I'd vehemently disagree. There's a clear cultural divide between the average of the US and the average of Europe on many topics, albeit much of that is a cause of the large quantity of remaining traditionalists in the US skewing the American average.

For example there's clear differences on secularism, gun-rights, access to abortion, universal healthcare, labour laws, privacy and regulation.

> The silent death of europe occured somewhere in the 00s

Sorry, how are we measuring this exactly? It's a significant reach of a statement by almost every measure. For example; if the EU is so "dead" then why do US manufacturers respect its regulations?

> secularism, gun-rights, access to abortion, universal healthcare, labour laws, privacy and regulation

I think most of these things are political rather than cultural. Specific laws take a variable amount of time to change/evolve, but are generally downstream of culture. Listing these kinds of political issues also tends to create a weird bias as you’re generally paying attention to the most extreme takes on all sides (e.g. you’ve listed access to abortion, but I would hardly consider this to be an indicator that the US was more culturally liberal than most of Europe pre-2022, just as I wouldn’t consider it an indicator that it is less culturally liberal post-2022,… it is more a political artifact than a genuine measure of culture).

"between the average of the US and the average of Europe"

I'm not sure how one even defines these. As an example, most of the examples you give have a near 50/50 (+/-10%) split here in the US.

> most of the examples you give have a near 50/50 (+/-10%) split here in the US.

That's what I mean. Many of those issues don't have anywhere near a 50/50 split in Europe, which is part of the definition of social norms, expectations and cultural values.

My bad, not average person, but average of the population. I got it. Although my statement still applies. You can look at voter breakdown by county to see a picture of how this 50/50 split is actually more homogeneous by locale. So there are cultural values, but they are at a more local level.

There's no 'average european culture' as inter-european differences are bigger than US-europe divide. The US is basically our common cultural base now.

> secularism, gun-rights, access to abortion, universal healthcare, labour laws, privacy and regulation

At least 4 of those issues are american , not european. this just goes to show how much attention europeans pay to the US issues instead of our own issues (aging of population, demographic deficit, unaffordable housing, unemployment , lack of global competitiveness, old money, brain drain etc). And what about european tech? I only discuss about it on HN, a californian forum.

> privacy

While these are interesting issues, they are nowhere near the top of the mind of average european person. Nobody went out on the streets because they wanted cookie prompts. We are just letting bureaucrats run the show and tell us we should like it

Similarly, there is no average American culture, as inter-state differences in attitude are large. America is as polarized as it's ever been, which is another way of saying the same thing.

american culture is almost homogeneous. ask a european visitor

Oh no, Peruvian culture and Canadian culture, for example, are very distinctly different, at least to my Belgian eyes.

This isn't what they meant, but I suspect you know that.

and so are Italian and Finnish cultures. But inter-USA cultures are as differnt as local cultures are within a single european country.

Would be interesting to have a distance metric for cultures , however

Yeah, the Navajo and Lakota are very noticably culturally distinct from each other, maybe even more so than people from Swabia and people from North Frisia.

The Navajo and Lakota are nations.

> The US is basically our common cultural base now

This is wishful thinking. People pay a lot of attention to the US due to its cultural output and importance in geo-politics but when they open the door they still pay attention to their own locality which has its own context.

> At least 4 of those issues are american , not european.

I'm sorry, how are those issues not European? Do you think Europeans aren't human or something? They're social issues and its harmful to think the US has any sort of monopoly on them. I could easily pull concrete examples where those issues are relevant to European events that I might suggest you are unaware of.

> While these are interesting issues, they are nowhere near the top of the mind of average european.

I would argue that for an average European elector, privacy is a much greater expectation than it is for an American.

> how are those issues not European?

because they are not contested in europe, only in the US

> privacy is a much greater

It's nowhere near as important as housing or employment i think. Strict privacy was mainly championed by German Greens, not a pan-european issue

Sorry, but that's bullshit. Does US discourse have impact on these topics in Europe: sure. But they are not solved topics that wouldn't be contentious otherwise.

> because they are not contested in europe, only in the US

every single one of those issues gets discussed in Europe. The US does not have a monopoly on social issues, I fear you are just showing the limits of your perspective.

i dont think anyone seriously debates whether abortion should be outlawed in western europe. It's just not a political topic in almost all of europe. Some very conservative parties use the US hype to rally their own supporters but it's just not working as an issue, abortion is to a very large degree culturally acceptable.

