Comment on Anon discovers Japanese jazz
PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 6 days ago
It’s that way in almost every country that isn’t America or America-light. Japan does it in over-the-top performative ways, but pretty much everywhere else, people care about random strangers, people invest time into their days and activities being nice just for the simple pleasure of human stuff and taking time to be a human and be pleasing with other people. Food, gifts, clothing, respect and value for travelers and gestures of good-will. If you’re from America, it feels “normal” here but something is clearly missing, and if you ever spend any length of time overseas you see exactly what it is and how badly wrong things are here, that it is missing.
I’m not trying to be prejudiced about it, just saying that every culture has its good stuff and its failings and not giving a shit about other people or life in general is definitely an American one.
I’m Canadian and we’re very America lite.
I grew up in a small town and I miss being young and spending so much time getting to know my neighbours or random people at the diner.
People feel less friendly the last few years, but when you get to know people they are nice. But that consideration for our fellow man is weak lately.
This is why I moved out of a metropolis to a small mountain town. We have our share of assholes and dipshit tourists, but a lot of people genuinely care up here and it’s much easier to be of that mindset when you’re around people of a similar ilk.
Honestly trumpism killed a lot of that spirit in the small town (and its surrounding towns) that I moved to. Now I’m working on moving back to the large city because then I can join some clubs and maybe find some sense of community that was lost thanks to the “fuck your feelings” crowd.
I’ve also now had 2 job changes due to layoffs in a row, so I want to move to where there’s more job opportunities for the next time a workplace decides to do without me, and not find myself up the proverbial creek or forced to accept another job with an hour of commuting each direction
Nelson? Revelstoke? Golden? Or proper little like New Denver or Kaslo or something? Considering that change for myself after having already gone from Toronto to Okanagan. Keep finding myself drawn to those kinds of places.
Not sure what it has to do with America, but the European countries (or people’s relationship) I’ve lived in are extremely far from being that nice.
Absolutely. Cold culture vs warm culture. It’s not just an American thing, but the "only america is this bad!" thought process on here is getting exhausting.
I’m in Germany, which feels pretty unfriendly to me (and I’m from Connecticut), but there’s still a back current of something. I don’t know if it’s best described as a sense of community, solidarity, or shared humanity, but I work at a bakery (culturally comparable to a diner, imo, and I worked in the US at a few diners) and the clientele as a rule sees me as a person in a way that they didn’t always in the US.
It’s also the first place I’ve worked in a city that didn’t have an oppositional relationship with the local homeless population, because my boss treats them like people, and doesn’t allow anyone to do any differently.
Wie just hate strangers, that’s all. Or rather people in general. If someone is friendly to me on the street, I look for an escape route and check if my wallet is still there.
Yeah, I have a European acquaintance who I’ve heard talk at length about how America is warm and friendly relative to Europe, and it’s a notion I’ve heard backed up by online accounts as well.
I ws defining most of Europe as “America light” here. People in Central America, the Middle East, and Africa all have a particular human way of interacting with each other that is absent in America and sort of muted in a lot of Western Europe. Then at a certain point my perspective flipped and I realized their way was normal, and it’s us that have something unusual about us.
The world is a big place with a lot of variation, and I’m not trying to romanticize any particular place. Just saying that a lot of looking out for each other and being kind has been forgotten about in a lot of America.
I sell on ebay and while I don’t go that far out if my way I do put a little thank you stamp on the packing slip, make sure everything is packed correctly and I go out of my way to make sure that the item is shipped either same day or next day if they order later in the day. People are always grateful that they get their items so fast. I often ask spare parts for things, but even things like cassette tapes I imagine that they want it for the weekend or it’s for a gift for someone.
grue@lemmy.world 6 days ago
What’s missing is walkability and “third-spaces.” Seriously.
See also:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHlpmxLTxpw
theguardian.com/…/extreme-car-dependency-unhappin…
medium.com/…/the-death-of-third-places-and-the-ev…
designdash.com/…/the-problem-with-car-centric-cit…
strongtowns.org/…/the-negative-consequences-of-ca…
usa.streetsblog.org/…/all-the-ways-that-cars-harm…
Serinus@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Europe took a long stroll in that direction too, but there are some major differences. First, most of their cities were established before cars. Second, they’re making more of an active attempt (in some areas) to be walkable again.
In short, in America 75 years is a long time. In Europe, 75 miles (120km) is a long way.
grue@lemmy.world 6 days ago
That’s true for America too, and isn’t an excuse. American cities were not built for cars; they were demolished for cars!
For example, downtown Houston, TX in 1957:
Image
vs downtown Houston, TX in 1978:
Image
tetris11@lemmy.ml 6 days ago
Are those the same location? I can’t see any common landmarks
ThoGot@lemm.ee 5 days ago
That’s so absurd it almost doesn’t seem real (from my european perspective)
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 5 days ago
You can actually see this in any small town that hasn’t seen significant redevelopment since they first paved the streets. Old houses are really close together, small lots, fairly dense development and its only a couple of miles from any part of town to any other part of town, so pretty walkable/bikable by nature
HonoraryMancunian@lemmy.world 6 days ago
What’s 75 years in metric?
muix@lemmy.sdf.org 6 days ago
2.3652 gigaseconds