Debate Why is it that so many Americans can't take criticism about the US and know so little about the rest of the world?

[Maciamo]

I've been following Evan Edinger on YouTube for a while. He is an American from New Jersey has been living in London for the past 13 years. He came as student and decided to stay. Is YouTube channel is mostly dedicated to the differences between the US and UK (or Europe in general).

Unfortunately he's frequently confronted to comments by Americans viewers who just can't accept any criticism about their country. I know what he means very well. I have been active on online discussion forums for 25 years, the including 20 years here on Eupedia, and over 20 years on forums about Japan frequented by many Americans. I've also had to deal hundreds of times with personal attacks from Americans whenever I criticized or even compared the US to other countries. It's very sad because we can't have any constructive discussion with people like that. What's more interesting is that it is almost always Americans who react like that.

I completely agree with Evan that when you love a country it is normal to point out its flaws so that things can be improved. I did it when I was living in Japan in the early 2000s and was often attacked by Americans on the forums who thought I was "a hater" and typically replied that if I didn't like it I should just leave. They didn't seem to understand that my criticism and my suggestions were only meant to improve things or at least to start a constructive debate about the pros and cons of each system. I never got as many personal attacks from Americans as when I criticised the lack of isolation in Japanese homes. It's only years later that I learnt that American houses are almost poorly isolated and it all started to make sense. I was indirectly criticising their country without knowing it! The question is, why is it that they can't take criticism about the US and seem to have a compulsion to view America as perfect and unimprovable.

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One of the reasons I started Eupedia was to compare countries and cultures. Not to boast about some countries being better, because let's face it no country is perfect, that you promote understanding about different cultures and compare the various aspects of each system to make it easier to improve each others' systems. If some countries do not want to change or improve, knowing about what's available elsewhere makes it easier for people to decide where they want to live.

When I was younger I studied one semester in Germany and another one in Australia. It completely changed the way my viewed my own country and the world. After that I also studied a bit in England, Italy and in Spain then went to live in Japan. Every time I observed carefully and compared. Every time I learned a language and try to understand all the differences between the culture in which I grew up and that country's culture. What were the differences? Why were there these differences? Why do people think one way in a country but another way in another country? Is the economic, political and educational system in a country reflection of its culture? Does culture emerge from the language people speak and how it shapes their way of thinking and how the experience life itself? How did each country's history shape their culture, system, institutions and values? These are questions that I've asked myself every time I lived abroad or travelled somewhere since my late teens.

I've watched many YouTube channels about people who moved to another country and discuss the differences with their home country. It could be Americans living in Europe like Evan Edinger in Britain or Ashton Schottler in Germany, or Europeans living in Japan (e.g. Chris Broad from the UK, Tev from France, or Ernesto from Spain), or even East Asians living in Europe. It doesn't matter. There is always something to learn from people's experiences.

What annoys me is people in the comments who the way Evan describes in this video, and generally they are American. So that's another interesting cultural difference to analyze. Why is it that so many Americans can't take criticism about their country? Is it just because they are so indoctrinated to believe that their country is the best in the world and can't imagine anything else at all being better elsewhere? Of course it's not all Americans who are like that. It's almost always people who have never left the US.

 

[Vitruvius]

I've been following Evan Edinger on YouTube for a while. He is an American from New Jersey has been living in London for the past 13 years. He came as student and decided to stay. Is YouTube channel is mostly dedicated to the differences between the US and UK (or Europe in general).

Unfortunately he's frequently confronted to comments by Americans viewers who just can't accept any criticism about their country. I know what he means very well. I have been active on online discussion forums for 25 years, the including 20 years here on Eupedia, and over 20 years on forums about Japan frequented by many Americans. I've also had to deal hundreds of times with personal attacks from Americans whenever I criticized or even compared the US to other countries. It's very sad because we can't have any constructive discussion with people like that. What's more interesting is that it is almost always Americans who react like that.