Abortion in Poland is legal only in cases when the pregnancy is a result of a criminal act or when the woman's life or health is in danger.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Poland#Legal_sta...

Abortion ebbs and flows. As someone else mentioned, currently Poland has placed severe restrictions on it and Ireland only legalised it something like 20 years ago, N.Ireland only decriminalised it about 5 years ago.

I would also suggest that considering the miserable failure of the mid-terms that the US has a similar strong average relatively set against limiting access to abortion too. Although I do appreciate that some areas of the US are more traditionally religious areas and more similar to the conservatives in Poland.

Abortion was only legalized in Ireland in 2018.

Abortion is one of the few cultural topics which doesn't tend towards borad consensus. E.g. acceptance of gay rights has a tipping point and then drifts towards the 90s+%, but abortion does not.

It's still very limited in Ireland and it took the death of a pregnant woman to make this happen.

Her husband begged the doctors to terminate her pregnancy in order to save her life but he was told "this is a Catholic country".

I marched myself on this dark day in Galway but Ireland still has a long way to go to become truly independent from its Catholic stranglehold. That caused so much pain especially to the youth.

But they are on their way yes, I was especially happy when the gay marriage made it through.

You don't think Ireland is part of western Europe? You don't think Poland counts as part of Europe and the EU?

It would be interesting to setup a sort of “quiz” about the US for Europeans and vice versa for Americans, I bet both would get those political points vastly wrong (eg, they’d think abortion laws way stricter or lax than they actually are, same with guns, etc). Most of what you know about other places comes from the media depicting it.

>There's no 'average european culture

Where do you live? Are you not aware that there is a very active and ongoing war in Europe which was triggered by the desire of a certain country to be more "European", and opposition to that desire.

ukraine was and is a european country. it wanted to be allied to the west and nato though

Indeed, it recognised that being "European" was more than a geographical concept.

Note that in 2014 it was "Euro-maiden" not NATO-maiden, or West-maiden.

> Nobody went out on the streets because they wanted cookie prompts. We are just letting bureaucrats run the show and tell us we should like it

Umm I do advocate for privacy. And I know many people that do. Feelings about GDPR are generally very positive.

But nobody wanted cookie prompts. They are the result of a shortsighted compromise.

What the EU should have done is simply forbid user tracking or make the user take action if they want to be tracked, no not tracking should be the default. Pop-up questions should have been explicitly forbidden.

However the industry knows that nobody wants to be tracked. And feared a loss of income. So they campaigned to weaken the law. The EU officials in their stupidity agreed. Stupid yes because now the industry blames them for the abundant cookie walls.

Not stupid, sadly - corrupt. I bet most of the MEPs that voted on that directive are now retired with a fat pension, made even fatter by some "consulting gig" from the folks that wanted that law weakened.

Unfortunately this is nothing new. Democracy has its problems.

When I go back to France I see burgers sold everywhere and massively more English words, both compared to 20 years ago.

French culture has very noticeably diluted in that relatively short time.

Use of language does not necessarily result in entirely changing the culture. Take South East Asia for example where they simply have their own spin on the English language. I fear that what the Anglosphere sees in this case is what it wants to see, its own victory, where in practice the actual outcome is more complex and doesn't necessarily result (in the long term) to the expectation.

Sure, foreign words are very often adapted.

But when you see for instance the cooking section of some French media renamed 'Food' that means something... or at least that the editor is an idiot.

Was American culture "diluted" when pizza became popular in the mid-20th century?

> There's a clear cultural divide between the average of the US and the average of Europe on many topics

This is very apparent to me reading HN late at night my time, which is mid-morning Europe time. It's like there are two totally different groups here. (We don't all think alike, of course, but there are prevailing views that tend to get upvoted. What's interesting to me is how it shifts with time!)

> if the EU is so "dead" then why do US manufacturers respect its regulations?

What does culture have to do with companies wanting the European money?

> For example there's clear differences on secularism, gun-rights, access to abortion, universal healthcare, labour laws, privacy and regulation.

