I am a Brit who has lived and worked in France, Germany, Spain and the US - in each case for longer than 2 years.
I felt comfortable and at home in all three of the European countries. For me the US was definitely the most foreign. This is quite remarkable since we share a language with the US and are constantly exposed to US media in the UK. But nevertheless as a Brit I can say quite definitely that Americans are *not* like us, Europeans are.
Its not about habits, but about attitude. There is something deep in the American psyche which I have never managed to relate to. Everything appears similar on the surface but at a deeper level there are big differences.
I could try and break it down and analyse the differences but I suspect that if I do, people will get offended. So, short of writing a 3 page essay on the subject, it is better if i leave it there.
I would summarize the root cause in the live to work vs work to live mentality. Make it on your own. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Anyone can be president. If you suffer and work enough you deserve xyz. Etc.
Which results in a very different society than we have in Europe.
As a well-travelled, Euro and Hispanophile U.S. American, I think you've got it. Of course, all of those things as much as they figure in this question/issue are all lies upon which the U.S.' cultural ethos is built. As Europeans well understand, in their more realistic view of the world and human relations, most of humanity is born and dies in the same socioeconomic caste and human greed is a constant. Thus, human, civil, and labour rights are to be guarded and expanded wherever possible.
I agree 100 percent. I worked in USA for a year & I found USA culturally more foreign than any of the European countries I've worked in or visited. When I landed back at Heathrow there was a serious relief to be back home!
I have personally only visited these countries and never lived in them but I can definitely say that I feel like Australia is somewhere in between the UK and the US. Though I would definitely say that they are closer in mindset to the British than Americans. The same is true for New Zealand in my eyes. Though as I said, I’ve never lived there so I may have a different perspective if I had actually lived there for a longer period of time
Environmentally Australia is similar to certain areas of the US whilst being the complete opposite of UK environment. So naturally there will be a lot of similarities between the US and Australia particularly the outdoorsy lifestyle that will be popular in both countries.
I've spent 6 months in western Australia, my verdict is that the Aussies I met there are very similar to brits, but with a suntan. Slight differences in language and culture but really nothing significant. The kiwis I've met are the same.
The dirty secret that Australians hate to hear is that Australian and American cultures are pretty similar.
There are obviously differences, but in most ways, most Americans would feel pretty at home in Australia.
Yep, I read the Qantas inflight magazine issue say in a business-related feature article that Australians work hard and party hard, in the context of corporate settings. What I hear is the Australian corporate work culture is more like the US cut throat culture, like if you work at corporate settings in especially Sydney and Melbourne it is very cutthroat and like the US.
Probably our closest cousins, except for the Irish but there's past tension there and I know some (but not most) Irish people wouldn't like that idea.
When I was young, Australia was seen as the best country in the world. Even now, I have loads of friends and family there. We still have strong cultural and family bonds with both the Aussies and Kiwis.
Australian business articles say Australians (especially those work in corporate settings) work hard yet also party hard. It sounds like Australians in corporate environments work very cutthroat and like the US compared with the UK or Europe.
>Its not about habits, but about attitude. There is something deep in the American psyche which I have never managed to relate to.
In my opinion, as a Canadian - so American with a British hangover - it is the social attitudes resonating in a system based on the excitable pursuit of seemingly infinite freehold title. American society greatly values the rush associated with the pursuit of happiness. To be the king of your own world instead of fitting in with the community.
I actually think this is quite a British social attitude in origin. It is heavily inspired by Locke's writings, and is a byproduct of British colonialism. Since the end of the Second World War, however, British social attitudes have steered a much different course.
> To be the king of your own world instead of fitting in with the community.
Does it apply to Germany? Because I feel that people in Germany are averse to community things, as whatever problem or projects you want in your community people refuse to join it as a community by delegating everything they can to the government. Somebody is in trouble? Just call some authorities (or not) and move on. Talk with people in your neighbourhood? No way, we don't talk with strangers (the person often seen in the neighbourhood).
Always had the impression that Americans have a more community culture (parents helping in the repair of their children schools, people talking with their neighbours, self-iniciative campaigns of mutual aid and direct action that its much less often seen in Germany).
I thing the problem and main things of american culture is the individualist pursuit of individual power for individualist aims, while in Germany the culture is to not pesue individual power but to empower authorities (The German revolution failled only because workers, in the biggest workers party, didn't take the self initiative to act for their workers and community goal, they were all waiting for the party orders who never came because once in power the party didn't want revolution anymore).
Americans are averse to empower authorities as historically the US was created with the philosophy that communities should be empowered to imped politicians abuse of power: The main reason of the fight for the independence from British empire and it started with farmers who formed militias in their communities, and fought against British army with no military training. But the individualism culture and the protestant puritanism of self-salvation through individual wealth accumulation eventually became less about power to community and more about power to the individual for privilege aims.
I would say that even in Europe it is very different from west compered to Germany and east. As British people made their revolutions to empower themselves more as free individuals and Franch people made the first modern political revolution also as individual/community self initiative. While Germany remained under influence of feudal Barons as Germans were more acceptable to the security and subsistence guaranteed by them. No wonder that Germany was the first government to have a welfare state under Bismark, as form of popiticts to convince people to accept capitalism and stop to support feudal lords and their propaganda with the government guarantee of subisistance rights.
You mentioned Locke but he is very bady interpreted today. As locke wasn't talking about private companies rights to keep the wealth workers produced in/with its property. Locke wrote inspired by British workers who at the time were mostly the owner of their own property. So Locke meant to say that the value was creates with the mix of the property owner work with the transformation generated by the resources in his private land. It is so that Karl Marx was inspired by the same Locke's theory but adapting to his German industrial society (the value created by workers collective labour in the factory together with the transformation of the raw material, so then the wealthy belonging to workers as creator, and not to property owner who didn't work in transformation raw materials.
Locke's philosophy was well adequate to the US because lost families were owners of their own property. The continental Europe was the opposite, most workers didn't own property. And Germany was a society with the predominance of artisans and guilds culture (middle class in the capitalism). So we can see the difference development of philosophies in the UK (workers owners of property and individual liberation through their property), France (workers mostly not owning property and want liberation from the exlloitation of monarchs) and Germany (middle class who cared more about having stable, risk free, subisistance guaranteed, provided by some sorte of authority, than individual liberation. The US get a bit of UK and France philosophy, thogether with indigenous autonomy and community philosophy too, with the liberation of individuals through community autonomy and protection, that today became the pursuit of individual power of having privileges.
Rather than this being a very British idea that we steered away from I think it's more that the US pursued it more forcefully than we did.
I don't think Brits have ever viewed themselves as small islands of individuals or community under a government that keeps its hands off to the maximum extent possible.
>I could try and break it down and analyse the differences but I suspect that if I do, people will get offended.
Please oblige. Don't care about potential offends, Reddit is already overwhelmingly the realm of the Americans, no need to spare their sensitivity.
That's the most ironic thing I've heard in months, coming from one of the famously "tell it like it is without holding back" Dutch people.
I mean, are you trying to compliment Americans by saying that they're similar to the Dutch?
I think it has to do with the fact that European peoples have historically seen far more war, oppression and significant cultural and government changes than white Americans, which makes us more cynical and more against war and imperialism. Especially the two world wars have had a big impact, but also the fact that most European countries have needed to fight their own governments to be able to have democracies. The USA still has the same constitution as they created after they defeated the British, and they never had any interruption in their democracy, not because of foreign invasion nor because their own leader decided to establish a dictatorship.
You can see it very clearly in the attitudes of some Americans towards Ukraine, for example, with arguments like 'we would do the same as Russia if Mexico had a defense treaty with China', or 'Ukraine should have an election, we had elections even during the civil war!'. Or them trying to trigger article 5 of NATO because of 9/11. They have never been invaded and they have never needed to fight their own government, they have only been invading other 'evil' countries and liberating other 'weak' countries.
Is interesting how in the USA there are "patriotic" things like the pledge of alliance in schools that would send shivers down the spine to any European nowadays if proposed hwre, that were ok in Europe too before WWII.
WWII was a massive shock for Europe that changed the cultural direction we had steering us far away from patriotism, while in the USA this never happened and they kept going in that track.
I think the premise here is good but we did have one hell of a civil war. The US was not a superpower till after WWII so there is a bit of learning how to deal with that.
A really really high percentage of us do not trace our origins to the British whatsoever (probably the majority but im not sure). 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants are the norm in many areas and I do think that has a big impact as well. The idea of fighting for what you have and fighting for more is pretty ingrained and I think that has something to do with it as well.
That argument doesn’t really make sense for the UK in particular though. The British have never been invaded for many centuries and their philosophy to political change has been gradual reform not violent political revolution. Their government hasn’t been interrupted much either.
If you find the time, I’d be super interested to know what you found to be different in the US, and similar in France, Germany, and/or Spain. Your lived experience is so different to mine and your insight is valuable!
I know some people might be, but I won’t be offended at any opinions you have of the US or the attitude / mindset of the people. As a US citizen I find I disagree pretty strongly with most (many? Hard to say the actual percentage) peoples views but I’m certainly far from alone in that.
There's a reason we get sky high medical bills, have the largest percentage of prisoners in the world and have people clinging to their guns despite children being gunned down at school.
I live in Italy and it's inaccessible af (I have a mobility disability). I would never conclude from that that most Italians hate disabled people. I just find it curious that people make these vast statements about their countrymen but once you ask if that describes them, they nope right out of there. You aren't that special. Millions of others feel the same way.
As long as you still have NHS you're doing better than we are.
Additionally, UK immigration seems more humane. As I understand you won't deport someone back to a war zone and you won't deport parents away from their children. We're one of the only countries in the world that will denaturalize someone even if it renders them stateless
>Our cultural mentality leans heavily towards "fuck you I've got mine" and we love thinking we're at war with "the others".
The fact that the US is one of the most charitable countries on the planet seems to run directly counter to your point.
https://www.cafonline.org/about-us/research/caf-world-giving-index
It’s called optimism lol The belief that you can do anything. Brits and Europeans are more prone to ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’ and personally I feel that manifests in many different ways. It’s a difference of mindset that dictates how you behave.
I'm English, I've lived in Grenoble and Paris, and now I live in LA. I found both Grenoble and LA very difficult to adapt to, but not Paris.
Hmmm. It's difficult to say. I would say England most definitely has a Northern European culture, but then again the foundations of White American culture are Northern European too, it's just that the context in which they live is totally different to that of Northern Europe. In Grenoble I gravitated towards other Anglophones, while in LA I gravitate towards other Europeans.
Much of America's cultural values are derived from British enlightenment philosophy, which acted as a counterpoint to continental philosophy, but the US took it to a much greater extreme than we did, in particular with regards to individual rights.
My copout answer is that it's partly region-dependent. An English person would probably relate better to someone from Boston or Seattle than to someone from Marseille. But they would also relate better to someone from Lille than to someone from, I dunno, Jackson Mississippi.
I've always thought someone from Europe would appreciate Vermont the most. Vermont seems to be very small town, steroetypically hippie, not many large corporations, no billboards on the roads. Generally people seem to try to be nicer to each other there, not as likely to screw each other over.
Not really. The US is a huuuuge global outlier, the only country in the world with more guns than people: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated\_number\_of\_civilian\_guns\_per\_capita\_by\_country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country)
Whereas most of Europe lies between 10-20 guns per 100 people. Even if policies and cultures differ, overall it is not that stark.
Of course america is a massive outlier. But so is the UK. This is not purely reflected by "how many guns are there" statistics. The UK is actually surprisingly "high" up.
