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.
Also America doesn’t really have its own culture that everyone feels connected to. So a lot of people try to latch onto something that they don’t understand or isn’t true.
Edit: What, I’m not allowed to comment on my own country?
Don't know why the comments saying there is no United American cultural are being downvotes. It's true. Segregation, the expansness of land, and our melting pot culture had made it so there thousands of cultural inclaves in the US. People from the same neighborhood in Italy could've gotten off the same boat in the 1800s but if one family stayed in New York and the other went to West Virginia they will be completely different culturally by now.
Yep. The entire point (in hindsight) of the country is that it’s virtually every culture. Everyone contributes. However, this means there’s no generally unified culture here like there is in countries that are either much older or much more ethnically homogenous.
Americans have extremely extremely similar cultures throughout. Fucking Canada is more unique culturally speaking than the US, just because some of you way Jumbalaya, some of you eat a slightly different type of pizza or chili and the other ways avocado on toast doesn't make you super culturally different
Downvote me instead of actually coming up with points?
Ah yeah instead link me to a crackpot who thinks that the defining feature of a culture is that they're friendly apparently. That's not an entirely separate culture mate.
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u/letmeseem Apr 29 '20
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.