Culture - US
I have been reading and writing about culture and development for some time. It occurred to me that I have not seen a summary of the culture of people who live in the U.S. It is sometimes helpful to understand other cultures if we can express what our own is about. The following list has just a few examples of how our US culture views things differently from some parts of the world. Some of these are part of our fundamental view of how things work. Others are more developed rights and values -- but I have a hard time drawing the line between those.
• Individualism.
We are the most independent folk on the planet. We celebrate individual contribution and diversity, creativity. This underpins many of our scientific social, and artistic achievements. Other cultures focus on collective efforts and consensus so much that they suppress creativity and differences. They see our approach to things as extremely impolite, self centered and dangerous.
Our heightened sense of competition also seems rooted in this, although that is also partly a 'tribal', ‘hierarchical’, king of the hill automatic response that seems to be common to all humans.
• In-charge.
We believe that we are in charge of the planet. We build it, fix it, operate on it -- sometimes to the detriment of the planet. We dig the well. build the dam, isolate the disease - it is ours.
Other cultures think of themselves as part of the planet. They live with life the way it comes, they are the victims of disease, not the masters. Life is something that happens TO them. They are not in charge of it.
• Investors.
We think of ourselves as ‘investors’. We put stuff in with the hope of future return. We plant, build, save, plan and organize. We think we have to put in to take out. This has a corollary in valuing hard work. Other cultures have more of a ‘raptor’ approach. They tend take what is there, without any contribution. They think of it as their right.
• We Create Wealth.
This is a close corollary of “Investors”. We think of wealth as something we create. We create wealth by hard work, by inventiveness, by improving productivity, making things better, etc. Other parts of the world see wealth as something limited. They think that if one group has too much, the rest of us are impoverished by that.
• National identity.
We feel that our tribal identity, our social consciousness is at the level of the nation. Some other cultures have barely gotten above the family level to the tribal, and are struggling to gain a sense of identity as a state or nation. I think that this is a natural maturing process which just takes a certain amount of time and effort.
Hopefully there is an even more advanced stage, where we identify ourselves as inhabitants of the planet, or members of one human family. And beyond that, as members of this GAIA - “mother earth”, the whole family of living things and environment. I think that will take us a long time!
• Rule of law.
We are convinced that we should respect the rule of law. If we don't like a law, we work to change it, not to destroy the structure of our society. We tolerate failure in our leaders, but do not tolerate disrespect for the law. Other societies regularly discard their government and opt for a new one. Some seem to condone leaders who depart from the law. This approach pays dividends in stability, but we lose a lot of flexibility. They see it as an occasional necessity in order to make rapid changes. We see it as a dangerous precipice.
• Honesty and Fairness.
We are fundamentally committed to integrity in personal and business affairs. If you follow the rules, and work hard, you should succeed. Taking unfair advantage is against our rules. We seem to have figured out that this is a required basis for our political and economic systems. You cannot have democracy and any semblance of a free market without basic integrity.
It's clear to me that this is one of our weaker traits, but I do think we pay it good lip service, and we are working on it. It is also clear that we really cannot trust anyone to follow this without some oversight, regulation, checking.
Other cultures seem to value the ability of some to rip off others - it seems to be part of the 'raptor' approach. It's called 'I got mine'. Advancement by trickery and deceit is valued highly. They don't seem to understand that they are all paying the price. They want the chance to 'get theirs', whatever the cost to the society. Just watch Italians driving in Rome.
• Minority rights.
A minority in any category, race, politics, religion, whatever, has basic rights in our society which the majority cannot restrict. This comes from our history of religious persecution in Europe, and our ancestors' desire to never be subject to that again. In some societies, conformance to the rule of the majority is the only option. There is no freedom to do other than that. They consider it dangerous to have different groups with different views of how things work - especially fundamental things like religion and government.
• Individual rights.
We think that individuals have some rights which the state cannot limit -- and we must all respect. In some cultures the state grants individuals whatever rights they have and can remove them. In our society, the state derives its powers from us. One of our key insights here is that these “fundamental” or “inalienable” rights continue to develop. Just imagine our society if we had not finally figured out that women and minorities are full human beings with full rights! It’s a work in progress.
Caveats
I realize that our multicultural society has such diversity that many people would disagree with some or all of these. And I'm not at all saying I like all of these, or that we need to continue these as such. The point is that we do have some common values, and they seem to support our way of life fairly well.
Like any values, they can change over time, and hopefully we will adopt better ones. We could also slide the other way - we are making this up - no one is giving it to us or controlling it.
We would be better off if we could grow a few other cultural traits we partially inherited from our Scandinavian immigrants. Most importantly this one:
• We are all in this together. Human kind is a community, a single society. What we do in one part affects people in all of the other parts, more or less directly. As we get more and more interconnected, this becomes a much more immediate relationship. If anyone on the planet is poor, is hungry, is needy - that ultimately affects my social climate, my economy, my level of wealth. Helping them is NOT charity, it is an investment in our own future.
