Re: CHAT: cultural interpretation [was Re: THEORY: language and the brain]

Quoting Stone Gordonssen <stonegordonssen@...>:

> >but we still, by and large, have more liberties than most people
> >elsewhere in the world.
>
> Try being a chronically-ill partnered Gay non-Judeochristian man in the USA
> for a while, then we'll speak about how liberties in the USA compare with
> those in Europe.
Have you ever been to, say, Istanbul, or Moscow? By Europe, you
must surely mean "a few metropolitan centers in western Europe,
such as Amsterdam, Berlin or Paris".  The idea of giving homosexuals
privacy in their own home is by no means universal in Europe (the
continent).

> >On the other hand, we can't show nipples on public TV over here.  Go
> >figure. :)
>
> Believe it or not, this has never been a big issue for me, though I do find
> it annoying/humorous that Europe seems to acknowledge that human's have
> genetalia while the USA still tries to make genetalia simultaneously dirty
> and sacred.
On the other hand, an American might argue with about as much truth
as you have here that "Europeans" (this construct that we are invoking)
are simply more materialistic when it comes to sexuality.  Both claims
are extremes that should be avoided.

======================================================================
Andreas Johansson said:

> I, apparently unlike many Americans, do not feel that "freedom" is
> necessarily a good thing. I'm all for banning smoking in restaurants,
> for instance.
The question is not whether "freedom" as such is good; the vast
majority of people both in Europe and America agree that it is.
The debate only arises when you specify what *type* of freedom
you favor.  In the US, the political culture is such that people
tend to favor more often economic freedom from the ability of the
state to regulate and to tax; these same people, less frequently,
also are less concerned about how the state interferes in non-
economic behavior, though opinion varies widely. In Europe, opinion
also varies, but the same questions are usually asked.  There the
political culture tends more frequently (but again, with great
diversity) to be sceptical about the merits of economic liberty,
and yet they are ardently opposed to notion of state-sanctioned
executions, or the illegalization of drugs like marijuana. In both
continents, particular issues have strong historical roots, and
thus the state exercises restraint or control where it would
otherwise not do so.  In America, the extent to which the government
is deemed to require separation of church and state befuddles many
Europeans as excessive, while in Europe people frequently don't get
upset if the state forbids proselytizing of most religions (as in
Germany) or outlaws the descration of national symbols (as in France)
or if (as in Denmark), marriages must be registered at the state
church no matter what religion (or lack thereof) you identify with.
All of these strike many Americans as a shocking lack of freedom.

So, again, you can't speak broadly about which continent is freer:
both are, and both are not.

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier            "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637

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