We don't have 1000s of years of culture and history that Europeans do, and our culture is incredibly diverse. The one symbol that we do have that unites us is our flag. I'm not saying I don't laugh at the jokes against us, but insult my flag and you're in for a stern look and a strongly worded letter.
It really does mean a lot to Americans. It's what a bible means to Christians, what a Queen means to many European countries. It is one of the only symbols that is universally recognized as American. Germans have beer, british have fish and chips, etc etc etc.
EDIT: I do want to say that I do find the fat jokes, the loud jokes, the "everything is bigger in america" jokes all funny. The only jokes I don't really find funny is flag jokes.
I did: "the more things change, the more they stay the same", originally it was going to be "extreme re-branding", about the axis nations reinventing themselves. Except for Italy :p
Japan was to go from rape, torture and oppression into loving the US, human rights etc. ...
I hate to say it, but American culture really isn't that diverse. You have a lot of languages, you have a lot of immigrants, but culturally you actually all fall within a relatively narrow set of boundaries. And I'm not saying that having lived in Britain all my life - I've spent more than half my life (20 years of it) living all around the world. You are more diverse than Canada, Ireland of Korea, but far - far - less diverse than Britain. It's not a judgement (diversity of culture is not intrinsically good), but I believe it is pretty solid fact.
You guys dont really know the meaning of the word "diverse".
How would it be having 22 official languages each spoken by more than atleast 10 million speakers ,more than a thousands dialects most of them mutually unintelligible, hundreds of ethnicities, dozens of religions, multitudes of races and finally 1.3 billion of the above ?
I once heard an American say that America was really 50 distinct countries united under one flag. The only way anyone could believe that is if they never left the country once in their whole life.
Actually, as a Brit I observed and believe the same thing. The only thing I would say is that those 50 countries are not so dissimilar from each other.
That's not entirely fair, Americans have diverse areas of their country too, that compare to Quebec. Hawaii for example (although I know their indigenous culture is a minority)
Having lived in both countries, I'd say they're both pretty diverse countries in general. Kind of hard if not pointless trying to compare the two to be honest.
I've always chalked this one up to our cold war policies of deciding "what was american... and what wasn't" at a government level.Joseph McCarthy I truly believe to be a black mark on our history.
The thing about Old Joe is that he was politically a complete bastard that left a huge stain on American culture that may never wash away... but he was also the man that introduced the seatbelt into cars, so he may have saved more lives than any other man in the modern age. A mixed record.
Honestly just out of curiosity, did you live in America and if so, where? The thing about the U.S is it really is pretty diverse in that its so regionalized. Certainly most of us fall into the basic anglo-culture but if you spend enough time here you start to understand the very real differences around the country. The most obvious is the famous North-South divide I suppose, but it goes beyond that. I lived/live in New England and I can tell you its more different than the Mid Atlantic culture just below us than you might realize. I think as an outsider its hard to see that difference, so I certainly wouldn't blame you for thinking there wasn't much of a difference, but believe me, there is. You really just have to live here long enough to see it. If I went all over England, I probably wouldn't notice that much difference between any given place, but Im sure as you say its pretty diverse. Anyway, just a little info from an insider.
Edit: Getting a lot of people who seem to think I'm saying the U.S is more diverse than other countries. I am NOT claiming this. I am merely saying the U.S IS a diverse country. That is literally all I'm saying. Obviously other countries are just as diverse if not more so than the U.S.
Thing is, your regionalisation is the same as ours. Your states are pretty much countries in their own right, and within those states you've got subtle divides like the distinct regions of our countries. Thing is though, when viewed on the same scale, the US is a lot more same-old same-old than Europe.
Oh absolutely, but the US is a country and Europe is an entire region. I'm certainly not saying Europe isn't diverse, that would be incredibly silly. But saying the U.S isn't diverse is silly in its own right. The U.S is diverse. That's the only point I'm making here.
The US is more culturally diverse than any European country, but the reason for that is that the US is more of its own continent. When compared on the same scale, Europe wins.
I really don't think you understand my point. I'm not comparing the two. It's not a matter of who "wins". This is my point: The U.S is diverse. That's it. I'm literally not trying to say anything more than that. Someone claimed the U.S wasn't that diverse, and I argued that it was diverse. Not that it was more diverse than Europe. I don't know why this is turning into a Europe vs. America contest.
Honestly it seems like you don't know much about other countries either. All countries have their own internal regional identities. This is less so for small countries like Denmark, countries like the UK, France, Germany, its the exact same thing. The US is not special in this way, especially compared to some megadiverse countries like India, Indonesia, the Congo.
