I'm glad I left America

If you can read this blog, you probably live in a western, or at least westernized, country. I admit I haven't been to any other western country except Canada (and that was only for two weeks), so perhaps this blog won't apply to you personally. Maybe England, Australia and the rest are different from the culture in America, but maybe this post will resonate with you because they're closer than you think.

Men who want to marry in the west are screwed for numerous reasons as I've laid out in this blog: they lose their dreams, freedom, money and much more, and take on the burdens of drama, debts and in-laws; all this I have already gone through. But for this post, I want to focus on the person anyone might be marrying, a man or woman from the west, through the lens of all the things I don't miss about American (western?) culture. Consider the four pillars of American culture:

1. Obsession with power

When was the last time you knew an American to equate morality or show deference to righteous action? And how does that compare with viewing others as moral or right because of their personal power? This obsession with power swings two ways:

Sometimes people view others as leaders deserving of respect, or virtuous people with golden hearts, because they are the strongest in the room. They're abrasive and brash, they stomp around and yell a lot, they tear down others with their words and actions, they take everything and give nothing back, and because they have the confidence, muscles or lack of compassion, they are the ones deferred to. Even more, these people believe that a person without power is deserving of all of the harassment, trolling, bullying, condescension, insults and attacks on their livelihood that they receive.

Confidence is everything, as I learned many years ago. I developed a powerful personality, bulked up and rode a cruiser motorcycle in college when I realized that power is everything to an American. Once I had done this, my four years of searching for a girlfriend was over in a few months, I had a wide network of friends and people respected everything I had to say. Despite this being a very angry period of my life where I lost my temper and insulted or threatened quite a few people who bothered me on the job or street, I still received much more in the way of respect, sex and friendship than I ever did as a timid, friendly loser before.

The other belief of power is the complete opposite: people without power are the ones with morality. It doesn't matter if they've accomplished nothing with their lives. It doesn't matter if they're murderers, rapists, or thieves, or people who engaged in fraud, slander, assault or any other negative action. Because their group has traditionally been out of power, then every member of that group must be more righteous, intelligent, or good then people in other tribes. These people believe that if someone shares the physical traits of a tribe that has traditionally been in power, then any and all harassment or violence against them is not only justified, but in some cases, encouraged.

I'm not arguing that confidence, muscles or any of these things are wrong or bad, or that being a member of this or that group automatically makes someone good or bad. What I'm saying is that these things should not equate with morality or moral authority... and yet, in America, they do. The effect of this pillar of American culture is one where people pride themselves on a lack of morality or a code of ethics: power is everything.

As for me: I was a member of the latter group, the belief that traditionally marginalized groups are inherently morally superior, during my Progressive days from the end of high school to the beginning of college. I no longer follow either of these beliefs on power.

2. Obsession with irony

I honestly wonder when this started. Americans have an obsession with speaking opposite to what they actually mean:

- "What a smart guy." (What a stupid guy)
- "This is the best car ever made." (I don't like this car)
- "He must have used a lot of brain cells for that." (That was a lazy effort)

While I don't know when this process started, I do know why people do it. First, people in America are hyper judgemental of others (which I'll get to in the next pillar). People fear what they attack others with, so because Americans use and therefore fear judgement, they couch all of their words in ironic double talk to maintain plausible deniability. For example:

- Stranger: "Wow, nice house." (This house is ugly)
- Homeowner: "Hey, I just bought this place and I haven't even finished working on it yet."
- Stranger: "What? I said it was a nice house. Calm down before you strain something, crybaby."

Second, people in America view honesty as being naive, and truth telling as the childish action of the mentally handicapped:

- "This food is kind of expensive for how little you get."
- "No f***ing s***, Sherlock. Did you think that all up by yourself? Thanks for the update, Captain Obvious."

People quickly learn to turn those truths into lie-truths to avoid this judgement:

- "BEST FOOD I'VE EVER HAD, AND ALL THE BANG FOR YOUR BUCK!"
- "Yeah, it sucks!"

Enjoying things ironically is another way that people protect themselves from judgement, because when enjoying something that's supposed to be silly, low quality or inappropriate, it's redundant to insult it; people already know it's bad. But when sharing something that you enjoy with others in America, it's common for people to riff or overtalk everything they see by judging all the plot holes, bad CG or acting they feel fit to ridicule.

This culture of irony leads to a country of people obsessed with hiding their true hearts and couching everything in a cloud of dishonesty, and to a pervasive fear of judgement.

As for me: I've used irony all my life, and still catch myself using it from time to time to this day. I'm still working hard on eradicating it from my vocabulary to lead a more honest life with myself and others.

3. Hyper judgementalism

Reality TV, Youtube channels dedicated to ripping apart the works of other people, blogs stalking and attacking a single person for months or years on end, American culture is awash with the constant attacks of people and things that the judgemental don't like. This leads to a sense of fear of being judged (which leads to pillar 2 above), but more importantly, it delays personal growth. There is a huge tendency for the judgemental to say things like "I may be scum, but at least I'm not _____."

