Comment by meuk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by meuk | Hacker News Reader

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It's mostly a matter of perception, but I agree wholeheartedly. While the US is a beautiful, rich, and diverse country, it is hardly developed in many aspects.

The education and healthcare is problematic and class-based, and many policies are near-sighted. There is an unhealthy obsession with shallow entertainment. Public opinion matters more than truth. There's no justice if you're not a ultra-rich, companies will just go to court until you're broke.

There are only two important political parties - both seem to have some moral issues. In general, Americans don't live very sustainable (gasoline, cars, and tech is really cheap, so why bother?). There is also a weird obsession with race - it's for some reason very common to divide people in races (apparently, you're either black, white, hispanic, or asian and there is nothing in between).

While most of the Americans I met work extremely hard and are a joy to be around, I also found them to be quite nationalistic and oblivious to criticism on the USA. Of course, this whole rant is a huge generalization :)

A part of it is definitely perception. If this country is so great, why does it have so many problems?

As to what distinguishes the US from European countries is probably the lack of continuity and history. One doesn't really feel like an "American" as one might feel "Spanish" or "French." An unfortunate consequence of this lack of unity is that democracy becomes very, very messy, and what might have unified the US--a common set of values, hopes, ideals, etc.--is being chipped away at. On the flip side US culture promotes individualism which sometimes leads people away from unity.

With respect to the issue at hand, there's a great quote by David Foster Wallace: “This is so American, man: either make something your god and cosmos and then worship it, or else kill it.” There's a bizarre zeal that's valued in US life and culture (think startup culture) that's great if you find that something to "worship," but if not you're left with this overzealous impulse to do something, something great, something worthy of your time, but you don't have anywhere to direct that energy. It becomes destructive. Europeans have a steadier pace of life that recognizes that 90% of the people aren't going to becomes famous, have amazing carers, be important figures, and that instead of that they can have good, stable, happy lives. In the US, that just doesn't cut it.

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