Brendan <pit.hokie@v...> wrote (Message 9200):
> I don't know if you have ever travelled to the United States, but
I'd have to say that the USA is far from uniform.
Hi Brendan!
As soon as I did the last click I noticied I didn't write it in the
best way.
Of course I know that the USA is far from uniform (even uncorrectly,
I did write "almost uniform"). What I mean is more about comparation
with Europe. Here a map like that posted by Victor (Message 9189) is
much more complicated.
Politically the US is a federation of states; there is a federal
administration; an army; a language for public administration
(despite the people speak more languages); a currency; nationwide
television channels; a general pop culture (in good measure exported
worldwide);
Nothing like that happens in Europe. Even the restrict European
Union (EU, which is not a federation yet) is far from the US model.
In Europe there are republics, kingdoms, principalities,
federations, unitary states, democracies, dictatorships; there are
dozens of official languages, plus a lot of regions with their own
official local languages, written in several alphabets; there are
dozens of currencies (despite some EU members use the common Euro).
Even the boundary lines of the European nations are not so straight
as the states lines in the US.
> But if you want to talk cultures, much like the map posted
earlier, the U.S. is full of different cultures! If you take my
home in Pittsburgh and compare and contrast it with a small town in
Nebraska; Berkeley, California; Miami; Chinatown in San Francisco
and a Navajo settlement in Arizona you're going to see cultural
differences just as varied as Europe.
That's were I may disagree. Culture is the whole human behavior (not
just language, arts or cuisine, so to say). I think that, if you
take the whole, Europe is more varied. As I said, a European
Victor's map would have more lines, more shades, more cultural tri-
or multi-points than in the US.
Well, perhaps it is impossible "to measure" the cultural variety or
diversity, but we may see it from other point of view. In both
Europe and the US there are cultural varities, but I think that in
the US there more things that lead to uniformity, or have the nature
or tendency to do so. Do you know what I mean? For example, the
Super Bowl, the State of the Nation speech, September 11, are a few
things that assemble most of the US citizens, or mean something to
most of them. You can't find such things for the Europeans. Even a
tragedy like September 11 in, say, Riga (Latvia) would mean to most
Europeans the same as the real even in the US: somebody else
problem. (Don't believe the politically correct speach of many
Europeans after September 11: we are with the Americans, we are all
Americans. That's just prattle).
> The USA may be a melting pot, but it's FAR from homogeneous.
Ok, I agree.
Yes, I've travelled to the United States. But only Florida,
unfortunately. I hope one day to go to see other states too.
And you, have you travelled to Europe? Which countries?
Best greetings,
Francisco,
Portugal