I understand the apparent hypocrisy of me judging judgement while judging marriage to be not worth the effort, but please understand my main point: judging things to help others or encourage good behavior is markedly different from judging things to feel better about oneself, and judging things sparingly and only when needed is also markedly different from judging every aspect of everything every hour of the day.

The behavior I'm describing, and the irresponsibility and immaturity that arises from perpetually judgemental people who attack others while ignoring their own faults, lead to an entire culture of fingers pointing at everyone and everything but the owner's own heart, delaying growth and evolution for years, even decades.

As for me: When I find something wrong in my life, I turn proverbial floodlights in every direction looking for the cause and solutions. When I came to the realization of how much energy is spent in America ripping apart other people and focusing away from personal fault, I examined my own habits online and ended up very disappointed in myself: every single website and Youtube channel I frequented, top to bottom, involved the judgement of people for their politics, taste in movies or video games, management of an IP or anything else. While I always take myself to task for the mistakes I make and never stop trying to learn and grow from the things I've done wrong in the past, I was still shocked to see how much of American culture had followed me, even in another country. I now primarily surf websites and Youtube channels dedicated to history, religion, science, the paranormal and other things that don't involve grinding others into pulp. It's still a struggle sometimes to avoid my old habits and stay away from the kinds of pages I used to frequent.

4. Hyper tribalism

White vs colored. Men vs women. Left vs right. Atheists and Muslims vs Christians. Old vs young. Rich vs poor. When you destroy a nation's identity and make it xenophobic, hate-filled, bigoted or stupid for someone to love their country and their neighbors as members of their countries, the caveman DNA of humanity will find another way to express its desire to join a group and engage in endless warfare with another group. Such is the case in America, where bands of humans, identifying themselves by a difference in something or another, will line up to engage in battle with their mortal enemies all day and night.

Anti-intellectualism is one of the great results of this warfare between the groups. When your only duty in life is to protect the group to which you belong, intelligence can and will take a back seat behind the primitive desire to see your group succeed and to dash your opponents' proverbial heads on the rocks.

This isn't to say that one or both of any of these groups can't have valid points that should be addressed; rather, this is just another symptom of the cultural bankruptcy of America, where tribethink is more important than objective truth.

As for me: I mentioned that I was a hardcore Progressive earlier, and after that, I was a hardcore Republican/Libertarian until I moved abroad. I have largely expunged every tribal identity I once carried, and remain on constant vigilance that I never slip back into any of those addictive patterns again so I can remain in control of my mind, and better able to get along with others.

As for:

- Drug and alcohol culture leading to chronic conflict avoidance
- One night stand culture degenerating social contact to primitive hominid levels
- Constant social experiments and pranks eroding general social trust
- Incessant cussing showing a lack of respect for self and others
- Welfare parasitism incentivizing sloth and punishing productivity
- Hypersexuality throwing everything noble or intellectual under the bus in pursuit of sex and only sex and leading to rampant STDs, child abandonment and abortions
- Social media addiction making people into egotistical, impatient, and insufferable attention seekers
- Internet addiction giving destructive and dangerous people echo chambers to mutually prop up their sociopathic ideas...
- ...and also giving people the ability to flee from any conversation without accepting blame, criticism or fault for wrong ideas, creating a nation of eccentric, Howard Hughes-like control freaks in real life
- The acceptance of moral relativism and the participation trophy culture creating an entitled nation of lazy people incapable of recognizing fault in themselves, but expecting the world to nonetheless be delivered to them on a platter

And more, these are things I find personally distasteful about America and are more controversial, so I'll just list them here and move on.

Now, with the four pillars identified, perhaps you can imagine people in your family, friends, co-workers or others who embody some or all of these pillars. Until I came abroad, I was a firm follower of almost every pillar and was constantly at odds with enemies that belonged to groups I didn't like. But when I realized that I didn't want to be that kind of person anymore, I slowly started to burn away every one of these hook-legged, blood sucking ticks, fleas and leeches from my heart and mind, and today, I've found a peace that I had never known in America. If I weren't married, my life would literally be as close to perfect as I could make it right now.

And speaking of which, this is where we get into the people of America and marriage. Imagine he/she wasn't just your friend or boy/girlfriend. Imagine this was your spouse... in your house... every day... for the rest of your life.

For men, attached at the hip, under pain of impoverishment and/or imprisonment, you would spend the rest of your life with an immoral, dishonest, irresponsible, immature and anti-intellectual woman, from which the only escape would be divorce. For women divorce isn't usually a problem, but for men, your choice is to bow your head and take this abuse until one of you dies or you divorce, or to establish dominance to curb this behavior and probably end up provoking her to divorce anyway.

If you think it's bad living in America (and anyone from another western country, feel free to comment if your homeland is as bad as America because I'd like to know your views), try being married to someone from the west. Marriage is bad enough because it will rob you in almost every case of your freedom, time, money and dreams, but to do so with a westerner... you are assuredly tempting disaster and ruin into your life.