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Thread: The Insular American

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    Featured Member Amethyst's Avatar
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    Default The Insular American

    Sorry about the length, but I'd like to hear your thoughts...

    The Insular American

    By Derrick Z. Jackson | April 29, 2005
    Boston Globe

    NOBEL LAUREATE Wole Soyinka used to ask people not to exaggerate the insularity of Americans by saying things like: ''Can you imagine the Americans? Nobody else plays baseball and yet they call their series the World Series." He used to say, ''C'mon, that's not the issue. That's superficial."

    He does not defend us anymore. ''I'm sorry," he says, chuckling. ''I've come around to the conclusion that it's not superficial at all, that it is an index we better be aware of."

    Soyinka, who turned 70 last year, is in Cambridge to be honored by Harvard University's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute. In an interview yesterday, Soyinka, who has braved death many times in his native, turbulent Nigeria, says that for all of our technology, Americans are now among the most insular and least curious people in the world.

    He says it remains common for him to hear people wonder whether Africa is still colonized by the British, and conflate world events to where ''they think the Yugoslav war was taking place in Asia against Chinese Communists." He says Americans' lack of curiosity is stunning.

    ''It doesn't matter whether it's blacks, it doesn't matter the class, it doesn't matter the level of education," Soyinka says. ''Some of the most brilliant of my colleagues in universities here are so insular that it hurts. I find it very difficult.

    ''The basis of it is a lack of an integrated exposure to other societies. This is one of the most insular societies I've ever encountered anywhere. And I'm not talking just about ghetto kids. Professors . . . parents . . . legislators. It's across the board. That is something you do not find to that extent in the rest of the world."

    Soyinka extends that insularity all the way to the White House, describing President Bush as a religious fanatic who has helped Americans become ''slaves of fear" with his rhetoric about weapons of mass destruction. In his current book ''Climate of Fear," Soyinka likens Bush's you're-with-us-or-with-the-terrorists rhetoric to McCarthyism, ''where the mere failure to denounce the communist ideology with satisfactory fervor or to denounce one's colleagues for communist sympathies became an unpatriotic act."

    Soyinka yesterday reaffirmed his sentiments about Bush: ''I believe it is impossible for him not to realize by now, even though he may not admit it, that he has committed a very grave blunder. It seems to me just impossible for somebody in that position, with the kinds of pronouncements he's made, not to realize that he's been living in a fool's paradise he has created.

    ''The world is far more complex for a nation, however strong, however big, to say that he doesn't care what the rest of the world thinks as long as he's doing what God intends. That kind of language, that kind of belief is what makes any leader, any human being dangerous. . . . Many Americans are in a mental bunker. Any information that tries to penetrate that bunker is rejected as enemy intellectual action."

    Americans so reject the world, this man of letters says he would not even recommend a book as the first step to critical thinking. ''I would begin by saying geography should become a compulsory subject," he says. ''If geography is not taught in schools, parents should begin to teach it in the home.

    ''For me, geography is the summit of human existence. It dictates the culture, it contains the history of how human beings actually recreated existence depending on the environment." In the United States, he continued, ''geography is 'What is the capital of California?' and once they say that, they think they know the world.

    ''The way we were taught geography, it is what made us so confident in the critical assessment of other nations. We know them, I mean, you don't know them all the way, but we know them in a way that is fundamental to the relationship of humanity to the natural environment.

    ''Once people understand that, you understand why Eskimos live in igloos, and you don't see that as backwards but as an intelligent use of resources. You understand why certain peoples eat horrible looking grubs and you recognize them as superior to hamburgers. Curiosity precedes critical thinking. If you're not curious, you can't think."

    Soyinka laughs one more time when he says geography was even more important than history. ''History can always be cooked up, written from the winner's point of view. History is 90 percent fiction. Geography is the material reality from which everything else derives."
    Your thoughts?


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    Banned Melonie's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Insular American

    this prompts a question ... who do you suppose determines suitable curricula for US schoolchildren, and has apparently decided that geography=geopolitics, economics and for that matter math and science should take a back seat to 'humanities' in primary and secondary education (with the other subjects I mentioned being mainly suitable for college level courses) ? What sort of reasons could they have had for making this decision ?

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    Member Fearless Fairy's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Insular American

    Excellant article and a very accurate description of many Americans.

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    God/dess Deogol's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Insular American

    Unfortunately I agree. It is descriptive of many americans.

    Luckily, there are enough americans who are curious enough for the likes of The National Geographic channel to be valid. The Discovery Channel as well as The Learning Channel (though that seems to be evolving into Homes & Gardens lately.)

    I think a lot of Americans are just trying to get by. There is quite a bit of anxiety about the future and what it might bring - especially with Bush whooping up rhetoric about social security. Who knows what the world will be like in 50 years from now.

    (I have no sympathy for the family living paycheck to paycheck, yet the go out and buy one of these $2,200+ TVs. But yet, they have no time to think of others but themselves and how to get what they want on so little. Raymond and Friends has a lot to do with the declination of American curiosity. Oh, I smiled. This is good enough. Oh listen to the goofy music and how they mock each other. I wish I could mock the people around me and get away with it as being clever and witty.)

    A lot of americans are trapped in a routine of life. Wake up, shower, work, eat, watch some TV, go back to sleep - do it all over again. Well trained little animals we are. We are there because we put ourselves there. Then we "multi-task" on so much trivial shit, that when we get home we are intellectually spent.

    Some of us at least hang out on the internet - my co-workers were surprised when I mentioned something on aljazeera.com.

    Even the so called "alternative" people tend to be clueless. They generally are even more clueless being so into their genre, judging who is and isn't lets say "goth" for example, that they don't even know about what is going on in the US.

    As an excellent example about that would be the so called protestors I have encountered while living in California. There is a group of people who think they are in the know and surprisingly are not.

    I am not talking about people who question the Iraq war, but the generally dingy and virulent kind of protestor who only knows the US is to blame for something that is happening in Zimbabwe or such. Ask them who Robert Mugabe is they ponder if he is a reggie singer. They only know the US and so they only blame the US for the worlds ills.

    Insulated? Yes. I have to admit that I at least know my neighbor's names and their aspirations. Unfortunately that is because my girlfriend told me. That said, I do know a little something about my neighbors!

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    Veteran Member myssi's Avatar
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    Default Re: The Insular American

    If I lived in Paris or Berlin and thought about events within a 500 mile (800 km) radius, I would have to immerse myself in the various geopolitical machinations of... how many?... countries.
    Now if I live in Nashville, TN and worry about a 500 mile radius, I only have to care about what goes on in 1 country. I think that sums up one big reason Americans are "insular".
    Furthermore, it seems to me that this Nigerian is pretty isolated in his own academia culture if he thinks most people feel like they are "slaves to fear". Needless to say, as a matter of fact, baseball is played elsewhere in the world: Canada, Japan, central America, Cuba, Taiwan...not to mention Europe (Italy, the Netherlands...) and Australia. The International Baseball Federation has 112 member countries. The teams in the World Series have been North American, but players come from all over the world and exposition games have been played in other continents.

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