anachronist Europe
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vaadake lahedat artiklit veebruari Wired magasiinis http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.02/misha.html
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How Europe Can Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Future
Science and technology are at the heart of a new culture war - pitting America's exuberance against Continental conservatism. Can we talk?
By Misha Glenny
It's not easy being Europe in the 21st century. Just ask anyone: The United States is leaving the Old Continent behind again - this time to wallow in technological anachronism. In their disarmingly frank style, many Americans look across the Atlantic and mutter, "What a bunch of losers." Europe, they say, appears bent on confounding individual endeavor at every opportunity. The familiar list of complaints goes on: excessive state interference in all walks of life; punitive tax regimes; a pervasive envy of the rich and famous; and that oh-so-infuriating condescension.
The culture war has been brewing for the last decade. But how much did Europe and America ever have in common? The Soviet Union was the glue that bound together the two halves of NATO; since the Soviet Union's collapse, we have come to realize that the idea of shared cultural values between Europe and America is, mostly, an illusion.
Just as Americans see Europeans as hopelessly stodgy, many Europeans really do believe Americans are uncultured, even if the sentiment is buried under layers of patronizing rhetorical fluff. Ostentatious wealth is considered gaudy, while state intervention is often seen as a matter of conscience, not economics. Affluent societies have a moral duty to collect substantial taxes to assist the disadvantaged - the American health system, for example, is regarded as downright offensive, excluding a huge underclass from all but the most basic medical care.
European foreign-policymakers angrily accuse their American counterparts of being insufferably stupid for buying into a Hollywood-inspired fantasy like the National Missile Defense system. And European consumers are horrified by what they see as American complacency and ignorance over the potential hazards of genetically modified foods; in general, the uninhibited exploitation of nature is much more widely accepted in the US than it is in Europe.
