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Very true! In the same vein though, the selection at places like Whole Foods is one of the best parts of coming home (from the third world). One of the hardest
by 55555 10y ago
Very true! In the same vein though, the selection at places like Whole Foods is one of the best parts of coming home (from the third world).
One of the hardest things for me to adapt to is how "liberal" America has become. It's not an objectively bad thing, but I feel like I went into a coma and woke up 20 years later in a world I can barely relate to. As an example, I'm thinking about stuff like Miley Cyrus' performance. And a lot of the social justice stuff -- I really just missed a whole lot of it and I've literally had to learn tons of new words and concepts to catch up and not appear bigoted. Living abroad in a more "conservative" culture and then coming back and adapting with a snap of the fingers is tough. The weird thing is that I was considered "very liberal" when I first left the US.
The hardest thing of all is perhaps how violent and aggressive and loud and rude Americans can be (in public, to strangers). It can be downright frightening, coming from Asia.
Edit: Also, I can't stop bowing to people. Asian Americans probably sometimes suspect I'm racist.
- wtbob 10y ago> One of the hardest things for me to adapt to is how "liberal" America has become. It's not an objectively bad thing One wonders, if the rest of the world is more cautious about this sort of thing, if maybe it's America that's in the wrong. Maybe other cultures deal with these things more sensitively or more rationally or just better. My experience travelling abroad is that people seem more comfortable in their skins, which is sad given that America is supposed to be the place where anyone can make it.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- astrodust 10y ago> My experience travelling abroad... Try doing that with a disability, being a visible minority, being a woman, etc. America is far from perfect, but it's at least accommodating. In other countries they don't hesitate to throw people to the curb. It's the little things: The wheelchair accessible stores and streets, the effort made to deal with vision impairments, institutions that are fighting for women's rights and so on. There are some places in the world where people with disabilities do not seem to exist, they're always hidden away.
- mahyarm 10y agoAmerica should not be comparing itself to developing nations, but other developed nations. In that they fall short in many things.
- herbst 10y agoFrom a outside perspective America seems like a developing nation in many perspectives. So I think both should be done. The amount of homeless, jobless, bad education, a meme president and all that is nothing you find in 'your usual developed nation'
- briandear 10y agoMore jobless in America? [citation needed]
- herbst 10y agoSort by %: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_unemployment_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_unemploym... given there are several developed countries with worse conditions
- astrodust 10y agoOne day you'll wake up and realize that employment in America is always unusually high. During the depths of the last recession it barely crested 10%. What makes it seem worse than it is has been the way these unemployed people are highly clustered today. There's counties with 50-60% unemployment, but they're low-population so they don't skew the national rate all that much. It certainly sucks to be in one of those affected areas, and I know people who are stuck there, but the big picture is a different thing. America is far from a homogeneous thing, but it's also full of opportunity if you're able, willing and prepared to move to them.
- 10y ago
- TorKlingberg 10y agoThe rest of the world is not a homogeneous place. 55555 specifically mentioned living in a "conservative" culture. Living as an American in a country like Bangladesh can be quite nice, but you really don't want to be a persecuted minority, or gay or similar there. That is NOT something America should learn from. A lot of countries are simply less developed, both economically and socially. There is no need to glamorize it. That said development is not a simple linear scale. Each culture has good things others could learn from, but it's wrong to see low development level as some kind of purity.
- wtbob 10y agoI wasn't thinking of countries like Bangladesh — I was thinking of countries like France or Germany!