JoiIto says ¹:
The US will become the one nation to rule them all and American culture bind them? In this scenario the US is kind of like a super state, but only American citizens can vote, right?
And I can only agree. He also rants about the “tendency to not care about cultures and people who you don’t know” which I think is a big problem everywhere, but since the current prejudice is that the Americans practically don’t know anything about the outside world, our fear is that this is exactly why they will trample us.
This may be also one of the major reasons I’m writing all these pages in English instead of German – because I guess I’m trying to reach out to the Americans in America. It is said that these days it is difficult to get accurate news – and specially so in the US – and that the best sources are on the Internet. I’m trying to contribute to that. Say something about your country and your culture in English on the web. Maybe it helps.
The entire thing also reminds me of Philip K Dick’s book *A Scanner Darkly* (was it?) where the characters believe that the Chinese built a great wall to seal them off the free world, and later in the novel we realize that is the USA that sealed itself off the free world.
Similar rants: 2003-11-12, 2002-12-20, 2003-10-14.
(Please contact me if you want to remove your comment.)
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I believe that one reason why we write in English is that English is the lingua franca of computing, and thus of the internet. Just like Italian has been the lingua franca of music and the arts in the past and as French has been or is the ... erm ... lingua franca (indeed) of international diplomacy.
Sure, I also write in English, because of the American hegemony and in order to get understood by many people in different countries. OTOH I wonder whether for the latter French wouldn’t be also a good choice. (I don’t know French yet, unfortunately. That must change.)
As for getting out to Americans ... I am a bit pessimistic here. From what I understandboth from my relatives in the Boston area and from the internetyou already have two kinds of Americans: the ones that are open and the ones that don’t care about the rest of the world. There is no need to get a particular message through to the former ones and there is no chance get it through to the latter ones. Hmm, sounds like a cliche. Maybe its wrong and I am exaggerating. But I do believe that there is nothing you can do with somebody who stillafter all what has happenedsupports the Bush administration.
– OliverScholz 2003-11-15 09:08 UTC
Hm, good point. The reason I object to this kind of resignation is this: If we have given up on talking with each other – what else is there? In real life, I’d say a punch in the face. *That* is the reason why we must keep talking to each other. Even if we fear that the other side might not be listening. Because the alternative is pounding each other’s nose. Just imagine yourself reaching out to the fringe – not to the hardcore bible-belt right-wingers, but to their kids, their nephews. And lastly, let there be no one claiming “I didn’t know” when this is all over. Because *Unwissenheit schützt vor Strafe nicht* (ignorance does not protect from punishment). It is our duty as citizens to inform ourselves. – Alex Schroeder
You are right. I was exaggerating. There are indeed the unmoulded ones to which one can at least show that there is an alternative to the narrowness of mind that surrounds them. And while it may be not necessary to get a particular message “through” to open and honest Americans, it is important to communicate; even for us non-Americans in order to understand what is happening. I have a nice quote from Lichtenberg (18th century enlightenment intellectual):
Daß man seine Gegner mit gedruckten Gründen überzeugen kann, habe ich schon seit dem Jahr 1764 nicht mehr geglaubt. Ich habe auch deswegen die Feder gar nicht angesetzt, sondern bloß um sie zu ärgern, und denen von unserer Seite Mut und Stärke zu geben und den andern zu erkennen zu geben, daß sie uns nicht überzeugt haben. – Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 - 1799)
(I am not able to translate this right now, sorry. Maybe later.)
In Germany I can do a much better job when having an argument with my fellow citizens than anybody from a different countryespecially from a country outside of Europecould. In the scarf case, for example. I know which examples to take, which way of reasoning has the greatest chance that some will follow me on it, to which values I may appeal etc.. And I can say “this is also *my* country, *my* culture”, i.e. I am talking from the inside, not as somebody from the outside making prescriptions. This is important, if you want to get heard when laying down a line of arguments. That’s the same for Americans.
It is important, however, to stay connected, if possible.
– Oliver Scholz
Nice quote. 😄 And I think you are right about the danger of prescriptive comments. I’ve heard of negative reactions, too, because after all may feel like hate-speech. This is why I try to also show that I don’t like what other countries are doing (ie. torture in Spain), and I try to make it clear that the reason all this America-bashing is happening is not because America is so bad (I am sure human rights in Turkey or Sudan are less respected than in the US, for example), but because we feel that it has taken a turn for the worse. I think people are slowly starting to wake up from their Cold War slumber and realizing that the New World Order (papa Bush) with the Americans in charge isn’t as cool as we had hoped it to be for over fifty years. – Alex Schroeder