Americans oblivious to world around them

Editor,

I’m an exchange student from Italy. During my stay in New Mexico I’m trying to use this opportunity to figure out how Americans act in everyday life, as opposed to stereotypes and what comes from movies and broadcasting. I’m talking, watching and listening.

The conclusion — right now — is that, unfortunately for them, most of Americans still consider themselves the center of the world — the only possible world, looking at the rest of the planet superficially as a fancy group of neighbors.

The first weeks I was here, a number of people asked me if I was comfortable driving on the right side of the road. Well, in Italy we’ve been driving that way since 1910s as does the rest of Europe, except for the British. Moreover, we can say Americans are the only Anglo-Saxons who do not drive on the left.

To me that simple story points out a shattering misconception — a lack of knowledge of the rest of the world — and it’s only one piece of the puzzle. Most Americans cannot understand that, outside their borders, people think differently, live differently, believe in different values — and they are not less important; they’re simply different. Of course, a lot of people all around Earth think like that, but the substantial difference is that the U.S. has asserted itself as a leading country worldwide for decades.

I come from a country where it has set, since forever, in our collective psyche to be open with ourselves about everything with foreign countries — Germany, France, Britain, United States, etc, usually to say we’re ages behind them.

A high school teacher I recently talked with an American-born student who believed the U.S. risks forging new generations of citizens who are uninterested, apathetic and, above all, not inquiring about what’s outside the U.S., what other people think and why they think and behave in those ways.

Force yourself to meet the strangers, the different, the uncommon, and urge us to reflect on who we are and how we live. If people do that finally, and if they can take something from the world around them, then perhaps the American way can be improved or changed.

The world is changing and the role of the U.S. is not the same as it was 50 or 20 years ago. The recent scandal over the spying activities on several European governments show us there are some limits the “reason of state” should never overcome. It’s now time for the United States, its government and citizens, to start building a new kind of relationship with the world, to start reconsidering old values, old schemes and old points of view.

Davide Arminio
UNM student