4 ms·

I feel like this article should be retitled, “What every American should know about life in America.” (Saying this as an American)

StavrosK 7y ago
The thing with culture is that it's invisible when you're in it. You literally don't know how houses could be built any other way, or human relationships be formed any other way. You might as well be questioning whether gravity should always pull and not sometimes push. Articles like these are great for giving you a taste of what things are like in other countries, and making you see that your way isn't the only way things can be. Travel does that too, and in a much more hands-on manner. One of the things that made an impression on me on a work trip to the US was that I was talking to a colleague and she said something about her not being well in her mental health the previous year, and then immediately apologized to me for "burdening me with her problems". I was speechless at (and still don't fully understand) the cultural factors that lead people to apologize for mentioning a detail of their personal life to a coworker, but it seems to me that life must be much more lonely like that.
- scottLobster 7y ago
  For example, as an American what struck me most about the article was this line: "I’m just saying that if you are found to have signs of a meningioma and go in for an MRI scan, you might expect eight to ten friends and relatives to take time off work to show up with you and weep in anticipation in the waiting room. You will not find that here, and you’ll feel a sharp crash and withdrawal." Is the author exaggerating, or is this actually a thing in other countries? I'd expect my immediate family and close friends to know I was going in for a scan and to care about the outcome, maybe even wait by the phone for results if they have the time. But to take off work and physically show up in the waiting room just for moral support? What planet is that? I mean sure even Americans can do that for major surgeries/births/etc, at least for those there's some amount of physical care required during the recovery that people can help with. But moral support for an MRI? I actually would feel bad being the center of that much attention. I guess Americans moralize "being useful" more than other countries, or just have a different conception of what "useful" means. Just because I might have cancer doesn't mean anyone else's time is less valuable than it was yesterday, or that I'm some charity case (Is being a "charity case" an Americanism I'm unaware of?). Immediate family and very close friends have some obligation of moral support, but beyond that it's like how a cat grooming another cat is the dominant cat. It's generally seen as less genuine, and even if it is genuine it's seen as putting unnecessary burdens on people who don't have a pre-existing social obligation to said burdens.
  - lentil_soup 7y ago
    No idea about Armenia, but that wouldn't be that strange in latin america. Of course not everyone would take the day off but many would offer to go to the hospital with you.
  - atlasunshrugged 7y ago
    I'm pretty sure it's actually a thing. About 2 months ago I was in Yerevan and went to a doctors office to re-up a prescription (I'm one of those medicating Americans) and basically everyone there was with several family members, and this wasn't even a surgery facility, just a large doctors office
  - LeoTinnitus 7y ago
    I think a lot of it stems from American culture simply being centered around money. It's all about how much you make and what you can afford. We all live in our houses 20 miles away from family if not farther and don't value community at all. It's like the US was devised in a way completely contrary to the way in which we evolved.
    - kyuudou 7y ago
      Well that and you don't get health care unless you are employed, independently wealthy or someone else's dependent that does work.
      - LeoTinnitus 7y ago
