Comment by makeitdouble
Comment by makeitdouble 2 days ago
A way into this: it's not personal choices.
Milking every dollar out of anything valuable is burned into people's souls, and willfully decreasing the value is not a possibility.
Comment by makeitdouble 2 days ago
A way into this: it's not personal choices.
Milking every dollar out of anything valuable is burned into people's souls, and willfully decreasing the value is not a possibility.
> I don't personally know of any
Like I said, just look at countries which resisted colonization.
For example - one of the fundamental mechanics of colonization is to find people willing to sell out their countrymen for personal profit. While there are always a few people like this, it's far from the norm; and those people are remembered with searing hostility.
A specific example that comes to mind: British land-owners exacting high rents on Irish farmers would often seize their property and hold a local auction. The entire town would turn out, the original farmer would make a small token bid to buy back their farm, and no one would bid against them.
Ireland also invented boycotts, where the entire village would shun scummy landlords.
Egalitarianism isn't just a reaction to colonizers though - it's the default state of humanity [0].
And research shoes that placing material possessions at the centre of your life is inversely correlated to your emotional well-being [1]. Pretty hard to believe that this would be the default.
So, American culture is clearly twisted. It might not be the most perverse in the world... But it's up there. This is a fact well recognized in the world, and almost entirely ignored in America itself.
Yes, on an individual basis, Americans can be quite lovely. Friendly and well meaning, might go out of their way to help you, and so on. Sure. But the fact that Americans can really believe that humanity, at its core, is willing to sell out their neighbors for profit says everything about Americans and nothing about humanity.
0 - https://medium.com/inside-of-elle-beau/yes-our-ancient-ances...
1 - https://time.com/22257/heres-proof-buying-more-stuff-actuall...
Really? Just America? I know of no country, having lived in more than a couple of them, where people don't do what they can to make money or increase the value of what they have for personal economic benefit.
Americans are no less or more human than anyone else, and this idiotic posturing about some inherent difference that makes one group of people or country somehow stupider, more wicked or more avaricious than others is a bad habit no matter what direction it flows in or who its pointed at..
> where people don't do what they can to make money or increase the value of what they have for personal economic benefit.
That wasn't the argument. You've moved the goalposts to a different stadium.
What was claimed was that "milking every dollar out of anything valuable is burned into people's souls", and somehow, from that, you heard "people do what they can to make money for personal economic benefit". Curious.
> Americans are no less or more human than anyone else
No one said Americans aren't human, or less human.
> this idiotic posturing about some inherent difference
No one said it was inherent. In fact I said the opposite; that people are generally egalitarian unless warped.
> that makes one group of people or country somehow stupider, more wicked or more avaricious than others is a bad habit
Nope. Countries have different characters, and it's okay to talk about it. Also, some countries - cough - have extremely powerful and capable groups that have been working for decades to warp the national character; say, by instilling rampant Islamophobia, or working to undermine critical thinking and general education.
I hope you ask yourself how you got this much wrong on a reading of a rather simple comment. Something clearly hit a nerve.
>What was claimed was that "milking every dollar out of anything valuable is burned into people's souls", and somehow, from that, you heard "people do what they can to make money for personal economic benefit".
Both things are in most cases essentially the same, and a person trying to get every possible dollar out of anything valuable for their personal gain indeed doing what they can to make money for themselves. This is in my experience a habit not at all unique to Americans..
That aside, you generalized about America, to a degree that's absurd for a nation of roughly 320 million people, which also happens to be one of the top countries in the world for charitable giving on a per capita basis and in absolute terms.
So yes, countries can have different tendencies in certain ways, and it's possible for the narrative that people in a country buy to be warped by political interests, but even in these cases, generalization is stupid, and so too is giving a particular, fashionable focus to making americans seem to be particularly warped people about this.
Do you perhaps speak as a European? There's a continent riddled with simmering racism and many of its own social problems. If you're from any number of other parts of the world, feel free to make some concrete argument for why their people are in any way less subject to personal greed, or propaganda or failures of critical thinking.
I see no evidence of it. Nationalist idiocies, racist tendencies, propagandistic narratives and bad economic habits abount just about everywhere in the world, and in some countries much worse than in the United States, which itself has no shortage of differing opinions and critical thinkers.
It also (at least until the current orangutan came to power, again,) has historically been one of the most welcoming countries on earth for immigrants from nearly anywhere, including Islamic countries.
Again, generalizing about this country is plainly mistaken and easily at risk of being downright stupid if done out of ideological spite.
> usually the countries that had to fight off colonizers
Good Lord!
France and Blighty (to pick two examples) did their fair share of empire building, however I can assure you, they do not worship at the alter of capitalism in quite the way which is endemic to the USA.
> they do not worship at the alter of capitalism in quite the way which is endemic to the USA.
What were they like at the height of their empires? During their respective long slow declines? Did their people worship the worst of their colonists as national heroes? ...
And while they are not quite as Molochian as Americans today (no one said they are, in fact the argument was that America is rather exceptional) they certainly aren't as anti-capitalist as many others. Particularly when you look at the manner in which they pursue global economic interests.
Try leaving America some time.
I promise you, there are countries out there where that type of person is widely looked down on (usually the countries that had to fight off colonizers).