Hi Marco
Thank you for the great article and insights.
Let me argue a seemingly insignificant point you made. Please bear with me,
as I think it is relevant to the discussion. New York isn't by any means the
center of the US. I would almost offer that we have no center. Certainly it
is the center for some things (theater, finance, immigration and Broadcast
News Shows come to mind), but I could make similar but different claims for
California, Washington D.C., Chicago, or the "Heartland" (including
Nebraska). Going forward to your article, the lack of synthesis and
diversity in America are more of our center than is a particularly large, old
city.
MARCO:
It is sad for us, but Europe is not anymore the center of
the world, so I think there's also a bit of envy. Anyway, we deserve it, after
centuries of stupid wars between us.
ROG:
But I suspect it isn't just the wars that have caused this transition. I
really do believe that America is better situated (due to both luck and
effort) than any other country for an emerging global cultural shift.
America took the values and beliefs of Enlightenment Europe (especially
England), and tried a unique experiment in Democracy and free enerprise that
proved immensely successful. Surprise, surprise, the experiment worked. What
were the odds?
However, because it worked, America got a huge head start on the rest of the
world at learning -- again primarily through trial and error -- how to work
best within this new model. Over the past 200 years, we have learned how to
control both free enterprise and democracy through the creation of intricate
checks and balances and support mechanisms. We have slowly learned how to
develop regulatory oversight systems, business codes, financial markets and
property laws that are finely balanced to achieve fairness and yet to
mitigate interference. This, combined with our positioning along the world's
two major Oceans, gives us a dynamic flexibility that seems to be lacking in
most other counties.
It just seems easier here to foster creativity, to develop new ideas, to
achieve financing, to reallocate resources and to repel governmental or other
powerful interference. As a businessman, I am aware that America is
unusually dynamic. We try more new things, and we allow more bad ideas to
fail.
I believe that globalization is to some extent Americanization. Meaning not
that it is Americans or American organizations that are alone in the
globalization, but that the models that we 'perfected' (I use the term very
loosely) over time are often (not always) used as the standard. As a result,
Globalization looks and smells a lot like Americanization, and shares a lot
of the strengths and weaknesses of United States culture. Further, something
that works well here after 200 years of learning and adaptation can't
necessarily be expected to work exactly the same everywhere else. And that
which is valued here is possibly even despised elsewhere.
Our culture (which was always partially multi-cultural) is seeping
everywhere. And we aren't necessarily even intending to spread it.
MARCO:
Then, it is true that on many things we don't have good words about the USA .
A
lot of people here don't like the American invasion on our ancient traditions.
Especially we can't understand the attitude you have to the market; we find it
excessive the value you deserve to money.
ROG:
I think we are saying something similar here. We are invading you without a
thought. In fact, it can be argued that others are "pulling" in American
values as much or more tha we are "pushing" them. And there are problems
associated with this value transfer. Some just don't work well within your
cultural context, and others are misunderstood.
MARCO:
And, as here in Europe leftism is much more common than there, about the 50%
of
the European population usually don't like your foreign policy. Especially in
Italy, Spain and Portugal there is a strong public opinion very critic against
the politics of the USA in Latin America (not to speak about death penalty).
ROG:
What we do and what the nameless and faceless beast of free enterprise does
is inappropriately important to people that don't share all our beliefs and
that
can't influence them one way or another. Seems like a recipe for resentment.
MARCO:
Last but not least, we don't like American Football :-)
ROG:
No argument here.
MARCO:
Anyway, here is a paper from an Italian journalist (my translation), written
few days before the WTC attack. I think it explains this strange mixture of
love
and hate the liberal Europeans have for the libertarian Americans. Let me just
remind that both liberal and libertarian have liberty as common denominator.
ROG:
The US is very heavily influenced by Classical Liberalism, but the term has
been converted to mean the almost the opposite of its original definition
over the past 75 years or so. We are really much more accepting of checks and
balances and the competition of ideas and much more wary of governmental
intrusion than liberal Europeans. On the other hand, I think both beliefs
solve certain problems and both create certain problems. The key is to use
the proper mixture of both philosophies, each at the right time.
================================
Twins separated at birth.
(by Fabrizio Rondolino)
USA is the opposite of the Left. Not that America is on the Right, it is just
because America is the specular reverse of the Left. They both arose from the
heart of French revolution; freedom is in their heart and freedom is their
foundation. Just like a couple of twins separated at birth, with a destiny of
never acknowledge each other as sisters, America and the Left sometimes fall
victims of a reciprocal attraction, and then both soon abandon, hate, detest
and
fight each other.
At the quest for freedom, the American answer is to offer to the individual a
possibly infinite horizon of chances; on the other hand, the Left offers to
the
individual a social structure, possibly relaxing, protective and reassuring.
That's why the will never be in agreement; that's why, sometime, they both
fall
in love with the other. Like two half parts of the same fruit or two faces of
the same coin, their fate is that of never meet each other, despite their
being
the same thing, basically.
But there's a substantial difference between these arguing sisters. The Left
and
its home (Europe) belong to modernity. They bear all the distinctive
characteristics and all the tiredness of modernity. On the other hand America
is
culturally and politically beyond modernity: it is, literally, postmodern.
Paraphrasing Lenin about Communism, America is the youngness of the world.
Its immense force is not in its military power, in its richness, or in its
cultural hegemony, conquered by means of Hollywood, Rock 'n roll and Coca
Cola.
The invincible force of America resides in that it doesn't acknowledge the art
of dialectics (that is an European creation, modern and leftist), and in that
it
ignores the dialectic's pretension of passing over the contradictions of the
world as it is, in order to build with an higher synthesis the world as it
should be. America let contradictions live and survive, refuses to control
and
bring them to a synthesis, and on this path is able to produce everything and
the opposite of everything: Vietnam war and pacifism, Mc Donald's and
biological
farms, IBM and the hackers, globalization and the Seattle people. The Left
could
learn from America many things; but, for that, it should rethink itself
radically.
ROG:
We are back to the lack of synthesis and center in America. I don't know if
you read my commentary on James Madison's writings last week, but they
pertained to this very issue. We built a society that was set on an
assumption that if the individual is supreme, that we will never be able to
have a collected vision. There are as many visions and values as there are
individuals. Therefore, the ONLY way to control exploitation of factions or
individuals by other factions and individuals is to establish a general rule
of law that applies, to use an analogy, broad rules of the road without
being able to control the specific, individual actions of the cars on that
road. And to ensure that individuals don't take advantage of each other, we
actively establish intricate systems of checks and balances in our govt and
in our economy. The contradictions are necessary to help us maintain our
balance. We have no center, we have an intricately balanced, constantly
evolving set of counterweights.
As usual though, I may be wrong.
Rog
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:01:32 BST