We need to get back to being human beings and human doings
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I once took an American friend out for a night in Manchester. His first night in the UK.
That dispelled a lot of the narrative of the quaintness of Europe.
There’s this thing that Americans have. An old world ideal. Where they picture is all having two hour lunches and generally chilling about the place. It isn’t real, just another dream sold to you by capitalism.
Sure, we do some things differently over here, public transport and the ability to walk places being two that I’m particularly fond of, but let’s not rose tinted this.
The rise of fascism, or at least nationalism, is coupled with some awful working practices, mainly imported… And some of the levels of outright poverty, both urban and rural more than challenge that in the states.
This is just another reflection of the grass being greener.
You think Europeans are friendly? In my experience people are just people. The folk I’ve met in North America have been lovely, by and large and we have much, much more in common than this fairy tale suggests. But it swings both ways and we also have plenty of arseholes across Europe that would as soon as shank you as they would invite you for a chat and not ask you what you did.
That is kind of the thing. Americans earn extremely well. So when Americans move to southern Europe, they are either retired or have a great remote job. With cheap houses in the rural parts of those countries and access to public health care, you can actually have a pretty chill lifestyle.
That is to say: Capitalism is great for capitalists.
I do wonder how much this is about moving from urban spaces to rural spaces as opposed to geographic discrepencies.
It depends, but in poor cities like Sevilla the suburbs have some decent apartments or houses for basically a good(like less then $100k) annual US salary. Those will have light rail access, so living car free is still possible.
To be fair the UK is actually depressing
I’m from the Netherlands and don’t think I’ll ever go back if not in my own bubble on a holiday not interacting too much
Such misery I haven’t seen elsewhere as what your people vocalize. And the aggression is off the charts. I have my hopes up for Ireland, haven’t been yet. But england? Nah, seen enough.
Every hometown is “a shithole” when you ask about it, indoctrination is complete with even “soulful folk” proudly exclaiming the most dumb standpoints
And the ones that rise above that are just more affluent and turn a bit more quiet so as not to risk showing their own true colors. Hypocrites, behind the elbows we call that. Class consciousness. Not European at all in my opinion. I kind of hope nowadays you guys don’t ever get to return, it’s that bad.
I hope it gets better for you over there but where I live lunches can last 1,5 hours and work still gets done with a vengeance
Most British people have been slowly crushed by 45 years of neo liberal economics. Its sucked the vitality and investment out of every town and village as the country deindustrialized and turned into a hub for casino capitalism in London
I imagine the Brits were happier before Thatcher arrived.
The poverty is extreme in some places. Even moreso just people’s demeanor. Lower class is degenerate in the way that they both hate what’s happening and do everything they can to make it worse by voting for right wing parties fueled by xenophobia as all they feel they want to control is their own living area and what else but a paki or a wog to blaim
I’m following the count binface saga for a bit, let’s see if something happens there
I won’t pretend to know the answers but I will say British folk are usually predictable to a t. Fancy clothes, handbags for men and vitriol for breakfast
I know a few UK people who moved to your country, all have pretty much vowed never to return to the UK. Every time I visit I wonder how you manage to do things so right (at least in comparison to the UK). The equivalent of UK council estates are a completely different vibe over there, the children seem so much happier and the work culture so much more chill.
The equivalent of UK council estates are a completely different vibe over there, the children seem so much happier and the work culture so much more chill.
I have only been to the Netherlands on vacation. I’m from Austria and I did live for two years in the UK Midlands.
The big difference is how they treat public services in the UK. In the UK public services (including public schools, public housing and public transport) are for those who can’t afford anything else. If you live in an UK council estate and you happen to find a decent job or a single mother happens to marry, they get thrown out and need to find a house or flat to rent on the private market at multiple times the rate.
Public schools are for those who can’t afford a real education.
Public transport are for those who can’t afford a car.
All these things lock people in. If they improve their situation, things will suddenly get much worse for them because they drop out of all the social systems. Kids grow up in council estates and many of them don’t know a single person who works. Of course they will turn out to be long-term unemployed, because that’s all they know.
