"That Uniquely American Optimism"...Really?

May 5, 2009 7:09 AM

Is "that uniquely American optimism" really so?

I feel like every other day lately, someone with authority of some kind swears we'll recover from this Great Recession because of "that uniquely American optimism." Are Americans really that uniquely optimistic? Does that mean that everyone else in the world is walking around seeing half-empty glasses everywhere? Or does it mean that Americans are all National Lampoon's European Vacation boobs walking around with no idea of the gravitas around us?

posted by jefficator to society & culture (32 comments total)

perhaps a little combination of both.
posted by tylerfulltilt at 7:14 AM on May 5

I don't know about optimism, I do know about entrepreneurism, and attitude.

On the blue a post on an America's experiences in the Netherlands drew a lot of comments. Even though what he said basically was: the Dutch expect a lot from their State. We Americans grow up believing we have to everything ourselves.

One could call that attitude optimism.
posted by ijsbrand at 7:18 AM on May 5 [3 favorites has favorites]

Bah, "American's"

"have to do everything ourselves"
posted by ijsbrand at 7:19 AM on May 5

I think it's a farce. Some people get lucky and fall into success; others use greed or manipulate their station in life to get ahead.

I believe the optimism is a byproduct of living in an extremely wealthy country, and most people agree that this wealth came from genocide, slavery, and an effective military industrial complex in the 20th century.

Will America bounce back? It's possible, but it will probably have more to do with back-room political dealings than any American folksiness.
posted by sswiller at 7:22 AM on May 5

I've lived in Germany for a good while now and haven't noticed Germans being more pessimistic than Americans. The difference is that in the German media you don't constantly hear people saying "Germans can do anything!" If you weren't fired for saying that, you'd certainly be laughed at. It's a difference in media narrative, not in individual disposition, I think.

I think the way it works like this: people who are paid to fill space on TV and pander to the audience say things like "Americans can do anything" and if you ask them why they say "because of the bottomless optimism of the American people". It's a belief in the power of belief itself that's somehow become the established public ideology of America, but in my experience it has nothing to do with actual individuals. Most people know that optimism won't pay the mortgage.
posted by creasy boy at 7:23 AM on May 5 [1 favorite has favorites]

I think it's an old theme of American identity because historically one could start over in America more easily than in Monarchistic Europe. So when politicians say this they are referring to the long tradition of the self-made man and the great frontier. Whether this is true or not anymore (or ever) is probably up for debate, but that's what they mean: People used to come here when we were the most free free market democracy to start over and work hard and make things better for themselves which made our economy work well.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:25 AM on May 5

No, there's nothing "uniquely American" about optimism. But claiming a universally admired human value as belonging uniquely to your own people is a great way to rally followers around a patriotic cause. Identifying with something as positive yet uncontroversial as "optimism" makes Americans feel like they have something in common with each other, which increases social cohesion, which is meant to be good for stopping societies from completely falling apart.

Don't worry, though, pretty much every culture does this. See: the "uniquely Australian" concept of Mateship.
posted by embrangled at 7:26 AM on May 5 [1 favorite has favorites]

Once upon a time Americans pulled back the veil and exposed the hypocrisy behind a monarch ruled world causing a worldwide uprising against colonialism. The world was grateful. But that bug was never truly extinguished and within a couple of centuries new, more sophisticated kingdoms emerged called corporations. The world is now again on a precipice and one wonders if America or anyone else in the world has the strength, resolve or "optimism" to confront and overthrow these new kings who do not control by brute force but through a much more powerful and insidious weapon - public relations.
posted by any major dude at 7:36 AM on May 5 [4 favorites has favorites]

Of course it's a cultural stereotype, but I think it has some validity. America is the Land of Opportunity, a place where anyone can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. It's fashionable on Metafilter to be cynical about that kind of thing, but there's a kernel of truth to it. By contrast my European friends who live in Europe seem a bit more fatalistic, comfortable, that things are fine the way they are. Americans are more optimistic that things can be made better. My European friends who moved to the US came here, in part, to seek out that optimism. So it's somewhat self selecting as well. FWIW I felt the same sort of optimism in Australia, the Lucky Country.

