Oct1
The paranoid American
I had dinner with some friends last night, none of whom are American, and the conversation turned to the funny cultural differences between America and the rest of the world. It was a fun, light-hearted conversation but since last night I’ve been thinking about some of the points that were made and, to be quite honest, I’m not quite sure I’m happy with what they suggest.
America has become hyper-paranoid. We have become a nation of gated-community living, pill-popping scaredy-cats that are afraid of not only the rest of the world, but each other. I’ll bet each and every one of you out there can remember the constant warnings against talking to strangers when you were a kid. Don’t talk to strangers? How the hell else are you supposed to meet new people?! What a crock of shit. And yes, I know, it serves a purpose. Keep kids safe from the crazies of the world. But honesty. It’s no wonder that we’re all anti-social malcontents when we’re all afraid of what might happen if we were to (gasp!) actually go out and try and meet new people!
A story to illustrate my point. My wife’s little sister was on a scout camp (yes, Irish scouts are co-ed). This scout camp is done once a year, usually in Europe, and the whole premise is that you must get from point A to point B over the course of 2 weeks. You are only allowed to spend a tiny sum of money per day and you must rely on the kindness of strangers and your own conversational skills to find your way and to find a suitable patch of earth for your tent each night. This suitable patch is generally someone’s yard or farmland. Well the year that Gina’s little sister did the camp was the first year that they extended it to America. All along the way they would talk to people, tell them what they were doing and sometimes ask for permission to use said patch of earth. Each and every time, the American they were talking to was agape at the fact that two teenagers were being allowed to run around the countryside alone. ”How dangerous!” Every person, without fail, would comment that it was a good thing that they happened to talk to them because they were nice (of course) but all of the other people in the community were crazy – or dangerous. Every single one of the them. That tells you two things. One, that most people are genuinely good and helpful. Two, that we’re all afraid of the big bad world that lurks in dark corners and down shady alleys.
I have a feeling that this has been slowly creeping into the American psyche for some time now. I would venture to guess that it started at roughly the same time that America began to move into the suburbs, away from the community creating barrios and apartment blocks of the big cities. We began to spread out, to create small closed off squares of land that we papered with NO TRESPASSING signs and we minded our own business. All the while feeding off the the so-call “news” stories that screamed about doom and gloom. We told our children that the world was dangerous and that no one could be trusted, and we told ourselves that it is a pity that this is what has become of it, but you have to do what you have to do. Popular culture has done nothing to help the situation, with parents becoming more and more controlling in children’s lives and schools (especially middle schools) becoming so sanitized and institutionalized that they effectively squash any and all creativity out of students and teachers alike.
It’s time for this to change. It’s time to stop listening to the news (except NPR), start talking to other human beings, and start meeting new people. The digital world is wonderful and has brought us many things but it has also added another layer of seperation to an already fragmented society of paranoia. We’re in this together people! Do yourself a favor and go meet some new people, borrow some sugar from your neighbors and for God’s sake, go talk to some strangers – you’d be surprised the find that most are great people!
Categories: Everything Else, articles
Tags: America, diatribe, paranoia, rant
October 10th, 2008 at 6:24 am
Hi, I’m Celso.
Seriously, though, I don’t know about the rest of the World, but here in London – and in the rest of the UK from my experience – I would say people are definitely more open to meeting/talking to new people than what you describe. Having said that, it’s also true that people tend to make these experiences short and ultimately stick with their established group of friends.
October 17th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
I don’t know… being a European (Dutch) Alien in Seattle, I find Americans to be friendly, polite and positive most of the time. In ways, America is a more positive place to be than Europe, and I’ve always admired the can-do mentality the US people go by here.
It is when I turn on the television and see Palin and McCain with their fear mongering that gets me scared. The message that they are consistently airing is that the world is a scary place, everything has to be about fighting and being prepared for the worst (in military terms, it seems that being prepared for economic or natural disaster isn’t so high on the agenda). They want you to vote for them because the alternative is a big spending, freedom destroying communist with links to terrorists or so is their implicit message, not because they have such a great agenda themselves. Unless you think that cutting taxes indefinitely will solve all our problems.
I hold some right-of-center values. I believe in fiscal constraint, small government, freedom of choice and holding citizens responsible for their own lives. For all their rhetoric, the GOP has little to do with all that. They cut taxes but increased the deficit to record heights (under Bush, but also e.g. under Reagan), meaning that we’ll waste a lot of money on interest and are now more dependent on other countries. The religious agenda and the way the ‘war on terror’ is conducted conflicts with individual freedom. Their way of demonizing opponents (on the Iraq war, issues like abortion and gay rights, etc) hurts democracy, which after all can only work when people can open speak their minds and others open to consider conflicting opinions. And instead of going after policies that are supported by research and experience, they promote policies that are based on religion and gut feeling; promoting abstinence instead of educating safe sex, the war on drugs that in the decades it’s been fought still leaves Americans with far greater drugs problems than their more liberal European counter parts, etc. The world of the GOP is a dark place that can wholly be explained in terms of good versus evil, in which America is the only free country, which has a God-given mission to spread it’s ideals of a no-compromise capitalist-democracy as the silver bullet for organizing society.
To me, America is a good place to live but with a lot of undeveloped potential. For that potential to be developed, the US needs leaders who are pragmatic rather than just idealist). It needs leaders who can infuse enthusiasm (let’s make green technology happen, much like the nation was excited to go to the moon), and who can cut back on waste in administration but also understand that things like education, energy infrastructure and science are worth investing in. I think that – even though I don’t agree with some of their ideas – democrats in power will make America a more positive place to live in again, even through a recession.
My 2 meager cents