What does it mean to be an American in the United States?

Question

What does it mean to be an American in the United States?

Answer 1

Honestly, it doesn't mean all that much anymore.

In the past, there were threads of culture that unified all Americans. Everyone got their news from the same radio and television stations, they watched the same movies, they watched the same television shows.. Not in a vain attempt to fit in and be like everyone else, but because there was no disposable market to speak of. You couldn't put four televisions in a house and expect everyone to be watching different things. You couldn't put out an indie album that you made in your basement or your garage or whatever.

Since then, culture has become so divided. If I want to talk to people who share my interests and worldview, I can. If I only want to hear news that I agree with, that's possible too. If I don't want to go to the store because the checkout lady smells funny, I can probably order what I want online. In short, people no longer have anything in common with their neighbors, which is why everyone has become so distraught bout how no one cares about the people around them anymore. A citizen of the non-nostalgic 21st Century might calmly ask "Why should I care about someone that I have nothing in common with?" Being a human being is not good enough anymore. Being in a similar social class isn't even good enough. Identity can be bought and sold the moment that our clothes or our cars make a single statement about us as individuals. In short, anyone who even listens to the music and ascribes to the philosophy of punk rock is a poser without adhering to a dress code to denote belonging to a social circle. This is not a communist/anti-capitalist axiom, this is a point of fact. In an identity in which identity can be bought and sold, it loses a great deal of inherent meaning and gains a great deal of social and cultural meaning.

This country is divided by far more than political lines. In the Northeast business culture, coworkers get together on Friday evenings and talk about what needs to be done on Monday morning. You will find more of a "work-to-live" than a "live-to-work" approach as you move west. Americans are not above all fat or lazy as stereotypes suggest. Americans are not penny-pinchers only concerned with the bottom line of profit. There are only TWO things that Americans share.. their individual communities- the mom and pop stores and the local coffee shops and the parks that are slowly becoming obsolete business models. The fabric of American civil life, based upon a natural and artificial environment worth caring about, is disappearing before our eyes. The second thing shared between all, or most, Americans is an extreme sense of individualism. Everyone seems to be in agreement that personal freedom and prosperity is the ultimate goal of any society. This fact has been exploited in recent years for political gain. Americans are, as a whole, willing to sacrifice freedom for freedom- just as long as we can lose freedom on our own terms. Regardless of this, hyperindividualism is not enough to unite a huge population of vastly different people behind a single identity- EVEN patriotism. Quite a country that we live in. I wouldn't replace it with anywhere else.

</soapbox>

Answer 2

It means that you are in danger of going down the tubes,and dragging a lot of other countries down with you, unless you change your ways.

Answer 3

like everyone else, work, work and work, then pay taxes and more taxes, pay bills and work some more.