As with all cultural stereotypes there are millions of exceptions.
posted by Nelson at 7:44 AM on May 5 [1 favorite has favorites]

I am American. Having lived & worked in a bunch of different places in the US and Europe, I'd say that our (Americans') optimism regarding salary, our economy, our children's future, our country's place in the world and our overall chances at worldly success is greater than that which I encountered in France, Italy, or the Netherlands. Folks in other countries might be more optimistic about other things - Italians, for example, are far more optimistic about retirement and about job security than Americans.
posted by charlesv at 7:49 AM on May 5

Non-American here.

In my experience--and this is putting a neutral spin on the phenomenon--it's not just institutions. Individual Americans do tend to have more faith in themselves and their own abilities than people of other nationalities. But I wouldn't call that optimism; I'd call it confidence. Or to put it bluntly, you guys brag about yourselves.
posted by dydecker at 7:53 AM on May 5 [3 favorites has favorites]

I think optimism in the present moment stems from two things. First, things have been pretty good here for almost a generation. We've avoided worst-case scenarios, and people believe that we will continue to do so. I think it's human nature to believe that worst-case scenarios won't occur (until you've lived through one). Second, people are pretty clueless about the severity of the risks we're facing. I see a lot of confidence based on ignorance about the economy in general and the housing market in particular.
posted by diogenes at 8:03 AM on May 5

Well, you do have to think who, for the most part, Americans are. With exceptions we are immigrants who moved here to make a better life. You could be first generation or 15th generation immigrant but chances are someone in your liniage took the bold, optimistic step to come here and start over. Prior to steam ships, or if you came by land from Latin America, that largely meant a greatly dangerous trip that you felt was a necessary risk to reach your optimistic goal. Further, many of those who reached the shores of America headed out to further trials and tribulations on the frontiers in the name of their optimistic goals. Even many of the children of those who were brought here by force have found hope and optimism in the goal of rising from slavery to equal status in America.

Now, of course, many Americans are fat, lazy, and complacent sucessive generations removed from those ambitious immigrants, pioneers, and rights marchers, and certainly America did not steal every person with ambition and optimism from the Earth, but the sort of optimism in the face of great trials and tribulations that nearly all of our ancestors had must have rubbed off at least partially on the "cultural identity" of America.
posted by Pollomacho at 8:14 AM on May 5 [5 favorites has favorites]

Every country thinks they have a uniquely - the Americans are "uniquely" optimistic, Canadians are "uniquely" polite, British are "uniquely" polite... wait, that's not possible.

Take it for what it is: the self-conception of national identity reinforced by cultural norms. And no reflection on the actual psychological character of the people who inhabit that country.

Also - for every person saying "hey, we were pioneers," just remember that Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, Argentinians, Chilieans, South Africans and Zimbabweans (at least the white minorities in the last two cases) were also "pioneers" into the great empty (aka not empty, sometimes quite crowded) wilderness.
posted by jb at 8:17 AM on May 5 [1 favorite has favorites]

Yesterday on NPR, in their coverage of the one year anniversary of the big earthquake in China, they described the "let's rebuild!" slogans appearing everywhere. The language used was of the usual style - i.e. "the indomitable spirit of the Chinese people can never be defeated".

Nothing the least bit "uniquely American" about it. Typical exceptionalist bullshit.
posted by Joe Beese at 8:19 AM on May 5 [2 favorites has favorites]

Another facet to factor in, touched on a bit above, such as Australian mateship, or Britishness in general, or pick your favorite country or group, is that every culture has founding/defining myths, basically all of which posit that they are special for various reasons. Its roots are probably ultimately in egocentrism, but certainly more broadly in tribalism, now even more broadly expressed in national contexts. We retell ourselves our own myths over and over for reasons I haven't yet learned (but I'm sure it has been well addressed in the social sciences). It's something about self-affirmation. Religions assume this even more acutely. "We are the special people."