Contrary to that, Austria’s public services are for everyone. Public housing is spread throughout the cities. There’s not just one large estate with all the undesireables, instead the public housing is spread all over. There’s a check for your financial situation when you move into public housing (though it’s quite lenient) and then your income is never checked again. If you become a billionaire, you can still stay in that flat.
That means, there’s quite a well-rounded mix of people in public housing. There’s poor people, but there’s people who are quite well-off in these houses as well.
Same goes for public schools. I went to a public school. In my class we had the son of Chinese immigrants who had to help out in his parents’ restaurant on the weekends. But we also had the son of former nobility who inherited €4mio when his grandmother died in his last year of school.
Everyone takes public transport in my city, regardless of their income.
This gives people perspective. The kid growing up in public housing will watch people go to work every day. The same kid will make contacts at school to kids who end up in management positions, it’s free networking built right into the school system.
We also have free public universities, which are also the highest quality universities in the country.
Treating public services as something that everyone has a right to and not just something that exists so the poor don’t die makes all the difference.
This makes so much sense, thanks for typing that out. I have seen it myself how some people in the UK see the benefits system as a career path - young mothers discussing how many children is the sweet spot for getting as much out of the system. I feel so sorry for these children.
The problem is that the way it’s setup it kinda has to be a career choice. Once you are in you are locked in and there’s no decent way you. The system actively punishes you for trying to improve your situation.
You know, everything is always a game of incentives. So if you want people to get off benefits you have to reward them for taking steps to do so. For example, a bad system couples benefits to income with hard thresholds. Imagine a system where you get €1000 in benefits each month, but if you earn any money these benefits are gone instantly. So if someone would take a mini job where they’d earn €500 per month, they’d instantly lose €500 by taking a job.
Thresholds in benefit systems are common, and the UK system has really hard thresholds.
As an alternative consider this system: For two Euros you earn, you lose €1 in benefits. So now someone who makes €500 in their minijob would still receive €750 in benefits, thus making €1250. They have a clear incentive to work, and every bit they earn improves their financial situation.
The way the UK system is setup for the most part is that you are either in the benefits system or you are not. If you want to get off benefits, you need to instantly score a decent full-time job.
That’s a difficult ask for someone who has no education, no network, no prior job experience and a CV that consists entirely of long-term unemployment.
People like that have the best chance to start with an easy, low-commitment minijob. So making sure that’s not an option for them all but guarantees that these people stay on benefits for life.
When I visited Ireland everybody embodied this post. Everyone walked everywhere, 99% of my interactions were genuinely pleasant and friendly, it was a weekday but people were out enjoying a long lunch on a sunny day in Dublin.
Can’t recommend enough.
I lived in the Midlands for two years. I didn’t think a place as run-down, impoverished, dirty and forsaken like this existed anywhere in Europe.
There’s this thing that Americans have. An old world ideal. Where they picture is all having two hour lunches and generally chilling about the place.
I’m pretty sure I saw stats saying that in EU people actually do work less than in US. For example in most EU states you get way more paid leave than in US.
they picture is all having two hour lunches and generally chilling about the place.
I’d say it’s overselling it, but there’s a grain of truth to that.
some of the levels of outright poverty, both urban and rural more than challenge that in the states.
It depends. In poland where I live there are pretty much no slum districts despite being less developed than US in general.
You think Europeans are friendly? In my experience people are just people.
From what I gather US has that culture of fake friendliness, while in EU people react just more honestly. It might not be that pronounced in UK that shares more culture with US than EU.
I think my main problem is with Americans talking about “Europe” as if it is a singular monolithic entity similar to the US (which we all know is far more nuanced and the difference between Texas and Maine is vast).
That over-simplifocation, over-generalisation is a strong narrative, but a really useless one.
Also, Poland! Wonderful. One of the most genuinely decent places I’ve visited.
As for the fake friendliness… It r really isn’t something I’ve encountered with Americans, at least no more than in capital cities all over the world.
The UK is very different from southern Europe
And large parts of “Southern Europe” are radically different from each other.
