Some Effects of American Exceptionalism

What follows are some effects of our default exceptionalist mode, in no particular order.

Since the metric system was developed in France and not in the US, we assume that surely it is not is good as what we use. We are happily unaware that our measurement system dates from ancient Roman times as handed down through the Middle Ages. It a mishmash of ad hoc values for weight, distance, and volume which gives headaches to every school child and wastes many hours in attaining mastery. Several years ago, NASA lost a Mars lander which crashed into the planet instead of entering a smooth orbit prior to touchdown. The cause was traced back to a single programmer in a company NASA had contracted to create the software for the approach and landing phase. NASA does its measurements in metric, as do all scientists. It never occurred to the programmer, however, that anyone uses anything other than our old imperial system and put the instructions in miles instead of kilometers. This could only happen because of an assumption that no one would choose to do things differently from the way we do them, which in turn is based on the tenet that we are the epitome of all the best.

We have always assumed that we are the pinnacle of human social evolution. Consequently we view our government as the most advanced in the world rather than as a product of a particular culture, as are all governments. We share this trait with some of the European countries. When they granted independence to almost all of their colonial holdings following World War II, they drew boundaries to create "countries" meant to be nation-states like France, the United Kingdom, or Germany. There were two big problems with their procedure. The first is that these new countries contained numerous ethnic groups with competing cultures and values and speaking numerous different languages. As if that were not bad enough, several ethnic groups were split into two, and sometimes three countries. In consequence, they lacked the social and cultural cohesion that European countries forged over centuries and which is not complete even there. The other problem is that political systems are part of a people's culture. Every ethnic group has a set of values, procedures, and power arrangements which they take as natural as breathing. The situation has led to instability, oppressive governments, wars, and genocide. Africa would be much better off if the Europeans had never gone there.

We apparently think we are so much better, that if we intervene in Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Iraq, or any other place, people will share our democratic values and happily adopt our political system. We see the effect of that: it has never worked. Having grown up in Argentina from age 3 to 18 and having lived in Brazil for four years as an adult, it is my sad duty to report that although Latin Americans are glad to know individual Americans and give them the benefit of the doubt at first, they thoroughly detest our foreign policy.

I went to Argentine schools before high school, when I entered the American Community School in a suburb of Buenos Aires, where I did my last three years in preparation for college in the US. The American community would never consider having their elementary-school children in Argentine schools (it gets too complicated in high school for people to transfer in and out). They all congregated in wealthy neighborhoods, living in houses as big as the ones they could have in the States. There they replicated American life and seldom interacted with Argentines and thus missed the warmth of friendship, the cultural memory of Europe, the wonderful food, and the adventure of absorbing a new culture Argentina could give them. The British have more schools than we do down there. My sisters attended some of them for many years. The Germans also have schools all over the country. They, as well as we, are averse to accepting other cultures.

When we lived in Comodoro Rivadavia, the main city of the Patagonia and a major port in a stunning location, American oil companies had extensive concessions for petroleum exploration and extraction. They shipped in prefabricated houses from the US and created a small American town on the other side of the mountain from the city. People noticed, of course. They and their ways are not good enough for us. That's the message.

So my point is that we are making enemies and setting potential friends against us because of our assumption of superiority. We are damaging our own interests. If we just understood that we are one country among others, acted with humility, and learned other cultures before acting, our many great accomplishments would begin to get a hearing and the world would like us much better.