With that said, America has its own unique makeup. It does work differently than other places (which themselves work differently than other places). I hear over and over from immigrants who come here that we do not realize the opportunities we've got. Even people from Europe, which you wouldn't think would be terribly different, have said this to me. Growing up, the father of my Greek immigrant neighbor would tell my dad how different it was here, how anybody could get started and do anything if they just worked hard. That sounds painfully cliche, but he said it was different back home. Just to start a business like his restaurant would have required so many more connections and favors back home, he said, would have faced so many more obstacles and resistance, and many people simply wouldn't be able to do it. I can't verify any of that for the Greece of the 80s or today, but that's what he claimed. He said felt very empowered and liberated and... optimistic here. Just a data point. Maybe social mobility is less fluid in many places than in the USA - maybe structures are more rigid and therefore people make more measured predictions of what is doable.

I've been to some third world countries that definitely have less opportunity, more barriers and institutional inertia, terrible conditions, institutionalized oppression, and crushing woes about the system. Clearly it's easier to be optimistic here in general than in than in places that have been like that for generations or longer. But I've lived in two other prosperous Anglo countries and they seemed very similar to the USA to me in operation and in outlook. I didn't feel like the one plucky optimist amongst hordes of pessimists or people with neutral outlooks. So is America really unique in that regard? It may be that the particular structure of American economic, political, and social systems fosters certain operational assumptions about what can be accomplished. Mix that with some self-affirming founding myths and cultural habits and maybe that helps explain the ongoing optimism narrative.
posted by Askr at 8:39 AM on May 5 [1 favorite has favorites]

As Nelson said above, I think the fact that for the entire 19th century there was good land free for the taking (up to 160 acres with the Homestead Act) has something to do with the American mythos.

Same thing with Australia. Europe was owned by the landowning nobility -- there was plenty of land but it was all claimed by somebody -- which affected their mythos to some extent.
posted by mrt at 8:39 AM on May 5

I think the "American optimism" is more a case of putting a smiling face on things since you have no choice but to get through, come what may. It's sort of a resignation to events you can't change, rather than any real boosterism.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:43 AM on May 5

I hate to disrupt this cloud of random opinions with, you know, some actual numbers, but since there are some relevant surveys, it wouldn't hurt to look. Check here.

69% of Americans agree that "people get rewarded for intelligence and skill." Only 39% of Europeans do. Likewise, 61% agree that "people get rewarded for their efforts," versus 36% of Europeans. Americans may be wrong about this, but they do believe that things will work out for hard working and talented people. It's probably fair to call that optimism, and that form of it is pretty unique to Americans, at least at those levels.

Nothing the least bit "uniquely American" about it. Typical exceptionalist bullshit, says Joe Beese.

My contradiction alert sounded on this one. The exceptionalists believe that Americans have inherent qualities that make success more likely, which, again, is optimism. If you acknowledge that there is such a thing as an exceptionalist attitude, and that it is pretty wide-spread among Americans, that's more evidence of some form of cultural optimism that is an outlier on a global scale.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 9:33 AM on May 5 [5 favorites has favorites]

I don't want to be unsophisticated about this, and certainly the Chinese and Indians have got the Yanks whipped for grandiose public displays of optimism any day of the week. But nevertheless, as a foreigner, living as a guest of the American people, I'm constantly struck by the power and pervasiveness of American optimism.

I live right next to a pretty grim slum, by the standards of the developed world. The people there have been poor for generations and will be poor for generations, and have the indignity of living cheek by jowl with one of the wealthiest, most privileged, quarters in the whole country. In Paris there would be riots. But here, in this little American town, I am met with nothing but courtesy and amiable optimism. They really do think, despite the sharp racial divides, despite the inaccessibility of good education, despite a frankly shocking health care system, that if they don't succeed in life it will be because they didn't work hard enough, and that when rich people do succeed it was because they did work harder and smarter. I think that most Americans don't even know that social mobility is lower in the US than it is elsewhere in the developed world, and what is more they don't want to know because contentment, here, is prized above clarity. During the election, people kept putting up these posters which just said 'hope', and you really believed they meant it.