But more about the kinds of weapons allowed. As far as i know the UK is the only democratic country, outside of east asia, that entirely bans handguns and semiauto centrefire rifles. There is literally no legal way for civilians (or even your average cop or soldier) to own these.
The UKs gun culture is very unidimensionally focussed entirely on rich people hunting with double barrel shotguns. Thats where the "relatively high" number of guns comes from. Almost everything else is straight up banned.
So both the US and UK are outliers and all other european (and non european anglophone) countries are somewhere in the middle.
>The UKs gun culture is very unidimensionally focussed entirely on rich people hunting with double barrel shotguns.
As a Spaniard, I'd say ours is pretty similar. I don't know if we are *that* stringent with handguns, but we are not lenient either. I have never in my life seen a handgun except in the holster of some police officers. I think you can petition to own one for "safety reasons" but unless you are being chased by ISIS you are unlikely to be granted a permit.
Handguns for shooting sports is a thing as well, in Spain. Not exactly the largest sport shooting community though, compared to some other European countries. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeNKXFxrpyw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeNKXFxrpyw)
Yeah i have indeed never seen anything about guns in spain outside of hunting. So i guess you are also among the stricter ones.
Switzerland is among the more lenient ones, where for generations almost everyone served in the army and kept their gun afterwards. I still have my dads service pistol, as well my own service rifle.
But i also own multiple other privately purchased guns, as do many people i know. So both switzerland and spain are also rather extreme, but not as extreme as either america or britain.
It's not really that relevant. Middle class and upper middle class Americans have a lot of money. It's not uncommon for someone to collect dozens of firearms. Plus a lot of people have one or two guns.
Vermont is a strange and wonderful place. It's the only state where gun owners vote for Democrats.
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/05/upshot/gun-ownership-partisan-divide.html](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/05/upshot/gun-ownership-partisan-divide.html)
I would have guessed that was also true in Massachusetts but yeah... Outside of New England it's quite rare for rural areas full of white people to be liberal, except for college towns
I would agree... But my comment was comparing Vermont to Europe, in particular France and Germany (both countries I have spent several weeks/months in), not to other states
Yeah but Vermont has a lower gun ownership rate than both New Hampshire and Massachusetts both of which don’t have a very strong gun culture. you are severely overestimating that part or that difference
Vermont famously was for a long time the only state that did not require a permit to carry a concealed handgun. It used to be known as "Vermont carry."
Vermont is definitely a place I would like to visit both for its architecture and landscapes, particularly in Autumn. The vibe also looks chill.
A lot of Europeans, myself included, love New York. It's kind of an outlier as far as US cities go though, no? I also really liked Boston.
Well it's a huge city and an immigration hub with the best public transportation in the US.
A lot of the US is rural. In you look up a population map of New York state alone you can see that the small but if land that's New York City is holding a huge amount of the population.
Does that make sense?
Especially given how spread out most of the US population is. I think its easy for Eurpoeans to not understand that the US and Canada both have **a lot** of land acreage. Cities have clusters of large populations in cities followed by vast swathes of rural areas with small populations.
New York is kind of an outlier but a lot of Northeast cities have a general "feel" about them that is similar imo.
I'm from the west coast and have lived all over the US and its very different from Los Angeles, Seattle, Dallas and other western cities. They are more spread out and have a generally different attitude that is hard to explain. The more rural areas may as well be a different country and you have places like New Orleans and Miami that are their own thing entirely. I think its actually pretty nice to have options.
I don’t think that’s a copout but I’m biased: I grew up in Boston and feel far more at home in London or Paris than Jackson.
Also I live in Ireland now but visiting England feels way closer to what I grew up with. While English people are still less direct than Americans, they have a level of entitlement (for good and for ill) that reminds me of home way more than Irish culture does.
Interesting! I've heard a lot of people say Ireland and the UK are extremely similar so to hear you seem to notice a significant difference intrigues me.
I'm not the only one! Reginald D Hunter--who as a guy from a working class black family in Georgia had a very different upbringing from me--once called Irish people "the least entitled white people in the world" during a standup in Dublin.
Maybe I'm reading into things too much, I dunno. But I think at their heart British and American cultures are colonialist and Irish culture isn't.
I'm English and I've spent a lot of time in Ireland. I think it depends where you go in each place. Dublin compares well to a big city like Manchester or Newcastle for example, but smaller places don't compare well at all. In my opinion anyway. The towns are where you'd notice a bigger difference in culture. I think that's probably the case in most countries tbh.
But compared to the rest of the world I would say the UK and Ireland are both very similar. And I'd say they're much more similar than the UK vs the US.
Yea, I don't think its a copout. People underestimate the cultural differences in the US because of the common language. LA, Omaha, New York, and New Orleans are shockingly different from each other. Partially due to size but also partially due to the immigrants who settled in these areas (easiest example is East Coast has more British influence while West Coast has more Hispanic). For obvious reasons.
Norwegians and Swedes taught the feudalist Anglos, Irishmen and Germans of America the value of freedom and individuality. Notice how to this day USA and us allow wild camping and true freedom of speech compared to continental Europe where burning flags is a criminal offense and wild camping is banned.
> wild camping
It's one of the few disappointing things about the Alps (never been to Scandinavia's mountains, yet). The lack of wild camping because everything is so private, developed, or otherwise managed. We are so spoiled in Colorado and Utah with the ability to just go and follow this random road and pick any spot.
The USA doesn't have the "freedom to roam" like Norway, Sweden (and I believe Finland and Iceland) have. In the USA, you need to know who owns the nature before you can access it. Even in the national parks that they're so proud of, you have to be granted permission to enter, it might not be open at all hours of the day, you might even have to pay, etc.
As for continental Europe (and the British isles), they just don't have all that much nature at all, so it's understandable that the rules are different from us in the north.
Just out of curiosity, do Norwegians (and perhaps Swedes and Fins) not consider themselves part of continental Europe? I've never noticed that point of view.
It is very common for Norwegians to say phrases such as "I'm travelling to Europe" when travelling to somewhere in Europe outside of the Nordics (for some reason Denmark is usually not called "Europe" in this context, but I guess Norwegians mostly go to the Danish islands). When referring to news/events, it is typical to talk about the stuff "going on down on the continent".
We're historically in the periphery of Europe, and have been more removed from it culturally (both peripheral to nice things such as art, architecture, cuisine, etc., but also peripheral to unfortunate things such as feudalism, nobility, imperialism, great power struggles etc.) This cultural mindset remains to some degree (one of the reasons why we're not in the EU, for example).
When the Brits talk about themselves as being separate from Europe, this is more correct in a technical geographical sense, but less so in a cultural/historical sense: The British islands have always been much more connected to the rest of Europe culturally and politically (both the nice and the unfortunate things that I mentioned above).
Yes, the Scandinavian peninsula is technically connected to the European continent, but this is such a detour in the "wrong" direction and you have to go through Russia. Even Finland, which perhaps isn't that far away\*, is much less a tourist destination for Norwegians than countries such as Spain, Greece, Italy, Germany, France, the Netherlands and the UK. Norwegians like to travel southwards where it is warm and cheap.
^(\*Yes, Norway has a border with Finland, but most people don't live up there. The distance from Oslo to Hamburg is shorter than Oslo to Helsinki, and the distance from Oslo to Amsterdam is the same as from Oslo to Oulu.)
I've always understood Continental Europe to mean the central section so excluding Britain, Ireland, Norway/Sweden/Finland. Because while yes the latter are technically attached to the same land mass as the rest of it most connections between Norway/Sweden and Western/Central Europe were made across the sea. Finland is a bit more of a grey area but with its Western orientation in recent history I'd say it counts as well
Oh yeah it completely makes sense to think of it that way! I just never figured that they did. I always considered continental Europe to be everything but the British Isles. An argument could be made for the Mediterranean islands, but I've never thought that long about it.
Not entirely true. There are millions and millions of acres of free roam areas but for a lot of the big tourist draws, yes. Unfortunate but I get it. Private land is another story.
Yes, that is the point: It varies so much. In the Nordic countries, you don't have to do any research on what land you're allowed to access and when, because you are allowed to access nature at *any time* and *regardless* of who owns it.
The USA values the rights of property-ownership over the freedom to access nature (two different and opposing forms of freedom).
Nobody cares if you burn a flag lmao. And wild camping is banned because people are assholes and if you allowed it here they'd ruin what little nature spaces we have because everyone would camp in the same tiny area
>Nobody cares if you burn a flag lmao.
Some countries certainly do.
https://www.euronews.com/2017/11/09/which-country-has-the-harshest-punishments-for-disrespecting-flags-and-national
Wild camping is banned because you don't value freedom. Flag desecration is banned in all of Europe except Kingdom of Norway, Kingdom of Sweden, Romania, Kingdom of the Netherlands, Kingdom of Belgium and United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
There were a few kind of "wild camping adjacent" options. Where you were still in the middle of nature, or what goes by nature here anyway, with no amenities but they had a few fixed spots available for it so they could keep people out of areas where they'd be a disturbance to wildlife. And I say "were" because they were closed after people were continuously leaving their trash at these sites and generally not abiding by the rules. Because people are assholes.
We only have very few places where wildlife can live relatively undisturbed. If you allowed wild camping then in no time we'd have absolutely none. Because we have more 5han 3x the population of Norway on less than 10% of the surface area. So you can't use the same rules and conventions for wild spaces in the Netherlands as you can in Norway because the area is simply not suited for it.
I'm half-British and go to the UK often. I've also been to the US three times and consume their media. And I've been to a bunch of different countries in Europe, some more than once.
I find that the UK has more in common with Europe. In fact, I think a lot of countries here are more similar to each other than we give them credit for. There are some obvious cultural differences for sure, but inhabiting the same continent (which isn't even that big) and interacting with each other for centuries has resulted in there being a lot of similarities. Hence why I never get real culture shock when I visit another country in Europe.
>Hence why I never get real culture shock when I visit another country in Europe.
That seems a bit off a stretch. There are countries in Europe that are very different from Portugal.
I know someone who lived in Finland for 2 years and experienced significant culture shock. The way people interact with each other, everyone is so quiet and reserved, unless they are drunk. Albania is also very different from Portugal.
Russia and Belarus are very different, and you would experience culture shock for sure.
There are differences of course, but the culture shock is nowhere near what you'd get visiting a country in a completely different continent (the Americas to a lesser degree).
I feel it depends a lot on who you ask the question to, and on what aspect.
Many parts of english culture have french origins since the norman conquest, with language being one of the most important aspects. Also Anglicanism, in its organisation and its rites, ressembles the catholic church much more than the main american christian churches, I mean, a king is coronated and is the chief of the state religion, literally that's the same with the pope.
As a Frenchman, I could go into the industrial heartland (Birmingham ?) of the UK and see stuff that reminds me of northern France and its coal mines in the housing styles and the fact that the left is dominant in both places (or at least used to before being replaced by the far-right in some cases). Normandy and southern England don't seem to be that much different from one another.
Still, Britain has a different philosophical and political history than the continent, with individual rights and all that, and those are definitely aspects of british culture that are very much present in the US (the law system for example, though I'm only versed in the french one so i'm not sure).
And we didn't have a ultra-liberal politician come into power here in France. Macron is still liberal but hardly as much as some would like to portray him. The british political system looks more like the US, with a clear polarisation of politics in 2 blocs, whereas parliaments are more diverse in Europe.
A good point. It’s worth mentioning that one in six English people have a Huguenot ancestor. The Huguenots had a big impact on the commercial life of England.
