4 ms·

I think international travel should be mandatory, especially for US citizens. The longest I've stayed anywhere overseas is a month, but even a few days in anoth

I think international travel should be mandatory, especially for US citizens. The longest I've stayed anywhere overseas is a month, but even a few days in another country can be eye-opening.

cryoshon 11y ago
Agreed. Traveling internationally has been an eye opener for me, although it also confirmed many of my deeply held biases about my own country. Americans will be shocked to learn that people in other countries don't walk around thinking about America or wondering what "the Americans" are going to do about stuff.
- refurb 11y ago
  Americans will be shocked to learn that people in other countries don't walk around thinking about America or wondering what "the Americans" are going to do about stuff. I don't know any Americans who do that.
  - WalterSear 11y ago
    I know plenty that think the US is the center of the world. This very discussion is about why you might not have noticed that part of American culture. Why do you think that our democratically elected leaders feel so comfortable bombing, invading and murdering? They know much of the population ultimately feels that it is the US society's prerogative.
    - Nadya 11y ago
      From discussions online, the average foreigner seems to know more US Senators than the average American citizen. I get most of my US news from my Australian friend. My three top sources for U.S politics are all sourced from the U.K. I can only name the Prime Minister of Australia because I have an Australian friend. I'd wager the average American isn't even aware Australia has a Prime Minister, let alone what his name is. I agree that US citizens think we're the "center of the world". They get that idea because we know nothing about other countries yet they know a lot about us. Under the reasoning of "A king doesn't learn a peasants favorite color." people look at their ignorance in a positive light rather than a negative one. I never gave a damn about US politics until I started travelling internationally and having more international friends than national ones. It was embarrassing to speak about US politics and have someone from Australia know more about my countries internal politics than I did. Edit: I think a large part of this is that many countries are bilingual. Learning a second language is especially common and probably the most common language is English. Meaning they can actually read our local news. Meanwhile, few people in the U.S actually speak French/German beyond what they learned in a few years of high school.
- burkaman 11y ago
  I actually think a lot of Americans would be surprised how much people in other countries know about the US. For example, a significant portion of Americans probably know basically nothing about France, and French government. France doesn't really affect their lives at all, and the mainstream news only mentions the country when a really major story happens. But glancing at the front page of the Le Monde website, I see a story about Obama meeting with Netanyahu, a really interesting article about big data in American elections (with a lot about a tool called NationBuilder that I've never heard of), a blog about the search for extraterrestrial life that draws mainly from American research, and an article about Obama and Keystone XL. There's a "Pixels" section full of American culture, with stuff about Fallout 4, YouTube stars, Microsoft, and an FBI hacking story. A lot of this stuff could be considered "local" news; I'm not sure why anyone in France would care about Keystone XL. Now obviously French people aren't walking around worrying about America, but in general, I think people in other countries know a lot more about us than we know about them. And that's not just because of the stereotypical ignorant American, the US just influences other countries more than they influence us.
  - jacobolus 11y ago
    In the past four days, the New York Times has published 36 news stories about Europe, plus various multimedia features and opinion pieces. http://www.nytimes.com/pages/world/europe/index.html http://www.nytimes.com/pages/world/europe/index.html
    - burkaman 11y ago
      It still seems like many (not all) of those are major world events, or stories that involve the US (Volkswagen, the FBI, Jeb Bush, Libor, etc.) And that's a section about 50 different countries. If I look at the Le Monde Americas section (http://www.lemonde.fr/ameriques/ http://www.lemonde.fr/ameriques/) I count 12 stories about the US in the last 4 days, the majority of which have very little relevance to the rest of the world. There's lots about Keystone, the University of Missouri racism scandal, the Seattle gum wall thing, etc. I'm not saying Americans don't care about the rest of the world or that the news doesn't report on stuff outside our borders, but comparing US news about Europe to European news about the US is sort of proving my point. I think Europeans tend