What Is An American
I don’t suspect Americans spend a lot of time thinking about what an American is exactly. But it's slow today and I’m bored. So what is this species “American”? Are we defined by our culture? If so, what is the American culture?
Dictionary.com defines culture this way:6. Anthropology. the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another.
Well now, how many different ways of living are there in the U.S? A whole boatload I’d imagine. This definition works well in a homogenous society – Sweden for example, but the U.S.? Everyday, 300 million people practice ways of living peculiar to traditions transmitted from their descendants, trouble is their descendants are from someplace else, at least at some point or another. So what culture bubbles up from this milieu? Is it similar to poring all the paints in the box together and getting a brown-greenish mess? Or is it similar to this:
Where each family has a distinct culture apart from being American and the intersection is being American. Multiplied millions of times it becomes unwieldy to my mind. But perhaps this is true to a certain degree and helps explain our fascination with hyphenation, i.e., Italian-American, African-American, Mexican-American, Andthelistgoeson-American. It does not however, explain what exactly is IN the intersection.
I think a better explanation of what an American is, is this: We are who we are because of this simple statement:We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,…
To be an American is to believe in an idea, that we are all free to be what we want to be, free to try, and free to fail. That no matter our societal or economic background we have an opportunity to make our lives better and this applies to EVERYBODY. Americans also believe that no man is above the law, as is embodied in our Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
To be an American you don’t even have to live here, you just have to believe in the idea. So now I’m off to that all American pastime…
Baseball. See ya!
4 comments:
I think American culture is unique in the world in that it is defined to a large extent by what newcomers bring to it and of which the natives assimilate. This is not too different from how ancient Greece became such a rich culture.
The dissimiliarity is that the Greeks exported their culture by force through Alexander the Great, commonly known as Hellenism. The Romans also borrowed heavily from Greek culture thus the fundamentals of Greek culture were spread throughout the known world.
In America it is true that we act like a giant sponge soaking up all who come. But then it's reflected back out to the world, where our influence "culturally speaking" is accepted by some, resented by others, and frightening to others as well.
It's as if America was a giant fruit tree, where people picked the fruit they wanted and left the rest. French teenagers dressed up as gangsta's, Japanese skate and surf culture, etc.
But the point I was trying to make, is that in America there are all cultures, therefore you cannot define an American by culture. The commonality in America which culture suggests exists outside culture, our commonality exists in the fealty to the idea of individuality and freedom.
Which is why you don't have to live in this country to be an American you simply have to believe in the idea.
Long before Alexander was on the scene Greece was a center of trade and activity in the Mediterranean and a hub of commerce and cultural exchange. Mostly due to its prime location as a maritime port and nexus for trade between 3 major continents.
The first Olympic games were around 776 BC. Over 400 years before Alexander was born and the Hellenistic period reached its zenith. It was a magnet for cultural import and export much like America is today.
As culture then was delivered by the sword during the campaigns of Alexander, it is now delivered by the media and much of our entertainment not to mention our corporate hegemony around the world.
I think what mystifies some people about America is the fact that we're more stable now than ever rather than having collapsed into anarchical tribalism from the result of having a historically generous immigration policy.
This proves to me, above all other things, that the "idea" of America is right and ultimately, "the draw" even if somehow other's views of the export (reflection?) of our culture is wrong.
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