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They’re not but that’s kind of my point. It’s not really that varied, you can go “red” or “blue” and those alternate a lot as you travel around, but the idea of

They’re not but that’s kind of my point. It’s not really that varied, you can go “red” or “blue” and those alternate a lot as you travel around, but the idea of a patchwork of many little very distinctive cultures is on life support.

civilitty 3y ago
How much have you actually traveled through the US beyond superficially passing through a few cities? Is “Massachusetts to California” supposed to be satire? You obviously haven’t met any Cajuns, Appalachians, or any number of American subcultures that are very distinct from your generic metropolitan yuppy. Many of them have dialects and accents thick enough to be practically indecipherable to many Americans. You just won’t find them at your local Trader Joes because they live somewhere else
- emodendroket 3y ago
  Yes, I have, but I didn’t think I needed to write my whole life story to make a point. Regional accents (Massachusetts has a couple distinctive ones! While we’re being condescending, surely you are at least vaguely aware of that) are more likely to be used by people middle-aged or older. Regional media is dead. Regional cuisine is far less distinct than it used to be with many specialties gone. In 1900 it wouldn’t have been common sense that MA and CA are “supposed to be” similar so the fact you’re throwing that in my face is actually making my point.
- jhonof 3y ago
  I think this sort of proves the point that Europe is significantly more varied though. Even if you only travel to major cities in Europe you notice very significant cultural differences between them. Small pockets of distinct cultures are around the US but there are way fewer of them and they are sparsely distributed in a way that most people don't run into them at all. For example, in Canada the difference between the Haida people, Inuit people, English Canadians are very apparent and obvious, but the vast vast majority of the country (outside of Quebec and northern NB) is small towns where people speak English, play the same few sports, have the same like 8 chain restaurants, and live in broadly similar property styles. Sure culturally BC is different from Ontario slightly, but having traveled to and lived in both for many years, the differences are not very significant unless I were to seek out specific cultural enclaves, and that is a 4500 km difference.
  - quesera 3y ago
    No argument against the idea that the ~continent of Europe is more heterogeneous than the country of the US. Just that the MA-CA example is vastly underrepresentative of the variation within the US.
    - emodendroket 3y ago
      Isn’t it a little odd that we can have culturally very similar places 3000 miles apart unless culture has mostly been nationalized in a couple variations?
      - quesera 3y ago
        I mean, superficially odd perhaps, yes. I can think of a dozen reasons why it makes sense. Regardless, it is not evidence that the culture is homogeneous in the middle. There is, of course, a national culture. Again I think we might be drawing the line differently. I look for and enjoy the variations. They are there. But if you want to paint with a broad brush, you can make lots of generalizations too. It's just less interesting.
        emodendroket 3y ago
        What forces would we expect to act on the coasts of the United States but not the interior?
        whythre 3y ago
        Cosmopolitanism- more multicultural cross pollination due to trade and travel. Wealth disparity is another. The coasts are also richer than ‘flyover country.’ There are isolated places in New Mexico, the Deep South, and Appalachia that are grievously poverty stricken, to give some extreme examples.
        emodendroket 3y ago
        If we want to get so nitpicky there are poor and isolated areas along the coasts too. And heartland areas outside of major cities are less able to sustain independent media. Modern institutions like the military shuffle people around to and from these less notable areas and many broad trends do not fit the simplistic narrative you're presenting (for instance, many rural areas have large immigrant populations who work in farms, meat-processing facilities, and similar).
quesera 3y ago
(parsing out the prepositions) Agreed, I think: MA-CA are nearly the physically most distant, but perhaps the culturally most similar. But disagreed that the places in between are not that varied. Beyond the superficial veneer of a (mostly) common language and political drama and media and sports teams and retailers, there are deeply different predominant ways of thinking about self and life. We may just be using different criteria on how to measure the magnitude of cultural variation. You won't see it from the highways, and yes the Internet is normative, and ultimately yes humans share a fairly predictable psychology. But the cultural variation between regions seems undeniable to me. Thank goodness! I travel a lot, and spend a lot of time in individual strange places, and this is a large part of the reason why I do so.
- emodendroket 3y ago
  I would wager that if you sat down people from small, deep-red towns in California, New England, and Texas, they’d agree on much more than they disagreed. And I’d bet you’d get similar results with city dwellers from each region. There are variations on, for instance, how likely people are to strike up a conversation with strangers in an elevator, but to me these are the more superficial differences.
  - quesera 3y ago
    To use your example: I think you'd be correct for the superficial beginning of the conversation. But this is no different than saying "Metallica fans from ...", or "NASCAR fans from ...". Politics is no longer about what people think. It's a nationalized polemic sport. There are two teams, and an irrelevant number of pretenders. But if you ever got past the "what you think you think" and into the "why you think the things you think", or "how do you live that expresses the way you think" ... the variations would start to come out.
    - emodendroket 3y ago
      Like what? I mean what do you think the variations are really going to be? People orient their entire value systems around their political affiliation.

