheism subreddit all the (American) posters act as if they're persecuted for their Atheism whereas in England religion is just something people do in private if they do it at all, it's hard for me to understand the way r/atheism posters perceive their persecution, but…
There is a lot of confirmation bias in judging how non-religious folks are treated in America by using /r/atheism - the people that don't feel persecuted won't ever feel a need to join an online community to discuss it.
Re: Living outside America
#56I'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…
> 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 they're also comparatively unsophisticated.
This article has always stuck with me and I think speaks to what you're trying to say. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspon...
"There is something about the carelessness of America that gives space for greatness."
"If you do not like your life and you have drive and luck, you can change it because - being American - you believe you can change it."
"But if Sonia Sotomayor is to make it big, there must be something creating the drive, and part of that something is the poverty of the alternative, the discomfort of the ordinary lives that most Americans endure and the freedom that Americans have to go to hell if that is the decision they take. This is the atmosphere in which Nobel Prize winners are nurtured. 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."
Re: Living outside America
#57Living 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…
"Living and traveling outside the US for ~15 years convinced me of the inherent superiority of the US" As an Australian who has travelled the world extensively, spent a great deal of time in the USA, and currently lives in Canada, I strongly disagree with this statement. It should also be noted that in most quality of life indexes, cities in the US rank far below many of those in Europe, Canada, and Australia - that…
> It should also be noted that in most quality of life indexes, cities in the US rank far below many of those in Europe, Canada, and Australia...
Having personally lived in two of the most recently top-ranked cities (Vancouver and now Melbourne) I'd say the indexes are mostly bogus.
Evidently something as important to quality of life as the weather isn't much of a factor given that it rains for most of the year in Vancouver. I haven't look up where SoCal ranks, but personally I much preferred living there to Vancouver for the climate alone.
And house prices in Australia are so absurdly expensive that I can't even consider buying (although I'm quite happy renting).
It's a cliche, but if you're really ambitious the US really is the land of opportunity. E.g., Elon Musk studied in Canada after leaving South Africa, but it's in the US where he started PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX.
Re: Living outside America
#58I feel like the majority of his "areas of impact" that living overseas has had on him could have just as easily happened if he had stayed in America, but moved to a city with some more diversity. It's more about growing up and making friends with people that think differently than you than just transplanting yourself.
i was also disappointed by how certain he seemed to be about what caused those changes to his character. All four of those points, in my mind, are characteristic of someone growing up, not living abroad. I don't think his opinions are at all unique to ex-pats.
Re: Living outside America
#59Living 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…
It just seems way too subjective
Sure, it's subjective, but humans are generally a lot alike. As with anything, "better" (with the exclusion of "strictly better") is a valuation that 'the typical human will prefer option X', taking into account the trade-offs of option X vs. typical attitudes towards those trade-offs.
This is why it is so easy to exclude, as you did, countries ravaged by war et al., because the typical human does not appreciate war and famine enough that few things will make up for it.
Re: Living outside America
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think there's something to the not being born there that helps. #1 was a huge revelation to me (I'd like to think I'm observant and well-informed), and continues to be so to Americans I've had the opportunity to tour-guide for. I'm really curious where it comes from. Perhaps because of the ubiquity of American mass-media? Every European knows the New York skyline and what "NYPD" and "FBI" mean. How many Americans c…
> How many Americans can spot the difference between Hong Kong and Seoul, or know what "BKA" stands for? That only means American culture is more exported than others in many forms like movies, TV shows, etc. People like to watch American shows, American that, American this, etc. If Honk Kong and Seoul were able to export their culture as effectively you'll know about them too. A lot of people know about Paris and Ca…
In short, Hollywood. And that English is the lingua franca of the modern world