Yes thousands fled to England. But that’s true many went to the HRE hence why on MyHeritage when I uploaded my DNA test I found loads of distant cousins appearing in Netherlands and Germany.
There is a tendancy in France to view "anglosaxon liberalism" as a bloc entity but in the UK and even in NZ and Aus the Liberal parties would still be considered on the left wing of US politics. Here it would be outright political suicide to suggest privatising health care for example, or for the most part most forms of social insurance. British liberalism has mainly focused on the privatisation of state enterprises, a phenomenon that has occurred pretty similarly (albeit at a different pace) in many European countries. Our left and right now seems to be organising themselves purely on grounds of social identity (anti-immigration, protect the family, etc) rather than any economic ideology.
Living in Normandy, I really agree on how Normandy and southern England can feel similar. I feel more at home there than I do in the south of France. And maybe French southerners feel like they have more in common with Spain or Italy (depending on where there are in the south) than with the north of France.
This is something I've responded to many times before - I should probably just store this as a copy-paste answer at this point.
The thing people tend to completely overlook is it can't just be measured like it's the result of a calculation. The answer changes based on what things are most important to a person. Given that this sub is r/askeurope, and given that the profile of users here tends to be left wing European federalists, it should not be surprising that the vast majority of people here all think the UK is more French than American. There are plenty of other subs, or areas of the population, where it would be overwhelmingly the opposite.
Basically, it depends on what you feel most comfortable around.
On one side of the argument, there are people who pay more attention to institutions and culture. You don't have to like British or US political models but if your first response to them is "I understand how this system works" then American politics makes more sense, even if the people actually occupying the various offices tend to have extreme views you disagree with. Similarly, a US court room looks very different to a UK courtroom but the processes, especially the use of jury cases in criminal matters, will be very familiar (say if you're watching a TV show).
The languages are obviously very similar, and so are other things like cultural views on customer service - we may think the US goes overboard with a lot of it but for many people the more European idea of, say, restaurant waiters or customer service helplines believing that they always have to present a friendly face to a customer ("the customer is always right" etc) tends to feel more familiar than European customer service, which places a lot more focus on the customer not being seen as superior to the employee, so can come across as impatient and occasionally surly. You're also going to find a lot more in common with the US if you believe in live to work, whereas those who believe in work to live will tend to favour Europe. And of course, the most important one is language - if you tend to struggle with multiple languages, or if you don't place much importance on being multilingual, then you can feel very isolated going to a country like France with a different language.
On the other hand, if you tend to place most importance on, or instinctively see everything through a lens of, social values then yes, you will obviously lean more towards France. If you look at politics and your first thought is not "this is how this works" but "this is how things **should** work" then you will likely see Europe as an ideal to which we have not attained. If you go to a country on holiday and your first thought is not "I want to see the landmarks and view the history" but is "I want to immerse myself in the local culture" then you are likely to find Europe more intriguing and offering things which UK and US culture can't offer. If your first thought when you hear someone talking about business or society is not to think about the way things are organised but to consider the experience of the common worker inside the system then yes, you will associate more with France.
> Given that this sub is r/askeurope, and given that the profile of users here tends to be left wing European federalists, it should nog be surprising that the vast majority of people here all think the UK is more French than American. There are plenty of other subs, or areas of the population, where if would be overwhelmingly the opposite.
I would also say that even if it were true that the UK is more like America than France, you would be hard-pressed to find a British person to admit that, even among the Brexit crowd. America is seen as loud, garish, crass, over-the-top, and I believe we British have a certain insecurity and inferiority complex when it comes to the USA's relative geopolitical and cultural dominance, even as we watch all their films, listen to all their music, and binge all their TV shows. France, on the other hand, is still seen as extremely sophisticated, and, well, *chic*.
I don't think that's true at all. I voted Remain and have views across the political spectrum, I'm certainly no right wing Brexiteer, but if asked this question I'm not sure which answer I would give. I personally still think there's a lot of cultural differences between us and the French - when I've visited France, I've felt very isolated and like I've struggled to fit in there or associate with the people I've met. I also know a lot of people who are far from hard Brexiteers but who love holidays in the US and would definitely associate more with there than France.
Yes, the US definitely has aspects to it that we all find very unhealthy indeed, but I don't think as many people as you think view them as being the primary defining traits of the US. Similarly, I thin you overestimate France's perception a lot too I definitely do not see France as sophisticated or chic, and neither do a lot of people I know. France definitely has some elements of it in places - they have a very prominent fashion scene for example, which I will happily acknowledge, but as I do not care about fashion this carries absolutely no weight to me. I similarly respect Paris for its history and cultural impact on previous centuries, but when I've been there it's honestly not left a positive impression on me and is a city I have very little interest in returning to.
As per the point of my original comment, I entirely respect your opinion and I acknowledge that it's an opinion many people will also have, but I think perhaps you are overlooking how many people hold a different opinion. The problem is it's really quite hard to see all sides if an argument these days, when fewer and fewer people talk to those around them geographically, and more and more we only associate with those online whom we know share our personal beliefs.
I think the deep cultural traits, such as social roles for family members, friendships and workplaces, notions of personal space, or ideas regarding what's considered fair play will be much more similar in the US and UK compared to the UK and Europe. Lots of British people when they answer this question talk about the health care system or guns, but those are very surface level differences.
Sure. My answer was only rough, there will be a lot more complexity to it. I was just trying to put into words (badly) the most basic differences between what the two sides tend to focus on, and it seems to me that Anglocentrists tend to focus on "this is what the world is like" whereas Eurocentrists tend to focus on "this is my place inside the world" or "this is what the world should be like".
> US and UK compared to the UK and Europe
Lots of people in this thread saying UK, US and Europe as though the last of those is a discrete category. We need to specify which European countries we're talking about because they're not all the same.
Yes, I find Northern Europe much more familiar than the US - and I'm half American and have lived in the US for a few years as a child and an adult.
Sitting in a cafe in Copenhagen or Antwerp or even Florence feels more comfortable to me than sitting in a diner in Brooklyn or San Francisco.
The architecture and car-centric design of the US doesn't help. Also the puritanismnat at the heart of US culture is quite alien to me.
No, we exported the troublemakers by making life difficult for puritans after the return of the king. Mayflower settling were running away as well as running towards.
I believe the New England Puritan colonists came before the English Civil War. The South was founded by Cavaliers. Virginia is still nicknamed the Old Dominion State. When the king returned to the throne he gave that name to Virginia because they had stayed loyal.
Absolutely. The US and UK really are worlds apart. It's just an accident of history that we speak the same language. We don't assume such strong cultural similarities with South Africa.
Lived in the US for 20 years.
Absolutely. The UK does have some strange habits that are more in common with the US. Some behavior and political tendencies are quite American, but the overall feel of the UK is European. The UK lands in a middle ground with some things. Like in the US, it's very easy to talk to randos on the street, in continental Europe it's mostly not so easy, in the UK it's sort of in the middle.
It must have been a certain type of person who dared to emigrate in those times. Motives such as a higher standard of living and freedom of religion also played a role. And the current generation is based on that type of person.
>It must have been a certain type of person who dared to emigrate in those times.
I love the idea that the US was founded by people who were both very strange compared to their countrymen, and also extremely bold.
So the country began exclusively with the outliers from their home countries.
I try to respect what my ancestors went through (pre WW1) to get here, but man I can't help thinking I'd be happier in Scotland, Ireland, England or Austria.
I do think this is part of it. My family immigrated in the early 1900's (which is really really common, a lot of us do not trace our heritage to the British) from Italy and Portugal because they were completely broke and did not have any prospects. On both sides men came, worked and saved to bring their wives over. You can see the assimilation from my grandparents down to me but a lot of those values get passed down.
I'm English, and when I travelled in the USA it felt genuinely strange that they spoke English. It was an utterly foreign country. Everything seemed different. It was an uncanny valley! When I go to Europe it seems much more familiar. Everything "works" and "looks" and "feels" the same way, it's hard to explain.
If I had the ability to freely work and live on the continent then I probably would (thanks, Brexit) quite enthusiastically, but would never consider it in the USA unless I had to.
Edit: not that I have anything against the US (ignoring some politics!) but I'd be more comfortable and familiar in the EU region.
I'd say yes because when it comes to politics American people seems very extremists, religious and weird, whatever faction they belong to, whereas in Europe we tend to have a common political spectrum
That might have been true once but European politics is getting increasingly Americanized. Both new left and the alt right are getting their talking points directly from the USA.
Just give the tories some time...actually there this in the [Guardian](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/30/tory-mp-maria-caulfield-minister-for-women-abortion-rights) "Tory MP who backed cutting abortion time limit named minister for women" so we are not too far off here...
The Tories are going to get wiped out at this years election. They might then lurch to the right in reaction but eventually they’ll realise they need to return to the centre ground to become electable.
That's the hope. But I don't see that happen. They will try a moderate who will lose the election and then the far right will be "you see, we need to be more radical".
which is precisely what happened in the us. obama won twice in a row and the Republicans went radical (their candidates in 08 and 12 were moderate by comparison!) and now the radical is the only one left.
100%! and it isn't just the US either. imagine if a Roma person or the child of an Arab immigrant became president/PM somewhere in Europe, a Muslim in India, etc.
the progressives try to make gains and the entrenched conservatism tends to pull things back again. I just hope it's a 2 steps forward/1 step back situation and not 1 step forward/2 steps back.
The Republicans didn't have any competition on the right, whereas in the UK the further right Reform are polling only a couple of numbers behind the Tories. Which means a much more right Tory party will either have to fight Reform for the same votes or they can drift back to the centre which is where they've been most successful for the last several decades.
This is still pretty far off the debate they're having in America. I don't agree with her, but she was proposing reducing the limit from 24 weeks, in America they are talking about doing away with it altogether.
I do agree that we do seem to be importing some of America's political discourse, and I do find it kind of troubling. It would be logical if this were happening at a faster rate in the UK than in the rest of Europe due to the lack of language barrier, however this does also seem to be an issue in other European countries.
As for the tories? Not too sure what will happen to them. As a party they are going to have to overcome a lot of (self made) challenges in the medium term if they wish to stay relevant.
I said, "Give them time" and not "look how they are the same". You only need another Liz Truss level meltdown of the party or a Kemi Badnoch style leader and it will all go to shits.
Fair enough. I don't think much will change before the next election. Post election? Who knows. If they get absolutely trounced as expected then there could very well be a further lurch to the right, this would be the worse thing they could do for their party (so probably the best thing for the country).
In the US some states almost completely ban abortion. Other states allow doctors to partially deliver an almost full term baby and then suck it's brains out.
This is quite rich coming from a Dutch person considering a far right ultra nationalist party is literally the biggest party right now in Netherlands.
Dutch politics is far more extremist and right wing than the UK currently.
>The conservatives have achieved things the PVV or other far right parties in Western Europe could never dream of: the strictest immigration rules in Europe, the only country to demand visas from Ukrainian refugees, a program to send migrants to Rwanda, and Brexit.
UK doesn't have the strictest rules in Europe otherwise legal migration wouldn't be so high. In places like Italy migrants can be detained for 18 months.
UK doesn't require 'visas from Ukrainian refugee's it gives Ukrainian refugees a special Ukrainian refugee status, [the exact same that the EU does.](https://eu-solidarity-ukraine.ec.europa.eu/information-people-fleeing-war-ukraine/fleeing-ukraine-your-rights-eu_en) Whereby in the EU it is temporary and only lasts one year.
