The U.S. Culture(s) thread

Well, it's about time a thread like this existed. A place to address the strange and often outright bizarre cultural practices of a twisted and ancient land...for certain definitions of ancient.

Specifically, this thread is for people who have any questions about U.S. cultural practices and beliefs to get answers or just discuss them. After all, it can be confusing even to people from the U.S., let along those from other countries.

First, a couple of points. The U.S., like many countries, has multiple subcultures. Unlike most countries, each of the dozen or so major subcultures has enough people to found their own country - or three. Most of these subcultures follow that same basic standards, albeit projected in different ways. Things that you associate with the U.S. might only hold true for some of these subcultures, so keep that in mind.

Second, the Cold War was a major event that shifted a lot of the paradigms that underlie the U.S. culture(s). Pre-Cold War U.S. was a very different place, and a lot of things that get touted as "American" traditions really sprung up (or at least, took their modern forms) during this time period. Again, it's something to keep in mind when posting.

With that said, we're go for launch, so start the party. Ask whatever you want, or make whatever points you can think of.

I recently gave eleven dollars to this homeless woman who claimed to be 7 months pregnant. The thing was that as soon as I walked away, the first though in my head was "oh shit I so got suckered." Not only that, but on the whole walk back to my dorm,I'm at a summer camp hosted by Yale in New Haven, I watched over my shoulder for more people coming to "beg." This clearly makes me a bad person, but it also seems to be something innate to current American culture, in practiuclar it is ironic in light of all the stories of people helping each other out in hard times at other parts of our history, What the hell happened to make us so dam cynical.

I'd like to direct your attention to a person you've probably never heard of: Horatio Algor.

He wrote a series of 19th century series of dime novels (first one published in 1867), which basically were what tied morality to individual self-reliance. The novels basically all followed the same pattern, in that a poor but upstanding young man who worked hard eventually impressed a wealthy backer, who proceeded to grant said young man the wealth and prestige he deserved. Note the formula here: wealth comes from those already wealthy, and to get them to share that wealth, you personally have to earn it.

These novels were very popular, and many of their ideas got implanted in U.S. culture. With hindsight, it's safe to say that sooner or later there would have been a political party based around that belief, and everything that goes with it. As it turned out, that ended up being one the two big ones, the Republican party (getting into the reasons why it was them would be a better topic for the politics thread).

Still, even in our Golden Age, we somehow managed to balance being at the hight of our grit and self reliance, with helping each other out. I still believe in the virtues of the American "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps mentality." But I fail to see the problem with getting help along the way with your ambitions. Also their are a lot more novels about people making it on their own, and quite a few calling the rich a bunch of greedy evil bastards, so I fail to see how some dime novels written in the 1860's could influence our culture so much.

Edit: And that still doesn't explain the pure soullessness of some elements of modern culture, at least we don't have yuppies anymore.

edited 27th Jul '15 6:30:04 PM by JackOLantern1337

Why not? After all, the most popular modern holiday around the world took its current form because some guy wrote a parable centered on said holiday about how awful it was that the wealthy hoarded wealth. And that was a single book, not a whole series of books!

There's a entirely separate tradition of self-reliance, I agree. It got weirdly fused with the Algor aesop during the 1920s, and the result was more or less the fiscal conservatism that Republicans court these days. What you were taught was most likely a variation on that concept, and I can tell right now you're struggling to reconcile it with what's really going on.

On a separate note, what do you mean by "soullessness"?

edited 27th Jul '15 6:58:10 PM by TotemicHero

Nah I'm not really struggling to reconcile self reliance with asking for help, after all,that's what family,friends, and society are for. Like I said, I still think our mentality is superior to the European "be content with your lot" or the Japanese "be a cog in the machine" mentalities. I hesitate to compare a relatively recent cultural norm to a major world Religion, but honestly it sounds a lot like what many people did not Islam, it got twisted and misinterpreted until only the most brutal bitter bits were left. As for soullessness, I should have said cynicism, i.e assuming people who ask for help are trying to scam you or will spend it all on drugs. I mean again, even in the 1920's,when everyone was racist, and supposedly around the height of the bootstrap mentality ,people would band together to help their neighbors, or just random strangers.

Dude, what are you on? Given the number of peasant, trade and middle class revolts (not to mention aristocratic hissy fits of megaton proportions) in each and every European country over centuries, you still think think "know your place" was more than propaganda and top-down enforcement?

Don't get sucked into the views of those justifying and/or exaggerating their reasons for leaving the Old Country, OK? Many who left had real grievances, don't get me wrong. But, not always a wider view.

I was talking about contemporary European culture, and it's more of a feeling that everyone knows they are likely to stay where their parents were,ironically they are actually more likely to get richer, and dictate their interests accordingly. In short, Europeans have a much stronger sense of class interests than Americans, and will often act to defend those interests, like the French cab drivers who rioted when Uber came to town.

Europe has a lot less issues with class then the US does, I'm pretty sure you guys have some of the worst social mobility in the developed world, thought he UK may actually be worse.

A UK guy named Lindybeige was talking about social mobility:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPLGh7TvIJA

"we live a fair society not an unfair one"

... Well that's simply not true, the implication of his statement is that people who work hard have already reached the top and people who don't have already reached the bottom, when that's clearly false, as seen by the vast numbers of hard working poor people.

I'm kind of curious of the origins of the "Land of Opportunity" nickname for the US. Mostly because I wonder if it had anything really to do with social mobility or if it just refereed to how much unsettled and unorganized (by European standards anyway) land there was for the taking.

It just seems to me that that kind of notion, and a lot of other quirks of American culture can be linked to the whole "pioneer/ colonist" culture that we haven't quite shaken off yet.

