I know this heading will attract vitriol and I’m not posting this to be deliberately inflammatory.
So don’t take it personally.
I live in a small remote country called New Zealand. The standard of living, average incomes etc of the average Kiwi are way less than in The United States.
However what we lack economically when measured against the largest economy in the world we tend to make-up in education, ability to adapt and a high degree of worldliness.
By in large New Zealanders know what’s going-on around the world and try to assist as best we can.
N.Z cares say about disasters happening in remote places.
N.Zers can even place these remote places on a map.
I think we ‘box above our weight.’
Cutting to the chase - in all my considerable travels I have yet to meet a more insular people than your average American (the states I’ve visited include CA, WA, CO, OH, IL, MA, NY, NJ and TX) I can say this hand-on-heart.
In my experience most Americans could not place New Zealand on a map nor for that matter answer a basic general knowledge question like “name a famous Englishman?”
I would more likely have more luck getting an answer to that question from a person from China or Brazil than I would a so-called educated American.
Americans only care about America and their own little myopic world.
The result from the Eastern Conference game would mean more to the average ‘Joe-Bloggs’ than the current humanitarian disaster in Pakistan.
This “don’t ask questions” and “never get outside the square” environment is the breeding ground and bedrock of all religions.
Religions flourish in countries where ignorance is endemic, the peoples never get to meet anyone else and see other perspectives on life.
This explains why America is still so into God, when in other comparable countries the populations are leaving churches in droves.
I rest my case with these two 'classic' videos - which never fail to amuse me:
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2 comments:
I disagree. Americans know little about the rest of the world because they have little need to know about these places. No offense, but if NZ were to sink into the ocean perhaps our lamb prices would increase slightly and we'd have to find somewhere else to film the Lord of the Rings movies, but otherwise the impact would be fairly minimal. I suspect that few Kiwis can say that about the US.
American ignorance about the world, and our conservative, superstitious values are mostly unrelated. I frankly believe the reason we are so religious is because it has been politically and economically expedient to control the masses through such conservative values. Religion is a highly evolved form of crowd control, after all.
I resent your statemens. I'm born and raised in Colorado, have traveled the world, driven through the entire US, gone through college and grad school despite childhood poverty, and all I can say is simply that wherever you go, there will be people who are bright clever and interesting, but by far they are outnumbered by those who are dumb as a sack of bricks. I come from a long line of atheists, my spouse is an atheist, but most of my dearest closest friends are christian and they keep up with every scientific and philosophical quandry I throw at them. Obviously you have to be more selective about th company you keep.
There is a far more severe problem at work here outside of religion, and it starts at the home. There is a diminishing sense of responsibility, actions don't have consequences, children are not developing proper coping mechanisms in a broad sense, there is a sense of entitlement with the populace in general, people are being raised too individualistically and are not developing empathy, technology immersion is doing away with interpersonal skills and relationships, and there is a very saddening misplacement of priorities (I.e. becoming the next honey boo boo as opposed to completing your math assignment).
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