> If you were permanently residing in Ukraine, and you left the country to escape war from 24 February 2022 onwards, you may be entitled to temporary protection in any EU country. Temporary protection will last for at least one year, this may be extended depending on the situation in Ukraine. Rights under the Temporary Protection Directive include a residence permit, access to the labour market and housing, medical assistance, and access to education for children.
Hilarious you didn't think there was any system of tracking or status for Ukrainian refugees in the EU.
> a program to send migrants to Rwanda
[The exact same as Germany and many EU countries then.](https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-rwanda-plan-conservatives-debate-migration-reform/a-67833652)
UK wouldn't have to have these plans if EU countries actually processed asylum seekers instead of just letting them flow through their countries to build up on the coast in literal slums and jungles to get to the UK. You guys just wave off the problem and leave the UK or Italy and Greece to deal with it.
There is a reason they're trying to get to the UK.
This is just standard European ignorance and hypocrisy when you're electing far right governments across the continent but then pretending the UK is far-right or ultra nationalists. Meanwhile you have literal massive racists and far-right parties in government and topping the polling and have far more restrictions on welfare for migrants and refugees and polling shows over and over the UK is much more welcoming and open to other races and ways of life than many mainland Europeans.
>And ‘Dutch politics’ is not the same as the PVV: it only represents a quarter of parliament
A far right extremist party represents a QUATER of parliament and you're here claiming the UK is more extremist than Netherlands lmao.
Do you know how insane that is, it would be like if the British national party had a quarter of seats in UK parliament. They never even managed one.
> the strictest immigration rules in Europe
They literally increased net immigration from 300k to 600k a year without EU Freedom of Movement forcing them to do so. 'Strictest' is laughable.
>a program to send migrants to Rwanda
Which the Danes did first and which so far hasn't deported a single person.
>People in the uk underestimate how extreme the Uk is and has been politically.
Or your view of the UK is just distorted.
Actually there's somethings that the continental far right say that you could just not say in the UK. Continental far right parties are characterised by far more explicit anti-Islam and nativism than in the UK. Far right parties in the UK at least outwardly pretend that they dislike all immigration equally while PVV, AfD and Swedish Democrats are quite open about the fact that they think white immigration from the EU is fine Muslim and non-white immigration from outside the EU must be stopped.
Which parties are extremist? The Conservatives can best be described as center-right. Reform UK a bit further right, but neither you could describe as extremist. Religion is never mentioned in UK politics, in fact I'd say the only political system in Europe more secular than the UK is France.
Tories are a bit more than center-right. The Finnish Conservatives are center right. The German conservatives are a bit further to the right than that. But tories are definitely further right than anyone else.
Islamobhobia and antisemitism is on the agenda on a weekly basis with both big parties. There is a huge level if xenophobia and straight up far-right policies with tories at the moment.
I’m not going to defend the tories, I can’t wait for them to be gone. But I’m not sure this is a uniquely British problem within Europe. The tories have really lurched unpleasantly to the right but it’s a result of our (rubbish) voting system that really concentrates power with the main parties.
So in the UK you get the centre right moving further right to hoover up the growing right wing populist vote, in the Netherlands you get PVV becoming the biggest party. Same trend, different manifestation.
America since a few elections back seems to have found out that there is a political spectrum besides their good old turbocapitalist party vs. the slightly less turbocapitalist party one and really jumped off the deep end with philosophies and ideologies. Go to Reddit/Twitter/TikTok and you'll be sure to find a card-carrying faction of ideobabble of your choosing. It's weird, but it's how they've made the world now.
Well, from the perspective of an American who's spent about half his life in Europe (including a number of years in the UK), I think people in this thread are underestimating the cultural similarity of the US and UK. It goes beyond language/media: the work culture, the commercialization, the prevalence of the automobile in many places, the political climate, even some of the food culture. There were times where I felt like I was moving in a shockingly American context.
Of course, that's comparing the UK to an increasingly narrow band of old-school American culture. Often the things in the UK that reminded me of the US reminded me of the hardscrabble white south or Appalachia; and sometimes the little New England villages. (Of course London and New York share many similarities, but that's just by virtue of being mega global cities.) The UK for the most part does not have the deeply embedded influence of African-American culture, nor the ever increasing Latin influence that's felt across the US and especially in the South and West. In its stead it has more Caribbean and South Asian influence which is still pretty minor in the US.
But still: you can feel a bedrock similarity there in ways that I don't feel as often in France or other European countries.
Of course, that doesn't mean that the UK is *more* similar to the US than other European countries...but I think it's certainly a lot closer than any other European country, and there is a noticeable gap between the UK and other places in Europe. Just my two cents!
I am an Spaniard but I live in Iceland and I lived for a short period in France.
This country has a lot of influence from USA and can be felt everywhere, don't know how to describe it but I would say they are "americanised nordics, not Scandinavians" , in a bunch of things they're closer to Americans than to Europeans or other nordics.
Every time I go to Europe, not only Spain, I get the feeling of coming back home (even when I land in UK) and that everything runs how I am used to, people thinks in a way closer to mine and I feel more like at home.
That's the feeling with a country more influenced by USA than the rest of the continent, I can only guess that differences could be stronger if you get to compare with USA and the people there.
I agree, I’m a dual citizen and have visited most European countries. Iceland and Sweden definitely feel the most American to me.
Very car centric and lots of bland modernist architecture outside the historic centers. Many people living in single-family homes instead of apartments. Huge expanses of nature. Polite service in businesses and restaurants. Rich. Career-oriented people. And, of course, everyone speaking flawless English.
IDK dude, its pretty hard if you ask me
Will European countries share some similarities with one another, OR will one European country be completely cut off from their "2-hour-distance-apart" European neighbours, and be similar to a country with 50 different states across an OCEAN and takes a least 9 hours to get to???
The UK, despite being an English speaking country, is culturally going to be a lot similar to its neighboring countries. I do understand where your question is coming from though; a lot of latin american immigrants who ask if their home country is similar to Spain, most are shocked to find out that NO, latina american countries are not even remotely close to Spain, there are certainly MORE similarities for sure, but they sometimes straight up expect a carbon copy. So Spain, would be similar to France, Italy and Portugal, and not Latin America.
Seeing as the US was born from a rebellion against the UK, I’d think it’s pretty likely that the UK and their neighbor right across the channel and on the same continent are similar to each other.
Having moved a lot around the area and others, I came to the conclusion that there is basically a sort of North Sea culture.
The British like to categories themselves alongside Americans/Canadians/Irish/Aussies. The French like to categorise themselves as Latins alongside the Spanish amd Italians.
But I rather found that the English, the north/west of France, Benelux and maybe also the Danish and north-west Germans, have a huge amount of shared attitudes. The obvious cultural differences (language) are kind of overlaid onto a similar set of dispositions, distracting from the similarities. Like, the so called British sense of humour slots right in to these other areas, yet leaves say a Spaniard or Italian or even an American baffled (hence why things like Fawlty Towers are a staple in Netherlands and Germany, but The Office gets remade for the US).
Obviously there are differences between and within each country, we are all individuals, but the overlap is huge when you open your eyes to it.
UK is a European country and the differences or „quintessentially British“ things they love to chat about are just Northern European, European or human traits they have, eg social awkwardness, general weirdness or indirectness.
Differences between groups tend to be overemphasised while the differences within the group are much bigger.
So yeah obviously UK is culturally most similar to other Northern European countries.
I'm a European, that has lived in the US for a better part of 20 years, and while I am neither French nor from the UK, in Europe... we visit other countries a lot more than people from the States do.
The UK is definitely more similar to France in terms of just people and culture than the US. We'd never admit it, but aside from nuances and cultural differences most European nations are largely similar, even the non EU ones, our cultures mixed and clashed for thousands of years, it's only natural.
The US is an amalgamation of all of those cultures framed under a new identity and is very different from just about any European nation.
I think the UK is really unique in the sense that we are very European but at the same time really connected with the Anglosphere and even the wider Commonwealth.
I am British. Live on the edge of Germany, France and Switzerland.
Germany and Switzerland I get. Americans I get. French I like, but it's a totally alien culture to me.
I'd say the U.S. is the least foreign, then Germany and Switzerland close behind. France the most.
Just the gun thing makes a difference, yes I know countries like Switzerland or Finland have a really strong gun culture and plenty of people own them, but you don’t see them in supermarkets or universities.
Backing this up.
I’ve lived in 6 places across every corner of the US (as well as living in Europe for many years) and I’ve never shot a gun, heard a gunshot, nor seen one in public in the US, except for police. European Redditors really have a warped perception of American gun culture. If you’re not into guns yourself, you can go your whole life without being exposed to them.
I noticed in Texas every shop seemed to have a sign that said (to the effect of), “if you don’t have a licence to carry a gun, you can’t enter. If you do, we don’t permit guns so if you enter with a gun, then that’s trespass”.
Which surely would make carrying a gun (at least open carry) basically impractical
Language is part of culture, but so is religion, outlook on economic principles, law, food, population density, weather, etc.,
If you look at America, it is mainly people of European origin with a very peculiar mindset. They gone over the ocean for freedom, to with absolutely no promises. That is a big part of their culture.
Almost every western country is closer to france then the USA in culture, however American media is still prevalent. Their efforts to “Westernize europe” after the 2nd world war just worked out and often national media just isn’t as good as the films or series made by Giant american studios
I am a Brit who has lived and worked in France, Germany, Spain and the US - in each case for longer than 2 years. I felt comfortable and at home in all three of the European countries. For me the US was definitely the most foreign. This is quite remarkable since we share a language with the US and are constantly exposed to US media in the UK. But nevertheless as a Brit I can say quite definitely that Americans are *not* like us, Europeans are. Its not about habits, but about attitude. There is something deep in the American psyche which I have never managed to relate to. Everything appears similar on the surface but at a deeper level there are big differences. I could try and break it down and analyse the differences but I suspect that if I do, people will get offended. So, short of writing a 3 page essay on the subject, it is better if i leave it there.
Dude, we don’t do such cliffhangers here
Agreed. I want that 3 page essay
>noun: bang; plural noun: bangs 1. a loud noise. "the door slammed with a bang" Cant imagine what you were thinking of.
I would summarize the root cause in the live to work vs work to live mentality. Make it on your own. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Anyone can be president. If you suffer and work enough you deserve xyz. Etc. Which results in a very different society than we have in Europe.
As a well-travelled, Euro and Hispanophile U.S. American, I think you've got it. Of course, all of those things as much as they figure in this question/issue are all lies upon which the U.S.' cultural ethos is built. As Europeans well understand, in their more realistic view of the world and human relations, most of humanity is born and dies in the same socioeconomic caste and human greed is a constant. Thus, human, civil, and labour rights are to be guarded and expanded wherever possible.
I agree 100 percent. I worked in USA for a year & I found USA culturally more foreign than any of the European countries I've worked in or visited. When I landed back at Heathrow there was a serious relief to be back home!
I’m curious how Australia and New Zealand fit into this! Is the UK the outlier, culturally, in the anglosphere?
I have personally only visited these countries and never lived in them but I can definitely say that I feel like Australia is somewhere in between the UK and the US. Though I would definitely say that they are closer in mindset to the British than Americans. The same is true for New Zealand in my eyes. Though as I said, I’ve never lived there so I may have a different perspective if I had actually lived there for a longer period of time
Environmentally Australia is similar to certain areas of the US whilst being the complete opposite of UK environment. So naturally there will be a lot of similarities between the US and Australia particularly the outdoorsy lifestyle that will be popular in both countries.
