Where the American Condition is concerned, seeing is believing

You know, its funny. As a Brit looking at America through media, you get a real image that the Americans have a massively over developed sense of entitlement. They believe - fundamentally believe that they inhabit the greatest country on Earth, and that they have the utmost entitlement to do whatever they want as a nation. It's their rules.

Now, when you meet indidividual americans properly, you realise that this isn't really true. Most of them are pretty down to earth, and especially the ones that I have met have actually been just as fascinated by the UK as we are with them. They are friendly, they are welcoming and they are decent.

When I've travelled the US recently, I've had the good fortune to be able to spare a few hours from business to do a little exploring, and to be honest it showed me a number of things that really illuminated the American Condition for me.

I'll take a couple of simple examples. Lets look at their housing. Now in suburban Connecticut, most places look schematically similar. There are houses set back from the streets themselves by decent driveways, they are set our on nice sideroads, and more than anything there is  s p a c e  everywhere. The houses are widely spaced - far more than you'd ever see in the UK. And what you need to remember is that this is the norm.

More than that, no two houses next to each other are the same. There are areas in the US where you get tract housing (houses all of the same design and joined), but nothing like the terraces we often live in. And another difference is that there are very few fences. Most yards are completely unconstrained, whereas we take extra pains to absolutely define what we own and where others cannot go.

So in the US you have lovely houses, even at the lower financial end, with a ton of space all around, you're always unique - and the amount of places with Basketball hoops, swings, boats, etc is amazing.

There is more to it all as well. When you want to go somewhere, cars are cheap, ubiquitous and everywhere. Gas is cheap, so you can afford to go wherever you want. There are stores of all kinds around. They are much more separated than we have, and you'll probably have to go further, but it doesn't matter here.

They have some great and simple innovations like excellent school transport for everyone. They have open space like you wouldn't believe, they have excellent internal flight transport, and provided you're employed they have great benefits, healthcare, dental, etc, and the price of life is pretty cheap.

And perhaps more than we do, they have a sense of community that goes with their open spaces and greater physical separation. They are generally more friendly and open to one another - for the most part.

So, am I sold? Not quite. Because there are flip sides.

Yes, they do have convenient access to so much. But somehow it makes the experience shallow and superficial. When travelling there is a propensity to be outwardly friendly and engaging, without ever developing an actual depth of caring. It is a basic, superficial experience that can often fall away when you look harder. It's the same with lots of the experiences. Yes, there are manifold places to eat, but they are almost all chains, and a lot are fast food. The stores are largely chains. Innovation is rare.

There are many other reasons as well - life is cheap to live, but sickness and death are terribly expensive, even with Obamacare in place. Because of the space that exists and the outward friendliness, you can be just about anything, but making a meaningful connection with anyone can be very difficult - I can understand why the US has a propensity to produce people who can feel terribly lost and alone.

And so on. I won't bore you further.

But the point of this is that having seen a tiny fraction American life (and I admit it is only a tiny fraction), I can quite understand why they come across as having a sense of entitlement. On the surface, they appear to have so very much compared to so so many other nations. Space. Convenience. Money. But the truth is a lot more complicated.

Isn't it always?

Ramblings of a peaceful mind

Its funny what travelling does to you. A lot of time to think, especially when travelling alone. It also puts you into new situations where you get to see life from something of an outsiders perspective.

I always find that this can be very illuminating. It gives you that moment where you can step back from your day to day and look at things a little more objectively. It tends to be the time that you see things most clearly.

Travelling at the moment, my mind turns to Life, the general organic structure, rather than my own existence. Seeing the breadth of life and regarding both the subtle cultural differences around me and the points where our creeds concur makes me have a little more faith in humanity tonight. This is because whilst the US is a vast, slightly daft, very self assured but ultimately very lonely place for many at times due to the geographical distribution (not just across the country, but the distance between houses, the distance between community), they make up for it with a profound attempt to create a true community and interaction with one another.