Any colony, in its early days at least, will be called a land of opportunity. You can find the same stories about Australia, told by and to those who went there willingly: there's land, there are natural resources, you decide by your labour how well you do, there's a fresh society, you're free - all that.

A lot of it is true, as well: a constant stream of immigrants, in the presence of natural resources, creates a demand that can be met by the labour provided by desperate workers. It's basically inevitable that there will be great economic growth as long as both the natural resources and stream of immigrants are sufficient.

Then again the motherland and its society will still impose themselves: someone who immigrates with a lot of wealth from the motherland will be able to hire the more desperate immigrants for very little money, with ample rewards for relatively small investments. Social and economic factors can become more stagnant quite easily, but as long as those who "made it" (or had already "made it" by virtue of their ancestors) control the narrative people will believe that there's great wealth to be had by anyone willing to put the work in.

The idea that the US has more social mobility than an average Western country is bollocks, to put it mildly. The American political system, perhaps even more so than the British, is set up deliberately to favour the wealthy. Compare various studies of economic mobility and related indicators - the Ease of Doing Business index, say, or HDI - and you'll often find that the United States doesn't do particularly well at all. For instance, the Nordic countries, despite their reputation as nightmares Socialist bureaucracy, tend to vastly outperform the US in the Ease of Doing Business index.

John Green has a succinct and accurate summary of social mobility in the US: "If you are rich, you have to be an idiot not to stay rich. And if you are poor, you have to be really smart to get rich." If you want evidence, look at Donald Trump. He's a great example of this. If he had started from the bottom he would have starved.

Historically, it's one of those "better by comparison" things anyway; up until the late 60s, the U.S. really was a better place to live than 95% of the countries around the world, its own problems notwithstanding.

And people have been critical of this ideal for a long time. Here's part of an African-American newspaper (back when they had separate ones, note that) article in response to the original dedication of the Statue of Liberty (1886):

edited 28th Jul '15 9:18:15 AM by TotemicHero

My major in university is "English language and culture". ("English", in this case, refers to the language and not the country, so about 35-40% or so of the stuff I've studied in my major has to do with the US.) As a consequence of this I know quite a bit about American history and culture - enough, at least, to know that anyone with any sort of familiarity with that subject would, of course, find the idea that American society is more free or equal than other Western societies quite ridiculous.

It's a credit to the United States, though, that their literary tradition is so full of criticism of the hypocrisy and lies at the root of the myth that are propagated about the United States. The likes of Mark Twain and Kurt Vonnegut have revealed the reality behind the facade; yet most Americans seem to refuse to see it, at least based on the politicians they persist on voting for.

But I'm turning this thread into a political treatise here. I think I'll stop here and let the tone become more jovial again.

This thread should be about Greasers and how funny they are.

I thought I'd report this from the politics thread - we really needed some place to discuss the bright side of the United States.

The Don't You Dare Pity Me! work ethic central to US culture had always seemed to me as the offspring of our Puritan, Calvinist, and other deeply religious roots and also the grim cynical nature of life in a relatively uncharted continent.

Facing hostile terrain, harsh winters, and the debatable allegiance of the native aborigines, the early colonists must have formed societies that judged status and fame by the contributions of a citizen towards its survival - those deemed useful and productive would be hailed as the pillars of good and industrious society, while those unable to yield material results were seen as exploiting - whether intentionally or inadvertently - the hard-working productivity of the other dutiful citizens.

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US festival celebrates Basque culture, history

edited 28th Jul '15 10:29:08 AM by FluffyMcChicken

See, that story is the kind of thing that people point to when they say that the U.S. is a land of inclusiveness.

In reality, the U.S. traditionally has no problems with big festivals, since they've been a part of the country for a long time. So it doesn't matter whether it's Mardi Gras, Cinco de Mayo, the 4th of July, or something more obscure, there's nothing wrong with getting together with your family and/or neighbors and having a big party.

The cultural diversity of the United States is probably its greatest asset, and one that I believe it should always cherish. This, actually, is one of the things the country has usually tended to manage very well, largely by simply not interfering. All of the cultures expressing themselves as festivals, languages, art, cuisine - it's a great wealth that my country sadly lacks; and, boy, am I jealous!

Wait the US actually manages something well? Oh my god the world is ending

Achaemenid once made a post on the General Russia Thread regarding that:

edited 28th Jul '15 1:10:08 PM by FluffyMcChicken

I don't think we won the cold war so much as the Russians lost it. Still, my biggest criticism of Kissinger is that he failed to understand the long term consequences of things, i.e how supporting Pakistan could drive India into the arms of the Soviets, a decision we have only recently begun to recover from. Also, he praises the Austrians way to much. The reality is that their strategies failed. The revolutions of 1848 happened, Metrarch was driven into exile, and Empire her represented would fall 60 years later.

edited 28th Jul '15 1:45:05 PM by JackOLantern1337

Kissinger's reputation seems to be polarized between attitudes in different regions of the world - Westerners (e.g Achaemenid and Ogodei) and especially Latin Americans (for obvious good reasons) label him as a product of a past century, while Russians and Indians (Shinra) will logically oppose his policies due to their nations being on the receiving end of them.

However, Kissinger is generally perceived as the go-to example of what a skilled and competent diplomat should aspired to be in Asia and the Far East, where Machiavellian doctrines and realpolitik have been and are the norm both in theory and in practice. His exploitation of the Sino-Soviet split and critical role in the diplomatic opening of the People's Republic of China is seen as a turning point in the history of the modern Far East.

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In Cuba, US cultural connections run deep

Uh the Rosenburgs were not murdered, they were executed for spying, which Soviet documents recovered at the end of the Cold War reviled they were acutely guilty of.

The article itself states that fact - you're talking about the quotation from a Cuban memorial dedicated to them.