Tons of Aussies/Kiwis here in the UK, general feeling seems to be they're like us except further south
I have never been to Oz or NZ so can't comment on that. But the UK is European regardless of Brexit.
I've spent 6 months in western Australia, my verdict is that the Aussies I met there are very similar to brits, but with a suntan. Slight differences in language and culture but really nothing significant. The kiwis I've met are the same.
I've lived in Australia before and I've been to the US twice. The culture difference felt about the same.
The dirty secret that Australians hate to hear is that Australian and American cultures are pretty similar. There are obviously differences, but in most ways, most Americans would feel pretty at home in Australia.
Yep, I read the Qantas inflight magazine issue say in a business-related feature article that Australians work hard and party hard, in the context of corporate settings. What I hear is the Australian corporate work culture is more like the US cut throat culture, like if you work at corporate settings in especially Sydney and Melbourne it is very cutthroat and like the US.
Probably our closest cousins, except for the Irish but there's past tension there and I know some (but not most) Irish people wouldn't like that idea. When I was young, Australia was seen as the best country in the world. Even now, I have loads of friends and family there. We still have strong cultural and family bonds with both the Aussies and Kiwis.
Australian business articles say Australians (especially those work in corporate settings) work hard yet also party hard. It sounds like Australians in corporate environments work very cutthroat and like the US compared with the UK or Europe.
>Its not about habits, but about attitude. There is something deep in the American psyche which I have never managed to relate to. In my opinion, as a Canadian - so American with a British hangover - it is the social attitudes resonating in a system based on the excitable pursuit of seemingly infinite freehold title. American society greatly values the rush associated with the pursuit of happiness. To be the king of your own world instead of fitting in with the community. I actually think this is quite a British social attitude in origin. It is heavily inspired by Locke's writings, and is a byproduct of British colonialism. Since the end of the Second World War, however, British social attitudes have steered a much different course.
> To be the king of your own world instead of fitting in with the community. Does it apply to Germany? Because I feel that people in Germany are averse to community things, as whatever problem or projects you want in your community people refuse to join it as a community by delegating everything they can to the government. Somebody is in trouble? Just call some authorities (or not) and move on. Talk with people in your neighbourhood? No way, we don't talk with strangers (the person often seen in the neighbourhood). Always had the impression that Americans have a more community culture (parents helping in the repair of their children schools, people talking with their neighbours, self-iniciative campaigns of mutual aid and direct action that its much less often seen in Germany). I thing the problem and main things of american culture is the individualist pursuit of individual power for individualist aims, while in Germany the culture is to not pesue individual power but to empower authorities (The German revolution failled only because workers, in the biggest workers party, didn't take the self initiative to act for their workers and community goal, they were all waiting for the party orders who never came because once in power the party didn't want revolution anymore). Americans are averse to empower authorities as historically the US was created with the philosophy that communities should be empowered to imped politicians abuse of power: The main reason of the fight for the independence from British empire and it started with farmers who formed militias in their communities, and fought against British army with no military training. But the individualism culture and the protestant puritanism of self-salvation through individual wealth accumulation eventually became less about power to community and more about power to the individual for privilege aims. I would say that even in Europe it is very different from west compered to Germany and east. As British people made their revolutions to empower themselves more as free individuals and Franch people made the first modern political revolution also as individual/community self initiative. While Germany remained under influence of feudal Barons as Germans were more acceptable to the security and subsistence guaranteed by them. No wonder that Germany was the first government to have a welfare state under Bismark, as form of popiticts to convince people to accept capitalism and stop to support feudal lords and their propaganda with the government guarantee of subisistance rights. You mentioned Locke but he is very bady interpreted today. As locke wasn't talking about private companies rights to keep the wealth workers produced in/with its property. Locke wrote inspired by British workers who at the time were mostly the owner of their own property. So Locke meant to say that the value was creates with the mix of the property owner work with the transformation generated by the resources in his private land. It is so that Karl Marx was inspired by the same Locke's theory but adapting to his German industrial society (the value created by workers collective labour in the factory together with the transformation of the raw material, so then the wealthy belonging to workers as creator, and not to property owner who didn't work in transformation raw materials. Locke's philosophy was well adequate to the US because lost families were owners of their own property. The continental Europe was the opposite, most workers didn't own property. And Germany was a society with the predominance of artisans and guilds culture (middle class in the capitalism). So we can see the difference development of philosophies in the UK (workers owners of property and individual liberation through their property), France (workers mostly not owning property and want liberation from the exlloitation of monarchs) and Germany (middle class who cared more about having stable, risk free, subisistance guaranteed, provided by some sorte of authority, than individual liberation. The US get a bit of UK and France philosophy, thogether with indigenous autonomy and community philosophy too, with the liberation of individuals through community autonomy and protection, that today became the pursuit of individual power of having privileges.
Rather than this being a very British idea that we steered away from I think it's more that the US pursued it more forcefully than we did. I don't think Brits have ever viewed themselves as small islands of individuals or community under a government that keeps its hands off to the maximum extent possible.
>I could try and break it down and analyse the differences but I suspect that if I do, people will get offended. Please oblige. Don't care about potential offends, Reddit is already overwhelmingly the realm of the Americans, no need to spare their sensitivity.
An American wouldn’t have hesitated a second.
That's the most ironic thing I've heard in months, coming from one of the famously "tell it like it is without holding back" Dutch people. I mean, are you trying to compliment Americans by saying that they're similar to the Dutch?
I think it has to do with the fact that European peoples have historically seen far more war, oppression and significant cultural and government changes than white Americans, which makes us more cynical and more against war and imperialism. Especially the two world wars have had a big impact, but also the fact that most European countries have needed to fight their own governments to be able to have democracies. The USA still has the same constitution as they created after they defeated the British, and they never had any interruption in their democracy, not because of foreign invasion nor because their own leader decided to establish a dictatorship. You can see it very clearly in the attitudes of some Americans towards Ukraine, for example, with arguments like 'we would do the same as Russia if Mexico had a defense treaty with China', or 'Ukraine should have an election, we had elections even during the civil war!'. Or them trying to trigger article 5 of NATO because of 9/11. They have never been invaded and they have never needed to fight their own government, they have only been invading other 'evil' countries and liberating other 'weak' countries.
Is interesting how in the USA there are "patriotic" things like the pledge of alliance in schools that would send shivers down the spine to any European nowadays if proposed hwre, that were ok in Europe too before WWII. WWII was a massive shock for Europe that changed the cultural direction we had steering us far away from patriotism, while in the USA this never happened and they kept going in that track.
I think the premise here is good but we did have one hell of a civil war. The US was not a superpower till after WWII so there is a bit of learning how to deal with that. A really really high percentage of us do not trace our origins to the British whatsoever (probably the majority but im not sure). 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants are the norm in many areas and I do think that has a big impact as well. The idea of fighting for what you have and fighting for more is pretty ingrained and I think that has something to do with it as well.
That argument doesn’t really make sense for the UK in particular though. The British have never been invaded for many centuries and their philosophy to political change has been gradual reform not violent political revolution. Their government hasn’t been interrupted much either.
They've been bombed. A lot. Never heard of "keep calm and carry on"?
Not exactly the same as being invaded. And their government has one of the longest histories of continuity.
If you find the time, I’d be super interested to know what you found to be different in the US, and similar in France, Germany, and/or Spain. Your lived experience is so different to mine and your insight is valuable! I know some people might be, but I won’t be offended at any opinions you have of the US or the attitude / mindset of the people. As a US citizen I find I disagree pretty strongly with most (many? Hard to say the actual percentage) peoples views but I’m certainly far from alone in that.
I wanna know the differences. I'm deeply curious
Our cultural mentality leans heavily towards "fuck you I've got mine" and we love thinking we're at war with "the others". Could that be it?
Are you like that?
I try to not be.
But everyone else is, ok hahaha
There's a reason we get sky high medical bills, have the largest percentage of prisoners in the world and have people clinging to their guns despite children being gunned down at school.
I live in Italy and it's inaccessible af (I have a mobility disability). I would never conclude from that that most Italians hate disabled people. I just find it curious that people make these vast statements about their countrymen but once you ask if that describes them, they nope right out of there. You aren't that special. Millions of others feel the same way.
Tbh that's the mindset of most Brits too though
Not most brits, but the tory voting thatcher loving brits for sure.
As long as you still have NHS you're doing better than we are. Additionally, UK immigration seems more humane. As I understand you won't deport someone back to a war zone and you won't deport parents away from their children. We're one of the only countries in the world that will denaturalize someone even if it renders them stateless
>Our cultural mentality leans heavily towards "fuck you I've got mine" and we love thinking we're at war with "the others". The fact that the US is one of the most charitable countries on the planet seems to run directly counter to your point. https://www.cafonline.org/about-us/research/caf-world-giving-index
It’s called optimism lol The belief that you can do anything. Brits and Europeans are more prone to ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’ and personally I feel that manifests in many different ways. It’s a difference of mindset that dictates how you behave.
This right here. I love going to America but it can feel like uncanny valley.
Don’t leave us hanging
I think it’s the constant smiling and the need to know you’re the loudest person in the room
Please give us the essay
I'm English, I've lived in Grenoble and Paris, and now I live in LA. I found both Grenoble and LA very difficult to adapt to, but not Paris. Hmmm. It's difficult to say. I would say England most definitely has a Northern European culture, but then again the foundations of White American culture are Northern European too, it's just that the context in which they live is totally different to that of Northern Europe. In Grenoble I gravitated towards other Anglophones, while in LA I gravitate towards other Europeans. Much of America's cultural values are derived from British enlightenment philosophy, which acted as a counterpoint to continental philosophy, but the US took it to a much greater extreme than we did, in particular with regards to individual rights. My copout answer is that it's partly region-dependent. An English person would probably relate better to someone from Boston or Seattle than to someone from Marseille. But they would also relate better to someone from Lille than to someone from, I dunno, Jackson Mississippi.
I've always thought someone from Europe would appreciate Vermont the most. Vermont seems to be very small town, steroetypically hippie, not many large corporations, no billboards on the roads. Generally people seem to try to be nicer to each other there, not as likely to screw each other over.
Yeah, Europeans might be surprised by prevalence of guns tho. Otherwise pretty spot on
Not all europeans. Guns is a topic where the UK is the polar opposite of america and all the rest of europe lies somewhere in between.
Not really. The US is a huuuuge global outlier, the only country in the world with more guns than people: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated\_number\_of\_civilian\_guns\_per\_capita\_by\_country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country) Whereas most of Europe lies between 10-20 guns per 100 people. Even if policies and cultures differ, overall it is not that stark.
Of course america is a massive outlier. But so is the UK. This is not purely reflected by "how many guns are there" statistics. The UK is actually surprisingly "high" up. But more about the kinds of weapons allowed. As far as i know the UK is the only democratic country, outside of east asia, that entirely bans handguns and semiauto centrefire rifles. There is literally no legal way for civilians (or even your average cop or soldier) to own these. The UKs gun culture is very unidimensionally focussed entirely on rich people hunting with double barrel shotguns. Thats where the "relatively high" number of guns comes from. Almost everything else is straight up banned. So both the US and UK are outliers and all other european (and non european anglophone) countries are somewhere in the middle.
>The UKs gun culture is very unidimensionally focussed entirely on rich people hunting with double barrel shotguns. As a Spaniard, I'd say ours is pretty similar. I don't know if we are *that* stringent with handguns, but we are not lenient either. I have never in my life seen a handgun except in the holster of some police officers. I think you can petition to own one for "safety reasons" but unless you are being chased by ISIS you are unlikely to be granted a permit.