Ok? But the UK is even more different
I worked in central London for 10 years and generally the American tourists were very polite and friendly. I served Monica Lewinsky once. I only knew it was her because Americans never sign their frickin credit cards so I had to check her ID. I also served some famous comedian once and my manager was wetting herself and after he left, she was like, Do you know who that was? And I’m like, no? 😅
(Rudest celeb was Vanessa Feltz, although it was my colleague who served her. Floella Benjamin was nice and still uses the “aging off” cheat.)
Sorry, in what world is the UK “southern” Europe?
Sorry, where did I say that it was?
By attempting to refute an assertion about southern Europe using the UK as an example…
Ah, my mistake. You are right, I was a little off topic there. I thought an anecdote about my friend might be fun, but I now understand that it is wrong.
I mean some people say ACAB, but I, for one, am grateful when when people like you decide to police the internet.
It stops us straying into conversation and keeps every action strictly as a nice, clean, binary argument.
Sure, you have to fabricate evidence and jump to your own conclusions to do so… Going so far as to make a weird accusation and then follow it up with a tenuous rationale, but I know it is for my own good.
Thank you for your service, Chief.
…you need to stop smoking whatever you’re smoking and come back to reality… Or learn to read, but I decided to be generous and assume you were just too high to know what was going on instead of assuming you were an idiot.
Sure thing, officer.
No weed. Weed bad.
Thanks for keeping us on the straight and narrow.
In all seriousness though, you fabricated something to be pedantic about. Perhaps you should re-read my original comment again. Whilst I open talking about somewhere in England I think go on to talk about Europe more generally. I can do this as I’ve lived in quite a few European countries, including ones in the south of Europe.
What did you think would happen when you made your erroneously pedantic comment, anyway? That people would like you for it? That you’d feel better for doing it? That you were adding to a conversation?
Nope. I think you’ve misunderstood discussion and confused your own sort of contrarianism with discourse.
Now, if you are done telling me how to behave and what drugs not to take, I’ll be on my way, officer.
The UK is not Europe, as I’m sure you know about the whole brexit thing.
Come on, of course it is. It’s not EU anymore but it’s still in Europe.
They seem like quite the outlier then if you really insist on including them.
If its just a geographic thing you mean, then sure its in Europe.
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He cited an American visiting the UK as an example of an American learning about Europe. I simply disagree that you can learn much about Europe from visiting the UK.
Cool, disagree away. Doesn’t change anything.
You said “the UK is not Europe” and I agree. Europe is massive and diverse.
Maybe that’s what you meant.
Also, the dude literally cites Greece, who do you think bailed out of the EU first? Does that mean Greece isn’t in Europe?
What do you mean with that? Greece is still in the EU. The EU bailed out Greece not that Greece left the EU.
Also, the dude literally cites Greece, who do you think bailed out of the EU first? Does that mean Greece isn’t in Europe?
Well not Greece because it’s very much still a member of the EU. It even still uses the Euro as a currency. Of all its members, the UK is the only one that left.
Greece didn’t bail out of the EU. Its still a member. It tried to reassert its monetary sovereignty during the Eurozone crisis and was crushed by Germany and forced into vicious austerity.
This guy is a weird spiritual business guru. This post isn’t an observation on modern American life, it’s one of his many posts that try to sell you on his business where he claims that he can teach you how to monetize your passions and not have to actually work
Their intentions do not disqualify the legitimate point made though. As a European, the last time I considered I could maybe live in the former united states was around 1997. So well before it turned full-on shithead Magastan.
Sure but… does he keep meeting Americans that moved and didn’t know life could be that way though?
More than one thing can be true at a time but while this reads like just some guy who keeps going to the local pub and meeting Americans who talk about how great life is after moving, in reality he’s a business man making a sales pitch.
It’s kind of working too. The amount of people here who didn’t think to research who this guy is and just took his word for it is… something.
