North America is populated mostly by desecandants of later immigrants to the continent that had nothing to do the original "exploration". The common folk in the

North America is populated mostly by desecandants of later immigrants to the continent that had nothing to do the original "exploration". The common folk in the colonizing countries had nothing to do with it either. The original local populations were all but wiped out by disease and war. The people who actually did most of the "exploring" were probably too busy worrying about surviving scurvy and and the winter to care about such romantic ideas. And at least one country (Scotland) was effectively bankrupted and lost its independence specifically because they spent an unreasonable amount of money on packing perfectly fine people onto ships to send to their deaths. You could say we're better off as a civilization than we were a thousand years ago. But that's true in nearly all countries, regardless of their colonial history. I suspect it has more to do with the Haber process and refrigeration than James Cook or even Ferdinand Magellan. Focusing inwards to grow isn't "languishing". And while I'm all for the platonic idea of exploration for exploring's sake, there is also a stage of (im)maturity where trying to go somewhere new just results in bringing all your old problems with you.