Are There Any Ways In Which Europeans Are More 'Backward' Than Americans?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Americans are frequently reminded of how ‘backward’ we are in our thinking as compared with Europeans, i.e. our cultural priorities, poverty, gay rights, religious fundamentalism, healthcare coverage, openness to other viewpoints, scientific literacy, capital punishment, dietary habits, consumerism, environmentalism, etc. Across the board, we appear to be behind the times as compared to Europeans.

My question is, are there any ways in which the converse is true - Europeans appear short-sighted, hysterical, and ‘backward’ in their thinking and Americans seem rational, level-headed, and progressive? What are they??

Thanks.

2

Slander laws? Ours are much stricter (though I can’t speak for anywhere else in Europe).

Quite a lot of European countries still have constitutional monarchs.

3

Many European countries still have state churchs, although despite this they’re more secular than the US. Until 2005 French women couldn’t give their surnames to their children if married.

4

I just know that someone will suggest that the USA is more advanced in “labour and capital mobility”, but that might be considered the opposite of “greater worker rights and reliablility of jobs”.

I suggest that the USA is more advanced in certain telecom fields, especially low-cost internet access. Also, there’s more tolerance of immigrants and different ways of living in many parts of the USA than in many parts of Europe (read about the struggles of gays in Latvia, for instance).

5

I think you could make an argument that the US is more enlightened in some ways when it comes to immigration. Some European nations seem to have a harder time assimilating immigrants. Germany, for example, has had a hard time defining what being German can mean for someone without any German blood.

6

The first thing that popped into my mind having traveled to Europe several times? Plumbing. YMMV.

7

David Hasselhoff played to sold out arenas in Germany.

8

One thing that the USA is definitely more advanced in: cleanliness related to smoking. When I was waiting for a train in Paris, people were smoking everywhere and grinding their butts out on the middle of the marble floors of the train station. At least in the US, people seem to be cleaner with respect to smoking in public buildings, though that may be only the effect of smoking bans.

9

[QUOTE=Jammer]
The first thing that popped into my mind having traveled to Europe several times? Plumbing. YMMV.
[/QUOTE]

Heh. That was my first thought as well.

10

Civil and criminal jurisprudence. That’s a big area, for sure. But where there’s a difference, it seems that Americans have the better of the two systems.

But I could be biased just because it’s the system I’m used to.

11

Oh, I forgot another one: The teaching methods in post-secondary education. It seems at a lot of European universities, the professor reads from a book or his notes, the class silently takes notes, and that’s it. Europeans visiting American classrooms are often amazed at the amount of teacher-student interaction that occurs.

12

So you think that’s backward? Or not?
[QUOTE=Walloon]
Civil and criminal jurisprudence. That’s a big area, for sure. But where there’s a difference, it seems that Americans have the better of the two systems.
[/QUOTE]
I’m not sure what you’re saying. Do you mean that the US system (both criminal and civil) is better than the European civil code systems?

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[QUOTE=Cunctator]
Do you mean that the US system (both criminal and civil) is better than the European civil code systems?
[/QUOTE]
Yes.

14

I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call it backwards—it’s not like they’re airbrushing enemies of the party out of the history books—but some of the British policies towards media censorship are a bit…eyebrow raising. Kinda unseemly for a 1st Amendment-lovin’ Yankee, like me.

Same thing with video game censorship, in various European countries. (For violence and gore, mostly. Though Germany bans games with Nazi imagery, in accordance with the rest of their anti-Nazi laws—not that I’d know why a game where you kill evil German troops would be a big seller over there. Or why one that shows the Nazis as being bad and needing to be destroyed would be morally unacceptable, either.)

15

[QUOTE=Cunctator]
So you think that’s backward? Or not?
[/QUOTE]
I would certainly say it’s backward, in that the only reason the monarchy (in this country at least) stay on is because of tradition. Not that tradition is always a bad thing, of course; but in my particular opinion they’re a tradition we might do better without.