I’m not saying the guy is a grifter, I don’t know. I don’t know if he’s right or wrong. My point is to make people aware this is a sales pitch not a genuine observation. And it’s a sales pitch by a “spiritual guru”, for what that’s worth
Personally, the US is a big place and so culture varies state-to-state. Where I live, people don’t ask you what you do for a living when you first meet them
Your point is fair, Iappreciated being told when someone posts with ulterior motives.
blue checkmark rule
This guy is a weird spiritual business guru.
Why should I care?
Because while everyone is assuming this is a tweet by just some guy who keeps running into Americans at the Pub who tell him about how great life is after moving, in reality he’s a business owner making a sales pitch
Knowing it’s a sales pitch, do you still believe he regularly runs into Americans who moved to Italy? Or do you think maybe he’s just making that up to try to sell his business to Americans?
That’s choice is up to you I guess, but at least now you know
I mean it’s a tweet, I wouldn’t trust it to be true either way
I see all the reels of Europeans coming to the US for the World Cup and they’re shocked how nice we are, how good the food is, etc etc. I have to remind myself that they’re visiting and that yes, we are nice on average and we don’t all live like an episode of The Wire, they don’t have to experience our job culture, health care, car requirement, extreme weather, and batshit insane and corrupt political system. Yes this is a great place to visit, but your life here is very much dictated by the hand you were dealt at birth.
Also these people are on vacation. People are in a good mood on vacation. They don’t mind a lot of everyday bs. They don’t really care of the food prices because they already spent a couple thousands to be there. Emotionally, they are in a theme park.
And importantly, they are drunk.
They’re also the kind of people who, apparently, have no problem traveling to the US despite the country having captain orange pedophile behind the wheel. You know, morons.
Imagine their expectations.
I dont think i’d survive the American hustle life, where everything is a potential sale and money is all your ever taught to create.
Hell doesn’t even begin to describe it
… and my entire American life has been an oscillation between being indescribably furious, knowing that ‘it doesnt have to be this way’ and then laughing uproariously at people being surprised by the astoundingly predictable outcome of literally every one burning out and crashing out.
This never could work, the way we do things… its inhuman, and insane.
It is no measure of sanity to be well adjusted to deeply disturbed society.
We’re just now finally experiencing the part where gravity resumes affecting Wile E Coyote.
… but we have a very long way to still fall.
As a neruospicy person that’s also an INTJ on the Meyer Briggs scale, let me tell you that “infuriating” doesn’t even come CLOSE to describing it.
Like I’ve spent 30 YEARS thinking of how to fix this busted system, read stoic, humanist, capitalist and socialist philosophy, Examined several world religions, studied most of european history, and am up to date on most science,… in short, I’m not a “know it all,” I make it my business to be well versed.
So when I come up with an idea of how to really get down to the nuts and bolts of the issues, only to be told that my solutions would never work, the only thing I have to say to everyone is
“Not with that attitude.” As I scream internally.
As someone who self-identifies almost the same exact way: yes, shit’s way beyond infuriating.
Like I’ve spent 30 YEARS thinking of how to fix this busted system
The only conclusion I routinely come to is that this whole place operates like one gigantic work camp, and (in a way) we’re still in the colonial era, built on top of centuries of extractive capitalism. We’ve made some progress by eliminating slavery, but the actual colonialism part has concluded within the continental US; it’s still happening elsewhere. The suffering doesn’t stop until we dramatically curtail incentives for exploitation of all forms.
There’s a bunch of ways that could take shape, but as you suggest, they all require a change in attitude to pull off.
Slavery is still very much alive in prison systems. So nope, not even that.
Fair. I keep forgetting about that loophole.
Hah, yeah you’re basically descibing my 20s.
Now, I’m an absurdist / cynical bastard, who just laughs as … 90% of all the things I told people would happen, are currently happening, to society broadly, and themselves personally.
None of these people ever apologized for the mockery and social ostracization and gaslighting they did for the last 20 years… so fuck em!
That I was correct means nothing. That I caused them to experience the cognitive dissonance of their lack of actually thinking about things… is apparently the only thing that matters.
Which basically just means these people are selfish, egotistical, and lazy.
The good news is that I don’t actually have to do anything about that. I can safely exist in my own way, at a bit of a distancd, while these idiots do their own survival of the fittest to each other.
