Ask A Genius 272 – Three Points of View on America
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/27
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Rick Rosner: Alright, in my lifetime there have been three points of view about thinking in America. When I was a little kid… actually I missed the first one, which was pure kind of rugged individualist culture, but that has… a thick rope running through American culture. Then you have… we have to get smarter to beat Russia deal which kicked in a couple of years before I was born.
Then you have the nerdism triumphant… with people my age in their 30’s becoming billionaires by creating Apple and Microsoft, Cisco and just the whole internet industry, the digital information processing industry. Now you… all of these things they are not abrupt as they are in the existing culture and differ from region to region. From whatever people… among whatever people you hang out with, now another overlay on America is… belligerent ignorance that we are not going to believe anything that doesn’t back up our point of view.
We are going to believe that evolution is a tool of the Godless, who want to abort our babies, believe that climate change is a conspiracy… to keep us scared and turn us socialist. Or the Chinese might be behind it according to Trump. So you have these various overlays so… I would say in General; America might be less of an intellectual country… but because we have one of the bigger populations among the world’s countries, and because we have an excellent education system… though it is under attack.
We are still a place for a lot of stuff based on productive thinking to go on. But we like to think ourselves as cowboys and Rambo’s… driving a pickup truck with a big American flag on it. Unlike Finland we do not have… nights that last for two and half months in the winter, where we sit around and drink and think, or out doing and building. That’s it.
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