I don't think most Europeans are fully aware of how "colorful" they seem, from an American perspective. What do I mean by "colorful" of course? It is simple: I mean to say that, generally speaking, even average Europeans -- i.e. not wealthy ones or highly educated ones -- seem to do a great deal of traveling and urban exploring, in comparison to even relatively wealthy and comfortable Americans.
In my experience talking and meeting Euros, I would say roughly 8/10 of them that I met, all seemed to have done what most people I know in the States would consider rather extensive traveling. Almost all of the Euros I met, even the ones I met in the European "countryside", all seemed like they had seen not just a wide handful of different cities -- but also different countries. European countries, yes yes, but still..different countries. And again ...these people were not wealthy. Some of them were, in fact, seemingly rather poor. They worked in little pharmacies, convenience stores, and pizza restauraunts. Most of them did not even have their own cars, and appeared to have no plans on ever getting one.
Now compare this to the average American who has not finished college and who has not managed to become "rich", by American standards. I honestly don't care what state you're in: I can practically guarantee you that 8/10 Americans you'll meet probably have only seen a few states besides the one they were born in, and more likely than not, especially if they are a white American, they are not living in an urban setting. In addition, what is even stranger to me is that, even when you do chance to meet a rich wealthy American who has had that "rare chance" to leave the country, it often seems like it has changed absolutely nothing about them. Somehow, they still seem rather provincial, convinced that America is the best, convinced that their life here is "superior", and they often all certainly seem to still be quite boring, in both mind and dress.
In fact, provincial is probably the best word that can be used to describe the vast majority of white Americans -- college educated or not. They all seem cut off and removed in some strange way. The dictionary defines this provincial word as meaning "...of or concerning the regions outside the capital city of a country, especially when regarded as unsophisticated or narrow-minded." I feel there is literally no better word to describe the vast majority of white Americans.
One basic conclusion I have come to over the years, for why I feel this way, goes something like this: A rich and educated person and a very provincial person, in my opinion, perhaps tend to have some odd similarities, when it comes to how they travel. Specifically, I believe that both of these groups tend to not really see the whole picture of wherever it is that they are traveling.
For example, an extremely provincial person that goes traveling often just sort of takes in stereotypes, and ignores the reality of the city they're in, and as for a rich traveler, they tend to perhaps think they are automatically "ABOVE" wherever it is that they are traveling-- so they don't think to take any real inspiration or advice from wherever they might be, either. They both ignore whatever it is that the place they are in is truly saying. They both see only a superficial, thin presentation.
A rich person, after all, or even a comfortable college educated person (for me that is defined as rich) tends to be coming from a position where they think their origin country is quite comfortable. It has made them rich. Therefore, I say again: When they go a'traveling, they tend to miss details of the culture they've flown to, in ironically just the same way a deeply provincial person --who is overly excited by simple stereotypes--also misses the finer details. As you can imagine, when rich Americans go traveling, they are looking for a vacation; they are not looking to consider the politics of where they are, or the social problems and how they change or don't change in compariosn to the States, etc....
In fact, the basic itinerary of the modern tourists, when you read about the sights most cruises etc show us, basically reveals this to us instantly. These people are only taking in the most basic areas of these cultures they are traveling into. They go to these places; but they do not go there seeking inspiration for how to effect this country. In other words, not only are most Americans literally trapped in America, unable to ever see or take real deep inspiration from another country, but even the Americans who do get out, often seem to come home with literally nothing to suggest. There is no sense that anyone anywhere else is doing anything differently, or better, or more advanced, than the way people here in America are doing it. If anything, it seems most American travelers are usually relieved to get back to their little Stateside provinces , after seeing the big cities of the outside world. They're relieved to get back to their suburban home, etcetc.
But now I want my reader to try and dwell for a moment on the way Europeans themselves tend to travel, and to take in other cities within Europe's varied countries, and I would also ask you to take into consideration just how much more frequently Europeans are able to travel, as well, in comparison to the American. Traveling in and throughout West Europe is so common, in fact, that most West Europeans probably don't even think to obsessively mention it or brag about it, in anywhere near the same way a rich or poor American would mention their own travels. When I spoke with Euros, I found this detail shocking: None of them are really all that impressed with any traveling one might chance to do in the Western world. This isn't because they find the places you can see in the West underwhelming or because they think the one country they live in is the best one -- it's rather because, chances are, they've already seen the places themselves, and they know 10 other friends who have also seen them. A European even as far as Naples in Italy's deep south can hop a train on the weekend to travel to Paris rather randomly. It isn't nearly as big of a deal for them as it is for us. In order to impress a Euro, you'd probably have to travel into the deepest regions of the world at this point. An American, on the other hand, will usually be "deeply impressed" just by a list of basic European cities. If you say you have seen Paris, Luxembourg, and Rome, you are insanely cultured by the American point of view. In fact, many Americans might even consider you insanely cultured if you have just spent 3 weeks in New York City.
