>> Because when American do it, they're assuming
> they're smarter than
> their neighbors. It implies they're apart from or
> above the society
> that produced them, and immune to its alleged
> faults.
I agree with Doug. Plus I think such criticisms are shallow and cheap. I kind of got sick of hearing it from ex-pat Americans when I was living in Europe. It was a way for them to suck up to europeans and portray themselves as "different" and "darling". I am also suspicious of europeans who facilely use the "stupid american" line.
When living in France, I would hear all of this shit (mostly from other ex-pats but also from some french) about how stupid americans were and then on numerous occasions see north africans treated like shit and talked to like dogs (actually much worse than dogs, given the french affection for canines) by certain french people.
I'll never forget in Italy riding around Turin with my friend who told me how Italians were not racist like the Americans (at that time Turin was almost 100 percent white). Two years later there was a huge influx of africans...I was walking around with that same friend and we encountered a wall that read "Negri fuori Italia". I looked at my friend and repeated her earlier observation about how the Italians weren't racist.
Thomas
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>> Because when American do it, they're assuming
> they're smarter than
> their neighbors. It implies they're apart from or
> above the society
> that produced them, and immune to its alleged
> faults.
>
> Doug
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http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
===== The real world gives the subset of what is; the product space represents the uncertainty of the observer. The product space may therefore change if the observer changes; and two observers may legitimately use different product spaces within which to record the same subset of actual events in some actual thing. The "constraint" is thus a relation between observer and thing; the properties of any particular constraint will depend on both the real thing and on the observer. It follows that a substantial part of the theory of organization will be concerned with properties that are not intrinsice to the thing but are relational between observer and thing.
W. Ross Ashby
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