Are you sure that this is an America/California/Silicon-Valley feature? That your own internal critical voice arose as a result of growing up with your father (a German) seems to indicate that you got it from either having an immigrant parent, a German/European parent, or a parent who was just a negative nancy. I don't mean to be critical of you or your father; I mean to point out that the criticism=>negativity idea doesn't seem to be a strictly American thing.

> I think it leads to a 'shotgun approach' where if enough people "try try try" then yes some do succeed spectacularly while everyone else around them crashes and burns.

This reminds me of the Orks in Warhammer 40k, wherein the sheer psychic power of an Ork can make a war machine function; the machine would collapse if a non-Ork attempted to operate it.

I think the negativity about / criticism of oneself and one's identity (e.g. the self-effacing comic) is unique to Western civilization. Do people outside the West (e.g. Africa, Middle East, Asia, and perhaps South America) view themselves as backwards for how their lives work? Plenty of people, whether on the right or left, are critical of Western policies, especially regarding military and economic campaign in non-Western countries.

I am genuinely curious if people in non-Western countries see themselves as Westerners do (e.g. more bad than good).