America Land of the Free and Confused

You see, Americans have apple pie and halloween. This negates the need for ingenuity. I think it is precisely Australia's blandness (as Germaine calls it) and relative lack of cultral heritage that gives rise to the incredible arts and music scene that we've got happening. Sure, travelling makes you a bit more nationalistic and patriotic, but I can see objectively that cultrally Australia really has it going on.

While I really like America, it is kind of frustrating. It's almost as if people here delight in fostering a culture of confusion. It's already written into the road laws - the give-way-to-whoever-is-first-at-the-stop-sign rule which relies too heavily on people's judgment and good will, which would be fine if people here consistently exercised good judgment and good will. And it's unwritten into the hospitality industry, where workers income is almost completely reliant on the tenous conscience of the customer.

The confusion goes right on up, through conversation and dialectic, where conclusions without arguments are boldly stated and no one really seems to care about getting to the heart of the problem. Or maybe it's not that they don't care, it's more that as a culture, Americans are short on intellectual tools for dealing with complex issues.

The confusion continues of course at a national level, where people are polarized on issues from gay marriage, multicultralism, the war in Iraq and the place of faith in universities. I don't think it's that people aren't listening to each other, it's more that no one attempts to engage with issues on the other side, instead they use emotive, of-the-man arguments in the hope that their opponents will retreat in fear.