16

Laws regulating the conditions and hiring/firing of workers in many European countries are often criticized as being overly restrictive and harmful to economic development, in fact supposedly causing a brain drain to states with more liberal laws.

17

We definitely are more willing to change our household.

The US seems to be the only country which is willing to bring technological advancement into the household. Washers, dryers, dish washers, garbage disposals, centralized air conditioning, in-wall wiring, etc. About all they’ve taken in (regularly) are computers and cell phones.

[QUOTE=Surreal]
Americans are frequently reminded of how ‘backward’ we are in our thinking as compared with Europeans, i.e. our cultural priorities, poverty, gay rights, religious fundamentalism, healthcare coverage, openness to other viewpoints, scientific literacy, capital punishment, dietary habits, consumerism, environmentalism, etc.
[/QUOTE]

Well…

We are certainly criticized on several of these, but I don’t know how many of them are valid, as opposed to it being more of a case of Europeans yelling out that we should have them, being the US and all, when they don’t have it themselves.

Cultural priorities: I can’t think of any other country in the world with more cultures. Decrying us for not always doing the best at it isn’t worth much when said from a fairly homogenous nation. Certainly France isn’t doing the best in being very laissez faire towards Muslims.

Gay rights: How many European nations have legalised same sex marriage? At the moment, three. And one US state does. Civil unions are running at ~16, versus ~7 US states. Europe is a little bit ahead, but not by an extreme amount. And given the amount of religious zealots in the US, that’s pretty impressive.

Poverty: From reading some GD threads, it looks to be that we have more people below the poverty line than many of the large European nations. However, most of ours have a standard of living higher than a lot of people above the “poverty line” in Europe. The American poverty line is higher than the European.

Openness to other viewpoints: I…highly doubt that the US is the loser in this area. Most other countries neither have the range of cultures that we have, nor the same number of nations criticizing them.

Consumerism: How is this bad? Or even backwards? Being picky about where you put your bucks is probably one of the greater blocks against tyranny and getting screwed over yet.

Environmentalism: Outside of not signing up for the Kyoto treaty, the US created the Environmentalist movement and is one of the lead forces behind it. Even the Kyoto issue (between Republicans and Democrats) is more one of “what” is a good solution, rather than whether we should protect the environment. Everyone agrees we should. And I think I recall reading that we’re doing a lot better in cutting back on pollutants than a lot of the countries who did sign up.

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[QUOTE=Sage Rat]
The US seems to be the only country which is willing to bring technological advancement into the household. Washers, dryers, dish washers, garbage disposals, centralized air conditioning, in-wall wiring, etc. About all they’ve taken in (regularly) are computers and cell phones.
[/quote]

The only reason for this is the reality of often living in older buildings and with an older infrastructure - the sewage system can’t cope with garbage disposal, there’s no space for a dryer (see the market for dual washer-dryers), anybody who can squeeze a dishwasher in has one. And air-con needs vents, ducts, etc.

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[QUOTE=GorillaMan]
The only reason for this is the reality of often living in older buildings and with an older infrastructure - the sewage system can’t cope with garbage disposal, there’s no space for a dryer (see the market for dual washer-dryers), anybody who can squeeze a dishwasher in has one. And air-con needs vents, ducts, etc.
[/QUOTE]

I do realise that, but there’s no reason you couldn’t be putting that into new buildings, or working it in over the decades as various renovations are performed. And it’s not like the dual washer-dryer needed 50 years to be invented. Europe and Japan are just now getting to it when the technology has existed a long time.

And, while costly, why not replace the sewage system? Keeping the nicely made old buildings up is one thing, but who cares about preserving the sewage lines as they were 50 years ago?

20

[QUOTE=Sage Rat]
I do realise that, but there’s no reason you couldn’t be putting that into new buildings
[/quote]

In the main, we do. (Air conditioning remains rare in Britain, for pretty obvious reasons)

50 != old. For example, London still relies on the original mid-19th century sewers. Rebuilding them would probably be the most expensive piece of civil engineering ever undertaken in the country (no, I’m not being hyperbolic).