        Thats a different issue altogether. I'm saying we don't have a community. I'm not saying those small farming villages were great and all like fiddler on the roof kinds, but much like the amish, it has a standard set of community. People work for eachother, give of themselves, and acknowledge life is a challenge. In the US, if you don't figure it out on your own and get rich, people just view you as scum and don't care whatsoever. This is why we have psychopaths shooting up concerts, a receding youthful male population, increased suicide rates in general, and people just tuning out of society. There is no defined purpose. You just have to make it. Which is incredibly hard in an economy devised full of choices, every which way preys upon your financial naivety. The US is a system of the lucky being raised right.
- atlasunshrugged 7y ago
  Yeah, I second that opinion that culture is invisible when you're in it. I'm an American but have been an expat living in Berlin, Tallinn, and then a few months in Armenia actually and have been gone for ~3yrs. I'm not sure I would have really understood this article as well as I do now unless I'd been gone for a while
  - abalashov 7y ago
    Intriguing overlap! I spent ~2 years total living in Armenia and bounced in and out of Berlin as well, and once lived in the latter for about 3 months.
plandis 7y ago
Really? I think it should be retitled: “Ignorant take on America from a foreigner who didn’t bother to actually understand life in America outside a small bubble.”
- zzzcpan 7y ago
  Could you give a few examples of what he misunderstood so much to warrant labeling it "a small bubble" perspective?
  - plandis 7y ago
    Like others have commented, parts of this sound like the author extrapolated their experience in a select few places in California to the rest of the country.
    - vsskanth 7y ago
      The author seems to be well travelled and barring a few exceptions (close knit small towns, urban areas) his depiction of suburban life seems pretty accurate and matches what I've seen so far travelling to many parts of the US.
    - abalashov 7y ago
      (Author here) I’ve barely set foot in California. :-) But I’ve been in the US since I was 6, and I’m in my mid thirties, so for all intents and purposes I’ve always lived here. I have lived in Indiana, Texas and Georgia (three different cities and towns in GA), and have visited a lot of other places in the country, of course, some of them extensively.
abalashov 7y ago
That’s very kind! But, joking aside, I’m sure you can appreciate that this would be thought more than a little presumptuous had I actually titled it that way.
- burlesona 7y ago
  No no, it's perfect just as written. I probably should have said, "This article _could_ be titled..." I've lived abroad, and then I have a large number of friends from abroad, so I understand most of these things to some degree. But reading your article just made me realize, these are the very things that I am so frustrated by in my own country, and yet when I talk to my family and friends they mostly just look at me like I'm weird and shrug me off. I think it's because (as another reply pointed out), they have never seen anything different and can't imagine that it doesn't have to be this way. There are many great and wonderful things about America and Americans, but I think our biggest single downfall is that our national pride has somehow mutated into what I would call a national narcissism. So many Americans deeply believe that we are the absolute best at everything. I've listened to family members crushed by medical bills say, "Well, at least we're in America where doctors can treat things like this, we're so fortunate here." I point out that people in other countries pay a fraction what we do for the same care, and they just... space out and cannot process what I'm saying. So, anyway, it was just a really cathartic read for me. You expressed these ideas so cogently and concisely, I wish I could have done the same. Last thing, one the note of the built environment, if you're interested in that sort of thing, I help run an organization called Strong Towns (strongtowns.org) which is largely aimed at helping Americans understand the flaws in the suburban model (namely that over the long-term it is an unproductive money pit that is eroding our national wealth). You might find you fit in well with the Strong Towns movement :) Thanks for writing and sharing this piece!