A few months ago I fell into conversation with a rail-thin middle aged man who's ragged coat and grubby hands spoke of a life of hard toil for little renumeration. I thought that he was going to complain about the politician who's campaign poster I was looking at, or gripe about the rain, or perhaps ask me for money (it happens all the time, here, as the locals have to pay to use the homeless shelter), but it turned out that he'd just heard my accent and wanted to know if I was a foreigner. When I replied that I was, he asked me how I liked the place, and we exchanged a few pleasantries and then, fixing me with his weary eyes and grinning a gummy grin he asked, without a trace of irony, 'wouldn't you like to live here?'

When I tell this story to my American friends they tell me to put it out of my head. They say it's condescending and somehow borderline racist (everything here seems to have racial overtones which baffle the outsider, even the food). But I can't help feeling that this story somehow sums up a lot about their country. Most of the people I meet, here, have a strong predilection to think the best of one another, and the best of themselves and I find that both admirable and bittersweet.
posted by Dreadnought at 9:37 AM on May 5 [8 favorites has favorites]

Personally, having lived lived both sides of this, I have to say that it's less an American sense of optimism and more an American sense of entitlement. The American Dream boils down to each generation doing better than their parents' generation, and the idea that this will not continue in perpetuity is unfathomable for a vast swathe of Americans, even today. Nothing, not even a recession, will stop them from eventually achieving that manifest destiny.
posted by DarlingBri at 9:41 AM on May 5

Here is the raw industrial and consumer confidence data from the OECD (usually you see this discussed in standardized terms) Raw data from the OECD is here. Last tab has historical data.

For industrial confidence data US>50 = expect the next 12 months to be better, ROW >0 = expect the next 12 months to be better

Consumer confidence is a bit trickier as its indexed to 2000=100 for the US - which of course is pretty much the local maxima for the underlying statistic. Europe is the same <0> thing

Data would seem to imply for industrial confidnece US is structurally more optimistic then ROW. For consumer confidence at first glance it seems the same conclusion is reasonable - but I'm not sure given we don't know the starting point of the index. If there is a generalization to be made though - the majority of Europeans seem to think the world is getting worse nearly all of the time.

posted by JPD at 10:00 AM on May 5

The American Dream boils down to each generation doing better than their parents' generation, and the idea that this will not continue in perpetuity is unfathomable for a vast swathe of Americans, even today. Nothing, not even a recession, will stop them from eventually achieving that manifest destiny.


This sounds like optimism, not entitlement. Entitlement is saying -I'm an American so I know today will be better for me then yesterday. Amercians seem to believe that if today was bad tomorrow has a chance to be better, so I'll work towards that. And if the next day is even worse, well then I just need to work harder and evenutally my luck will turn. That is optimism.

The flip side of this is that Americans massively underplay the role luck has in determining what happens in your life.

This optimism is of course why so many Americans vote against they current economic interests in favor of policies that favor the economic interests they hope (assume?) they will have in the future.
posted by JPD at 10:09 AM on May 5

I've lived in Germany for a good while now and haven't noticed Germans being more pessimistic than Americans. The difference is that in the German media you don't constantly hear people saying "Germans can do anything!" If you weren't fired for saying that, you'd certainly be laughed at. It's a difference in media narrative, not in individual disposition, I think.

creasy, without getting too far into it, I must respectfully disagree with you here. Outside of the narrow confines of artistic risk, people here are risk-averse. I don't even like to discuss upcoming projects I'm looking forward to because it's tiresome to watch people practice their skeptical face over a calculated risk that you, not they, are taking.

I think it's a farce. Some people get lucky and fall into success; others use greed or manipulate their station in life to get ahead.

