
Checking out of 'Hotel America' - rglovejoy
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8176448.stm
======
geebee
I often enjoy these articles, but they never really resonate with me. I see
almost nothing of my day to day life in these narratives.

Would this article describe San Francisco? New York? Seattle? Portland?
Austin? New Orleans? Memphis?

I assure you that people buying a house in SF aren't surprised to find grout
in the tiles or drafty windows. We're actually kind of hoping to find those
things, because this means we're not paying for someone to stage and flip
(even in this economy).

I think international borders are very over rated where it comes to culture
shock. Not saying there's no difference, of course, I just suspect there's the
opportunity for every bit as much culture shock within the US than between the
US, Canada, or Australia, maybe more... try moving from central Manhattan to
central London, then move from Manhattan to the outskirts of Toledo. Hell, you
don't have to go that far, just go to the New York exurbs.

~~~
lionhearted
One of the best things I ever did was drive cross-country. Seeing the West
Coast, Rocky Mountain States, Midwest, South, and East over the span of a few
weeks showed me a heck of a lot that I still go back and ponder when I meet
someone from a place I passed through. Little tiny things are very different.

But don't underestimate international border culture shock either - especially
non-Western countries. America was basically settled by and built on Western
European traditions - England, Spain, and France mostly, with some Dutch and
later the Irish, Italians, and other Western Europeans. But the ex-Soviet
Bloc, Middle East, East Asia are lightyears different from America, and the
culture shock is pretty supreme. Basically assumptions about how the world
works and should work that I didn't know I had I had to re-check.

The craziest was the Japanese on work. Raised in America, I basically took for
granted that doing work is something you don't like that you do for money.
Okay, some really lucky people love their jobs, but they're pretty rare. And
some people manage to have an "okay job", but all our media, movies,
television, and culture ethos are that "work sucks and get it over with so I
can get paid and do something else."

Japan? Not the case. People actually take pride in doing work, for working. We
look at the Japanese hours and think Japanese people are bat shit crazy, and I
mean, maybe they are, but they actually take pride and enjoyment out of
working. Comparing an American employee at McDonalds to a Japanese employee at
Mosburger or Yoshinoya, or even Japanese McDonalds is a head trip. Cross
border culture shock, even. Words don't do it justice, seeing the expression
and gesturing and presentation of people working in Japan really is something
else, as are similar things in other very different places.

------
domodomo
This article was strong because it balanced critique with commendation. It's
an interesting observation that America's "bigness" in many things is
simultaneously it's largest advantage and disadvantage.

I've often felt that Americans tend to have a kind of naive optimism compared
to folks from other countries. In fact, while living abroad I've felt judged
by Western Europeans in particular for that quality in myself (some of my best
friends are German and French, FWIW). But I think that attribute is what has
contributed to much of the success in America, particularly in the
entrepreneurial crowd.

~~~
philwelch
I suppose Americans do have a naive optimism--I've always perceived British
culture in general to be cynical and negative, but that may simply be in
comparison to my own optimistic culture. I attribute a lot of that to history.
The fall of Europe's empires in the 20th century was the failure of their
grand national experiments, and on top of it, much of the world faced immense
death and destruction during the wars of the 20th century. Europe, China, and
Japan were destroyed in WWII, Korea and Vietnam faced significant destruction
in their wars, and most of the communist states faced significant internal
destruction through mass murder of various kinds. America largely escaped this
level of destruction.

~~~
domodomo
Good point. I think a lot of a culture's attitude is based on cultural memory,
which comes from lessons learned (or not) from history.

Americans abroad are often elbowed about how young their country is (ugh, I
lived in Beijing and they always trot out 4000 years of Chinese civilization.
Nevermind the CCP is only 80 years old), but what this means is relatively
less cultural baggage. Americans have less cultural memory to look backwards
at and reference (and a lot we see back there like destruction of Native
Americans, black slavery, etc is painful to examine), so as a result Americans
have no choice but to look forwards.

~~~
philwelch
We also don't have all that old _stuff_. Over in Europe they still have
castles and palaces from medieval times. Buildings that are centuries old.
With rare exceptions, Americans knock down old buildings and build new ones.

------
tc
That piece resonated with me. In the spirit of Alexis de Tocqueville
(Democracy in America), sometimes it takes a fascinated outsider to draw a
properly nuanced picture of what it really means to be an American.

~~~
Semiapies
I think the opposite - it strikes me as much more an insight into the ideals
of English culture than anything about the US. Particularly the stereotypical
assumption that you can understand a vast country by living for a while in
Charleston and the District of Columbia. :)

To be fair, it's from the POV of someone who's managed to spend eight years in
a society without learning how to tell a joke to a stranger, but there's a
reason why they say, "Americans think 100 years is a long time, and the
English think 100 miles is a long way."

~~~
tc
He does reveal quite a bit about his own biases, but he walked away with the
realization that the things he would criticize most about America are also
what make America possible.

------
abstractbill
This sums up pretty much exactly how I feel about America having lived here
for 6 years. I both love it and hate it here. This bit was particularly good:

 _A nation which will one day mass produce a cure for type one diabetes, could
not, would not, save little Kara Neumann from the bovine idiocy of her
religious parents._

~~~
georgekv
"A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill." - Robert
Heinlein

~~~
ShabbyDoo
I suspect that that statement was not meant to include murderers.

~~~
kragen
Heinlein was a big enthusiast of violence.

~~~
dmm
What does that mean? His novels certainly contained violence but I don't
recall any of them expressing enthusiasm for it. And a man is not his
writings. Scifi authors often explored worlds with different values and
conditions. For example many of his novels contemplate polygamy and
alternative marriage/family structures but I have never heard anything to
suggest that he himself practiced anything like that.

