[linux-audio-user] Re: LinuxMAO.org, a french Linux Audio Wiki

[lanas]

On Sat, 04 Mar 2006 19:39:35 -0500
Lee Revell <rlrevell at joe-job.com> wrote:

> On Sat, 2006-03-04 at 19:10 -0500, lanas wrote:
> > I've lived in Europa for four years and there's more culture there
> > than in America, that's one thing for sure.  People in general like
> > to know about things, they have interests, while in America only
> > some do. 

> I don't know what part of America you live in, but there's TONS of
> culture where I am.  Maybe you didn't get into the city enough.

Can't have tons of culture when the country is only 400 years old at
most.

There's no blame to be put: simply look at the facts.  What can you
expect as 'tons of culture' when your country is large as a continent,
does not include other old countries (as Russia, China, etc...), that
Native people (the only ones who lived there before) are
rendered irrelevent, that your northern neighbour is mostly the same
(apart from that little corner up there of 7 millions, you know, but
even them, they're Americans, but with a slight cultural twist), and
when all immigrants, despite their exotic names, adhere quite fast to
the American way of life.

So that's pretty much uniform.  And this uniformity prevents people
from facing 'tons of culture'.  Can't really blame people for that.

Now compare this to Europe.  All these little sovereign 'countries',
each having their own language (most of them).  You cannot live in
Europe on a daily basis for years without that feeling coming up.  Be
it in the news, the papers, that prompts you to think 'Hey, there are
Italians down there close by and Parmalat has troubles and it implies
Berlusconi. Hey, there are Finnish people up there close by (yes I
know, takes 24 hour ship trip from Rosotck to get to Helsinki) and
they're doing some good business with Nokia. etc...". So on so forth.  

Be it the music.  Especially in the middle-to-small leagues, but also
the big stars such as Zugaro whose posters fills up the streets ofa
German city. When did you had the oppurtunity to last see the very good
Swedish band Isildurs Bane ? Or The Flower Kings ? Well, you know, IB
takes their rental truck and drive it down to Germany and then they can
play a few gigs there. And the week after ?  Two Finnish ladies singing
Lapland songs.  Lots of that per week, 52 weeks per year.

Be it the films, rentals and in theatres.  be it the car industry with
cars from France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Czech republic (Skoda - I
know, owned by VW), Sweden.

So you see, there's no blame to be put on the dynamics where people
are living.  Put European people in America and after a generation or
two they'll behave like... Americans ! ;-)  

As for the second point I mentioned, people having in general more
interests in things, this is very flagrant with the percentage of
Americans not caring what Bush has lead them to so far.  Political
chitchat in America often boils down to echoing something heard on
TV.  In Europe you at least get the feel that the individual has given
some thought to the matter.