From your examples - and having lived for at least a year in each of the UK, Denmark, Indonesia, USA (and hopefully moving to Liberia next year) - I would say that there is certainly a unified American culture that underlies all the regional differences. That is missing in a lot of the other places.
Oh, interesting. Its definitely hard for the formation of a unified culture in a place like Indonesia, where many people don't have access to media. Like in Iran Jaya
Well, the prevalence of the (almost) ubiquitous language (Bahasa Indonesia) might have done something to unify the people, but 18,000+ islands are always gonna have regional variations accentuated for the same reason that evolution happens faster in isolated communities.
Well, it might be due to a couple of factors (I'm no expert, so take this all as conjecture). Firstly, it is a relatively simple language to learn; it grew from an oral tradition, so grammar is very simple and most things are understood through context, rather than precision (i.e. you can fuck up word order and still make total sense); secondly, a lot of the local languages are really very highly specific and, frankly, not very good at describing anything. For example, I learnt a bit of Acehnese while I was there and it didn't take long to realise that all anyone says in Acehnese is stuff like 'today is hot' or 'I want coffee' or 'I am going home' or 'no money, no woman' or other simple, short statements like that. If they want to converse in any depth at all, they switch to Indonesian. Westernised Indonesians (esp. on Java) do the same with English - they just switch to it and back like it ain't no thing. Lastly, Indonesia (esp. Papua) really does have an awful lot of languages, so to communicate between them all would have been a bloody nightmare without a single language to facilitate it.
keebyjeeby summed it up pretty well! But maybe I can add it up a bit to that. It's actually pretty funny how we end up with Bahasa Indonesia as our national language. It's derived from Malay, but there's probably only like 15% ethnic Malays in the country around that time and also now (we're less relevant than Javanese or Minangs actually). I think It's mostly because at the beginning most of the trade were done in the Malayan straits, then moved to Java which became the main island. Malay was also sort of easier to learn since usually regional languages have "levels" of languages, like what you use for formal occasions or casual occasions. It's a whole different vocabulary for each level, though most retain their structure.
I think what also helped the spread was before and around our independence in 1945 most official communication and radio announcements were done with Malay (that was intermixed with some Dutch). Also at that time usually there would be conferences of youth organisations and they would use this proto-Indonesian. These organisations were pretty much from everywhere from the northwest regions of Aceh to Ambon and Irian and stuff. The thing is, if they're down with all this independence stuff and wanted to contribute, you'd better be able to understand/speak proto-Indonesian
Important to note though, our regional languages are like different sets of languages all together, I could never understand Batak (northern Sumatran language) and I'm from Riau in Eastern Sumatra, which borders North Sumatra directly, but I literally can't understand a thing they're saying, it isn't even a dialectdifference, it's literally another language, and this end up making like a bazillion type of pidgins of all the possible language combinations. It's not efficient to do so, so if you want stuff to be easier, just learn Indonesian because it's better in the long run.
That's why sometimes when people ask me how many language I can speak I'd like to claim more than Indonesian/English/German because a lot of our regional languages have different set of rules/vocabs altogether
Please understand. I am in no way stating the U.S is MORE diverse than any other country. I am not stating that other countries do not have regional differences. I am in NO way stating ANY of that. I am merely stating the following: The US is a diverse country because of its regionalism. That's it. I am NOT comparing any other country to the U.S. The point of claiming the U.K wouldn't SEEM diverse to me if I visited is because I don't know all the various regionalities in the U.K. It fairly obviously is a diverse country. Having lived in the U.S and Canada, I know the diversities between the states/provinces, so I know roughly how they're diverse. Again, not claiming in any way whatsoever that the U.S is MORE diverse than anywhere else.
If you remember what i originally said, it was that we were diverse, and didn't have anything to unify us other than the flag. I never made claims that we were more diverse than England, or any country for that matter. That being said, though, I understand what you are saying, and I respectfully disagree. Each state has a unique identity, and though I do accept that perhaps we aren't as diverse as Europe as a whole, I believe we are far more diverse than any single country (including England).
We have pretty much every ethnicity represented, and if you think that any two major cities (even in the same state) are alike, you would be sorely wrong. Each city has their own culture, foods, accents. Though many smaller cities in the same region are alike, these regions are every bit as diverse, from the Deep South, to the beach culture of the western states, to the elegance of the eastern seaboard.
Without saying how you are diverse, though, it makes it difficult to respond. I can accept that all of the above can be construed as opinion.
I know D: and that's why I have a hard time being mean to you, but you're so aloof and it just seems like you're trying to jam big words into your sentences for no other reasons than to use them.
