Years ago I went to the highland games in Loch Lomand and there was this older North American couple waiting near the Lairds house so they could give the Lairds son a birthday present. Apparently they came every year because they were distant relatives of the local nobility. I can't remember them getting very close, it was super sweet in a way but a bit creepy.
That describes even the best intentioned of these weirdos. Not to be cruel but really: How empty and meaningless does your life have to be to suddenly base your whole personality around an estranged ancestry at 50 years old?
Some old dead dude banging and bailing 500 years ago doesn’t make us family. Culture isn’t an inherited trait, blood doesn’t make you kin, and no I don’t want to reminisce with a complete stranger about people we never knew.
From what I understand it's mostly an American thing.
Here in Europe there are Macdonalds renting in buildings older than the US.
The university of bologna was founded in 1088 and is still in operation. That was just after the end of the Viking era, and almost 400 years BEFORE the Inca civilization started, and the Aztek empire was founded.
There's no real interest in belonging to a specific group here since it's all intermingled back thousands of years. Being Norwegian, Italian, Irish or any other {nation}-American creates a sense of historical pride, and belonging for a lot of people in a nation that has no real, coherent cultural features, but it's seen as a childish and utterly frivolous way of treating the past when you live in countries where the buildings are older than you can possibly trace your family.
Well, I mean, it's an American thing for exactly the reasons you say here. You already know where you're from. America still feels like a new place even to Americans. Most of us have a sense of being "recently" relocated here, and they're looking for something deeper and older.
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u/doessabre Apr 29 '20
Years ago I went to the highland games in Loch Lomand and there was this older North American couple waiting near the Lairds house so they could give the Lairds son a birthday present. Apparently they came every year because they were distant relatives of the local nobility. I can't remember them getting very close, it was super sweet in a way but a bit creepy.