I just had to get over the immense grief of fully realizing the extent to which I could do nothing about the incredible amount of unnecessary harm most normies gleefully do to themselves and others.
That is apparently just the human condition.
The comments in here are largely centered around “How can I get out?” Or alternately “Getting out is not possible.”
I came across this post last year, and it gave me the kick in the pants to get out myself.
https://crazypeople.online/post/6720157
Been out of the states since January. I started in Portugal and I can confirm how relaxed it is there. I’m in Morocco now and have met the most kind and welcoming people I’ve ever known. Very relaxed here as well. I don’t currently have plans to return.
It may or may not be possible for you depending on your specific situation. If you are in the “How can I get out?” camp, I’d encourage you to think seriously about making it happen. Look at how you could radically change things. Sell everything, quit your job, and crash at a family member’s house. The barriers are likely lower than you imagine, and the upsides are dramatic.
I’d like to point out squats as an option too. It is sometimes bad, but usually super mild. People on speed raving a lot. If that’s what it takes to get the first few months out of the way, fuck it
There’s also couchsurfing.com or trustedhousesitters.com. We stayed in a place for a month for free and just had to take care of their cat and dog. It was a really good experience, and we’ve been doing it internationally off and on ever since to help mitigate rent.
Capitalism exhausts the earth and its people. I don´t think southern Europe is excluded.
imagine living in europe and wanting to turn it into the USA. That is what a lot of conservative and liberal politicians feel like to me.
I had a friend who was studying Buddhism and moved to south-west Asia for a time. He described this phenomena as “it’s hard to dry off if you don’t get out of the pool.”
So… two hour lunches. But I thought they still had a 40 hour workweek in most places. So do they work 8 to 6? Or is the 2nd hour of lunch technically work time?
Yes we have a 40 hour work week (germany). Standard working hours are 8.5 hours a day, which includes 8 hours of paid work and a mandatory 30 minute unpaid break (So it’s really a 42,5h week). I have never heard of a 2 hour lunch ever from anyone I know that works a regular job. On the contrary, many people simply work through their 30 minute break (Which is against the law but it can be difficult to enforce and you get singled out and bullied by management very quickly if you start acting up about it in many low income jobs)
Housing prices have been skyrocketing for decades and many people are struggling to pay for rent and groceries because wages have been stagnating when adjusted for cost of living at the same time. The welfare state has been and continues to be gutted in most parts of europe under the guise of saving money for war efforts or the covid crisis or climate change or whatever issue is available to justify it in the current moment.
Police are increasingly militarized and overly aggressive although they kill less people (Unjust killings are still happening all the time though).
Censorship is also ever increasing. For example targeting all shades of the “Pro-Palestinian” political movements, or incidents where people get their house raided etc. for posting unfavorable remarks about politicians on the internet. There are also incidents of courts making overly harsh judgements to create examples out of cases against leftist lawbreakers to send a signal to the populous.
It’s the same shit over here, just slightly milder. As a poor person in europe these posts read like either pure propaganda or uneducated statements made by comfortably wealthy european workers and small business owners or american tourists. I think it’s sad that being slightly better than the USA seems to be enough for so many people to proudly support all the deplorable shit that is happening in their own home countries.
It is a lot milder in key aspects. In Germany it is way less common that people go bankrupt over health issues. People can usually stay home when sick, paid, and those days aren’t deducted from holidays either or similar nonsense. Of course there are problems and things are moving rather in the wrong direction but things are not almost the same (“slightly better”). If you think the social system is almost as bad in Germany I doubt you have experienced how things are for the poor in the US. It is not just a little bit worse. And lets not even start about the privatised prison system and laws designed to fill those privatised prisons instead of reducing crime. Then there are laws deliberately designed to prevent poor people from voting etc.
The original post said southern Europe, so Italy, Spain, Greece, etc. In these places many businesses close around lunchtime and reopen later in the afternoon. So typical opening hours may look like 8am-12:30pm, 3:30pm-7pm. That’s not all places (restaurants or large grocery stores don’t follow that format, obviously), but many shops do it.
