The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Is the US still relevant to modernity?
Djinn
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Last week, Adam Gopnik wrote a piece on the new French President, Nicolas Sarkozy . He ended his article with a surprising twist, slotting Sarkozy into a European worldview in which the United States was no longer the vanguard of modernity:
Gopnik is not arguing that America is unimportant; the US is obviously an economic and military juggernaught. But he's suggesting that the 'spirit of the age' is no longer with the United States like it once was. Its in Beijing, its in Dubai, its in London. The US is no longer has universally accepted leadership role by virtue of a moral mandate, nor does the US still have an untarnished, serviceable social model to propose for universal emulation. The nation no longer has the zeitgeist.
To me, this raises a few questions. Is Gopnik right? If he is, is this a problem? Perhaps we should have nothing to fear from a future in which Asia and Europe have all the momentum. Can the United States do anything to once again represent modernity in the eyes of the world? I think this question goes deeper than the failures of any one administration; it goes to the core of what America represents in a post-Soviet world.
The catastrophe in Iraq has had an unlooked-for effect: not to stoke anti-Americanism in a new generation but to make America seem almost marginal. For almost two hundred years, Americanization in Europe has been synonymous with modernization—that’s why the Statue of Liberty stands in New York Harbor, as a gift of the Third French Republic, the fraught state that appeared after Louis-Napoleon’s Second Empire failed. It was a gift not from a complacent old world to a nascent new one but from a newborn republic to one that, after its civil war, was firm and coherent. The point wasn’t that Europe would not abandon us; it was that we would not abandon old Europe to the despots.
Now, for the first time, it’s possible to imagine modernization as something independent of Americanization: when people in Paris talk about ambitious kids going to study abroad, they talk about London. When people in Paris talk about manufacturing might, they talk about China; when they talk about tall buildings, they talk about Dubai; when they talk about troubling foreign takeovers, they talk about Gazprom. The Sarkozy-Gordon Brown-Merkel generation is not unsympathetic to America, but America is not so much the primary issue for them, as it was for Blair and Chirac, in the nineties, when America was powerful beyond words.
What Brown, Merkel, and Sarkozy all have in common is that they do not want to be defined by their response to America—either unduly faithful, as with Blair, or unduly hostile, as Chirac became. Instead, as Levitte says, they all want to normalize relations with a great power that is no longer the only power. Its military weakness has been exposed in Iraq, its economic weakness by the rise of the euro, and its once great cultural magnetism has been diminished by post-9/11 paranoia and insularity. America has recovered from worse before, and may do so again. But it is also possible that the election of Nicolas Sarkozy may be seen not as the start of a new pro-American moment in Europe but as a marker of the beginning of the post-American era.
Gopnik is not arguing that America is unimportant; the US is obviously an economic and military juggernaught. But he's suggesting that the 'spirit of the age' is no longer with the United States like it once was. Its in Beijing, its in Dubai, its in London. The US is no longer has universally accepted leadership role by virtue of a moral mandate, nor does the US still have an untarnished, serviceable social model to propose for universal emulation. The nation no longer has the zeitgeist.
To me, this raises a few questions. Is Gopnik right? If he is, is this a problem? Perhaps we should have nothing to fear from a future in which Asia and Europe have all the momentum. Can the United States do anything to once again represent modernity in the eyes of the world? I think this question goes deeper than the failures of any one administration; it goes to the core of what America represents in a post-Soviet world.
Djinn on
0
Posts
Eh, I'd give you that but it doesn't make for great and functioning cities. Beijing is losing so much of what made it Beijing for the olympics it's tragic. The other aspect of it is that everything is happening all at once and so soon you're going to essentially be saturated with the same type of building. I don't want to go into a big Jane Jacob's rant, but you need variable ages in buildings for a good city to prosper. Partly because of the lower rent and such, but also for the visual dynamism that makes areas attractive.
Plus it isn't as though we're stagnant in the midst of museumification (which parts of Europe, mainly Paris, have to combat). Chicago has 3 core and outrigger skyscrapers breaking the 1000' barrier (Chicago Spire will be tallest in continent and only beaten by the Burj for the world title) right now. Which compliments the 3 older super-tall buildings using the previous standard of the tube structure rather nicely.
?
I would say that Hollywood still qualifies as a taste-maker, though. Even if the sheer numbers can't match Bollywood (which frankly seems improbable, at least in terms of unique viewers regularly exposed to content (which I would argue is more significant than the bottom line if we're talking about cultural forces, etc), seeing as how Hollywood films end up being exported around the world), Hollywood still defines a great deal of what Western pop/mainstream culture is.
Edit: get back to me when another country manages to have the largest military, the largest economy, one of the most influential cultures, and the most important limited natural resource is priced according to its currency all at the same time.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Clear and Present Danger portrayed American forces involved in a secret and illegal war against Columbian drug cartels, and the CIA and Presidency abandoned their forces mid progress. Portraying corrupt and shadowy US government as a bad guy isn't new.
