Define the word "American" - Page 4

What if you're American but don't identify with American culture?

you can't really call anything "american culture" as in something completely unique to us. i have lived here my whole life and i can assure all of you that america as a nation has nothing that resembles culture. all we have is the same sort of sterilized, standardized corporate monoculture that our corporations are spreading all over the world. mcdonalds and pepsi and microsoft are our culture. you dont have to be american to get that. so to call anything "american culture" is misleading. i am american because i happen to live within the borders of what everyone agrees belongs to the american government. i pay taxes to the american government and i obey (or at least pretend to obey) its laws. that is what makes an american.

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[quote] would you describe the english as french, german or italian? no you wouldnt.

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They all have the same roots. But I wouldn't describe them as the same language.
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i meant race not language, the english are genetically made up of a lot of other european countries, and as you mentioned are language has the same roots, we have been given culture and traditions form europe, but we are still british not italian or french or german.

just because america isnt cultured doesnt mean it has no culture. you just have a coporate culture, though there is more suggestion of a cultural identity in rural america than big city america. you could be anywhere in the world in a large city, only language usually seperates them, but rural areas retain more of the traditions.

geography and politics tell you that you are an american. what other indicators do you need?

What makes up a culture? How many of those things do you need to be a part of that culture? Is culture restricted within boundaries? How old does a country have to be in order to have a distinct culture from wherever the inhabitants originally came from?

Americam food? American family values? American religion? I'm just comparing American "culture" to other cultures. Our culture isn't as old as other countries.

it has to be of an age at which it has recognisable differences from its parent culture. also does having the same culture mean that you are the same country. part of ireland has a similar culture to the rest of the british isles, yet it is not part of the uk because it fought for and won its independence. there are people who live there who would kill (and have done) to not be part of the uk. why should we consider the situation of america and europe any differently.

Well I sure hope there's an American culture or I must have imagined all those people saying their American. I don't think age has much relation to it. I'm pretty sure that once people came to America they were already saying I'm American. But American culture isn't really the same as other cultures because it's a multicultural nation. It's not so much focused upon religion or race but more upon values. Those values sway between person to person. In my opinion and I think I've already stated this is America revolves around money.

Money....that's the core issue...along with a self-righteous "let's save the world" attitude.

i would agree, that america does seem to have very few defining indicidual values. but it does have some, and not just the negative ones that we have listed.

America over compliments itself. They get offended to criticism to easy.

so do most people. the british dont tend to if its from themselves, but they get annoyed at anyone else telling them their wrong.

its the same in most places.

Yeah but America's really bad at it.

i suppose your right, america can be a bit tetchy about anyone thinking there is anything wrong with it.

Being American means nothing except being classified in a certain group and that small boklet called a passport. being from a certain country gives a human no advantages nor disadvantages. Countries are a coincidence and mean nothing America could have just as easily been called New Britain with the alter of a single descition made by a British or American general in the independence war. That flag which thousands of young men have fallen for ,could have had frogs on it instead of stars with a little alter of human history. No offence to Americans!

I know that. But we assign meanings to objects. America is just a piece of land like England, Zimbabwe, and Mongoloa, but what does American mean to people?

-a certain geographical feature
-commercialism
-moral self-righteousness
-the ability for a person to reinvent himself/herself (change class, body shape etc)

These are just a few.

To me it means freedom. In the beginning we were controlled by other countries and we fought to be free from them because of their restrictive ways and we built a new government that lacked those restrictions.

We would be free to speak our mind and follow our own mind and not required to follow any religion but free to follow any religion.

This was a new government, the first of its kind and it was successful until Bush came along.

Actually problems started some time back. The Unitarian Church says the problem started when businesses where given the same constitional rights as people. The Veterans For Peace say it was when the military industrial complex was created, a beast that must be fed that requires more and more and some say wars were intentionally waged just to keep it fed, Iraq being the latest example of that.

But anyways, it means freedom to me and its worth fighting for, even if we have to fight our own government who seeks to undermine those basic principles.