I thought this was an interesting article that investigates the different approaches to life in America and Europe. Many of us often discuss/debate these differences, and many of us have also lived them, so it was interesting to get a perspective that tries to balance the views from both sides of the Atlantic. The article was written by Chris Arnade, and published in The Free Press, a source that tries to present different sides of arguments and philosophies – much-needed balance in today’s divisive world.
“Recently, on the last morning of a trip to Italy, I found myself in a quiet suburb of Milan. Determined to get food before the long maze of international travel began, I headed to the plaza at 6:00am – the plaza with the 600-year-old Renaissance sanctuary, that is, not the one with the 500-year-old baroque basilica – to try and find something, anything really, to eat.
The café there wasn’t anything special by Italian standards, but to me as an American, it was outstanding: a display of fresh pastries and croissants, and an array of fruits, eggs, and sandwiches. Since it was my final day, I splurged and let the waitress-owner pick a sugary raisin pastry for me, and for the next hour, I sipped cappuccinos in the cobblestone square, watching the regulars come and go. Thanks to the delays and incompetence of Delta Air Lines, it would be another 50 hours before I had my next sit-down meal – in the bland lobby of a chain hotel, sitting on an indistinct service road, four miles from the Atlanta airport. That feast – four eggs on two paper plates with plastic silverware and gas station coffee – was five times as expensive. The eggs weren’t that bad, but the setting was bleak: a sterile corporate design meant to keep costs down while offending as few people as possible. A crude accounting of cost and calories shows little difference between the two breakfasts, but that’s exactly why such simple measures miss the point. My meal in Italy was uplifting; the one in Atlanta was depressing. The aesthetics of pastries and eggs might seem trivial, but they aren’t – because they point to deeper, more profound differences between two different continents, and two very different cultures.
The debate over whether the U.S. or Europe offers a superior lifestyle is eternal, and – as someone who spends my life traveling, and writing about it – I’ve participated in it many times. I’ve played both sides – not out of duplicity, but because there’s no simple answer. Europe is undeniably healthier, but the U.S. is richer, for example. Online, though, people want a clear winner. This became clear again while I was in Italy, when the latest version of the classic meme, “The American mind cannot comprehend this”, “went viral – this time attached to an image of a group of young Spaniards drinking and smoking in the street. Europeans laughed at beleaguered, office-bound Americans who cannot understand the joys of café culture. But, as the battle started to wane, a power outage across Spain and Portugal gave the American side an opportunity to revive the meme to mock the backwardness of Europe: They couldn’t understand how a continent could just lose power.
Now there’s more truth in this “American mind” meme than most. The U.S. and Europe really do have two different understandings of what it means to be human, and this manifests in our rules, regulations, and social preferences. While both the U.S, and Europe share a commitment to classical liberalism and democracy, we have very different definitions of the public good, and therefore very different views of what we want from life. In broad terms, the U.S. emphasizes material wealth, opportunity, and individual liberty, while Europe places more value on community health, shared resources, and a sense of place. From the European perspective, the U.S. is built on the cult of the individual, which is why it has too many guns, obscenely large cars, inadequate public transportation systems, and dysfunctional public spaces. From the U.S. perspective, Europeans are held back by a vision of the common good that means stealing from the successful to prop up the losers, which is why they are unmotivated, unproductive slackers who would rather sip coffee all day than work. This difference isn’t just about policy on taxes, healthcare, or labor rights – it’s about how we understand the “good life” and how our physical environments reflect that.
If individual liberty is the priority, as it is in the U.S., then the public sphere can largely be ignored. It is a place you have to pass through on the way from your workplace to your home, which is big enough to serve as a social space (your home that is). The result is public spaces in the U.S. are given short shrift, with little appreciation for the aesthetics. Thus today, despite our immense natural and material beauty, large parts of the U.S. are ugly, soulless, and dehumanizing – a landscape of bland housing developments, strip malls, and franchise stores that look as though they were dropped from the sky into bulldozed land, with no regard for the surrounding environment.