Yet, even after all of this, what you'll notice, consistently, is that Americans still just don't ever want to totally admit that they are, indeed, usually very provincial. In my experience, talking to many Americans, I have found that the vast majority of them seem to want to "have their cake and eat it too" , when it comes to this subject. This means the following: The typical white American often wants to simultaneously be interpreted as a "simple down home person", whilst still being regarded as someone whose not provincial. In other words, the American will be very offended when you tell them they seem narrow minded and not well traveled, and yet 20 minutes later, they can't wait to explain to you how little they care to even contemplate living in some "massive" city like Paris or Rome etc. As my reader can imagine, this doesn't make any sense. One cannot be both provincial and well-traveled. You are either one or the other. One cannot be educated and uneducated. It just doesn't make any sense. Alas, for the modern white American, it somehow does. In their mind, this conundrum is totally possible; in fact, it is preferable. Americans never, ever want to believe that America is a "simple country" populated with fairly "simple people". For, they think, how can this possibly be? How can a world super power possibly be inhabited by simple folk?
This is where the big problem is happening. It's the entire dilemma. Americans , you see, again ,especially the white ones, are deeply unaware of their own inherent provincialism, because they think they're living in the most advanced and forward thinking country on the face of the Earth. It is a world super power, it has nuclear bombs, and its military is unable to be beaten. Therefore, the American tells himself, it is the center of the world --and how can the "center of the world" possibly be provincial, right? Except it is, and can be, very easily. Mostly because, even if the Americans have nuclear bombs , and a media empire, guess what? It still isn't really the center of the Western world. The average citizen, who does not live inside the TV, is still not able to see anything thats important about the Western world and western civilization.
What I personally find so interesting about this viewpoint, of course, is that the Americans of old, even up until the 1940s more or less, inherently understood this. They knew, for an absolute fact, that they were living in the outskirts of the Western world; in fact, it was the entire reason that they had come in the first place. The "original" Americans who came here, whether you are talking about the ones who began crossing the Atlantic in the days of the colonies,straight up to the ones who came in the early 1900s, purposely came here because it was not the center of the world. They were looking for things that only a provincial area can ever offer: Clean air, a lot of uninhabited land, a lot of work still yet to be done, no rich folks to harass them, and not a lot of people around, in general. Now, however, as the years have passed and America has grown and grown, this false interpretation has grown with it. This false idea that, when the USA won the Second World War, and when she came home and built interstates, a TV and nuclear bombs, she immediately switched to being the Western worlds "nucleus/heart" overnight. In fact, this idea is so strong by this point, that even Europeans sort of believe it.
The general idea goes something like this: After the war, Western Europe and all of its inhabitants sort of became "irrelevant". As a result of this, someone had to take up the position as the "gatekeeper" of all Western civilization -- and who better to do this than the Americans (and a bit the English) who had won the war?
And yet...no one would ever dare say this same stuff about Russia, would they? No one would ever dare say that the Russians suddenly became the gate keepers of all Western civilization, and did not the Russians also win the war, just like Americans? To paint the Russians as the new gatekeepers of Western civilization, just because they won a war and developed a nuclear arsenal, sounds absolutely ridiculous. We all know that Russians are rather provincial, simple, and yes, "Backwards". We know that Russians are not posh, too urbane, or too advanced--when it comes to anything except their weapons and their bombs. No one would ever dare try to say that Moscow or Saint Petersburg have become the new "Paris" etc. It sounds preposterous. But, you see, this is exactly what the Americans did and still do, when it comes to their own New York City and Los Angeles. These two cities , as wide apart from each other as could be, just suddenly burst into being the new "centers of the west", overnight, as a result of a war. This is ridiculous of course. It sounds asinine, once you actually sit down and read the history of the West from a Western European point of view--instead of "an American point of view" . American universities do not do this of course.....
In Russia, for example, they actually refer to everyone in West Europe, and the States, as being "westerners". This term is meant to signify that these people are from a different, far flung culture altogether. A culture that has some slight connection to their own, but also one that is far and out of reach, etc. Well, here is my opinion on it, when it comes to the States: If Russia is considered the "Far East", in relation to West Europe, then the United States ought to be considered the "Far West". Once you see it like this, you start to be able to make a whole lot more sense of the entire story of Western civilization, that somehow the poor,provincial Americans are still not really making -- even in their most "prized" institutions, so far as I can tell.See, in my opinion, the problem with Americans is not that they are provincial, like Russians also are, but rather that they are not totally aware of their provincialism. Again and again I go back to that same idea, I believe, because I essentially cannot think of anything more fastidious than talking to someone -- in this case, literally an entire nation of people -- who does not realize their true position and place in the story of Western civilization. It is, quite frankly, rather difficult to talk to most Americans about anything regarding history or politics, etc, because they always play that game I referenced before:They always want to be simultaneously "down home and simple" -- whilst at the same time then trying to profess that they are so advanced and cultured/worldly.