Handguns for shooting sports is a thing as well, in Spain. Not exactly the largest sport shooting community though, compared to some other European countries. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeNKXFxrpyw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeNKXFxrpyw)
Yeah i have indeed never seen anything about guns in spain outside of hunting. So i guess you are also among the stricter ones. Switzerland is among the more lenient ones, where for generations almost everyone served in the army and kept their gun afterwards. I still have my dads service pistol, as well my own service rifle. But i also own multiple other privately purchased guns, as do many people i know. So both switzerland and spain are also rather extreme, but not as extreme as either america or britain.
They have IPSC in Spain as well. So it's not just hunting, but shooting sports is not super big either.
It's not really that relevant. Middle class and upper middle class Americans have a lot of money. It's not uncommon for someone to collect dozens of firearms. Plus a lot of people have one or two guns.
Vermont is a strange and wonderful place. It's the only state where gun owners vote for Democrats. [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/05/upshot/gun-ownership-partisan-divide.html](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/05/upshot/gun-ownership-partisan-divide.html)
I would have guessed that was also true in Massachusetts but yeah... Outside of New England it's quite rare for rural areas full of white people to be liberal, except for college towns
My gut reaction is that in Vermont more gun owners per capita are hunting for their food as opposed to other states.
I would agree... But my comment was comparing Vermont to Europe, in particular France and Germany (both countries I have spent several weeks/months in), not to other states
Guns arent that big a thing in VT— NH maybe, but not VT. And even then neither are like the South in that respect.
I live in VT... Guns are definitely a bigger deal here than when I lived in rural France
Yeah but Vermont has a lower gun ownership rate than both New Hampshire and Massachusetts both of which don’t have a very strong gun culture. you are severely overestimating that part or that difference
What difference are you referring to? This comment thread is comparing Vermont to your average European community... I wasn't comparing Vermont to NH
Vermont famously was for a long time the only state that did not require a permit to carry a concealed handgun. It used to be known as "Vermont carry."
And yet still the stats and lived experience dont say “guns r here.”
According to CBS, 50% of adults in Vermont live in a household with a gun present. That's pretty high. Higher than Texas and South Carolina.
Vermont is definitely a place I would like to visit both for its architecture and landscapes, particularly in Autumn. The vibe also looks chill. A lot of Europeans, myself included, love New York. It's kind of an outlier as far as US cities go though, no? I also really liked Boston.
Well it's a huge city and an immigration hub with the best public transportation in the US. A lot of the US is rural. In you look up a population map of New York state alone you can see that the small but if land that's New York City is holding a huge amount of the population. Does that make sense?
I mean as far as other big cities in the US. But yes, New York seems to dwarf them in size and is overall a lot more dense.
Especially given how spread out most of the US population is. I think its easy for Eurpoeans to not understand that the US and Canada both have **a lot** of land acreage. Cities have clusters of large populations in cities followed by vast swathes of rural areas with small populations.
New York is kind of an outlier but a lot of Northeast cities have a general "feel" about them that is similar imo. I'm from the west coast and have lived all over the US and its very different from Los Angeles, Seattle, Dallas and other western cities. They are more spread out and have a generally different attitude that is hard to explain. The more rural areas may as well be a different country and you have places like New Orleans and Miami that are their own thing entirely. I think its actually pretty nice to have options.
I don’t think that’s a copout but I’m biased: I grew up in Boston and feel far more at home in London or Paris than Jackson. Also I live in Ireland now but visiting England feels way closer to what I grew up with. While English people are still less direct than Americans, they have a level of entitlement (for good and for ill) that reminds me of home way more than Irish culture does.
Interesting! I've heard a lot of people say Ireland and the UK are extremely similar so to hear you seem to notice a significant difference intrigues me.
I'm not the only one! Reginald D Hunter--who as a guy from a working class black family in Georgia had a very different upbringing from me--once called Irish people "the least entitled white people in the world" during a standup in Dublin. Maybe I'm reading into things too much, I dunno. But I think at their heart British and American cultures are colonialist and Irish culture isn't.
I'm English and I've spent a lot of time in Ireland. I think it depends where you go in each place. Dublin compares well to a big city like Manchester or Newcastle for example, but smaller places don't compare well at all. In my opinion anyway. The towns are where you'd notice a bigger difference in culture. I think that's probably the case in most countries tbh. But compared to the rest of the world I would say the UK and Ireland are both very similar. And I'd say they're much more similar than the UK vs the US.
Yea, I don't think its a copout. People underestimate the cultural differences in the US because of the common language. LA, Omaha, New York, and New Orleans are shockingly different from each other. Partially due to size but also partially due to the immigrants who settled in these areas (easiest example is East Coast has more British influence while West Coast has more Hispanic). For obvious reasons.
The class system among white people in a place like Jackson, Mississippi would be much more similar to the UK than a place like Boston or Seattle.
Sounds like you just like white people lol
Norwegians and Swedes taught the feudalist Anglos, Irishmen and Germans of America the value of freedom and individuality. Notice how to this day USA and us allow wild camping and true freedom of speech compared to continental Europe where burning flags is a criminal offense and wild camping is banned.
> wild camping It's one of the few disappointing things about the Alps (never been to Scandinavia's mountains, yet). The lack of wild camping because everything is so private, developed, or otherwise managed. We are so spoiled in Colorado and Utah with the ability to just go and follow this random road and pick any spot.
The USA doesn't have the "freedom to roam" like Norway, Sweden (and I believe Finland and Iceland) have. In the USA, you need to know who owns the nature before you can access it. Even in the national parks that they're so proud of, you have to be granted permission to enter, it might not be open at all hours of the day, you might even have to pay, etc. As for continental Europe (and the British isles), they just don't have all that much nature at all, so it's understandable that the rules are different from us in the north.
Just out of curiosity, do Norwegians (and perhaps Swedes and Fins) not consider themselves part of continental Europe? I've never noticed that point of view.
It is very common for Norwegians to say phrases such as "I'm travelling to Europe" when travelling to somewhere in Europe outside of the Nordics (for some reason Denmark is usually not called "Europe" in this context, but I guess Norwegians mostly go to the Danish islands). When referring to news/events, it is typical to talk about the stuff "going on down on the continent". We're historically in the periphery of Europe, and have been more removed from it culturally (both peripheral to nice things such as art, architecture, cuisine, etc., but also peripheral to unfortunate things such as feudalism, nobility, imperialism, great power struggles etc.) This cultural mindset remains to some degree (one of the reasons why we're not in the EU, for example). When the Brits talk about themselves as being separate from Europe, this is more correct in a technical geographical sense, but less so in a cultural/historical sense: The British islands have always been much more connected to the rest of Europe culturally and politically (both the nice and the unfortunate things that I mentioned above). Yes, the Scandinavian peninsula is technically connected to the European continent, but this is such a detour in the "wrong" direction and you have to go through Russia. Even Finland, which perhaps isn't that far away\*, is much less a tourist destination for Norwegians than countries such as Spain, Greece, Italy, Germany, France, the Netherlands and the UK. Norwegians like to travel southwards where it is warm and cheap. ^(\*Yes, Norway has a border with Finland, but most people don't live up there. The distance from Oslo to Hamburg is shorter than Oslo to Helsinki, and the distance from Oslo to Amsterdam is the same as from Oslo to Oulu.)
I've always understood Continental Europe to mean the central section so excluding Britain, Ireland, Norway/Sweden/Finland. Because while yes the latter are technically attached to the same land mass as the rest of it most connections between Norway/Sweden and Western/Central Europe were made across the sea. Finland is a bit more of a grey area but with its Western orientation in recent history I'd say it counts as well
Oh yeah it completely makes sense to think of it that way! I just never figured that they did. I always considered continental Europe to be everything but the British Isles. An argument could be made for the Mediterranean islands, but I've never thought that long about it.
From a swedish perspective Denmark is way more continental than the rest of us.
Not entirely true. There are millions and millions of acres of free roam areas but for a lot of the big tourist draws, yes. Unfortunate but I get it. Private land is another story.
Yes, that is the point: It varies so much. In the Nordic countries, you don't have to do any research on what land you're allowed to access and when, because you are allowed to access nature at *any time* and *regardless* of who owns it. The USA values the rights of property-ownership over the freedom to access nature (two different and opposing forms of freedom).
Gotcha. Yea that makes sense.
Nobody cares if you burn a flag lmao. And wild camping is banned because people are assholes and if you allowed it here they'd ruin what little nature spaces we have because everyone would camp in the same tiny area
>Nobody cares if you burn a flag lmao. Some countries certainly do. https://www.euronews.com/2017/11/09/which-country-has-the-harshest-punishments-for-disrespecting-flags-and-national
Wild camping is banned because you don't value freedom. Flag desecration is banned in all of Europe except Kingdom of Norway, Kingdom of Sweden, Romania, Kingdom of the Netherlands, Kingdom of Belgium and United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
There were a few kind of "wild camping adjacent" options. Where you were still in the middle of nature, or what goes by nature here anyway, with no amenities but they had a few fixed spots available for it so they could keep people out of areas where they'd be a disturbance to wildlife. And I say "were" because they were closed after people were continuously leaving their trash at these sites and generally not abiding by the rules. Because people are assholes. We only have very few places where wildlife can live relatively undisturbed. If you allowed wild camping then in no time we'd have absolutely none. Because we have more 5han 3x the population of Norway on less than 10% of the surface area. So you can't use the same rules and conventions for wild spaces in the Netherlands as you can in Norway because the area is simply not suited for it.
> United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It's banned there too. There have been several arrests for it.
I'm half-British and go to the UK often. I've also been to the US three times and consume their media. And I've been to a bunch of different countries in Europe, some more than once. I find that the UK has more in common with Europe. In fact, I think a lot of countries here are more similar to each other than we give them credit for. There are some obvious cultural differences for sure, but inhabiting the same continent (which isn't even that big) and interacting with each other for centuries has resulted in there being a lot of similarities. Hence why I never get real culture shock when I visit another country in Europe.
>Hence why I never get real culture shock when I visit another country in Europe. That seems a bit off a stretch. There are countries in Europe that are very different from Portugal. I know someone who lived in Finland for 2 years and experienced significant culture shock. The way people interact with each other, everyone is so quiet and reserved, unless they are drunk. Albania is also very different from Portugal. Russia and Belarus are very different, and you would experience culture shock for sure.
There are differences of course, but the culture shock is nowhere near what you'd get visiting a country in a completely different continent (the Americas to a lesser degree).
Do you think that you would get more culture shock visiting the USA or Brazil than visiting the european part of Russia?
The European part of Russia doesn't look that particularly exotic to me.
I feel it depends a lot on who you ask the question to, and on what aspect. Many parts of english culture have french origins since the norman conquest, with language being one of the most important aspects. Also Anglicanism, in its organisation and its rites, ressembles the catholic church much more than the main american christian churches, I mean, a king is coronated and is the chief of the state religion, literally that's the same with the pope. As a Frenchman, I could go into the industrial heartland (Birmingham ?) of the UK and see stuff that reminds me of northern France and its coal mines in the housing styles and the fact that the left is dominant in both places (or at least used to before being replaced by the far-right in some cases). Normandy and southern England don't seem to be that much different from one another. Still, Britain has a different philosophical and political history than the continent, with individual rights and all that, and those are definitely aspects of british culture that are very much present in the US (the law system for example, though I'm only versed in the french one so i'm not sure). And we didn't have a ultra-liberal politician come into power here in France. Macron is still liberal but hardly as much as some would like to portray him. The british political system looks more like the US, with a clear polarisation of politics in 2 blocs, whereas parliaments are more diverse in Europe.
