Living outside America

Re:Living outside America by jandrewrogers on Sunday July 01, 2012 @09:39PM (#4186844)

Most Americans believe in the provincial caricatures of the other cultural regions of the US with which they have no experience. It is not just other countries, Americans are like that in their own country. And in fairness, the US is a large, populous country with diverse regional histories. Most Americans would probably be very surprised to learn that the "sagebrush culture" (red) states are the least religious or that the western mountain states are the second most urban outside the NYC area.

There is a considerable amount of cultural distance between, say, one of the Cascadia cities (like Seattle), and Mississippi, and Boston, more so than you often find between different European countries. What deceives people is that Americans nominally all speak the same language despite the stark cultural and historical differences between regions.

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Re:Living outside America by seanmcdirmid on Sunday July 01, 2012 @10:20PM (#4186956)

Or how Idaho is an algmation of LDS teetotalers, survivalist libertarians, and extremely liberal hippies! But even the different between Seattle and Spokane (Washington's first and second largest urban areas) is pretty extreme.

My dad worked in nuclear, so I moved around a lot when I was a kid: Tricities Washington (sagebrush country), Toledo Ohio, Somewhere (Pennsville) New Jersey on the tristate border, Vicksburg Mississippi, and finally back to the PNW (Seattle). Actually, many Americans are fairly mobile, much more so than their European counterparts. Its not unusual to meet others like me who moved around a lot as kids (and are still moving, just not in the states anymore).

General American ignorance is quite a myth, though I'm sure their are many stationary Americans, there are just as many Americans who've lived everywhere.

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