civilitty 3y ago

How much have you actually traveled through the US beyond superficially passing through a few cities? Is “Massachusetts to California” supposed to be satire? You obviously haven’t met any Cajuns, Appalachians, or any number of American subcultures that are very distinct from your generic metropolitan yuppy. Many of them have dialects and accents thick enough to be practically indecipherable to many Americans. You just won’t find them at your local Trader Joes because they live somewhere else

emodendroket 3y ago
Yes, I have, but I didn’t think I needed to write my whole life story to make a point. Regional accents (Massachusetts has a couple distinctive ones! While we’re being condescending, surely you are at least vaguely aware of that) are more likely to be used by people middle-aged or older. Regional media is dead. Regional cuisine is far less distinct than it used to be with many specialties gone. In 1900 it wouldn’t have been common sense that MA and CA are “supposed to be” similar so the fact you’re throwing that in my face is actually making my point.
jhonof 3y ago
I think this sort of proves the point that Europe is significantly more varied though. Even if you only travel to major cities in Europe you notice very significant cultural differences between them. Small pockets of distinct cultures are around the US but there are way fewer of them and they are sparsely distributed in a way that most people don't run into them at all. For example, in Canada the difference between the Haida people, Inuit people, English Canadians are very apparent and obvious, but the vast vast majority of the country (outside of Quebec and northern NB) is small towns where people speak English, play the same few sports, have the same like 8 chain restaurants, and live in broadly similar property styles. Sure culturally BC is different from Ontario slightly, but having traveled to and lived in both for many years, the differences are not very significant unless I were to seek out specific cultural enclaves, and that is a 4500 km difference.
- quesera 3y ago
  No argument against the idea that the ~continent of Europe is more heterogeneous than the country of the US. Just that the MA-CA example is vastly underrepresentative of the variation within the US.
  - emodendroket 3y ago
    Isn’t it a little odd that we can have culturally very similar places 3000 miles apart unless culture has mostly been nationalized in a couple variations?
    - quesera 3y ago
      I mean, superficially odd perhaps, yes. I can think of a dozen reasons why it makes sense. Regardless, it is not evidence that the culture is homogeneous in the middle. There is, of course, a national culture. Again I think we might be drawing the line differently. I look for and enjoy the variations. They are there. But if you want to paint with a broad brush, you can make lots of generalizations too. It's just less interesting.
      - emodendroket 3y ago
        What forces would we expect to act on the coasts of the United States but not the interior?
        whythre 3y ago
        Cosmopolitanism- more multicultural cross pollination due to trade and travel. Wealth disparity is another. The coasts are also richer than ‘flyover country.’ There are isolated places in New Mexico, the Deep South, and Appalachia that are grievously poverty stricken, to give some extreme examples.
        emodendroket 3y ago
        If we want to get so nitpicky there are poor and isolated areas along the coasts too. And heartland areas outside of major cities are less able to sustain independent media. Modern institutions like the military shuffle people around to and from these less notable areas and many broad trends do not fit the simplistic narrative you're presenting (for instance, many rural areas have large immigrant populations who work in farms, meat-processing facilities, and similar).

quesera 3y ago

(parsing out the prepositions) Agreed, I think: MA-CA are nearly the physically most distant, but perhaps the culturally most similar. But disagreed that the places in between are not that varied. Beyond the superficial veneer of a (mostly) common language and political drama and media and sports teams and retailers, there are deeply different predominant ways of thinking about self and life. We may just be using different criteria on how to measure the magnitude of cultural variation. You won't see it from the highways, and yes the Internet is normative, and ultimately yes humans share a fairly predictable psychology. But the cultural variation between regions seems undeniable to me. Thank goodness! I travel a lot, and spend a lot of time in individual strange places, and this is a large part of the reason why I do so.

emodendroket 3y ago
I would wager that if you sat down people from small, deep-red towns in California, New England, and Texas, they’d agree on much more than they disagreed. And I’d bet you’d get similar results with city dwellers from each region. There are variations on, for instance, how likely people are to strike up a conversation with strangers in an elevator, but to me these are the more superficial differences.
- quesera 3y ago
  To use your example: I think you'd be correct for the superficial beginning of the conversation. But this is no different than saying "Metallica fans from ...", or "NASCAR fans from ...". Politics is no longer about what people think. It's a nationalized polemic sport. There are two teams, and an irrelevant number of pretenders. But if you ever got past the "what you think you think" and into the "why you think the things you think", or "how do you live that expresses the way you think" ... the variations would start to come out.
  - emodendroket 3y ago
    Like what? I mean what do you think the variations are really going to be? People orient their entire value systems around their political affiliation.