One of the most amazing awareness issues that hits you when you travel around Europe is that very thing K. Sure, things are lovely in a historical nostalgic sense, especially when you visit your typical tourist spots, but, in the back-roads and every day living areas of Europe, things are so backward and inefficient its grating to your average American. You're walking along and looking at all the cobblestone streets, the ancient castles, or the walls built way before America was ever conceived of, and you wonder, why hasn't their country developed to the extend America has? They've had so much more time!
One of the huge misconceptions people in Europe have about America is we don't work well together. The truth is just the opposite. In comparison to just about anywhere else on earth, we work together incredibly well. It takes working well together to build clean water systems which feed every home, it takes working well together to create affordable energy which feeds every home, it takes working well together to create the finest military the world has ever seen, to create the finest businesses on the planet, to create the finest schools of higher learning, and especially to create the finest charitable organizations in the world.
Here is another way of looking at it, we don't have people any smarter living in America, we've simply created a better culture and climate upon which a persons talents may grow and prosper.
I know I'm rambling a bit here, but this theme has so many tentacles it's tough for me to stop writing.
Remember a few years ago when the Clinton Justice Department went after Microsoft for being too successful? Just imagine for a moment the French government doing the same thing toward a French company. Whether you agree with the decision to go after Microsoft as an unfair monopoly or not, you have to agree the French government would never be seen doing the same thing. Then the question is why? And the answer is simply this, the system the French live with is so corrupt, in order for a company to be successful to begin with, means they would be closely tied to the French government. In other words, large French companies are nothing more than arms of the French government.
Europeans have such a different outlook on life, as Americans we aren't really very closely linked culturally with them anymore. Each family is all too often out for that family and that family alone, each town is out for that town, each area is out for that area (at the expense of other areas).
In Europe, I would say the Germans are more like Americans than any other country, (even the Brits), but when you consider the rest of the world, it's actually the Japanese that work together and change together and process information closer to the way Americans do. The Japanese have a culture of change, a culture of improvement and a culture of nationalism similar to America. They may not be the flavor of the month when it comes to successful countries going forward (China and India), but I wouldn't count them out for a moment. The Japanese are what is pushing American businesses to improve and stay ahead technologically. And we are all benefiting from that urgency.
Europe is not really playing catchup. We're simply moving too fast for them. |