I think this is a common Anglo-American outlook that thinks that generic European is the ultimate expression of Democrat (or Blairite Labour/LibDem). There are plenty of reactionary Europeans, and since they're not completely bound to US right-left ideologies there are plenty of examples of e.g. race-realist environmentalists, or anti-abortion socialists.

edit: I mean, you've offered a literal list of US wedge issues, and assumed that Europe takes the Democratic Party position on them.

> For example; if the EU is so "dead" then why do US manufacturers respect its regulations?

I don't want to take a side on this one, but is your argument here really that US capitalists have high philosophical standards on what market they'll enter?

You probably (99.9% certainty) spend too much time online and not enough time outside. twitter != the real world, tv != the real world

The 'outside world' is worse. Europe is aging, it's looking backwards and has very little interest in the future. The left side of the spectrum is stuck in '70s social democracy and believes it can still work despite the demographic collapse (french protests). It is not forward-looking nor has it made a post-boomer vision. The right is stuck in awe of its old glory and tries to revive nationalism (like Mrs Meloni, Brexit, Orban etc etc). People are (rightly) not very excited by those old minds. There is more interesting stuff happening in the US and Asia

That's a very limited definition of culture then

I'd say the french protests are a good testament to the french culture being alive and kicking when basically every other country accept slaving their lives away until 67+

I’m a big fan of french culture a wish other countries would do the same to establish where is the line of what they want to preserve, and really do the investiment for it.

France also is the cradle of liberal economic ideas, its culture did not start in 1968. And let's face it, the protesters demand are not realistic, they are about kicking the can down the road a bit more before it explodes

> the protesters demand are not realistic

The independent retirement board says otherwise but ok. If the trickle down economy and automation delivered we wouldn't even work until 60. But instead we have proles like you bootlicking the top 1%

* * *

How do you call the working class defending longer working hours/lives ? They're literally proles, by definition, and are pushing for things which aren't in their own interests

It reminds me of "socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires"

It feels like a natural outcome of liberalism, social democratic band aids are kicking the can down the road before it explodes into the working class rioting on the streets. Can only do so much austerity and wealth redistribution to the wealthy, i.e. "IMF-approved, sound economic policies without alternative" before that happens.

The real problems are the unfortunate contradictions in end of politics style liberalism: growing wealth inequality, wage stagnation, increased worker efficiency and record profits, the media can only do so much to hide it. So protesters are under the impression that their demands are realistic, of course thats at the root of the argument and your outlook on it depends on your degree of faith in liberalism.

What's unrealistic is the upper few percent of society vacuuming up almost all the surplus wealth generated by the other 95% for themselves.

> '70s social democracy and believes it can still work

and it can. Bear in mind that these were hard fought social structures that Europe sacrificed generations for in the war, which toppled the greatest empires and ravaged our lands, they came at great expense. It might be easy for a modern American to scoff at the concept of "70's style social democracy", but it is our version of "liberty" which we would protect as much as any American might the bits of the constitution that they like.

Remember that the totality of European GDP rivals US GDP (its in the big top 3 with the US and China), we will make social democracy work because to us, its the lowest acceptable bar. While one half of American news reels will continue to peddle the concept that its impossible because its within their vested interest to do so, it remains a stalwart part of European social expectations.

Perhaps when the US suffers a crippling loss on its lands once more and is forced to face the worst outcomes of the human experience, it might consider building a kinder social state too.

>Europe is aging, it's looking backwards and has very interest in the future. Really curious of what you call "future" here. I could be wrong, but this concept usually hides some very dogmatic opinions.

What is "european culture"? :)

Honest question in good faith, as even some individual EU countries don't have a consistent culture (think e.g. Germany) and at least for my very tiny slice of Europe, the culture and regional customs are still very much alive! :D

It’s the aggregate of culture(s) in Europe. Delineate them as you wish, or not. It’s irrelevant to their point.

I sympathize with concerns of mythologizing culture into existence, as is usually done in the process of nation state formation, but it’s a poor grounds for being a pedant.

Who do you socialise with in Europe?! I’m a dual national and regularly spend time in 3 European cities and 8+ US cities. To be honest, it’s the US that’s devoid of culture and European culture is very much there and deep rooted.

US has a distinct culture, its just not a one to one mapping of what “culture” even is, to Europe, or most places.