Seeing that kind of interaction makes me happier. And so too does travelling to another culture and finding such good in it. In fact, it reminds me of the good I have found in every culture so far. It sits there ready to embrace, if you only let yourself see it.

In the face of this, I cannot begin to state how happy I am to have had such a moral decision in my life as to change industry so that I can truly embrace pacifism. Essentially, I cannot in good conscience understand the compunction to undertake violence against others because ultimately they are all precious, hugely interesting and generally good.

That is also making me extend the question as to the rest of Life in its organic sense. If I wish to embrace peace properly, must I be vegetarian? Must I stop driving in order to help the environment? I have no answers on these ones yet, but more than anything - and Descartes would be proud...

I am thinking.

Connectivity

Coming off the back of an amazing birthday, where my friends geographically close and far showed just how awesome they all are, I sit in an airport terminal turning my mind to connectivity.

Not just how you link your phone up, how many friends you have on Facebook or who you hang out with in any given week.

I'm even extending this beyond who you know directly and who you can have claimed to meet.

I'm actually pondering the far more primitive and far more pervasive connectivity that surrounds us at all times, which we barely even notice.

Think about a shopping centre. Think about a football match. Better yet, think about an airport, because its topical for me right now and will play to a later example.

When you wander around these places, just think about how many other people are there. I know, all faceless souls right? Well... Think about how many you look directly at - how many you wonder about or have a thought about. I'll bet you its a lot more than you imagine. That is a connection. Primitive, simple, but a connection.

Now think about how many you make eye contact with. That's definitely a connection.

Now. Think about how many must see you, mostly without you realising. That will be a lot of connections. Manifold ways that you have affected people in tiny, simple ways that you can neither know or understand.

Let's take my extreme example - you are on an aircraft. Look out the window, you're up high and you can't see faces. But how many faces are looking up at you? More than you can imagine. After all, how many times have you looked up at a plane for a moment and wondered who is on it or where it is going? All connection, no matter how simple.

We talk about how this can be a faceless, lonely world, but the truth is that if you are willing to look, there are connection everywhere. You are basking in the warming glow of your connection with the rest of humanity, washing over you at every moment.

And you didn't even know it.

I'm back. Still finding a place.

Hello. It's been like... 3 months. Yup. Long time.

Essentially, I stopped blogging at the point where I lost my cat. I know that sounds odd to say to anyone who doesn't have cats as a reason why things stopped for a while, but she is an integral part of my wonderful little family of four (me, my Beloved, Annabelle and Moonrise) and the loss precipitated a full month of combing the neighbourhood and hunting everywhere. Sadly to no avail. In the wake of that it was hard to find anything good to blog about, and then Xmas, etc. came up.

So here we are. And now I am blogging just on the eve of my 31st Birthday (seriously, about half an hour from now).

Birthdays are always a time of reflection, and this is no different. Life has been, on the whole, pretty brilliant. I have my Beloved, I have my family, I have my cats (a new addition of Jasper joined our little enclave). I've just had an epic trip to Center Parcs, and I'm looking at more holidays this year, including some proper travelling adventures again. I have my work, where I'm considered an expert in my field (!) and I'm now fully into engineering management. I have my cooking, I have my reading, I have my piano and now I have added a true SLR camera to my arsenal of brilliant pastimes. I'm finally beginning to lose weight. Things are good.

It still leaves a few questions though. I'm still not really sure what will happen going forward over the next year. I'm pretty confident that I can fill it with something good, but I have no idea where I'll be at the end of it. That being said I had no idea at the start of last year that I'd be here by now.

So here I am, back again and blogging properly. I'm doing much better at being Masamune, I'm still doing very, very well at talking a load of old rubbish, but I'm looking forward the most to trying to find out what my place will be in this world over the next year. Over the next few years I guess.

I've managed to cheat death for 31 years, I'd quite like to cheat him out of quite a lot more. So I guess that's plenty of time to find a place.

Time for birthday fireworks!