to know more about the US than Americans know about any one European country. Also, this discussion is specifically focused on culture. I see maybe one or two culture-related articles on that NYTimes page, and pretty much no non-US articles in the Arts section. I think all the articles there about foreign artists are specifically about what they're doing in the US. Whereas Le Monde, while of course it's focused on French culture, has Fallout 4, YouTube, a couple American art auctions, James Bond (maybe that's cheating though), Justin Bieber, and more. US culture is everywhere, and no one country or even continent gets that much space in American newspapers. Finally, since I'm now realizing that picking a newspaper called "The World" might have biased my results, L'Express and Le Figaro seem to have similar amounts of American politics and culture.
protomyth 11y ago
You don't really need to go overseas as a US citizen as a trip to a different region will do exactly the same thing. Its pretty amazing what a person from NYC can learn about themselves when they end up on a reservation in ND for a couple of months. Very enlightening for those students. I had my eureka moment when I took a job in urban MN after working on the reservation for 5 years (and growing up there before that). They announced a noon meeting and I went and they didn't serve lunch. Everyone brought a bag lunch (expect me). I was pretty ticked off and insulted[1]. I was mad the rest of the day. It took a call home and the "your not on the rez anymore" speech to open my eyes to what we hold as truths spawned from culture. 1) have a lunch meeting on a reservation on the upper great plains and not serve lunch at your peril - never mind not accepting a gift as you leave - federal rules and local traditions can conflict a bit
- greggman 11y ago
  It's not nearly the same magnitude of different. Some examples: Pretty much all of the USA, Canada and Europe are heavily influenced by Christianity. So, come to Japan where there's almost zero Christian influence. Or take Singapore (Japan as well) both places that are super safe. I never felt unsafe in the USA until I lived in Japan and Singapore. Things USA culture just takes for granted (your car will get broken into if you leave anything showing. Dark alleys are to be avoided. Losing your wallet means never getting it back. ...) all things that aren't actually true they're just so internalized in the culture we don't recognize the aren't actually facts of the world but rather facts of current western culture. I'm sure India and China also different magnitudes of difference than US regions.
superuser2 11y ago
Transatlantic roundtrip airfare for a family of 4 at a time kids will have off from school is around $5500. That's before you start getting places to sleep for any appreciable amount of time, car rentals or train tickets (which are quite expensive), etc. Median income in the US is around $50,000. $7-8k is a family car, most of somebody's student loan balance, the entire electronics budget for ~5 years. You want them to piss it all away on a week or two? Fuck no. International travel is a luxury for the extremely privileged. Hell, I was pretty privileged - my parents made a total of around $110k in a low-cost-of-living city - and $3,500 for New York City was a once-in-a-lifetime treat. Granted, there are ways to do it outside of the family, like study-abroad programs. But then in addition to the cost of the vacation you're paying full tuition to not take real classes and (if you're in a field like CS) delaying graduation by a semester or more because you're not making any progress on your major. Analysts say current airline prices are hilariously, unsustainably low. It's only going to get far, far worse. EDIT: I should say that vacations are important and we do take them. We drive 10-15 hours and stay at AirBnbs in other 3rd-string US cities that, while pleasant, are not high-end tourist destinations. Nashville, Lawrence, Raleigh-Durham, Cape Cod, far-flung D.C. suburbs, etc. With a Prius and more than 2 people, driving far is cheaper than flying pretty much everywhere in the continental US.
- Nadya 11y ago
  Without even getting into money - try taking 2 or 3 weeks off work and see if you still have your job in most places... taking time off is a rarity in the U.S for anything short of maternity leave. Meanwhile many other countries have mandatory time off. As in "you better take off at least 21 days this year." Seriously, just take a look at this. [0] United States has 0 days off. Over half the list is >15 days. Those people have time off to go on a 2 week vacation. You might note that US workers can "earn" up to 20 days. Taking off those days is usually looked down upon and can hurt chances of promotions. Being fired shortly after returning from an "extended leave" is not unheard of. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_statutory_minimum_employment_leave_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_statutory_minimum_empl...
  - superuser2 11y ago

