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The article was very different from what I expected, and as an American I agreed with pretty much all of it.

by nether 13y ago

VLM 13y ago
One thing that I did catch that was pretty funny is he only spent time in our biggest most urbanized cities, yet he thought those were a bit too car oriented. His head would explode with surprise if he visited an area that wasn't one of the 10 largest cities. If he thought Chicago was a little too car dependent, try rural ... anywhere. Several of his comments boil down to a fanatic root belief in proceduralism. Who cares if the food sucks as long as the checkbox "waitress smiled" is checked. Also applies to a bunch of other examples, like you can be a jerk and thats OK as long as you go to church on Sunday, obsession with money, annoying advertising, consumerism/all you need for happiness is the latest iDevice, etc. The core belief being that success just means having the right checkboxes checked. That observation would shorten his list considerably. A couple of his other comments dance around Americans being the most ignorant western culture out there (what you say Ireland has airports, and you're not all potatoe farmers?) Several of his other comments fit into this category. We really do encourage stupidity as a culture to keep the consumerism and gullibility toward advertising going. Whole classes of people who basically only exist to be milked as cash cows. Just kinda how we are, I guess. So for those who can't get thru, these three above themes summarize his observations reasonably fairly, or at least I hope fairly.
- bct 13y ago
  Rural areas come with other benefits. Urban and suburban areas that are too car-centric are the worst of both worlds.
  - VLM 13y ago
    Suburban areas come with benefits too, lack of traffic congestion, no parking hassles, plenty of places to go, everything nearby. A car in the city, is mostly just a pain.

The article was very different from what I expected, and as an American I agreed with pretty much all of it.

by nether 13y ago

The article was very different from what I expected, and as an American I agreed with pretty much all of it.

VLM 13y ago

One thing that I did catch that was pretty funny is he only spent time in our biggest most urbanized cities, yet he thought those were a bit too car oriented. His head would explode with surprise if he visited an area that wasn't one of the 10 largest cities. If he thought Chicago was a little too car dependent, try rural ... anywhere. Several of his comments boil down to a fanatic root belief in proceduralism. Who cares if the food sucks as long as the checkbox "waitress smiled" is checked. Also applies to a bunch of other examples, like you can be a jerk and thats OK as long as you go to church on Sunday, obsession with money, annoying advertising, consumerism/all you need for happiness is the latest iDevice, etc. The core belief being that success just means having the right checkboxes checked. That observation would shorten his list considerably. A couple of his other comments dance around Americans being the most ignorant western culture out there (what you say Ireland has airports, and you're not all potatoe farmers?) Several of his other comments fit into this category. We really do encourage stupidity as a culture to keep the consumerism and gullibility toward advertising going. Whole classes of people who basically only exist to be milked as cash cows. Just kinda how we are, I guess. So for those who can't get thru, these three above themes summarize his observations reasonably fairly, or at least I hope fairly.

bct 13y ago
Rural areas come with other benefits. Urban and suburban areas that are too car-centric are the worst of both worlds.
- VLM 13y ago
  Suburban areas come with benefits too, lack of traffic congestion, no parking hassles, plenty of places to go, everything nearby. A car in the city, is mostly just a pain.