America

This is an excerpt from the blog of a friend of mine, Sarah in Chicago, who is about to return to NZ after a long period living in the USA - it sums up so much of what I feel about the place, I thought I'd grab part of it and republish (I wish I could have summed it up so pithily):

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I am completely expecting this to be a very large part of my homecoming soon. Particularly so given that I'm going to be moving into policy and political work as a career back in NZ, as while I definitely participated in politics before moving here, I really cut my teeth, as it were, in the cauldron that is American, and Chicago, political theatre. There are attributes of a vicious, vivacious, incredibly fast-moving, animal when it comes to US politics that really exists no where else in the world. The political world here is constantly changing, constantly moving, always shifting from one thing to the next, as issues of huge ramifications are debated, lost and won. Knives are being moved from one back to the next, just as acts of incredible self-less charity are given. There is passion and anger, joyfulness and celebration, utter sadness and dejection, love and sacrifice, here.

New Zealand politics are, as any kiwi will tell you, quite different. For a start, despite setting the course of a nation, they're simply not taken as seriously, In fact, culturally kiwis take nothing incredibly seriously. Not that we don't care, or that we make fun of such, but rather, the all-consuming nature of the way Americans approach most things is just something your average New Zealander would cock their eyebrow at and ask "Wot are ya, mate?". Our laid-back nature as a culture just doesn't allow us to care, or at least be seen caring, about anything the way Americans do about seemingly most things (except, naturally, about such things as beer, rugby, and having a fair-go). This cultural passion and approach to things is something I have certainly internalised.

And I have to say, I have moved to the Right on some political issues. The US centre politically is ridiculously to the Right ... almost to the point of caricature. What is considered reasonable right-leaning political positions are positions that anywhere else in the developed world, the Western world, would be rightly laughed out loud at. Don't get me wrong, I haven't gone insane and turned into a libertarian or any such nonsense. But I have repositioned myself to the pragmatic need for a strong military, for instance, and do tend to give police and such forces the benefit of the doubt. While as a sociologist I certainly come down on the side of the structural forces in society being the dominant cause of individual behaviour, I have definitely taken-on individual responsibility attitudes that I hadn't had previously. Don't get me wrong, even back in NZ I'm still going to be a left-winger, but I am a far more centrist one than I was before I left.

Then, of course, is the way Americans approach work. To an American, what you do for your career encapsulates in large part, if not in majority, who/what you are as a person. This is in part pragmatic, because so much of the American life is accessed via one's employment, from health-care to consumerism, to grilling and neighbourhood, credit and psyche. This is both in terms of the amount of one's income, but also where one's status is viewed to be located. Furthermore, it's also about how much Americans work. There is an absolute good seen in working as many hours as possible in the day, week, or whatever. Rooted in Calvinism, the US culture sees fundamentally how much time you spend working as a sign of effort and commitment, of how good you are as a person. This is something present across all of Western society, but only in the US has it taken on absolutist principals ... working oneself to death is not a euphemism here. You'll often over-hear on the subway professionals boasting of, as part of their everyday conversations, how many hours they've been putting in ... being 'busy' is taken to be the regular state of affairs.

And I will admit, I've totally bought into such. I find a lot of pleasure and worth in sitting in a cafe late at night, working ... in getting up with the dawn, grabbing my espresso, knowing that I'm getting into the office before most, owning a part of the day most people don't see ... in getting home in time to just grab some food before bed, just as I know I'll be getting up early to repeat the day over-again. One of the things I am really looking forward to once I am back is working after-hours in cafes around Wellington. I expect I'm going to be putting in more hours than your average kiwi ... and I'm going to love it.

There are, however, things I haven't taken on, that I remain most emphatically a kiwi, as well as Dutch, over. The consumerism of the US society, where everything requires money and/or an assessment of your ability to pay, where any misstep can doom you for life, at the same time as making self-worth require getting as close to that misstep as possible. Not to mention the related insane individualism of the culture, where a society's responsibility, or the need to relinquish one's rights to the benefit of society as a while, are seen as evil and hideous concepts (as evidenced by the treatment of Sonia Sotomayor currently). The US really needs to get beyond this if it is to mature as a nation, right past wrongs, and gain respect. The same for the high focus on competitiveness, where one needs to the best in everything, or one is nothing. Where everything (and I do mean everything) is hierarchically organised and ranked ... a mentality that leads to ignoring any and all weakness or fault, an absolutism that can produce nothing but disaster, depression, and American exceptionalism as absolute good, as difference is not prised for its diversity, but rather questioned as to level of worth. Then there is the pervasive displays of religion everywhere, in everything, something that for New Zealanders is highly offensive, where religion, and any reference to such, is considered a personal, and highly private, thing.

But, that all said, there is a beauty and wonderfulness about America that I have experienced nowhere else. While the American Dream is precisely that, a dream and a myth, the ideal that if one just works hard enough one can fix any problem, solve any issue, and go places no-one has gone before, means that as a country America will try things and do things that no other nation will. It believes in itself in ways that no other nation does. Sure, this gets it into trouble quite often, as it will meddle where it has no invite nor experience, not listening to the advice and knowledge of other more mature societies. Or it will over-simplify like a teenager, earnestly thinking that no one else has come up with a particular idea ever before in history, ideas that will solve everything.

But occasionally, just occasionally, it can live up to that ideal, and in doing so, like no other nation on earth, it is glorious and wonderful. It will trip over its huge gawky feet regularly, but those feet will carry it to places from time to time, that no one else really has never been before. This is a country that birthed the civil-rights movement, the feminist movement, the LGBT movement, etc ... movements that, while here still have a long way to go, had ramifications throughout the world, reverberating through time and space. America embodies the best and worst of humanity ... it is the excesses and extremes of our species and societies, the incredible highs to which it can succeed, and the depths that it can descend to. It is risk personified as a nation, that which holds not just our darkest fears, but also most cherished dreams as a world.

And it this hope, this positivity, that I have really garnered living here ... Americans believe, fervently, in their core, that things can, and will, get better, if only one believes that they can. I love this country for that. When I speak to my students about issues in America, I want them to reclaim this country, as I have investment in it, as I see its worth and possibilities as my own. As annoyingly grating as every other culture in the world finds America's insane optimism as a nation, something I will say I too wince at often, there remains the fact that to an American, the phrase "that's just the way things are" is not an explanation, but rather a call to change.

So, as teenager-ish as this country is, for all it's faults and for all it's beauty and wonder, just as I call myself Dutch, and a New Zealander, I can call myself an American.

I have become an American.
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Unlike Satah, I have not yet become an American, and I'm not sure I ever will, being a lot older and crustier by the time I got here (I certainly didnt become English even with 7 years there)... but it is quite an insidiously inviting place, and I probably will slide into Americanity, at least in some parts (and of course there are some bits where I was already there, like being assertive with restaurant service). Mind you, when someone tells me of all the extra hours they work here, my reaction is still, You can't be very good at your job if you need to work extra hours! and somehow I doubt that will ever change.

Update: I forgot to say, I have some amazing bruises today, & spent the weekend very sedately.