I partially stole this idea.
This confession aside, it was already something I'd been thinking about before I stumbled across this time in one of my bookshop haunts.
That is, how different is Europe from the United States? Is there any reason to demonize those yonder countries, or raise them to a pedestal?
It's an interesting question, as much for personal reactions as it is for the answers it finds. I automatically assume the differences between us, and group 50+ very different states to compare a vastly diverse continent. I eschew my country for something which the media and my country has told me is infinitely more cultured, effective and "better." And it's true, I'd rather live in another country (or countries) when I'm older, and European countries definitely top of my list after my newfound obsession for Brazil.
But what am I exactly getting myself into? Yes France has a health system which is (vastly) superior to America's, but are their crime rates better than say... Minnesota's? Or while it is wonderful x a million to be a mother in Sweden or Norway, can we really lump those two countries with , which rank below the United States even before you pick apart individual states? I'm told in every country I visit that young people want to go to the United States, that it is still viewed as a country of opportunity and wealth. While I usually shrug off these comments, citing Richard Wilkinson's Ted Talk, perhaps this is a bit hasty... Yes class gaps are big in the United States (occasionally huge), but can you really assume that it is the same, or even similar across regions, towns, states or sections? And then if you bring Europe into the picture things get a lot messier, and much more... similar.
So here is my list of things that I see as similar/the same between us, and what this means to me.
1) Money
A common currency goes a long way towards grouping a bunch of otherwise dissimilar countries together. The Euro links separate countries together, in a collective sink or swim mechanism. One country (or several) pays for the follies or imprudent policies of others. The dollar does a similar thing with the states (and El Salvador, which uses the dollar as its official currency).
2) Travel
Travel has never been this easy in the European Union, for Europeans that is. Going across boarders or in planes is as basic as having your identity card, be it Greece, Germany or Spain. While working can get a little trickier, the homogeneity of the experience between crossing state borders is... eerie. You (a hypothetical european citizen) don't need a visa to live in another european country for longer than... forever? I haven't done extensive research on this, but under the Schengen Agreement, internal travel is lax, with an external boarder maintained. Today this zone includes approximately 400 million people.
3) Culture
Our parents and grandparents are different, it is true. But is the younger generation significantly different from one another? You can largely experience the same nightclub, the same texting over make-uped teenager, or American pop music in just about any state or country these days. While this is vastly over simplifying things, I can't help but look at a metro station full of people reading the same books (translated), hooked up to their ipods and texting on their blackberrys (blackberries...?), wearing blue jeans and the same t-shirts day after day and not wonder what happened.
4) Union vs. United
While the Union's hold is considerably lighter than the federal government's, at the same time they both serve a centralizing organizations which unite and organize a group of squirrelly, heterogeneous and complicated "countries" and "states." Depending on the degrees of separation between you and the people who actually make decisions, you vote for people who later decide things for areas which don't include you, and have foreign or out of state representatives make crucial decisions for your country or state.
5) The differences inside us vs. the differences between us
Peter Baldwin makes the argument in his book "The Narcissism of Minor Differences" that what is more important than overall group differences between The U.S. and Europe are the differences between us. In some things, Minnesota, New Hampshire or Vermont has more in common with the nordic countries than some of the southern states. Some of the southern european countries get more of a mirror-like fright looking at budget plagued California or Alabama than their fellow union members.
A final (linguistic) note on life over here. When referring to a rude person, the terms I hear most often is "mal educado" or "mal élevé." These translate into "badly educated" or "badly brought up." There is a direct linguistic connection between the quantity of education you have, or how your parents raised you and how you are perceived as a culturally adapted person.
Something to muse about...
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