Might it happen in future? Possibly. But I really don't think we've reached the Snowcrash aphorism of:
"There's only four things we [Americans] do better than anyone else: music, movies, microcode (software), and high speed pizza delivery"
- Snow Crash
Granted it would be incredibly awesome if the US was well regarded for its high-speed delivery of Pizza's. This would be a beacon unto other countries, surely.
But really none of the things you mentioned have anything to do with modernity. Biggest and most influential does not necessarily mean a country is important to global modernity. If other countries are making almost as many, if not more contributions to science and technology (which a few are AFAIK) one country, even the US is no longer hugely relevant to it. Would there be an impact if the US suddenly stop contributing? sure. Would it be as damaging as it would have been even 20 years ago?very doubtful
I think it's fair to say that modernism in the US is at a low ebb in most spheres. Hell, we're not even adopting the new technologies at the rate that Europe and the Pacific Rim are doing.
I guess that explains the suckage. AVP2!!!
Back on topic. I think the US's modernism has slowed considerably. The US has turned very, very resistant to change. The US was ahead of the time, in the early 1900s, way ahead of the times all the way til the 90s. Internet, computers, vehicles, air travel, healthcare. Then we sort of calmed down and now we notice our fiber network is being constricted, our technology outdated, and no one wants to pay to upgrade We'd rather spend all the time and money on tanks, aircraft carriers, fighting video game violence, etc. etc.
B.net: Kusanku
I side with my countrymen.
If we wanted to wipe Iraq off the map, there are a number of ways to do it. Making them stop killing each other and form a modern government is an exercise in extreme political hubris that has not gone so well, but it does not say a lot about our military.
A lot of your statements are mutually exclusive, do you know what you're talking about? You can't state that a country is extremely influential, and then even consider the notion of that influence just suddenly stopping or having no impact. And also, the gorilla statement made by feral is a common economics metaphor. Strong economy=other countries have to consider you when making decisions, and therefore you have influence on their actions and how they develop
If a country has a strong international influence which the U.S. certainly does, there's no way it can "suddenly disappear" without some huge catastrophe occurring, which would then very adversely affect other countries' economies. While the U.S. may no longer be the most progressive or the clear cut leader in innovation, new technology, many other countries see our standard of living and economic stability as a GOAL for them. The definition of modernization is also a relative term. To the poor 3rd world country, having a central banking system may constitute as "modernization". But for a 1st world country like the U.S., "modernization" defines a broader and more complicated set of topics because we having the basics covered already. This means that the U.S. most certainly has a huge influence on modernization, we just aren't on the cutting edge of progress/growth in terms of 1st world countries.
Whether modernization produces overall good or bad effects is a completely different issue especially when you can consider it from an economic, cultural and other prespectives.
More and more countries are moving away from the dollar for pricing oil. The Euro is the new hotness in the oil business.
(Also, the US military keeps getting its ass kicked in international wargames.)
Shipping and import/export companies; which indirectly means any consumer purchasing products that involved oversea transportation.
And thanks to terrorist concerns, entering the United States is about as pleasant as a colonoscopy (though sometimes you can kill two birds with one stone).
The last 7 years haven't been good for America. It is sad, really sad, because traditionally we've never had a benevolent (in theory) world superpower before. I can hardly see China or India being as good for the world, though that is where the future is.
I don't know about you guys, but I've enrolled in mandarin lessons. I suggest you do the same.
The US was better for the world, overall, than any other superpower. I'm not ignoring Latin America interference, and I certainly won't apologize for it, but historically speaking US was the best superpower the world has had. That may be because the competition isn't that heavy...
The Ottoman Empire was actually pretty tolerant of minorities and foreigners, perhaps too tolerant, as they allowed the Europeans to take advantage of the low import taxes. However, I wouldn't compare the Ottomans to the Americans in terms of being a "peaceful superpower" especially considering the Ottomans' system of warfare and the fact that they were continually losing/gaining territory with constant fighting throughout the history of their Empire.
This is a joke, right? Or are you an American yourself?
No, the US wasn't ahead of the time from 1900-1990. That's a load of typical American bullshit. While there were certainly instances when the States lead the charge, and may have harnessed the 'spirit of the age', it was never a giant, continuous stretch of American superiority. THE defining characteristic of the age was the dichotomy between the American and Soviet experience, not one exclusively or the other. When the bottom fell out after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there's been a kind of interregnum where the US has tried (in vain) to exclusively capture the spirit of the new century. It never really materialized, and I don't think it will again. That isn't a bad thing at all, and I for one welcome the time when hamburgers and bad beer are no longer considered high cultural items.