Comments by "Jessica Dainese" (@JessicaDainese) on "Neutrality Studies"
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@svenhanson398 I agree. In 1992 I spent a year in the USA as an exchange student. It was there that I realised that us Europeans are a family. A family whose members have different languages, traditions, interests etc, but share a common history, many values, behaviors etc. We were a group of students from Italy, Spain, Germany, and other European countries. We all experienced the same culture shocks in the USA. We all critized the same things about the USA. We could talk among ourselves about things American students had no idea about, from politics to history to European "pop culture". We even "looked European". Of course I (as an Italian) was more stylish than the German student 😂 (joking), but we all dressed better than American students (who often looked like they were wearing pj's or going to the gym). We laughed about the same things. We all got a bit fatter after a few months of American food. None of us was interested in school sports, cheerleaders or going to the prom. Once a bunch of Europeans from different countries find themselves in another continent, they do realise there is indeed a shared European culture.
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@svenhanson398 yes I agree. I have a diploma in European languages and literatures. I studied European history, philosophy, arts etc. I also travelled alot and lived for periods of time in the UK and USA. The UK is like, half way between continental Europe and the USA. Italy has been, for centuries, after the Roman Empire, ruled by foreign powers. You can still tell today. There are regions (like Piemonte and Val d'Aosta) that are more French-like, regions that are more German-like (Trentino-Alto Adige, Veneto), and the South and Sicily are like a different country (they were under Spanish, Arab, Byzantine rule among others). I do not even need to travel outside Italy to find different cultures or languages 😀 every region has its own language (some call them dialects, but they are proper languages, different than Italian). So it comes very natural for me to engage with (and respect) different cultures. Unfortunately in the USA they are taught that American culture is the best, and that everybody in the world wants to be like them. They get very defensive if you criticize any aspect of American culture. In Italy, we criticize our country and ourselves all the time 😂 (apart from food. We do think Italian food is above criticism lol). In regards to clothes, I dont think it is just vanity that makes us want to dress nicely. It is a question of respect. If you go to school or work dressed in pyjamas, it looks like you dont really want to be there and couldnt even bother to get dressed. This lack of respect was very obvious to me as an exchange student in an American highschool. In my Italian highschool, us students treated teachers with respect. No matter how friendly some teachers were, they were still teachers. In the USA, I saw students treating teachers in appalling, disrespectful ways that would not be tollerated here. I saw PARENTS treating teachers disrespectfully. In Italy, at least when I was a student, no parents would question the school's authority. If a student got a bad grade, no parent would blame the teacher. American parents do blame the teachers. Anyway, there is at least one thing all Europeans agree on: that we are NOT Americans 😂 nor we want to be.
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@svenhanson398 @svenhanson398 yes I agree. I have a diploma in European languages and literatures. I studied European history, philosophy, arts etc. I also travelled alot and lived for periods of time in the UK and USA. The UK is like, half way between continental Europe and the USA. Italy has been, for centuries, after the Roman Empire, ruled by foreign powers. You can still tell today. There are regions (like Piemonte and Val d'Aosta) that are more French-like, regions that are more German-like (Trentino-Alto Adige, Veneto), and the South and Sicily are like a different country (they were under Spanish, Arab, Byzantine rule among others). I do not even need to travel outside Italy to find different cultures or languages 😀 every region has its own language (some call them dialects, but they are proper languages, different than Italian). So it comes very natural for me to engage with (and respect) different cultures. Unfortunately in the USA they are taught that American culture is the best, and that everybody in the world wants to be like them. They get very defensive if you criticize any aspect of American culture. In Italy, we criticize our country and ourselves all the time 😂 (apart from food. We do think Italian food is above criticism lol). In regards to clothes, I dont think it is just vanity that makes us want to dress nicely. It is a question of respect. If you go to school or work dressed in pyjamas, it looks like you dont really want to be there and couldnt even bother to get dressed. This lack of respect was very obvious to me as an exchange student in an American highschool. In my Italian highschool, us students treated teachers with respect. No matter how friendly some teachers were, they were still teachers. In the USA, I saw students treating teachers in appalling, disrespectful ways that would not be tollerated here. I saw PARENTS treating teachers disrespectfully. In Italy, at least when I was a student, no parents would question the school's authority. If a student got a bad grade, no parent would blame the teacher. American parents do blame the teachers. Anyway, there is at least one thing all Europeans agree on: that we are NOT Americans 😂 nor we want to be.
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