After rereading the thread, I still don't feel like anyone has made a good effort to answer earllogjam's original questions. I'll give it a go.
B The only "culture" we have has been manufactured in the pursuit of wealth. He cited Las Vegas and Disneyland.
by this standard, all the artwork of the Renaissance, including Da Vinci's Last Supper and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, is also not real culture, as it was created by commission from the Catholic Church. Just as much a work of corporate art as Ronald McDonald or the Spice Girls.
What do you think binds this country together?
Aside from a common religion or genetic background, the same things that bind together most countries.
-common interests (baseball, football, American Idol, Seinfeld)
-national pride
-fear of difference
-shared geographic location
-people outside the country grouping us all together and calling us names
I for one think there is a very strong American culture because something definitely happens to new immigrants here that makes them very different from the people they left behind. They become American.
Agreed. It's the music, film, literature, food, fashion and other trends that draws them in... all the things enjoyed by their peers that they also start to enjoy and identify as their own. As for changes that mark someone as American, it depends on the person, since the culture that a person comes from might be different or similar in different ways from American culture.
In general, though, Americans tend to be
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highly individualistic, placing greater importance on self-actualization than on the needs of family or society at large
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materialistic, enjoying the secular and often eschewing, or only paying lip-service to the spiritual
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motivated to succeed, instilled with the notion that upward mobility is a reality not a fantasy and that anything is possible with enough willpower.
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a bit entitled, many Americans, having been born into affluence, feel its somehow their right to live comfortable lives
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indifferent toward global affairs, they are more concerned with what's happening in their own country.
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a bit fat and lazy, it's true
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an odd mix of sexual contradictions, in some ways hyper-sexualized, in other ways deeply neurotic about sex, this is the clash of Puritanism vs. the sexualization of everything in the media. I think the latter is winning but the former is still holding on
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open to speaking their mind, whether they be poor or wealthy, white or black, male or female, young or old, educated or not, Americans feel like their opinions deserve to be heard. This can be jarring to cultures where certain segments of the population (women, children, the working class, etc) are supposed to hold their tongue.
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idealistic, we get told we're the greatest country in the world and that there's no downside to Democracy or capitalism, sometimes we believe it
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a bit high-strung, just from my observations of other more laid-back cultures. I guess if you wanted to spin this positively you could say we're more proactive or results-oriented