I think international travel should be mandatory, especially for US citizens. The longest I've stayed anywhere overseas is a month, but even a few days in another country can be eye-opening.

cryoshon 11y ago

Agreed. Traveling internationally has been an eye opener for me, although it also confirmed many of my deeply held biases about my own country. Americans will be shocked to learn that people in other countries don't walk around thinking about America or wondering what "the Americans" are going to do about stuff.

refurb 11y ago
Americans will be shocked to learn that people in other countries don't walk around thinking about America or wondering what "the Americans" are going to do about stuff. I don't know any Americans who do that.
- WalterSear 11y ago
  I know plenty that think the US is the center of the world. This very discussion is about why you might not have noticed that part of American culture. Why do you think that our democratically elected leaders feel so comfortable bombing, invading and murdering? They know much of the population ultimately feels that it is the US society's prerogative.
  - Nadya 11y ago
    From discussions online, the average foreigner seems to know more US Senators than the average American citizen. I get most of my US news from my Australian friend. My three top sources for U.S politics are all sourced from the U.K. I can only name the Prime Minister of Australia because I have an Australian friend. I'd wager the average American isn't even aware Australia has a Prime Minister, let alone what his name is. I agree that US citizens think we're the "center of the world". They get that idea because we know nothing about other countries yet they know a lot about us. Under the reasoning of "A king doesn't learn a peasants favorite color." people look at their ignorance in a positive light rather than a negative one. I never gave a damn about US politics until I started travelling internationally and having more international friends than national ones. It was embarrassing to speak about US politics and have someone from Australia know more about my countries internal politics than I did. Edit: I think a large part of this is that many countries are bilingual. Learning a second language is especially common and probably the most common language is English. Meaning they can actually read our local news. Meanwhile, few people in the U.S actually speak French/German beyond what they learned in a few years of high school.
burkaman 11y ago
I actually think a lot of Americans would be surprised how much people in other countries know about the US. For example, a significant portion of Americans probably know basically nothing about France, and French government. France doesn't really affect their lives at all, and the mainstream news only mentions the country when a really major story happens. But glancing at the front page of the Le Monde website, I see a story about Obama meeting with Netanyahu, a really interesting article about big data in American elections (with a lot about a tool called NationBuilder that I've never heard of), a blog about the search for extraterrestrial life that draws mainly from American research, and an article about Obama and Keystone XL. There's a "Pixels" section full of American culture, with stuff about Fallout 4, YouTube stars, Microsoft, and an FBI hacking story. A lot of this stuff could be considered "local" news; I'm not sure why anyone in France would care about Keystone XL. Now obviously French people aren't walking around worrying about America, but in general, I think people in other countries know a lot more about us than we know about them. And that's not just because of the stereotypical ignorant American, the US just influences other countries more than they influence us.
- jacobolus 11y ago
  In the past four days, the New York Times has published 36 news stories about Europe, plus various multimedia features and opinion pieces. http://www.nytimes.com/pages/world/europe/index.html http://www.nytimes.com/pages/world/europe/index.html
  - burkaman 11y ago
    It still seems like many (not all) of those are major world events, or stories that involve the US (Volkswagen, the FBI, Jeb Bush, Libor, etc.) And that's a section about 50 different countries. If I look at the Le Monde Americas section (http://www.lemonde.fr/ameriques/ http://www.lemonde.fr/ameriques/) I count 12 stories about the US in the last 4 days, the majority of which have very little relevance to the rest of the world. There's lots about Keystone, the University of Missouri racism scandal, the Seattle gum wall thing, etc. I'm not saying Americans don't care about the rest of the world or that the news doesn't report on stuff outside our borders, but comparing US news about Europe to European news about the US is sort of proving my point. I think Europeans tend to know more about the US than Americans know about any one European country. Also, this discussion is specifically focused on culture. I see maybe one or two culture-related articles on that NYTimes page, and pretty much no non-US articles in the Arts section. I think all the articles there about foreign artists are specifically about what they're doing in the US. Whereas Le Monde, while of course it's focused on French culture, has Fallout 4, YouTube, a couple American art auctions, James Bond (maybe that's cheating though), Justin Bieber, and more. US culture is everywhere, and no one country or even continent gets that much space in American newspapers. Finally, since I'm now realizing that picking a newspaper called "The World" might have biased my results, L'Express and Le Figaro seem to have similar amounts of American politics and culture.