So sswiller, you think there is no such thing as a merited success?
posted by Your Time Machine Sucks at 10:27 AM on May 5

In Britain we have the same sort of thing with our "wartime spirit," a term that comes out in force when we go through rough patches to remind us how we were pretty much the only country in Europe to both face and hold back Nazi Germany, going through heavy bombardment all over the country, the Battle of Britain, rationing and a basic shortage of goods, things of that nature. The reasoning is that since the war days were oh so great and we were so great at them, that we can get through anything that is thrown at us. Is this the same kind of thing?
posted by tumples at 10:52 AM on May 5

Everyone's responses are fascinating. A thought that springs to mind for me would be how one might construct an experiment that was controlled for feelings of optimism versus feelings of "American optimism." Your Time Machine Sucks's comment makes me wonder whether a profile of American investors would include a naturally higher risk tolerance, and how that risk tolerance would be affected if, for instance, the same proposal was presented in neutral and in patriotic terms. Perhaps Americans are likely to be most risk-tolerant when an endeavor is framed as contingent about American ingenuity specifically, rather than on something abstract and "neutral" like "the market."

FWIW, I find it fascinating that free-market capitalism has become an American export in the wake of this turmoil.
posted by jefficator at 11:16 AM on May 5

Your Time Machine Sucks's comment makes me wonder whether a profile of American investors would include a naturally higher risk tolerance

Empirical evidence would seem to suggest this. Much smaller venture capital industry, much smaller value investing industry (despite the fact that the lack of Ch 11 style restructurings until recently actually made it less risky then in the US), fewer distressed debt players, etc , etc.
posted by JPD at 11:30 AM on May 5

Also, there has been a net export of risk-friendly Germans to the US over the course of the last century-plus, which probably has had an impact on the tendencies of both countries.
posted by Your Time Machine Sucks at 11:48 AM on May 5

Some people see it as a uniquely American naivete, whereby the American dream performs a similar function to religion for Marx - the opium of the masses. A belief that anyone who works hard can/will succeed means that anyone who has not yet succeeded has not worked hard enough, placing all blame on the individual and none on structural constraints.

It seems to be a regularly ploy of most governments to suggest that all problems will be overcome through the exertion of [[unique national characteristic]] as a means of defusing potential dissent.

That answer may be rather different to what you wanted.
posted by knapah at 12:22 PM on May 5

Are Americans really that uniquely optimistic? Does that mean that everyone else in the world is walking around seeing half-empty glasses everywhere? Or does it mean that Americans are all National Lampoon's European Vacation boobs walking around with no idea of the gravitas around us?

Yes, you are.

But it works. All that stuff you're seeing on the news about 'consumer confidence' and the like? They mean that the US public can choose to simply will this recession out of existence because the changed thought changes spending behaviour and changed spending behaviour really will fix this.

Odds are that (as usual) they'll get bored of this shit quite soon and blink this one away as well, and that (as usual) will 'domino' its way across the EU and Pacific in short order simply because there's so fucking many of you and (in global terms) you're all fucking minted.

Most of the rest of the world is somewhat stunned and awestruck by this objectively-bizarre 'boob' thing that Americans have going on but right now we're rather counting on it not to suddenly stop.
posted by genghis at 7:21 PM on May 5

Oh, and British people don't think of themselves as 'uniquely polite'. Unflappable, maybe. The national self-image is quite attached to the idea that nothing can force them to alter their behaviour. IRA? July 7th attacks? Bollocks to it. There were people lining up on July 8th to get on the number 30 bus: "still got to get to work, don't I?" Gawd bless 'em.
posted by genghis at 7:26 PM on May 5

Oh, and British people don't think of themselves as 'uniquely polite'.

I'm not so sure. The capacity for self-effacing politeness is a very important part of British self-image (complicated by conceptions of class, of course). I remember traveling in Hungary with a mixed group of Brits, Canadians and New Zealanders. We decided that the most important word of Hungarian, for us to learn, was the word for 'sorry', on the grounds that people of these nationalities had the ability to express any imaginable concept merely through the medium of apology.
posted by Dreadnought at 9:35 PM on May 5