------
michael_dorfman
_"It was an entirely preventable death caused, let's be frank, by some of the
Stone Age superstition that stalks the richest and most technologically
advanced nation on earth."_

That's patently unfair. Much of that superstition is Bronze Age. Credit where
credit's due.

------
ShabbyDoo
Why is it that so few Europeans believe that diabetes can be cured via prayer?
Is it that state-run religions aren't as market-savvy as the "free-market"
churches in the US? Are Europeans better educated? I presume the author
probably is also referring to an embrace of creationism as well. What is it
that went right in Europe (or just didn't go awry)?

~~~
abstractbill
I would love to know the real answer to this. I suspect it has something to do
with how easy it is to form a church here and get it tax-exempt status (I have
no experience in this area of course, but from what I've heard it's much
easier in the US than it is in Europe).

~~~
noss
ShabbyDoo is definitely onto something with his guess that European
government-connected churches market themselves less.

From what I understand you will be quite left-out of society in most of US if
you don't go to church. Here in Sweden, as a member of church, you can have
funerals, marriages and baptising at church, but the church will never really
bother you to come to the Sunday service.

The Swedish church was slightly decoupled from the government a number of
years ago, but fees from members are still collected by the tax office,
something like half a percent at most, it varies by region (diocese?).

Also, members of the Swedish church get to participate in elections for the
primary positions. See <http://www.svenskakyrkan.se/default.aspx?di=272326> I
don't know if that happens for US churches.

Mormons and other US free-churches do come here and have head quarters. I find
that they pray on the poor and unfortunate ones by knocking doors and stopping
people on the streets to offer their solutions. They're very much considered
fringe groups though, since the Swedish church is so much moderate and yet
provide ceremonies that are in demand even in the world's most secularized
country.

~~~
pyre
> From what I understand you will be quite left-out of society in most of US
> if you don't go to church. Here in Sweden, as a member of church, you can
> have funerals, marriages and baptising at church, but the church will never
> really bother you to come to the Sunday service.

Not really. I don't. Maybe you're talking about people that belong to a
particular church being pressured into regular attendance? But I belong to no
church and even when I have in the past the only times I went regularly were
when I was forced to as a child.

{edit} Maybe I've just managed to avoid areas like this but I've lived in the
Detroit, Portland and Toronto (Canada, which I guess doesn't count). {/edit}

------
Semiapies
I'm a bit thrown by the mention of Kara Neumann. It's as if he's trying to
suggest it was some major trend that wacky American law allows, as opposed to
a freakish event that lead to her fanatical parents being convicted of
reckless homicide.

~~~
jerf
Yes, that was terribly weak. One story is still an anecdote. Data looks
something more like <http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/oct/10/gender.ukcrime>
(since our author is a brit), but I say this not to directly criticize the UK
either, but to point out that if that's not a fair to "understand" Britain and
Wales through that news story, than certainly it's not fair to understand
America through that one either. Poor form.

------
asdflkj
In Europe, lower classes* are obsessed with upper classes, and vice versa. In
America, neither cares about the other. The upper classes are free to live in
their own world (much as the great artists of the Renaissance), while the
lower classes, left to their own devices, become grotesque. America is really
two separate nations.

Am I delusional? This seems so clear to me, and yet I haven't heard it
anywhere.

*I'm not talking about "class", exactly. This is not about social standing or money, but the ability to influence the world, and not necessarily in a highly visible way.

~~~
dmm
The upper-classes are pretty grotesque as well.

------
tumult
That was surprisingly good. Thanks.

------
edw519
_...there must be something creating the drive, and part of that something is
the poverty of the alternative, the discomfort of the ordinary lives that most
Americans endure and the freedom that Americans have to go to hell if that is
the decision they take._

Both of my grandfathers sacrificed everything to come here so that _I_ could
have a better life. They knew 100 years ago what many, sadly, still don't
understand. The "poverty of alternative" transcends time as well as space.

 _They_ created the drive. It's my job to make sure it continues.

------
csbartus
"But America speaks to the whole of humanity because the whole of humanity is
represented here; our possibilities and our propensities."

Sounds a bit Nazi, a nation over all others ...

God bless America, we, the people of the Earth are proud of seeing it,
understanding it and learning from. And (now as the world order is changing)
we are inviting Americans to see us, understand us and learn from us.

And God bless we are living fast times. Our grandchilds won't ever think in
terms of nations, borders and states

------
peregrine
Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety( <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0403538/> ) is
an excellent look at this and the US in general.

------
BigZaphod
What a terrific article! I know a comment like that doesn't add much to the
discussion, but as a native American, I'm not sure I have much to add to it
anyway. :)

------
TweedHeads
"You can checkout any time you like,

But you can never leave"

~~~
Dauntless
Actually, I've been to USA for quite a lot of times (in which I stayed for
several months) and came back with no problem… America is a place of extremes,
be those good or bad. So getting back home is very easy if you consider the
bad stuff, like the high criminality in some places (looking at CSI just
doesn’t feel the same as when I lived in Europe), the religious towns where
Jesus is some kind of money making superstar, the wasteful mentality, the
obscene hospitalization prices etc. But of course for all the bad stuff there
is an equally extremely good side, like the openness of people, the energy and
get things done attitude, be it having a block party on top of an apartment
building in NY queens in 5 minutes to starting an NGO or a firm, the by and
large hardworking people, the creativity of the place is quite high also etc.

~~~
kragen
_So getting back home is very easy..._

Unless you're Maher Arar or one of an unknown number of other people who
shared his fate but couldn't fire off a text first to inform their family.

------
Alex3917
"I am increasingly convinced that these elements of the nation are not the
flip side of the greatness of America, they are part of that greatness."

Too bad we can't ask the girl.