protomyth 11y ago

You don't really need to go overseas as a US citizen as a trip to a different region will do exactly the same thing. Its pretty amazing what a person from NYC can learn about themselves when they end up on a reservation in ND for a couple of months. Very enlightening for those students. I had my eureka moment when I took a job in urban MN after working on the reservation for 5 years (and growing up there before that). They announced a noon meeting and I went and they didn't serve lunch. Everyone brought a bag lunch (expect me). I was pretty ticked off and insulted[1]. I was mad the rest of the day. It took a call home and the "your not on the rez anymore" speech to open my eyes to what we hold as truths spawned from culture. 1) have a lunch meeting on a reservation on the upper great plains and not serve lunch at your peril - never mind not accepting a gift as you leave - federal rules and local traditions can conflict a bit

greggman 11y ago
It's not nearly the same magnitude of different. Some examples: Pretty much all of the USA, Canada and Europe are heavily influenced by Christianity. So, come to Japan where there's almost zero Christian influence. Or take Singapore (Japan as well) both places that are super safe. I never felt unsafe in the USA until I lived in Japan and Singapore. Things USA culture just takes for granted (your car will get broken into if you leave anything showing. Dark alleys are to be avoided. Losing your wallet means never getting it back. ...) all things that aren't actually true they're just so internalized in the culture we don't recognize the aren't actually facts of the world but rather facts of current western culture. I'm sure India and China also different magnitudes of difference than US regions.

superuser2 11y ago

Transatlantic roundtrip airfare for a family of 4 at a time kids will have off from school is around $5500. That's before you start getting places to sleep for any appreciable amount of time, car rentals or train tickets (which are quite expensive), etc. Median income in the US is around $50,000. $7-8k is a family car, most of somebody's student loan balance, the entire electronics budget for ~5 years. You want them to piss it all away on a week or two? Fuck no. International travel is a luxury for the extremely privileged. Hell, I was pretty privileged - my parents made a total of around $110k in a low-cost-of-living city - and $3,500 for New York City was a once-in-a-lifetime treat. Granted, there are ways to do it outside of the family, like study-abroad programs. But then in addition to the cost of the vacation you're paying full tuition to not take real classes and (if you're in a field like CS) delaying graduation by a semester or more because you're not making any progress on your major. Analysts say current airline prices are hilariously, unsustainably low. It's only going to get far, far worse. EDIT: I should say that vacations are important and we do take them. We drive 10-15 hours and stay at AirBnbs in other 3rd-string US cities that, while pleasant, are not high-end tourist destinations. Nashville, Lawrence, Raleigh-Durham, Cape Cod, far-flung D.C. suburbs, etc. With a Prius and more than 2 people, driving far is cheaper than flying pretty much everywhere in the continental US.

Nadya 11y ago
Without even getting into money - try taking 2 or 3 weeks off work and see if you still have your job in most places... taking time off is a rarity in the U.S for anything short of maternity leave. Meanwhile many other countries have mandatory time off. As in "you better take off at least 21 days this year." Seriously, just take a look at this. [0] United States has 0 days off. Over half the list is >15 days. Those people have time off to go on a 2 week vacation. You might note that US workers can "earn" up to 20 days. Taking off those days is usually looked down upon and can hurt chances of promotions. Being fired shortly after returning from an "extended leave" is not unheard of. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_statutory_minimum_employment_leave_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_statutory_minimum_empl...
- superuser2 11y ago