On laughing through American angst

Transcript:

Yesterday, I had dinner with some of my parents' friends, and it was really refreshing to have a political conversation with older people who have a global worldview of politics and not an American view. So one person was a former UN ambassador for Kazakhstan, and the other person I was chatting with was the wife of a Boeing engineer. And every three to four years, they moved to a different country. So they've lived in Korea and Japan and all over the world. And it just reminded me that America really is viewed as, unfortunately, the laughingstock of the world. It's like, definitely a circus right now. And that gave me some kind of comfort, actually, because it's like, instead of taking—I know this is gonna get misconstrued on social media, but I'm just gonna say it instead of—instead of taking this so seriously, there is also a point at which we can just laugh through it, because America is so ridiculous, and it actually takes the pressure off of what we're going through and how fucked up our policies and our government is, and it also reminds me of the importance of traveling abroad as as a global citizen and not as a tourist and really getting to live in different cultures.

It reminds me of when I was spending a lot of time in Copenhagen and making a lot of friends there, and a lot of friends who were also American or familiar with American culture, and then have moved abroad, and I realized how of how deeply of a stronghold capitalism has on us as Americans, particularly like—of course, global capitalism is real—but Americans have a very specific type of capitalism that's like a chokehold on us. And I have a friend who was talking about the cognitive dissonance she experienced when she came back to LA to visit friends after living in Copenhagen for a couple of years and just seeing how capitalism drove all of her friends lives, like capitalism drives our career choices, what we do every day, right? Like thinking every day has to be “productive”, and just this unspoken pressure on us to achieve and succeed and buy more and gain more and up-level, which is just not true, right? That way of living is such a fallacy that keeps us oppressed, and how she feels this relief living in Copenhagen where, that drive just isn't there, and it's such a beautiful thing, because she'll knit for hours by a river and go swimming, and there's not this cultural pressure to be achieving all the time, and instead, people just live their fucking best lives.

And I think that's so beautiful and and it's a reminder of why we should travel and experience different cultures and remember that the American worldview and this American angst that we're feeling—this American angst, ooh, that's so good—is very American, and there are a lot of countries in the world that are stable, where life is good, where people are taken care of by the government. We can't imagine that because we're Americans, but it gives me a sense of relief, knowing that another way of living is possible, and it's happening all around us in different parts of the world.