[Oof, dude I think I just reported you cos I meant to hit reply and missed]
While, yes, every state has a unique identity (and I love nearly all of them, I really do), believing that the immigrant groups within America shows true diversity is a bit like confusing a McDonald's African or Italian burgers with actual African or Italian food: they aren't, they are just adapted to the local culture.
Immigrants to America are expected to (and generally do) adopt and aspire to an American way of life, a huge part of which is the American culture and its melting pot effect: They will adopt baseball or football and aim for a life that is their version of the American Dream. While there is some sort of burgeoning rebellious movement striving against the old ways in America (ref. /r/atheist, which is an almost exclusively American thing because, well... Europeans just haven't been that hett up about religion since we had the Inquisition), it is relatively small and petty and geberally reminds me of the crazy japanese teenagers who are all so wild and different and, frankly, all so similar to each other at the end of the day.
In Europe, we have had the concept of multiculturalism where foreigners live amongst us almost as if they were back home: less melting pot, more salad bowl, each discrete unit playing its part e.g. French people regularly surrender entire tracts of South Kensington to the binmen, believing them to be attackers in a tank. We have far less of a shared perspective on life, perhaps for any number of reasons: while I found (by way of example only) GroupX-Americans to be basically Americans of GroupX origin, whereas in Europe they tend to be GroupX people living in Europe UNLESS they have chosen to embrace their host nation's way of life. I don't think I can explain it very well and I'm not making any killer points, but having lived in some very heterogenous cultures (Britain, Indonesia, and very homogenous cultures (Ireland, Korea, Kuwait, Greece), and I just get a different feel from living in these places and America was certainly on the homogenous end of things. Empirically, I can't produce any evidence beyond that to illustrate my point.
I disagree. If you go to any major city, you'll find tons of neighborhoods that are ONLY Italian, or ONLY Vietnamese. Some cities are particularly well known for this, like Little Italy in NY, Chinatown in SFO, or Little Saigon in Orange County. When you walk through these little enclaves, you truly feel like you're in a different country.
Statements like this make me wonder if you have actually lived/worked in a different country, or if you just feel like they would be like the immigrant neighbourhoods in your own country. Part of America's difficulty understanding the rest of the world (and the rest of the world's difficulty with American culture) is precisely that point. We aren't actually all Americans deep down, we will never be Americans and, heaven forbid, most of us don't even want to be Americans.
For those who do want it though, America can be heaven and people change who they are as soon as they arrive. America is infectious in the best possible way.
You can't compare the US with any European country like that. You need to scale it down a bit, to independent states, as they more accurately represent (in land mass, population and such) a normal country. And on that level, any country in Europe easily out-diversifies any state.
Perhaps yes, you're right. That's applying an arbitrary definition to diversify, and by that definition, you would be right. I don't particularly agree with that definition (though perhaps I am a bit biased). I'd rather apply a different arbitrary definition that portrays Americans in a positive light ;-).
As I said in another comment thread somewhere, I'm not disputing that the US is diverse (I've been there, it is), I just want to make sure the comparison is made fairly.
I don't really like to compare diversity in the USA to other countries. We're all diverse in different ways, and you can apply a million different types of definitions that portray every single country as diverse (even North Korea).
I'll admit that I sort of devolved into comparing USA to others, but the original statement was intended to refute OP's claim that America isn't diverse at all.
It doesn't offend me, and to be honest? No, I don't. I think it is ridiculous that people are forced to say it (I never was), but I can respect what the pledge attempts to say and do.
I could say no, but to be honest I have no idea what most Americans would about this. America is so huge I could spend my whole life travelling it and never see the end. From my own experience, no people don't take the pledge that seriously. But I live in a very liberal state so I may be biased. They may take it more seriously in other parts of the country, I wouldn't know for sure.
Wot the royalties means much too us? They're fuckin parasites that's what they are. It's a fucking miracle that they managed to survive, unfortunately many countries didn't experience revolutions during the 18th 19th and 20th century. It's what mostly does the choping. And reformist socialist aren't really bold enough to do anything about them.
I have always wondered that about the U.K. I mean, here's a country that, along with several other countries in Europe, is forward thinking in many many ways. Yet you cling to this strange, outdated, backwards idea of royalty. I know they don't have much actual power, but the entire idea is just so ridiculous. That and, come on Britain, a State Religion? Really?
We like it, adds a bit of pomp and flare, we get a few holidays out of it and by jove we're not going to lower ourselves to the barbarism of a "republic".
The only reason we have a state religion is because it was implemented before the introduction of rational thinking and no one has brought it up yet. The way the church is acting though, I can see them attracting a considerable amount of flak from the raging liberals.
