publicduende wrote:Nah, dude, ain't that simple. A lot of you in here, without making names, are known to harbour distorted, paranoid views of the environment you live in. It's this bunch who cannot be taken seriously.
Earlier posts have insinuated that, in many parts of your country, it's sufficient to walk alone in a coffee shop or restaurant to be frowned upon by staff and fellow patrons alike. It doesn't take a genius sociologist born and bred in the US to call it a gross exaggeration, to use a euphemism.
I respect S_Parc and I am happy to believe him if he says the situation is that bad, and that's about the level of social disconnection and mistrust you young Americans have towards one another.
I cannot help considering though that a lot of you aren't exactly the most objective benchmark for recounting and judging the social dynamics in the US. Most of you are bitter against the world, always ready to blame feminism, conspiracies and AW bitches for the state of your lives, the lack of a girlfriend or partner worth her name, et cetera. Some of you are deliberately boasting giving up interacting with the world out there, in search for a Utopia of hot virgin teens to marry, as if this self-righteous act of isolation was of any utility to the cause you're purportedly supporting or fighting.
Not to sound arrogant, but to a non-American observer a good 50% of you guys are just biased and unreliable sources of information, let alone opinion.
Seeing much of the world outside US helped me get a better perspective on things.
I've been restraining from posting trip reports and too many opinions since I'm still learning so much about the world. I want to figure out the historical, economic, cultural, and evolutionary reasons behind these differences. Instead of posting irrational rants, it's much more useful to think scientifically and analytically, such as trying to scientifically and rationally explain social phenomena in the framework of Social Darwinism. Maybe after some months I will post much more, as I start to understand things much better.
For example, I've been realizing that people in many developing countries bond together so much because poor people NEED each other to survive and form mutual safety nets. In developing countries, they do not, since forming large, close-knit social networks can become a burden and liability rather than help.
OK, so the thing is, the US has a high degree of free-market capitalism creating wide income gaps much greater than that of Europe, since Western European nations tend to be more socialist and dole out more welfare. The plus side of this is that a freer market allows for more (and sometimes more ruthless) entrepeneurship, which is why you see so many incredibly innovative companies and products coming out of the US (Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on), but not so much from Europe. But then, there are many cons as well. Capitalism creating wide income gaps is also a huge problem in China, but American individualism, the way American suburbs are laid out, and a hyper-consumerist culture really exacerbate social disconnectedness far beyond that of the more communal and crowded China. Economic, social, and dating Darwinism develop to a much higher degree in the US than elsewhere in the world. So then the winners really win, but the losers really lose it. You can see this in the huge divide between the world-class universities (Ivy Leagues, etc.) and the rest of the schools churning out junk. There's nothing much in the middle.
I'm not BS'ing all of this off the top of my head, since some of these views are also espoused by Lee Kuan Yew (the "founding father" of Singapore) in his recent geopolitical treatises. Lee, who has traveled widely in the US and was educated in the UK, said while the US is in many ways highly admirable for its unparalled universities and economic productivity, that he would not choose to permanantly reside in the US due to its stressful culture.
Additionally, what I see on this forum is American exceptionalism being manifested in simply another way. Due to what they're being taught and exposed to in childhood, Americans often believe that only
they are the most (insert ________) in the world. Their opinion of America may have flipped 180 degrees, but the American exceptionalism mindset is still there. After all, the US does top many lists on good and bad things, but many of these things can be found in other countries to some extent as well, and manifested in different ways.
