For everyone that says fuck america and wants to leave

but why? the point of the thread is to explain what makes those countries so much more desirable than your own

 

Yeah I noticed this about the family I stayed with in Spain. We were eating at a restaurant in Gandia and the father spent a lot of time making fun of the gypsies that were seated in front of us.

They also seemed to be afraid that Muslims were gonna take over Spain because of their high immigration rates. (Sound familiar?)

 

I live in a warm part of the USA and Australia is the English-speaking country with regions as warm or warmer than where I come from. The attitude against nude beaches sux in Queensland, but New South Wales is more tolerant.

Galicia in Spain, south Atlantic coast of France, Bavaria, maybe Switzerland would be cool to live in.

Cornwall is beautiful in summer but they have wicked winter storms.

 

Many of the muslims don't fit in well into liberal western democracy. Too much of a cultural gap. Should not have been invited in the first place.

Gypsies are free spirits, more compatible. But one country should not be expected to provide social welfare for them, the entire EU should share the burden.

Gypsies are prone to thieving, and I know how annoying it can be to have your stuff stolen, but that's because the gypsies (Roma) have been marginalized. They need proactive rather than reactive attention.

 

I don't see why anyone should provide support for anyone, especially not people that steal from them

 

Social welfare is really enlightened self interest.
The only way the Roma (Gypsy) people can make it in today's world is to use whatever skills they have. And they really really need some new skills other than thieving.
Teach them a better way! It ain't free, but the cost of leaving them ignorant is even more.

 

Ever hear of:

Jamaica
Guyana
Belize
Cayman Islands
Liberia
Bahamas
Bermuda
Gahna
Barbados
Trinidad and Tobago
Micronesia
Palau
Rawanda
Papua New Guinea
Grenada
South Africa
St. Lucia
Virgin Islands

They're all English speaking, and warm.

 

Ok, theres plenty of shit wrong with any culture. The crude Mass Media is freaking out plenty of dip shit sheeple "highly educated" Europeans as well.

They're freaking out over middle eastern boogiemen just as much as any US redneck stereotype.

 

america has cultural roots, but culture in this country has become watered down and marketable. Take african-american music, for example. Modern music wouldn't even exist if it weren't for the blues and jazz movement of the earlier part of the last century. Thats a unique heritage americans should be proud of (even white people, and even though it was born out of a tragic time in us history), but someone figured out that a lot of money could be made if it were toned down a little and marketed to suburbia. There are a lot of other cultural examples like that. Thats my other problem with america besides our corrupt leaders. We are experiencing the extreme side of capitalism, in which corporations take over pretty much anything that can be marketed and make money.

 

thisssssssssssss is the kind of conversation I was trying to start

 

^ good, cause this is the conversation I was looking for more out of this thread:

So maybe the thread has made everyone happy

Culture comes and goes, but America seems to be in a Dark Age (with a couple exceptions here and there). Europe (and maybe Australia and New Zealand even more so), are still churning out great comedians, personalities, interesting and well made shows, and original, quality music.

Damn near everything in America has become what's trending and what's most profitable, and that's almost always the most crude, dumbed-down piece of recycling.
And the conversation seems to erode exponentially with the media.

 

for sure. As a white person I don't feel like I belong to any real culture or have any traditions so I began creating them for myself and establishing my own culture. I really feel like what the world needs now is more people thinking of the weirdest most different thing they possibly can that hasn't been done before because everything has gone stale and retro is the new fad. Everyone wants to do what someone else does because they'll be accepted for it and it's easy. Noone wants to take the chance to be different for fear they'll be shunned

 

ignore what is "american", embrace the world

 

THIS. People seem to see the countries of the world as opposing football teams... we're all one.

 

This is kind of dumb. What you described is happening everywhere. I think one reason people are so obsessed with "other" cultures is the oriental aspect. It's new and exotic, and it's a story from "over there" rather than "daddy's rehashed history lessons". For every great cultural legacy from "over there" you hear, there are several that you don't hear and will not necessarily be exposed to because they are left "over there". You are experiencing their best and brightest which, along with the oriental aspect, is why "their culture" is so appealing and why you think American culture is dead and dying.

The idea of world culture is a double-edged one. While it does bring forth new cultural aspects, it weakens the old ones. I feel that this "mixing pot" idea leads to conclusions like Duck had previously expressed. That the "mixing pot" group lacks a cultural identity, in a true heritage sense, and it may seem that the culture lacks direction or is stagnating and likewise lacks any cultural heroes or victories.

 

It's not like we aren't on the Internet. I do have access to foreign media.
It all has it's own crap; sure, but there's a lot more good elsewhere.

America doesn't have it's own heritage or culture?
I'm going to use music as my example here, because I don't know as much about the formation of dramatic genres or foreign countries' history:
Country music, jazz, blues, hell even hardcore punk and disco and grunge and hip hop.

But country's getting more and more mainstream,
most good jazz is old jazz,
there's about 5 bands out there keeping blues alive,
we killed punk in the 90s and keep stabbing it for some reason,
grunge and disco were just trends (sadly),
and there's some good hip hop still but overall the genre's really dropped off since the 90s, hell even from the early noughties.

Hell, we're on a hippie forum - hippie's are as American as apple pie or (good) football.

 

We have a culture in Appalachia.
Settlers from France, Celtic Britain and Germany fused their folkways a few hundred years ago, then some of us on the southern fringes partially merged our culture with Cherokee folkways. The 21st century has hurt Appalachia, but the culture is not dead. Food, music, dance, way of speech, traditional crafts, farming and skills persist.
Look up the Wikipedia entry on Appalachian Culture, Foxfire books, Archives of Appalachia, Dick Spottswood Show (radio), Appalachian Heritage (Berea College), Appalachian Heritage Alliance,
North Carolina Folklore Society, North Carolina Literary Review, Appalachian Traveler (do-it-yourselfer guide), Museum of the Cherokee Indian

 

i agree with you as far as the mainstream goes, but if you dig a little deeper you can find a lot of good stuff. I can think of at least 10 indepedently signed american musicians or bands off the top of my head that are putting out great music that isn't the least bit watered down. I won't bother to suggest any because I don't know what type of music you like..but there is definitely good music out there. I'm not familiar with very many comedians, but i'm sure there are some decent american comedians. As far as well-made shows, I rarely watch tv but i really love several showtime shows...the C word, dexter, weeds. They're all intelligiently written. plus america gave birth to the greatest show ever to exist...seinfeld granted, seinfeld does a great job of illustrating the emptiness of american culture, but i still love the fuck out of it.

as far as music, all my friends are musicians, and not just shitty garage band type musicians either. They're all super talented. There are probably groups of musicians like my friends in every single town in america, people who are plugging away in local clubs and trying to create their own musical culture and maybe make a decent living from it one day.

i think the keyword is mainstream....you really gotta ignore the mainstream to recognize that america still has cultural value.

 

Right on.

America is a diverse country, and culture is defined locally. If you wanna dwell on the fact that we're assholes when it comes to foreign policy I'll agree with you, but then the direction this country's headed in doesn't necessarily reflect the will of it's people.

GardenGuy's got it right, they've got culture in Appalachia, more so than a lot of parts of the world. Culture is what you make it.

That's because the media's full of shit. You can buy into it if you want, but if you have any capacity for independent thought you'll see right through it, as I'm sure you do.

 

I don't get how anyone could say the United States has no culture. We pumped out more than anyone in the 20th century on a world wide basis.