Travel the world, meet interesting people.
Sep. 3rd, 2002 11:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davywavyOne interesting difference I’ve noticed between Britons and Americans is the different ways they appreciate their countries.
To put it bluntly – the less an American travels, the more they seem to love the good old US of A. The less an Englishman travels beyond our borders, the less he loves his homeland.
Now this is just a general rule, and I know there are exceptions, but it remains remarkably true of those people who I have met. Go to America, and if you meet someone insisting that the US is the best place in the world, you can usually draw a graph displaying the inverse relationship between the distance they’ve travelled beyond their borders and their conviction of the greatness of their homeland.
Conversely, the more loudly a Briton insists what a hellhole England is, the less likely it is that they’ve seen anything of the world.
I could make some very trenchant observations as to why this should be, but I’m interested in hearing other peoples views as well, so comment away.
To put it bluntly – the less an American travels, the more they seem to love the good old US of A. The less an Englishman travels beyond our borders, the less he loves his homeland.
Now this is just a general rule, and I know there are exceptions, but it remains remarkably true of those people who I have met. Go to America, and if you meet someone insisting that the US is the best place in the world, you can usually draw a graph displaying the inverse relationship between the distance they’ve travelled beyond their borders and their conviction of the greatness of their homeland.
Conversely, the more loudly a Briton insists what a hellhole England is, the less likely it is that they’ve seen anything of the world.
I could make some very trenchant observations as to why this should be, but I’m interested in hearing other peoples views as well, so comment away.
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Re: Much randomness
Date: 2002-09-03 05:04 am (UTC)Not being British by birth or much by upbringing I can't answer this. I have come across, on a radio program?, a study that looked into mental health/cultural identity in Scotland compared to England and found that very few English came up with positive descriptions of being English, as opposed to British.
I don't see also why the feeling of being a declining power would result in people that travel appreciating England that much more when thay come back?
The idea [random and shootable :)] is that Brits have a glorified idea of the rest of the world that they once owned, which they compare to the detriment of current reality. Once they go and actually see the reality of the far away places they can more accurately compare it to reality at home, and hence are happier with home.
However I also think it may simply be cultural - Brits are a self-deprciating lot and hence deride 'home', but once having travelled and come in contact with other cultures who are proud of home, the visiting Brits become less self-depreciating and more positive.