No where,of course, is this ridiculous game more pronounced, than when it comes to the Republicans , in the USA. The Republicans are a particularly absurdist political party because they are now obsessively claiming to "embody" the so-called' ethics' of Western civilization -- whilst knowing literally next to nothing about it. If the Republicans truly did prize Western civilization and her particular achievements, then they would be obsessed with urban centers, higher education, the arts, as well as science, for those things are - it could be argued - the literal hallmarks of Western civ. Alas, when we look into the "Republican way", what we tend to find is , literally, the exact opposite: Republicans seem to hate cities, they oppose making higher education more accessible to the public, they are completely despised by all artists, and scientists everywhere cannot stand them. The shocking truth about the Republican party is this: They are the representatives of that great big population of people who, "a long time ago", wandered too far from the heart of Western Civilization.
Republicans are not the representatives of the heart of Western Civ. They are the exact opposite. They are representing the far flung, desolate outskirts of Western civ. They are the public and political face of people who, now, are, in a sense, waiting to be civilized again. As the reader might be able to guess, many of these people -- being the descendants of folks who hated civilization in the first place and thus fled from it -- are not all that excited about the tentacles of civilization reaching out to grab them again. The very pronounced hatred that the Republicans have for "big government" and even their own cities, like New York City and LA, is really just a hatred for a civilized, rather "compact" world. Again: They like being on the outskirts, and in the quiet, tranquil provinces.They like being on "their own". Charity and healthcare and gun control laws be damned to the depths.Being on your own is more important--from this angle they take. Seeing fancy cities , seeing the Old World, having the ability to ride a train to Brussels instead of a pick-up truck to the "sticks", all of this be damned, in their view. They ain't impressed. Which, you know, them not being impressed by all of that "high culture" stuff is totally fine -- until you turn around and remember that they still want to be in charge of nuclear bombs and they still want to bully the whole wide world around with this literally massive military that they invested all of their money into. This is when it becomes a major problem.
Coincidentally, one very fascinating part of being alive in this particular time period, is that we now see how the rural "Far West" Republicans of America, have begun to take a shine -- finally -- to their rural Far East twins, way out there in Russia. It, in fact, is even beginning to appear as though they are forming a "Secret alliance" of some sort, one to the other. Many Americans in the big cities are utterly mortified by this, in just the same exact way that many Western Europeans are also mortified by it. The Democratic party, which represents the urbane area of the States, and is liberal, is absolutely shocked by this. How, they seem to wonder, is it possible that this alliance is being formed? How on Earth is this possible? Russia, they perhaps think, could not be any more different! Of course, we know that this isn't the truth. We know, in fact, that Americans, even if they're from "big New York", probably have more in common with Russians, than they do with West Europeans. Russians tend to not see much besides Russia, after all, when they travel. Russians tend to be pretty religious. Russians also tend to think their country, even in spite of its provincialism, is still somehow the greatest country of all time. Just like even many so caled "college educated" Americans, Russians tend to not really know Western European history that well. They also live in an intensely privatized academic world, like the Americans do as well. Many Russians can probbaly relate quite well with the American student debt crisis. This is something Western Europeans cannot relate with, at all, since higher education has no cost attached to it, at all....
Therefore, I can tell my reader that, personally, I have not been at all surprised by the so-called "Russia American" alliance that seems to have been forming lateyl, at all. If anything, I think it's all of this long story coming to its natural conclusion. Perhaps it is the case that Russia and America are now going to have to "unite" with one another, in order to move themselves --who knows how -- into no longer being as provincial and behind West Europe, as they currently are at this time. This is a whole other topic now of course that I've started with; but, in a sense, I have always found it somewhat shocking that these two countries weren't allied with one another, even right after the Second World War -- considering they fought on the same side. Am I a bit concerned and frightened about a Russian and American alliance and what it might mean for the world? Sort of. Maybe. But am I completely mortified by it and shocked? Absolutely not, because I have always been thinking of these two enormous, backwoods province countries as being very similar anyways.. I have never, at least for a long time, thought that Americans or Russians can even begin to compare to the intellectual and philosophical culture of West Europe. I don't care if they have produced televisions, nuclear bombs, kalashnikov rifles, and submarines. The people themselves are still not "cultured"; that's all that matters.
One day, of course, I have faith that they will be. They'll finally be just like the intellectual West Euros often are now, with their free education. But as of today, the Americans and the Russians are not that way.They are narrow minded, they are simple, and they are living on the outskirts of western civ. ---
the end
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