The way the US generally does housing and land use planning leads to a lot of vanishing of culture, specially in urban areas.

The same 8 lane stroads with the same super box stores and fast food chains. All connected with the same type of highway to a bunch of single family homes with little low level commercial or cultural activity.

It sounds like you don't have first hand experience living a European life (and I don't mean just living in Europe, it's all too easy to get sucked into a bubble).

While homogenization is at work, the cultural divide is blatant to the point of being highly visible here.

Having a foot in both worlds, I don't see it. If anything national cultures are giving way to European culture (which does have some inherited traits from the US) more than anything else.

From what vantage point are you speaking?

I’ve been online for 17 years and so I’ve been very aware of the trend of “wokeism” and other things like that. I also live in the country known as Europe. Yet in “real life” I have never, ever encountered a woke, virtue-signalling stereotype. The closest I came was some other guy’s experience that he relayed to me.

And that goes for other American (or not) things that also are “online”: those things might be something that I can read about every day while online, but I might never hear it come up in “real life”.

> The media is generally importing american anxieties and US domestic issues are even adopted as local

Aside from some fringe people who are immediately made fun of by us normal baguette-eaters, no.

In fact this is absurd on its face: high speed internet (thanks America?) made it clear to all of us too-online citizens of the country of Europe that Americans have concerns and opinions that are completely alien to us:

- Trigger-happy police

- Dying because lack of health insurance

- Circumcision

- Individualism of the type “I’m against taxes because it’s involuntary; people should give out of their own free will”, and yet also when they are facing hardships themselves: “I’m not gonna accept no charity!” (…makes sense)

- Opinions on abortion

- Etc.

And people argue a lot about that. (In my experience English message boards are often split 50% between the US and 50% the rest of the world, so there are a fair few Europeans to argue with). That’s what happens 95% of the time; the other 5% is your version: “Oh wow, those things are so cool; I’m gonna adopt and argue for them here in the country of Europe.”

> Yet in “real life” I have never, ever encountered a woke, virtue-signalling stereotype.

I can’t imagine most Americans have either (though the numbers may be different on this particular board).

I think most Americans are aware that the primary culture wars going on right now are fairly divorced from everyday life.

You forgot gun violance. The statistics for that are insane compared to any other country

No, they aren't. Gun violence in America doesn't look that bad compared to places like northern Mexico, El Salvador, Brazil, Sudan, etc.

Compared to rich nations, however, it looks downright awful.

Sorry yes I should have been more specific, I did mean compared to rich nations.

When me and my wife where choosing where to live, given we were planning to have kids, the idea of school shootings really scared us, so we had to pass on the U.S. entirely.

No.

> > Etc.

American culture is very different to local European cultures, which are all distinct from one another, and are usually as different from one another as they are from American culture.

We seem to have imported Naziism from Germany with little problem, so the circle is 2/3 complete.

>There is little 'european culture' left ... That's your opinion, and it strikes me. I don't understand the difference between what you call "fossilized cultural artifacts" and "alive culture and thought". In france, there are a lot of linguistic communities that still talks local tongues, and there are some events in which people reunite themselves in order to perform some folkloric dances (not related to age). Is this a fossilized cultural artifact ?

A lot of the good films I saw the past years were from europe. I really enjoyed the contemporary scandinavian scene recently, you could try to enlarge your vision and watch different things (recommendation [0]) There's a crazy amount of artistic domains, and I can't believe that someone (as you just did) can think of having scanned successfully the whole Europe cultural practices to be allowed to say " european culture is gone". Music, dance and visual arts are being created everyday : does it constitutes a part of what you call "culture" ? Concerning the public intellectuals you talk about, well, they were only a diffusion channel for one part of the european culture , and I don't think their death implies the death of culture, but rather the lowering of the signal amplitude perception from USA.

[0] https://www.on-tenk.com/

This is just complete nonsense.

Europe has tons of intellectuals. It doesn't need the US to defend it. There is tons of culture that is incredibly different in Europe compared to the US, just look at Urbanism and Public Transit for example. And the political issues are imported because they are issues here to and young people in the West generally point in the same direction, but even then many of the issues are quite individual as well.

Emigration to the US is not that common, and immigration to places like Germany is very common. Its mostly Eastern Europe that are emigrating both to Western Europe and the US.