Cultural Questions, What do you wanna know? ask them here

[Mr Khan]

vlad321 said:

I have been wondering about something for a bit now, maybe it can be explained, because it is most definitely culture.

I have lived in the US for about 13 years now, and at first I thought the stereotypical, golf culture, etc. type of Americans were just pure idiots. Then I realized they aren't any more idiotic than elsewhere. So I decided they were just uneducated. But that is also false, they go through high school, some through college, and while the education system is utter crap, the middle and upper classes are very much educated.

Most recently I came to the answer I wanted to, and realized that they are just ignorant. Not stupid, or uneducated, but ignorant. Furthermore, they WANT to be ignorant of what happens in the world. The US is the only country where "ignorance is bliss" has been used for anything other than an insult that I have heard. Why is that?  Culturally, what drives the middle and upper class, golf culture, of the US to embrace ignorance?

Almost all reasons that lead to the hatred of America abroad seem to originate from this, so I am just wondering where it comes from.

Edit: I am not generalizing to all Aemricans, just a huge chunk. There are plenty of worldly americans out there and I have as much fun socializing with them as anyone from Europe. People here should know who I am talking about. I'm talking about the type that went to or send their kids to finishing schools and private schools. The type that hovers over their children and tries to make play sets safer by removing everything, because god forbid their child falls down and scrapes a knee. Whether you like it or not, those types of people are basically the majority, then again maybe CA, CT, and the south haven't given me a big enough sample size to base this opinion on, but in those 3 areas by far the majority fall in the label of ignorant.

Isolationism runs deep in the American psyche: we don't care about other countries' affairs or problems and we don't want to care. Now you are correct in that that does not dictate all Americans' views, but there was a reason why we took so long getting into either World War.