This isn’t to say Europe doesn’t also have its own urban sprawl or dehumanizing architecture. It does – especially in the Netherlands – but even in these places, there’s a lingering respect for beauty and the need to publicly socialize. If the state doesn’t provide social spaces, family-run businesses do, because the citizens demand it.
Nor is it to say all of America is ugly. There are pockets of beauty – neighborhoods, cafés, and restaurants with a European level of aesthetic appreciation – but these are exceptions, often built for wealthy and educated elites.
By contrast, if you find yourself stuck – as I have been – in a random town in France, Germany, Italy, or the Netherlands, you will almost always find a café, restaurant, or park, that offers something uplifting. You can sit, have a decent meal, and relax without being immersed in banality.
That simply isn’t the case in the U.S. Beyond being depressing, this homogeneity means much of America feels indistinguishable from place to place. When I was in that hotel in Atlanta, I could have been in any city in the country, In Europe, however, there’s still a genius loci – a spirit of place – that persists, even in areas not known for their historical significance. You don’t need to be in a famous part of Paris or a picturesque Lombardy village to detect an area’s unique identity – though that certainly helps. Belonging depends on being part of something larger than yourself and, in Europe, this is tied to a cultural heritage that stretches back millennia. The U.S., with its relative youth and diversity, lacks this connection – and instead, its obsession with wealth has made us a nation of fragmented communities.
That said, material wealth is obviously an important factor in human happiness and fulfillment. It doesn’t matter how much a society values the collective good if it exists in a state of outright destitution, as I witnessed in Dakar. But above a certain level of riches, wealth brings diminishing returns; the pursuit of more money can even become destructive, pushing aside all other sources of happiness.
Both Europe and the U.S. are wealthy enough that gross domestic product (GDP) is no longer the singular measure of well-being. But unlike Europe, the U.S. seems to have forgotten that human happiness also depends on things less measurable than money.
Some readers may grumble: “You’re giving Europe too much credit. You’re only seeing its best parts as a tourist. But I’ve seen America’s best parts, too. I probably couldn’t have had my life, where I changed careers three times – from academia to bond trading to traveling for a living – outside of the U.S. I am a product of American individuality, cultural flexibility, and economic might, and I’m not here to simply bite the hand that fed me.
So, rather than claiming Europe is superior, I’m simply saying: Its different. The vast majority of people born and raised in Europe will prefer it there, and the same is true in the U.S., because we are all primed to embody the values we grow up around, and for almost everyone that means you are more comfortable living in the culture that raised you.
It is the elites who culture-shop, picking and choosing what works best for them: Well-do-do Americans can escape the banal landscapes, as I do, through travel, or by living in exclusive U.S. neighborhoods that share European qualities. Likewise, highly motivated Europeans can find a way to move to America, perhaps by working in a large corporation, and thereby gain American levels of wealth. It is the working class who are tethered to live within their culture. They’re who this debate should be about, not us cultural chameleons.
“What constitutes a fulfilling life?” remains one of the most important questions anyone can ask, and since a society and its culture is built from the top down, policymakers getting that question right has literally lifelong ramifications for hundreds of millions of people.
At present, it’s easy to think the U.S. has the “right” answer – because America is “winning” in the most quantifiable areas, like GDP, innovation, and economic freedom, and also because the U.S. model works “better” for the elites doing the debating: it provides the freedom they want, without the burden of contributing to a broader public good.
This is unfortunate, because America’s elites would benefit from a bit more humility – gleaned not from visiting the quaint parts of Europe, but from spending time in its less glamorous corners. Its there, where there is deeper meaning without great wealth, that the contrast between what these two things can offer is clearest – and where it hopefully becomes evident that human dignity isn’t just a theoretical subject to debate online.”
In my opinion, it comes down to how you define quality of life!
I would appreciate comments on these thoughts, and I will publish any I receive.
