Culture

The beliefs, customs, art, etc., of a particular society, group, place, or time.

What does it mean to be an American? And what do you think of when you think of a typical American? I have recently begun thinking about my country and our culture, and wanted to learn more about what exactly makes an American. To find out, I thought that I should get a view from the outside of the proverbial white picket fenced, good ‘ol ‘Murican home. Basically, I am wondering what non-Americans think of our culture, and of us in general.

First, I began pondering this when I couldn’t really think of anything distinctly American. For inquiring minds, think of our food. While we do have some “American” comfort food, especially here in the South, what is there that we created ourselves? I mean, for the love of our sacredly majestic Bald Eagle, apple pie isn’t even American! Is this not a national travesty? But, I digress. The point is that we have many amazing things in this country, but how much of it is concretely ours? While I thought this over, I also began to think of why people, myself especially, are so enthralled with other countries. From the exotic to the ancient, and to the high end cities of the world, we are obsessed. Now, I am sure this doesn’t just extend to us Americans, but I thought about how each country has their own beautifully unique world of its own. To get a better picture, think of 100 percent authentic Italian food and wine, visiting a thousand year old English castle that once held kings, queens, and knights, or the awe-inspired embellished clothing worn in the streets of India. Get the picture? If not, think of a country or place where you’ve always wanted to go, and become aware of the images your mind creates when you think of this place and its people. You get a vision of their culture and their way of life.

Now, I am not saying that America doesn’t have its own cultural cues and certain ways that we act that makes us unique. Nor am I saying that we don’t have an intricately rich history that has shaped us to what we are today. What am saying, or asking rather, is what makes us American to non-Americans? What do they think of when they think of America? Do people of different nationalities and tongues think of our star spangled flag and hyper-patriotism? Do they think of our wide range of geography and national wonders? After searching the web, I have found a few answers to my questions and quandaries about what makes us...us.

To begin, I’ll stick with the positives. While I don’t think it’s exactly a secret that a stereotype of Americans portrays us as arrogant, ignorant, loud and so on. On my search I was pleasantly surprised to see the opposite view. Scouring forums and blogs, I found that most found Americans very friendly, caring, welcoming, and open people who live in a geographically diverse nation! The general consensus is that American’s are very optimistic dreamers and have been; that we believe that anything is possible with hard work and perseverance. Okay, so besides us Americans in general, what about the other stuff, like our food, drink and entertainment? The biggest thing I found was that non-American’s are almost disgusted by the sheer amount of sugar in almost all our food. Many posts I read from spoke about not being able to even eat our bread because it was so sugary. But, besides the Willy Wonka level of sugar, we use a substantial amount of cheese in everything. As an American this is something I love.

Cheese is life people. We love our cheese.

Many are so flabbergasted by the amount of choices we have in, not only our restaurants, but our grocery stores as well. To non-Americans the fact that we have a choice of, what kind of bread we want our sandwich on, and what kind of cheese we want on said sandwich, along with what kind of dressing, is just mind blowing. Oh, and side note, the customer service in America is seen as amazing. Many say how underrated our beer is. Now, I’m not talking about Bud Light and the like, I’m talking about the large amount of micro-breweries and craft beers we make.

Let's move to the music, more specifically, blues and jazz, which are two personal loves of mine. America gave birth to these two soulful genres and in my personal opinion from my search that is that the world is very glad, as these genres gave birth to rock, pop, rap, and hip-hop.

Now, besides the few, awesome things, I will end with what was a bit of a mixed review from non-Americans.

Patriotism

While many love how so patriotic we are as a people, some, to be blunt, find it a bit creepy. I read on several different forum sites how things such as the pledge of allegiance and how our flag is plastered everywhere you go is quite strange to outsiders. I found this quite interesting and maybe a bit eye opening, because as Americans, these things are completely normal to us.

After doing a little adventuring on the web and seeing all different kinds of opinions and views from people all over the world, I came to love my country even more. Sometimes, you need an outsider’s perspective to get a clearer and wider view of things. I came to realize how many things are truly American and what makes us great people of a great nation. I think sometimes we take our freedom and our way of life for granted, not realizing how great it really is. I encourage others to take a step outside, in any situation, to see the broader view of things because what you find may surprise you.