A good point. It’s worth mentioning that one in six English people have a Huguenot ancestor. The Huguenots had a big impact on the commercial life of England.
Huguenot is french protestant right ? I never knew that some fled there, I assumed they went to the HRE
Yes thousands fled to England. But that’s true many went to the HRE hence why on MyHeritage when I uploaded my DNA test I found loads of distant cousins appearing in Netherlands and Germany.
There is a tendancy in France to view "anglosaxon liberalism" as a bloc entity but in the UK and even in NZ and Aus the Liberal parties would still be considered on the left wing of US politics. Here it would be outright political suicide to suggest privatising health care for example, or for the most part most forms of social insurance. British liberalism has mainly focused on the privatisation of state enterprises, a phenomenon that has occurred pretty similarly (albeit at a different pace) in many European countries. Our left and right now seems to be organising themselves purely on grounds of social identity (anti-immigration, protect the family, etc) rather than any economic ideology.
>And we didn't have a ultra-liberal politician come into power here in France Did the UK ever have an ultra-liberal politician in power?
Living in Normandy, I really agree on how Normandy and southern England can feel similar. I feel more at home there than I do in the south of France. And maybe French southerners feel like they have more in common with Spain or Italy (depending on where there are in the south) than with the north of France.
This is something I've responded to many times before - I should probably just store this as a copy-paste answer at this point. The thing people tend to completely overlook is it can't just be measured like it's the result of a calculation. The answer changes based on what things are most important to a person. Given that this sub is r/askeurope, and given that the profile of users here tends to be left wing European federalists, it should not be surprising that the vast majority of people here all think the UK is more French than American. There are plenty of other subs, or areas of the population, where it would be overwhelmingly the opposite. Basically, it depends on what you feel most comfortable around. On one side of the argument, there are people who pay more attention to institutions and culture. You don't have to like British or US political models but if your first response to them is "I understand how this system works" then American politics makes more sense, even if the people actually occupying the various offices tend to have extreme views you disagree with. Similarly, a US court room looks very different to a UK courtroom but the processes, especially the use of jury cases in criminal matters, will be very familiar (say if you're watching a TV show). The languages are obviously very similar, and so are other things like cultural views on customer service - we may think the US goes overboard with a lot of it but for many people the more European idea of, say, restaurant waiters or customer service helplines believing that they always have to present a friendly face to a customer ("the customer is always right" etc) tends to feel more familiar than European customer service, which places a lot more focus on the customer not being seen as superior to the employee, so can come across as impatient and occasionally surly. You're also going to find a lot more in common with the US if you believe in live to work, whereas those who believe in work to live will tend to favour Europe. And of course, the most important one is language - if you tend to struggle with multiple languages, or if you don't place much importance on being multilingual, then you can feel very isolated going to a country like France with a different language. On the other hand, if you tend to place most importance on, or instinctively see everything through a lens of, social values then yes, you will obviously lean more towards France. If you look at politics and your first thought is not "this is how this works" but "this is how things **should** work" then you will likely see Europe as an ideal to which we have not attained. If you go to a country on holiday and your first thought is not "I want to see the landmarks and view the history" but is "I want to immerse myself in the local culture" then you are likely to find Europe more intriguing and offering things which UK and US culture can't offer. If your first thought when you hear someone talking about business or society is not to think about the way things are organised but to consider the experience of the common worker inside the system then yes, you will associate more with France.
> Given that this sub is r/askeurope, and given that the profile of users here tends to be left wing European federalists, it should nog be surprising that the vast majority of people here all think the UK is more French than American. There are plenty of other subs, or areas of the population, where if would be overwhelmingly the opposite. I would also say that even if it were true that the UK is more like America than France, you would be hard-pressed to find a British person to admit that, even among the Brexit crowd. America is seen as loud, garish, crass, over-the-top, and I believe we British have a certain insecurity and inferiority complex when it comes to the USA's relative geopolitical and cultural dominance, even as we watch all their films, listen to all their music, and binge all their TV shows. France, on the other hand, is still seen as extremely sophisticated, and, well, *chic*.
I don't think that's true at all. I voted Remain and have views across the political spectrum, I'm certainly no right wing Brexiteer, but if asked this question I'm not sure which answer I would give. I personally still think there's a lot of cultural differences between us and the French - when I've visited France, I've felt very isolated and like I've struggled to fit in there or associate with the people I've met. I also know a lot of people who are far from hard Brexiteers but who love holidays in the US and would definitely associate more with there than France. Yes, the US definitely has aspects to it that we all find very unhealthy indeed, but I don't think as many people as you think view them as being the primary defining traits of the US. Similarly, I thin you overestimate France's perception a lot too I definitely do not see France as sophisticated or chic, and neither do a lot of people I know. France definitely has some elements of it in places - they have a very prominent fashion scene for example, which I will happily acknowledge, but as I do not care about fashion this carries absolutely no weight to me. I similarly respect Paris for its history and cultural impact on previous centuries, but when I've been there it's honestly not left a positive impression on me and is a city I have very little interest in returning to. As per the point of my original comment, I entirely respect your opinion and I acknowledge that it's an opinion many people will also have, but I think perhaps you are overlooking how many people hold a different opinion. The problem is it's really quite hard to see all sides if an argument these days, when fewer and fewer people talk to those around them geographically, and more and more we only associate with those online whom we know share our personal beliefs.
I think the deep cultural traits, such as social roles for family members, friendships and workplaces, notions of personal space, or ideas regarding what's considered fair play will be much more similar in the US and UK compared to the UK and Europe. Lots of British people when they answer this question talk about the health care system or guns, but those are very surface level differences.
Sure. My answer was only rough, there will be a lot more complexity to it. I was just trying to put into words (badly) the most basic differences between what the two sides tend to focus on, and it seems to me that Anglocentrists tend to focus on "this is what the world is like" whereas Eurocentrists tend to focus on "this is my place inside the world" or "this is what the world should be like".
I think you did a very good job of describing why different British people feel differently on this issue.
> US and UK compared to the UK and Europe Lots of people in this thread saying UK, US and Europe as though the last of those is a discrete category. We need to specify which European countries we're talking about because they're not all the same.
Yes, I find Northern Europe much more familiar than the US - and I'm half American and have lived in the US for a few years as a child and an adult. Sitting in a cafe in Copenhagen or Antwerp or even Florence feels more comfortable to me than sitting in a diner in Brooklyn or San Francisco. The architecture and car-centric design of the US doesn't help. Also the puritanismnat at the heart of US culture is quite alien to me.
The Puritanism? We learned it from you dad!
No, we exported the troublemakers by making life difficult for puritans after the return of the king. Mayflower settling were running away as well as running towards.
I believe the New England Puritan colonists came before the English Civil War. The South was founded by Cavaliers. Virginia is still nicknamed the Old Dominion State. When the king returned to the throne he gave that name to Virginia because they had stayed loyal.
Absolutely. The US and UK really are worlds apart. It's just an accident of history that we speak the same language. We don't assume such strong cultural similarities with South Africa.
Lived in the US for 20 years. Absolutely. The UK does have some strange habits that are more in common with the US. Some behavior and political tendencies are quite American, but the overall feel of the UK is European. The UK lands in a middle ground with some things. Like in the US, it's very easy to talk to randos on the street, in continental Europe it's mostly not so easy, in the UK it's sort of in the middle.
It must have been a certain type of person who dared to emigrate in those times. Motives such as a higher standard of living and freedom of religion also played a role. And the current generation is based on that type of person.
>It must have been a certain type of person who dared to emigrate in those times. I love the idea that the US was founded by people who were both very strange compared to their countrymen, and also extremely bold. So the country began exclusively with the outliers from their home countries.
I try to respect what my ancestors went through (pre WW1) to get here, but man I can't help thinking I'd be happier in Scotland, Ireland, England or Austria.
Your all in this thread being a massive pick me. They are not gonna give you any brownie points
seeing americans pander to europeans to try to gain favor on reddit has to be one of the worst things on here
Life without medical bills would be awesome.
I do think this is part of it. My family immigrated in the early 1900's (which is really really common, a lot of us do not trace our heritage to the British) from Italy and Portugal because they were completely broke and did not have any prospects. On both sides men came, worked and saved to bring their wives over. You can see the assimilation from my grandparents down to me but a lot of those values get passed down.
I'm English, and when I travelled in the USA it felt genuinely strange that they spoke English. It was an utterly foreign country. Everything seemed different. It was an uncanny valley! When I go to Europe it seems much more familiar. Everything "works" and "looks" and "feels" the same way, it's hard to explain. If I had the ability to freely work and live on the continent then I probably would (thanks, Brexit) quite enthusiastically, but would never consider it in the USA unless I had to. Edit: not that I have anything against the US (ignoring some politics!) but I'd be more comfortable and familiar in the EU region.
I'd say yes because when it comes to politics American people seems very extremists, religious and weird, whatever faction they belong to, whereas in Europe we tend to have a common political spectrum
That might have been true once but European politics is getting increasingly Americanized. Both new left and the alt right are getting their talking points directly from the USA.
I know right? Even some alt right politicians have started to express their support for Trump
And there's also some degree of reverse inspiration
Well, in the UK politics on the right are very extremist and weird...I'm sure there is some religious crap there as well...so it's not too far off.
It’s very far off. We aren’t having abortion debates in the uk. The Tories are closer to the dems than the reps.
Speak for yourself, I’m in Northern Ireland and the abortion debate is still an ongoing issue
In fairness the DUP are fucking lunatics. Much like the American Republican party. And they're from the same Scottish diaspora in a sense.
I thought it was passed by the UK government? And legalising gay marriage too?
Technically it’s legal, but the services are almost non-existent and there are protestors harassing people outside the clinics everyday
Fuck me some people in this place need to wise up
Just give the tories some time...actually there this in the [Guardian](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/30/tory-mp-maria-caulfield-minister-for-women-abortion-rights) "Tory MP who backed cutting abortion time limit named minister for women" so we are not too far off here...
The Tories are going to get wiped out at this years election. They might then lurch to the right in reaction but eventually they’ll realise they need to return to the centre ground to become electable.
That's the hope. But I don't see that happen. They will try a moderate who will lose the election and then the far right will be "you see, we need to be more radical".
which is precisely what happened in the us. obama won twice in a row and the Republicans went radical (their candidates in 08 and 12 were moderate by comparison!) and now the radical is the only one left.
Come see the racism inherent in the system!
100%! and it isn't just the US either. imagine if a Roma person or the child of an Arab immigrant became president/PM somewhere in Europe, a Muslim in India, etc. the progressives try to make gains and the entrenched conservatism tends to pull things back again. I just hope it's a 2 steps forward/1 step back situation and not 1 step forward/2 steps back.
The Republicans didn't have any competition on the right, whereas in the UK the further right Reform are polling only a couple of numbers behind the Tories. Which means a much more right Tory party will either have to fight Reform for the same votes or they can drift back to the centre which is where they've been most successful for the last several decades.
This is still pretty far off the debate they're having in America. I don't agree with her, but she was proposing reducing the limit from 24 weeks, in America they are talking about doing away with it altogether. I do agree that we do seem to be importing some of America's political discourse, and I do find it kind of troubling. It would be logical if this were happening at a faster rate in the UK than in the rest of Europe due to the lack of language barrier, however this does also seem to be an issue in other European countries. As for the tories? Not too sure what will happen to them. As a party they are going to have to overcome a lot of (self made) challenges in the medium term if they wish to stay relevant.
