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There's no 'average european culture' as inter-european differences are bigger than US-europe divide. The US is basically our common cultural base now. > sec
by seydor 4y ago
There's no 'average european culture' as inter-european differences are bigger than US-europe divide. The US is basically our common cultural base now.
> secularism, gun-rights, access to abortion, universal healthcare, labour laws, privacy and regulation
At least 4 of those issues are american , not european. this just goes to show how much attention europeans pay to the US issues instead of our own issues (aging of population, demographic deficit, unaffordable housing, unemployment , lack of global competitiveness, old money, brain drain etc). And what about european tech? I only discuss about it on HN, a californian forum.
> privacy
While these are interesting issues, they are nowhere near the top of the mind of average european person. Nobody went out on the streets because they wanted cookie prompts. We are just letting bureaucrats run the show and tell us we should like it
- Quarrelsome 4y ago> The US is basically our common cultural base now This is wishful thinking. People pay a lot of attention to the US due to its cultural output and importance in geo-politics but when they open the door they still pay attention to their own locality which has its own context. > At least 4 of those issues are american , not european. I'm sorry, how are those issues not European? Do you think Europeans aren't human or something? They're social issues and its harmful to think the US has any sort of monopoly on them. I could easily pull concrete examples where those issues are relevant to European events that I might suggest you are unaware of. > While these are interesting issues, they are nowhere near the top of the mind of average european. I would argue that for an average European elector, privacy is a much greater expectation than it is for an American.
- seydor 4y ago> how are those issues not European? because they are not contested in europe, only in the US > privacy is a much greater It's nowhere near as important as housing or employment i think. Strict privacy was mainly championed by German Greens, not a pan-european issue
- detaro 4y agoSorry, but that's bullshit. Does US discourse have impact on these topics in Europe: sure. But they are not solved topics that wouldn't be contentious otherwise.
- Quarrelsome 4y ago> because they are not contested in europe, only in the US every single one of those issues gets discussed in Europe. The US does not have a monopoly on social issues, I fear you are just showing the limits of your perspective.
- seydor 4y agoi dont think anyone seriously debates whether abortion should be outlawed in western europe. It's just not a political topic in almost all of europe. Some very conservative parties use the US hype to rally their own supporters but it's just not working as an issue, abortion is to a very large degree culturally acceptable.
- barrkel 4y agoAbortion was only legalized in Ireland in 2018. Abortion is one of the few cultural topics which doesn't tend towards borad consensus. E.g. acceptance of gay rights has a tipping point and then drifts towards the 90s+%, but abortion does not.
- wkat4242 4y agoIt's still very limited in Ireland and it took the death of a pregnant woman to make this happen. Her husband begged the doctors to terminate her pregnancy in order to save her life but he was told "this is a Catholic country". I marched myself on this dark day in Galway but Ireland still has a long way to go to become truly independent from its Catholic stranglehold. That caused so much pain especially to the youth. But they are on their way yes, I was especially happy when the gay marriage made it through.
- 4y ago
- edmundsauto 4y agoSimilarly, there is no average American culture, as inter-state differences in attitude are large. America is as polarized as it's ever been, which is another way of saying the same thing.
- seydor 4y agoamerican culture is almost homogeneous. ask a european visitor
- tmtvl 4y agoOh no, Peruvian culture and Canadian culture, for example, are very distinctly different, at least to my Belgian eyes.
- qlm 4y agoThis isn't what they meant, but I suspect you know that.
- seydor 4y agoand so are Italian and Finnish cultures. But inter-USA cultures are as differnt as local cultures are within a single european country. Would be interesting to have a distance metric for cultures , however
- tmtvl 4y agoYeah, the Navajo and Lakota are very noticably culturally distinct from each other, maybe even more so than people from Swabia and people from North Frisia.
- pessimizer 4y agoThe Navajo and Lakota are nations.
- pcrh 4y ago>There's no 'average european culture Where do you live? Are you not aware that there is a very active and ongoing war in Europe which was triggered by the desire of a certain country to be more "European", and opposition to that desire.
- wkat4242 4y ago> Nobody went out on the streets because they wanted cookie prompts. We are just letting bureaucrats run the show and tell us we should like it Umm I do advocate for privacy. And I know many people that do. Feelings about GDPR are generally very positive. But nobody wanted cookie prompts. They are the result of a shortsighted compromise. What the EU should have done is simply forbid user tracking or make the user take action if they want to be tracked, no not tracking should be the default. Pop-up questions should have been explicitly forbidden. However the industry knows that nobody wants to be tracked. And feared a loss of income. So they campaigned to weaken the law. The EU officials in their stupidity agreed. Stupid yes because now the industry blames them for the abundant cookie walls.
- toyg 4y agoNot stupid, sadly - corrupt. I bet most of the MEPs that voted on that directive are now retired with a fat pension, made even fatter by some "consulting gig" from the folks that wanted that law weakened. Unfortunately this is nothing new. Democracy has its problems.