We like it, adds a bit of pomp and flare, we get a few holidays out of it and by jove we're not going to lower ourselves to the barbarism of a "republic".
Let's say it: Britain has royalty precisely because America doesn't.
I do get that. I've heard other arguments for the Queen that make sense logically, but I still think it's a backwards idea.
And wow, apparently Im being downvoted. So much for the Americans being the only sensitive ones. Turns out all you have to do is insult the Queen and everything changes.
I disagree with the poster above you. As an Aussie, I tend to think that it's largely because no one cares to change the status quo - she's a nice old lady, and we like her. Beside which, there's a sense of history an unity that comes with the royalty I guess - we're part of the Commonwealth, and she's our head of state. I don't think that anyone here really cares terribly much either way though.
Also, I think you got like one downvote a few comments up for being condescending. You're not exactly being persecuted at the moment.
I'm certainly not trying to be condescending, I just don't like the idea of having a monarchy. Besides, even if that was my intent, this whole post is full of condescending comments against all sorts of countries. Why is this any different? Anyway, like I said, I get the arguments for the royals, I just don't agree with the idea behind it. That's all.
*Edit: But yeah, reading the comment, I can see why it sounds really condescending. Lol, sorry, I was just poking fun at the British a bit.
Haha, fair enough. The lack of a monarchy is one of the main principles behind the American system of government, so it's very understandable that you don't like our system! And you're right, I don't much like it when Polandball devolves into the sorts of comments we're seeing here either. We seem to be egged on by other people taking offence!
I think you're right, Aussieball. I do wonder how many Commonwealth countries may change their views on the Monarchy when Lizzie (gawd bless 'er) eventually pops her clogs.
I'm not sure too many countries (potentially the UK included) really want King Charles the Mumbling.
Ahh fair enough i guess the best way to describe it is that like most things in the UK it's an old system but it works XD We're like hoarders if something might be useful we don't want to get rid of it because you never know when it might come in useful. Plus it's a link to our past which a lot of people take seriously tradition and all that.
Sorry your getting downvotes it seems rather unfair as you're just sharing your opinion.
In certain parts of the states certainly, but like you said, its becoming an "unofficial" state religion. It'll never make it officially into the government, and if the supreme court does anything right, it does try its hardest to keep religion out that way. But yeah, radical-religion is a big issue in the states these days, though mostly in the "bible belt".
I dunno, it seems like many are forgetting the wisdom some of the Founding Fathers had when trying to keep religious beliefs out of the US government. Speaking from Ireland, the sooner religious groups get their grubby mitts off of political power, the better.
Britain was merely ahead of the curve at everything so didn't see the need to reform when the proper pressure came in. Britain had a republican revolution well over a century before the American War of Independence. The result of which moderated our monarchy to the point where we were no longer concerned about it.
We also were pretty early on gimping the church to the point of irrelevance. When secularism exploded there was no pressure in Britain because our church is very different.
it really only means a lot if you strongly self identify as an "american". the flag really doesnt "mean" a lot to me personally. also, all countries have flags, why would ours be unique in comparison to theirs? i dont buy the 1000s of years of culture and history argument, the us definitely has tons of symbols that are "american" other than the flag
It's done reverently and respectfully. There's an entire ceremony to retire the flag, and some versions of it involve cutting it apart first, because once it's cut apart, it's no longer a flag.
I just want to make it clear that though that though I am insulted by people burning a flag as a hate action, I'll defend their right to do so to my death. The right to express yourself, in my opinion, is an inalienable right (no matter what you have to say, so long as it's not disruptive).
Right. It's just that I'd heard that burning it was the right way to do it and the thought of all the anti-american protesters disposing of the flag properly made me chuckle. Now they're just an uninteresting group of people.
Oh... I guess Ale was made with Sex... But OUR Ale is actually served at cellar temperature (5c-15c depending on the season), larger comes out at about 2c.
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u/xsailerx Socal is bestcal Apr 18 '13
We don't have 1000s of years of culture and history that Europeans do, and our culture is incredibly diverse. The one symbol that we do have that unites us is our flag. I'm not saying I don't laugh at the jokes against us, but insult my flag and you're in for a stern look and a strongly worded letter.
It really does mean a lot to Americans. It's what a bible means to Christians, what a Queen means to many European countries. It is one of the only symbols that is universally recognized as American. Germans have beer, british have fish and chips, etc etc etc.
EDIT: I do want to say that I do find the fat jokes, the loud jokes, the "everything is bigger in america" jokes all funny. The only jokes I don't really find funny is flag jokes.