14 ms·
I think it's become a cultural thing, unfortunately. I've spent the last few years seeing the world, and the difference in attitudes between the people of many
by acabal 13y ago
I think it's become a cultural thing, unfortunately. I've spent the last few years seeing the world, and the difference in attitudes between the people of many other countries and Americans at home is striking. We've become a fear-based culture.
I have an anecdote from a month or two ago. My girlfriend--she's German--and I were in Boston's central park, where there's a wading pool for children. The place was extremely busy with families and children everywhere--and also crawling with police. As the mother next to us ushered their 9-year-old into the pool, the mother loudly told her, "If anyone touches you, you scream!" My girlfriend laughed out loud at the silliness of it (the child was within eyeshot, in a pool filled with other children and families, in broad daylight, and surrounded by police) and commented to me about how afraid Americans are of everything.
Now that's just an anecdote. But we're seeing bits and pieces of this everywhere. Parents fearful of pedophiles around every corner. TV commercials about new drugs, scaring us into thinking we have some painful disease. ("If you've had chicken pox, the shingles virus is already inside you..."). People like the Free-Range Parenting blogger getting harassed and hounded. The ballooning security and surveillance apparatus. The militarization of our police, and draconian and unfathomable laws and sentencing requirements. The TSA, which is pure theater in service of fear. Bits and pieces.
I find myself increasingly thinking that the fear-based environment in the US is not a place I would want my children to grow up in. It breeds a dangerous us-vs-them (the brown people, the druggies, your neighbor) mentality and leads to suspicion and hatred.
Unfortunately I don't know what to do about it other than move to a different, more emotionally stable country. Culture is hard to change and takes a generation.
- indefatigable 13y agoYet Germany has institutionalized the same mentality on a more abstract level. "Global warming might be happening, shut down the energy industry!" "We can't use nuclear power, someone might get cancer! Keep mining coal and etching solar panels!"
- pavs 13y agoThey are not even remotely the same thing.
- pzuraq 13y agoThat's a ridiculous comparison, The fact of the matter is that those decisions are completely logical. Whether or not global warming is happening, we will run out of fossil fuels and fissionable material eventually. Solar is renewable, self sustaining. By building out solar Germany is reducing there dependence on foreign countries and securing there future; Possibly helping to reduce global warming is just icing on the cake.
- Nicholas_C 13y ago>That's a ridiculous comparison, The fact of the matter is that those decisions are completely logical. I don't think shutting down an entire industry in a knee jerk reaction is logical. Gently paring down fossil fuel energy consumption is logical. I think the extreme reaction is the illogical mentality that he was talking about.
- pzuraq 13y agoIt's more than a knee jerk reaction though, there are a lot of reasons to speed up the switch to solar and renewables. Global warming may have been a catalyst, but it was going to happen eventually and they figured sooner rather than later.
- anigbrowl 13y agoYes, but if you want to do something about global warming it'd be a lot smarter to keep the nuclear power stations running and take coal plants offline instead. Nuclear power has a spotty safety record overall, and the consequences of a mistake can be acutely disastrous, but coal is likewise a chronic disaster.
- dmd 13y ago> Nuclear power has a spotty safety record overall This is so incredibly false it's on par with stating "commercial aviation has a spotty safety record overall".
- petervandijck 13y agoWhich leads to a culture where everyone is afraid of touching kids that are not their own. It's really sad.
- a3n 13y agoWhen my own kid was very young I was paranoid about touching him in public. It didn't stop me, but I was mindful of it, and I would occasionally feel I was getting extra scrutiny by some parent; a man not at work in the daytime, holding a young boy's hand. Feh.
- AndrewKemendo 13y agoThis strikes me as odd. As a parent (dad) of two, I wouldn't ever dream of feeling odd about holding either of my kids' hands - or even for that matter chasing them down when they run away screaming (which happens often). Just a counter data point here.
- a3n 13y agoI didn't feel odd for the act, I felt uncomfortable with the assumptions or speculation implied by the scrutiny. No one likes to be distrusted, regardless of the context.
- mathgladiator 13y agoI wear a shirt that says "Free Hugs", and I've had many adults take advantage of it. The other day, a kid asked me and I got all weird and "can't"... I don't wear that shirt anymore.
- akshatpradhan 13y agoAbsolutely true. My g/f coos at other people's kids, but I look the other direction. The last thing I want is a liability for friendliness.
- lectrick 13y agoBoston's a poor example. It's possibly the most socially-conservative place on earth I've ever lived in other than a Muslim country.
- api 13y agoTangent: I lived in Boston for a while. I'm glad to read stuff like this as it reminds me that it wasn't me. PSA: Boston is not liberal, except a little bit in the abstract NPR "latte sipping" academic sense. Culturally it is unbelievably, stiflingly conservative, far more so than "red states" for example.
- lectrick 13y agoI dated a cute girl from Andover, MA for a while. Andover is a little upscale town just north of Boston, kind of a well-off suburb. She hated that I wore a tiny bit of gold jewelry (gold cross from my grandmother) because "that's what non-white people wear", so away that went. She hated that I wore T-shirts because... probably similar reasons. I took her to a beach on the Cape, and she wore... black. Covering her whole body. Formal black clothing. I mean basically, if you transplanted a Puritan circa 1750 into the modern age, you'd get this woman. She had never lived anywhere else. And then after breaking up with her, I looked around and it was all I could see... races not even interacting at all, both white and black people having REALLY limited "socially acceptable" clothing choices, etc. I don't want to bash Boston too hard. I lived there for like 8 years. It has the best sports bars around, but this unfortunately only adds to its "provincial" reputation. Boston Harbor is really nice. The fact that Boston barely has any beaches (at least compared to, say, Long Island) was just weird for me (growing up on LI, I took the miles of beaches for granted, I guess). I have a lot to say about Boston, both positive and negative. But yeah, socially? Can you even get more socially conservative while still being politically liberal?
- api 13y agoThat's astounding, but not surprising. The wealthy 'burbs of Boston are even more stifled than the city or Cambridge. Boston should have been Silicon Valley. It had all the pieces, everything aligned, best of the best. But it's not. I think there's a really good argument to be made that this conservatism is why. All the really smart people ran away first chance they got.
- mtdewcmu 13y agoThe most unfortunate part isn't that we worry too much -- it's that we worry about the wrong things. Not enough people seem to be concerned about the unaffordability of health insurance, or the fact that 401k plans are unlikely to cover retirement.
- api 13y agoI'm suspicious that this is constructed, and is precisely the idea. American TV is one long stream of things to be afraid of-- other than the things you should be afraid of. It's distraction.
- mtdewcmu 13y agoI think people, deep down, know the difference between real and fake threats. People like getting worked up about fake threats, because they know they don't actually have anything to fear -- any more than from a scary movie. If the TV was always going on about real-life stuff that made you feel uncomfortable -- who wants to watch that?
- mjallday 13y ago> Unfortunately I don't know what to do about it other than move to a different, more emotionally stable country. Culture is hard to change and takes a generation. That seems extreme. The situation you describe seems directly under control of the parents. Eg you can solve this for your child by simply not subscribing to that culture.
- weland 13y agoIt's not that easy. Not subscribing to the culture of most parents tends to result into isolating your child.
- djvv 13y agoI completely agree, as someone who grew up in East Europe and is now in the US. The contrast between my childhood and what I see here is huge. And before someone counters that I come from an uncivilized place let me say what I saw 4 years ago while living in Amsterdam. Kids who were in 3rd or 4th grade would bike to school alone, crossing streets with traffic and so on.