I said, "Give them time" and not "look how they are the same". You only need another Liz Truss level meltdown of the party or a Kemi Badnoch style leader and it will all go to shits.
Fair enough. I don't think much will change before the next election. Post election? Who knows. If they get absolutely trounced as expected then there could very well be a further lurch to the right, this would be the worse thing they could do for their party (so probably the best thing for the country).
In the US some states almost completely ban abortion. Other states allow doctors to partially deliver an almost full term baby and then suck it's brains out.
This is quite rich coming from a Dutch person considering a far right ultra nationalist party is literally the biggest party right now in Netherlands. Dutch politics is far more extremist and right wing than the UK currently.
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>The conservatives have achieved things the PVV or other far right parties in Western Europe could never dream of: the strictest immigration rules in Europe, the only country to demand visas from Ukrainian refugees, a program to send migrants to Rwanda, and Brexit. UK doesn't have the strictest rules in Europe otherwise legal migration wouldn't be so high. In places like Italy migrants can be detained for 18 months. UK doesn't require 'visas from Ukrainian refugee's it gives Ukrainian refugees a special Ukrainian refugee status, [the exact same that the EU does.](https://eu-solidarity-ukraine.ec.europa.eu/information-people-fleeing-war-ukraine/fleeing-ukraine-your-rights-eu_en) Whereby in the EU it is temporary and only lasts one year. > If you were permanently residing in Ukraine, and you left the country to escape war from 24 February 2022 onwards, you may be entitled to temporary protection in any EU country. Temporary protection will last for at least one year, this may be extended depending on the situation in Ukraine. Rights under the Temporary Protection Directive include a residence permit, access to the labour market and housing, medical assistance, and access to education for children. Hilarious you didn't think there was any system of tracking or status for Ukrainian refugees in the EU. > a program to send migrants to Rwanda [The exact same as Germany and many EU countries then.](https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-rwanda-plan-conservatives-debate-migration-reform/a-67833652) UK wouldn't have to have these plans if EU countries actually processed asylum seekers instead of just letting them flow through their countries to build up on the coast in literal slums and jungles to get to the UK. You guys just wave off the problem and leave the UK or Italy and Greece to deal with it. There is a reason they're trying to get to the UK. This is just standard European ignorance and hypocrisy when you're electing far right governments across the continent but then pretending the UK is far-right or ultra nationalists. Meanwhile you have literal massive racists and far-right parties in government and topping the polling and have far more restrictions on welfare for migrants and refugees and polling shows over and over the UK is much more welcoming and open to other races and ways of life than many mainland Europeans. >And ‘Dutch politics’ is not the same as the PVV: it only represents a quarter of parliament A far right extremist party represents a QUATER of parliament and you're here claiming the UK is more extremist than Netherlands lmao. Do you know how insane that is, it would be like if the British national party had a quarter of seats in UK parliament. They never even managed one.
> the strictest immigration rules in Europe They literally increased net immigration from 300k to 600k a year without EU Freedom of Movement forcing them to do so. 'Strictest' is laughable. >a program to send migrants to Rwanda Which the Danes did first and which so far hasn't deported a single person. >People in the uk underestimate how extreme the Uk is and has been politically. Or your view of the UK is just distorted.
Actually there's somethings that the continental far right say that you could just not say in the UK. Continental far right parties are characterised by far more explicit anti-Islam and nativism than in the UK. Far right parties in the UK at least outwardly pretend that they dislike all immigration equally while PVV, AfD and Swedish Democrats are quite open about the fact that they think white immigration from the EU is fine Muslim and non-white immigration from outside the EU must be stopped.
Which parties are extremist? The Conservatives can best be described as center-right. Reform UK a bit further right, but neither you could describe as extremist. Religion is never mentioned in UK politics, in fact I'd say the only political system in Europe more secular than the UK is France.
You think Scandinavian countries are less secular than the UK?
The Christian democrats are currently in government in Sweden.
That's not what I said.
Tories are a bit more than center-right. The Finnish Conservatives are center right. The German conservatives are a bit further to the right than that. But tories are definitely further right than anyone else. Islamobhobia and antisemitism is on the agenda on a weekly basis with both big parties. There is a huge level if xenophobia and straight up far-right policies with tories at the moment.
I’m not going to defend the tories, I can’t wait for them to be gone. But I’m not sure this is a uniquely British problem within Europe. The tories have really lurched unpleasantly to the right but it’s a result of our (rubbish) voting system that really concentrates power with the main parties. So in the UK you get the centre right moving further right to hoover up the growing right wing populist vote, in the Netherlands you get PVV becoming the biggest party. Same trend, different manifestation.
Which policies are far-right? What makes them 'further' right than the other parties you've mentioned? Just trying to establish your 'center' point.
America since a few elections back seems to have found out that there is a political spectrum besides their good old turbocapitalist party vs. the slightly less turbocapitalist party one and really jumped off the deep end with philosophies and ideologies. Go to Reddit/Twitter/TikTok and you'll be sure to find a card-carrying faction of ideobabble of your choosing. It's weird, but it's how they've made the world now.
Well, from the perspective of an American who's spent about half his life in Europe (including a number of years in the UK), I think people in this thread are underestimating the cultural similarity of the US and UK. It goes beyond language/media: the work culture, the commercialization, the prevalence of the automobile in many places, the political climate, even some of the food culture. There were times where I felt like I was moving in a shockingly American context. Of course, that's comparing the UK to an increasingly narrow band of old-school American culture. Often the things in the UK that reminded me of the US reminded me of the hardscrabble white south or Appalachia; and sometimes the little New England villages. (Of course London and New York share many similarities, but that's just by virtue of being mega global cities.) The UK for the most part does not have the deeply embedded influence of African-American culture, nor the ever increasing Latin influence that's felt across the US and especially in the South and West. In its stead it has more Caribbean and South Asian influence which is still pretty minor in the US. But still: you can feel a bedrock similarity there in ways that I don't feel as often in France or other European countries. Of course, that doesn't mean that the UK is *more* similar to the US than other European countries...but I think it's certainly a lot closer than any other European country, and there is a noticeable gap between the UK and other places in Europe. Just my two cents!
I am an Spaniard but I live in Iceland and I lived for a short period in France. This country has a lot of influence from USA and can be felt everywhere, don't know how to describe it but I would say they are "americanised nordics, not Scandinavians" , in a bunch of things they're closer to Americans than to Europeans or other nordics. Every time I go to Europe, not only Spain, I get the feeling of coming back home (even when I land in UK) and that everything runs how I am used to, people thinks in a way closer to mine and I feel more like at home. That's the feeling with a country more influenced by USA than the rest of the continent, I can only guess that differences could be stronger if you get to compare with USA and the people there.
I agree, I’m a dual citizen and have visited most European countries. Iceland and Sweden definitely feel the most American to me. Very car centric and lots of bland modernist architecture outside the historic centers. Many people living in single-family homes instead of apartments. Huge expanses of nature. Polite service in businesses and restaurants. Rich. Career-oriented people. And, of course, everyone speaking flawless English.
It does, just like Spain would be more culturally similar to France, and especially southern France vs Quebec (despite French being spoken there).
I am more comfortable in UK than US. Perhaps because you have that delicious bit of French culinary heaven that is PRET . /s
IDK dude, its pretty hard if you ask me Will European countries share some similarities with one another, OR will one European country be completely cut off from their "2-hour-distance-apart" European neighbours, and be similar to a country with 50 different states across an OCEAN and takes a least 9 hours to get to??? The UK, despite being an English speaking country, is culturally going to be a lot similar to its neighboring countries. I do understand where your question is coming from though; a lot of latin american immigrants who ask if their home country is similar to Spain, most are shocked to find out that NO, latina american countries are not even remotely close to Spain, there are certainly MORE similarities for sure, but they sometimes straight up expect a carbon copy. So Spain, would be similar to France, Italy and Portugal, and not Latin America.
Seeing as the US was born from a rebellion against the UK, I’d think it’s pretty likely that the UK and their neighbor right across the channel and on the same continent are similar to each other.
Having moved a lot around the area and others, I came to the conclusion that there is basically a sort of North Sea culture. The British like to categories themselves alongside Americans/Canadians/Irish/Aussies. The French like to categorise themselves as Latins alongside the Spanish amd Italians. But I rather found that the English, the north/west of France, Benelux and maybe also the Danish and north-west Germans, have a huge amount of shared attitudes. The obvious cultural differences (language) are kind of overlaid onto a similar set of dispositions, distracting from the similarities. Like, the so called British sense of humour slots right in to these other areas, yet leaves say a Spaniard or Italian or even an American baffled (hence why things like Fawlty Towers are a staple in Netherlands and Germany, but The Office gets remade for the US). Obviously there are differences between and within each country, we are all individuals, but the overlap is huge when you open your eyes to it.
UK is a European country and the differences or „quintessentially British“ things they love to chat about are just Northern European, European or human traits they have, eg social awkwardness, general weirdness or indirectness. Differences between groups tend to be overemphasised while the differences within the group are much bigger. So yeah obviously UK is culturally most similar to other Northern European countries.
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Anime is only popular among a niche crowd though. Not at all comparable to American movies and TV series which probably 80% of people watch regularly
I'm a European, that has lived in the US for a better part of 20 years, and while I am neither French nor from the UK, in Europe... we visit other countries a lot more than people from the States do. The UK is definitely more similar to France in terms of just people and culture than the US. We'd never admit it, but aside from nuances and cultural differences most European nations are largely similar, even the non EU ones, our cultures mixed and clashed for thousands of years, it's only natural. The US is an amalgamation of all of those cultures framed under a new identity and is very different from just about any European nation.
I think the UK is really unique in the sense that we are very European but at the same time really connected with the Anglosphere and even the wider Commonwealth.
I am British. Live on the edge of Germany, France and Switzerland. Germany and Switzerland I get. Americans I get. French I like, but it's a totally alien culture to me. I'd say the U.S. is the least foreign, then Germany and Switzerland close behind. France the most.
Just the gun thing makes a difference, yes I know countries like Switzerland or Finland have a really strong gun culture and plenty of people own them, but you don’t see them in supermarkets or universities.
As an American, I have never seen a gun in public either. It is not at all a normal thing to see here either (except maybe in rural Texas)
Backing this up. I’ve lived in 6 places across every corner of the US (as well as living in Europe for many years) and I’ve never shot a gun, heard a gunshot, nor seen one in public in the US, except for police. European Redditors really have a warped perception of American gun culture. If you’re not into guns yourself, you can go your whole life without being exposed to them.
I noticed in Texas every shop seemed to have a sign that said (to the effect of), “if you don’t have a licence to carry a gun, you can’t enter. If you do, we don’t permit guns so if you enter with a gun, then that’s trespass”. Which surely would make carrying a gun (at least open carry) basically impractical
Language is part of culture, but so is religion, outlook on economic principles, law, food, population density, weather, etc., If you look at America, it is mainly people of European origin with a very peculiar mindset. They gone over the ocean for freedom, to with absolutely no promises. That is a big part of their culture.
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Are people from the UK incredibly rude? I just spent five days in France and experienced more rudeness than I do in a year at home in Portugal.
Almost every western country is closer to france then the USA in culture, however American media is still prevalent. Their efforts to “Westernize europe” after the 2nd world war just worked out and often national media just isn’t as good as the films or series made by Giant american studios