Really depends on where you work. I’d say the vast majority does not have 2h lunches. That only happens in pretty relaxed jobs or for upper management, who probably bill it as work meeting anyway. Probably not all that different from America.
Edit: At least in Germany. Italy or Spain might might be more relaxed.
Americans live to work. Other societies work to live.
Yank here, I do not live to work
French here. I wasted a huge chunck of my life living to work.
I know it’s not an everyone and everywhere thing. Just a general statement about the overall society and its culture. With the US’s GDP the citizens could have a much higher quality of life than really anywhere else but they generally choose to have a very low quality of life dedicated to work. I’ve known people who haven’t taken a holiday in years or would complain that if they ever took more than two weeks they would be hurting their career. It’s depressing to watch the people who have the most cosplay living in a much poorer nation. Also yes I’m aware that the wealth is primarily in the hands of the unelected american royalty but I thought the second amendment was there to prevent that circumstance. Governments are meant to protect and serve their citizens and citizens must ensure the government is doing so.
The machine is not for everyone - and we should have a system that allows people to have a balanced life. But we should not punish or prevent the people who like working like that. It takes all kinds…
I think the only people anyone’s wanting to punish is billionaires.
I think the consideration is that, in moving away from the mandatory hustle “culture”/grind, care is taken not to stigmatize it for the people for whom it is a desirable lifestyle. Culture has a way of overcorrecting.
Is there an actual way to preempt a swinging cultural pendulum before it changes direction?
The obvious answer is to try to convince people, but that doesn’t account for the reason (I think) that pendulum is getting more extreme in recent decades, which has a lot to do with corporate media and corporate social media. I hate to be the boring one who always connects the dots back to billionaires, but I really think it we got rid of billionaires we’d have a lot less to worry about culturally.
We’re all just spitballing here unless someone is secretly a sociologist, but I do think social media accelerates cultural swings/overcompensations. Social media, and its focus on appearances, encourages a low-specificity sorta purity testing. If you aren’t visibly conforming, at the very least you’ll be inundated with media of how “this” is the correct thing. And that’s assuming you aren’t actively harangued by people pushing conformity. So “the correct thing” gets positively reinforced and quickly builds momentum.
I think the only recourse is educating people to not just absorb everything their eyes and ears ingest, i.e. critical thinking. Which doesn’t seem feasible without a revamp of education.
I totally get the impulse to say “we solve this by making people smarter”, and when it works I’m over the moon. But it’s literally the hardest solution to achieve in a fascist society where all the major media outlets are co-opted and the schools are all chronically underfunded.
The only other answer depends on where you[impersonal] lie on the topic of governance. Because you’d need some kind of overarching organization to feed mediating/moderating media to the population (trying to sidestep the word “propaganda” although that is what it would be).
Either the population becomes smart enough to ameliorate unreasoned shifts in culture on an individual basis or the populace entrusts that responsibility to someone over them.
In-line edit: I guess there is also the possibility of a sort of “herd immunity”, where enough educated individuals are countering misinformation and overreactions in their community to achieve the same effect.
Hard to say. I think anyone trying to force anything on a society usually deserves to be shot into the sun. Maybe the only morally flawless way to create a better world is to expand your (impersonal) own circle of empathy to its maximum, and when you get a chance, try to help others to do the same.
Moved to Scandinavia. That’s completely accurate in my experience
The better post that I saw was someone saying how ex-USA citizens jumped at loud sounds because we fear gunfire and Europeans took them in stride.
Lol, being afraid to die. Where in america do they live, Hawaii?
Ehh… Probably a bit hyperbolic. Most people are jumpy around loud things, not because they are afraid of guns, but because loud noises are surprising. Your brain isn’t very involved in most of your body’s reflexive actions.
Plus, most Americans haven’t been around people firing guns either. And the sound that a gun makes changes pretty drastically based on environment and where you are relative to the shooter. The most common reaction to actually being shot at is generally confusion not fear.
it’s not just being stuck in it. if you voluntarily leave it, you’re labeled aberrant.