I completely agree with Evan that when you love a country it is normal to point out its flaws so that things can be improved. I did it when I was living in Japan in the early 2000s and was often attacked by Americans on the forums who thought I was "a hater" and typically replied that if I didn't like it I should just leave. They didn't seem to understand that my criticism and my suggestions were only meant to improve things or at least to start a constructive debate about the pros and cons of each system. I never got as many personal attacks from Americans as when I criticised the lack of isolation in Japanese homes. It's only years later that I learnt that American houses are almost poorly isolated and it all started to make sense. I was indirectly criticising their country without knowing it! The question is, why is it that they can't take criticism about the US and seem to have a compulsion to view America as perfect and unimprovable.

One of the reasons I started Eupedia was to compare countries and cultures. Not to boast about some countries being better, because let's face it no country is perfect, that you promote understanding about different cultures and compare the various aspects of each system to make it easier to improve each others' systems. If some countries do not want to change or improve, knowing about what's available elsewhere makes it easier for people to decide where they want to live.

When I was younger I studied one semester in Germany and another one in Australia. It completely changed the way my viewed my own country and the world. After that I also studied a bit in England, Italy and in Spain then went to live in Japan. Every time I observed carefully and compared. Every time I learned a language and try to understand all the differences between the culture in which I grew up and that country's culture. What were the differences? Why were there these differences? Why do people think one way in a country but another way in another country? Is the economic, political and educational system in a country reflection of its culture? Does culture emerge from the language people speak and how it shapes their way of thinking and how the experience life itself? How did each country's history shape their culture, system, institutions and values? These are questions that I've asked myself every time I lived abroad or travelled somewhere since my late teens.

I've watched many YouTube channels about people who moved to another country and discuss the differences with their home country. It could be Americans living in Europe like Evan Edinger in Britain or Ashton Schottler in Germany, or Europeans living in Japan (e.g. Chris Broad from the UK, Tev from France, or Ernesto from Spain), or even East Asians living in Europe. It doesn't matter. There is always something to learn from people's experiences.

What annoys me is people in the comments who the way Evan describes in this video, and generally they are American. So that's another interesting cultural difference to analyze. Why is it that so many Americans can't take criticism about their country? Is it just because they are so indoctrinated to believe that their country is the best in the world and can't imagine anything else at all being better elsewhere? Of course it's not all Americans who are like that. It's almost always people who have never left the US.

Many Americans are shockingly uneducated on the historic emergence of the respective cultures around the world - often even those concerning their own ancestral backgrounds at times. I think it's particularly worse for those who are more significantly mixed (both ethnically and racially on a sort of sliding scale of disinterest). I don't make this statement as an attack on Americans but simply as an observation. When a person is intellectually blind to the differences and uniqueness of different methods of life and cultural norms of thinking as well as the historic circumstances such norms emerged from, it becomes impossible to compare and contrast the benefits and tradeoffs of other cultural norms to one's own. People like this instead default to the defense of the culture they are familiar with to which is the one immediately accessible to their knowledge base because critique from an unknown entity is emotionally processed as an attack on a way of life rather than constructive conversation of potential for improvements. Widespread notions of Americans being uncultured does have a basis in reality and the lacking public education system to which is partly responsible for their predisposition is certainly in large part to blame. It is not totally universal as exceptions to people like this do exist, but it is regrettably normalized.

 

[italouruguayan]

I believe that knowing you belong to the richest and most powerful country in the world almost inevitably leads to a feeling of superiority.
And therefore, little interest in what is outside.
I can understand it in ordinary people, but I don't understand it in people with higher education.I never traveled to the USA, but friends who have gone to study there say that many of their colleagues, very competent in their specialties, were completely ignorant about many parts of the world.It must be a flaw in the education system, further aided by a powerful ally: Hollywood.
Hollywood is a great creator and spreader of misinformation and prejudice (for example, Italy is the land of the Mafia, Romania is the land of vampires, etc.). I remember once, as a child, watching a Popeye cartoon on TV, where Popeye was being chased around the world by Brutus, and they arrived in Brazil. And while in Rio, they both arrived at... a bullring! In Brazil! One of the gates it said "El Toro" (The Bull), in Spanish! I was just a child, but I thought: How can they be so ignorant? Over the years I got used to those things... like a Steven Seagal movie supposedly set here in Uruguay, where people lived in total misery under a sinister dictatorship, but at the same time had high-tech weapons with which they threatened the world... hahaha!!!