StavrosK 7y ago

The thing with culture is that it's invisible when you're in it. You literally don't know how houses could be built any other way, or human relationships be formed any other way. You might as well be questioning whether gravity should always pull and not sometimes push. Articles like these are great for giving you a taste of what things are like in other countries, and making you see that your way isn't the only way things can be. Travel does that too, and in a much more hands-on manner. One of the things that made an impression on me on a work trip to the US was that I was talking to a colleague and she said something about her not being well in her mental health the previous year, and then immediately apologized to me for "burdening me with her problems". I was speechless at (and still don't fully understand) the cultural factors that lead people to apologize for mentioning a detail of their personal life to a coworker, but it seems to me that life must be much more lonely like that.

scottLobster 7y ago
For example, as an American what struck me most about the article was this line: "I’m just saying that if you are found to have signs of a meningioma and go in for an MRI scan, you might expect eight to ten friends and relatives to take time off work to show up with you and weep in anticipation in the waiting room. You will not find that here, and you’ll feel a sharp crash and withdrawal." Is the author exaggerating, or is this actually a thing in other countries? I'd expect my immediate family and close friends to know I was going in for a scan and to care about the outcome, maybe even wait by the phone for results if they have the time. But to take off work and physically show up in the waiting room just for moral support? What planet is that? I mean sure even Americans can do that for major surgeries/births/etc, at least for those there's some amount of physical care required during the recovery that people can help with. But moral support for an MRI? I actually would feel bad being the center of that much attention. I guess Americans moralize "being useful" more than other countries, or just have a different conception of what "useful" means. Just because I might have cancer doesn't mean anyone else's time is less valuable than it was yesterday, or that I'm some charity case (Is being a "charity case" an Americanism I'm unaware of?). Immediate family and very close friends have some obligation of moral support, but beyond that it's like how a cat grooming another cat is the dominant cat. It's generally seen as less genuine, and even if it is genuine it's seen as putting unnecessary burdens on people who don't have a pre-existing social obligation to said burdens.
- lentil_soup 7y ago
  No idea about Armenia, but that wouldn't be that strange in latin america. Of course not everyone would take the day off but many would offer to go to the hospital with you.
- atlasunshrugged 7y ago
  I'm pretty sure it's actually a thing. About 2 months ago I was in Yerevan and went to a doctors office to re-up a prescription (I'm one of those medicating Americans) and basically everyone there was with several family members, and this wasn't even a surgery facility, just a large doctors office
- LeoTinnitus 7y ago
  I think a lot of it stems from American culture simply being centered around money. It's all about how much you make and what you can afford. We all live in our houses 20 miles away from family if not farther and don't value community at all. It's like the US was devised in a way completely contrary to the way in which we evolved.
  - kyuudou 7y ago
    Well that and you don't get health care unless you are employed, independently wealthy or someone else's dependent that does work.
    - LeoTinnitus 7y ago
      Thats a different issue altogether. I'm saying we don't have a community. I'm not saying those small farming villages were great and all like fiddler on the roof kinds, but much like the amish, it has a standard set of community. People work for eachother, give of themselves, and acknowledge life is a challenge. In the US, if you don't figure it out on your own and get rich, people just view you as scum and don't care whatsoever. This is why we have psychopaths shooting up concerts, a receding youthful male population, increased suicide rates in general, and people just tuning out of society. There is no defined purpose. You just have to make it. Which is incredibly hard in an economy devised full of choices, every which way preys upon your financial naivety. The US is a system of the lucky being raised right.
atlasunshrugged 7y ago
Yeah, I second that opinion that culture is invisible when you're in it. I'm an American but have been an expat living in Berlin, Tallinn, and then a few months in Armenia actually and have been gone for ~3yrs. I'm not sure I would have really understood this article as well as I do now unless I'd been gone for a while
- abalashov 7y ago
  Intriguing overlap! I spent ~2 years total living in Armenia and bounced in and out of Berlin as well, and once lived in the latter for about 3 months.

plandis 7y ago

Really? I think it should be retitled: “Ignorant take on America from a foreigner who didn’t bother to actually understand life in America outside a small bubble.”

zzzcpan 7y ago
Could you give a few examples of what he misunderstood so much to warrant labeling it "a small bubble" perspective?
- plandis 7y ago
  Like others have commented, parts of this sound like the author extrapolated their experience in a select few places in California to the rest of the country.
  - vsskanth 7y ago
    The author seems to be well travelled and barring a few exceptions (close knit small towns, urban areas) his depiction of suburban life seems pretty accurate and matches what I've seen so far travelling to many parts of the US.
  - abalashov 7y ago
    (Author here) I’ve barely set foot in California. :-) But I’ve been in the US since I was 6, and I’m in my mid thirties, so for all intents and purposes I’ve always lived here. I have lived in Indiana, Texas and Georgia (three different cities and towns in GA), and have visited a lot of other places in the country, of course, some of them extensively.

abalashov 7y ago

That’s very kind! But, joking aside, I’m sure you can appreciate that this would be thought more than a little presumptuous had I actually titled it that way.

burlesona 7y ago
No no, it's perfect just as written. I probably should have said, "This article _could_ be titled..." I've lived abroad, and then I have a large number of friends from abroad, so I understand most of these things to some degree. But reading your article just made me realize, these are the very things that I am so frustrated by in my own country, and yet when I talk to my family and friends they mostly just look at me like I'm weird and shrug me off. I think it's because (as another reply pointed out), they have never seen anything different and can't imagine that it doesn't have to be this way. There are many great and wonderful things about America and Americans, but I think our biggest single downfall is that our national pride has somehow mutated into what I would call a national narcissism. So many Americans deeply believe that we are the absolute best at everything. I've listened to family members crushed by medical bills say, "Well, at least we're in America where doctors can treat things like this, we're so fortunate here." I point out that people in other countries pay a fraction what we do for the same care, and they just... space out and cannot process what I'm saying. So, anyway, it was just a really cathartic read for me. You expressed these ideas so cogently and concisely, I wish I could have done the same. Last thing, one the note of the built environment, if you're interested in that sort of thing, I help run an organization called Strong Towns (strongtowns.org) which is largely aimed at helping Americans understand the flaws in the suburban model (namely that over the long-term it is an unproductive money pit that is eroding our national wealth). You might find you fit in well with the Strong Towns movement :) Thanks for writing and sharing this piece!