I think the “everybody” is really an American-centric thing. As far as I can tell, all of the New Atheist types are non-European, or who focus most of their polemics on American audiences.
I’ve never lived in Europe, but this was my experience growing up in the US:
“You don’t believe in Jesus/God? I must not have raised you right”
“You’ve treated me better than all of my previous boyfriends/girlfriends, but you don’t believe in Jesus so I’m breaking up with you”
“You’re new to the area? Where did you move from? Oh, Nowhereville, Alabahoma? I’m from Otherplace, Nevexico. So what church do you go to?”
“How come you’re not going to the prayer breakfast/luncheon?”
“You didn’t get the job/your car broke down/lost your wallet/etc.? Don’t worry, god has a plan for you”
“Can you believe these scientists and their evolution/global warming/sciency science talk? They’ll say anything to reject god, right? My pastor says XYZ so therefore it’s true”
I’ve lived in a lot of places in the US and in my experience the places where this sort of stuff doesn’t happen are mainly large cities like NYC or San Francisco. And even then, it has to be the parts of those cities that are leaning on the more affluent side of things. It’s not just a USA Bible-Belt phenomenon… I’ve actually never lived in or visited the Bible Belt so it must be a lot worse there.
The funny thing is that everything I read (mainly fiction) or watch (movie) about the “cowboy” culture of rural America does not seem to reflect it much. OK it is clear that religion tends to ebb and flow, have low and high tides and there was a sort of a high one after 1970 (“moral majority”), still. Random example: Axl Rose from Guns’n’Roses. He is such a typical rural guy, in fact, he kind of revolutionized rock fashion by doing away with leathers and chains and basically dressing on stage like like a rural US agricultural tractor driver. There is hardly any reference to either religiousness or atheism in the songs. Just seems to not care. The whole rock and roll culture does not seem to care much and apparently never did, no matter how much I go back in time, Easy Riders, or even further. That matters, because that is the most popular aspect of America over here :) Many an aging Euro guy imitates all this ride choppers, wear cowboy boots and hats, indian jewelry, booorn to be wiiild kind of thing and it is authentic so far that at the very least the American musicians whose songs get listened to really don’t seem to care either way.
(Although of course there is one confounding factor: all this kind of thing feels very American but is often surprisingly not so, Born to be Wild is actually a Canadian song and so on, these things have a prairie-cowboy-freedom feel, but not really sure to what extent do the reflect actual American experiences or aspirations. This may be a different topic, but I think it is relevant to understanding. There is an America-as-a-concept many an aging Euro guy loves and religion does not seem to play much a role in it. It is based on various things. Like westerns. Who makes the westerns? Surprisingly, Italians like Mario Girotti!
How does it look like with American eyes—completely fake? Or normal?
It looks like a very exaggerated version of one particular America. There are shops that sell this kind of merchandise in the Western US, but they sell as much to tourists as to folks who actually dress like this.
What you need to understand is that there is more than one distinctively American subculture in the US. In particular, there are at least two major poor, rural, white American cultures: the high-religiosity country music culture, and the low-religiosity rock/metal culture. Though they can often be found side by side in the same trailer park, the same home, or even sometimes the same individual, there is also some real tension between them. Rock/metal appeals more to teenage rebellion, rejection of responsibility and civilization, rootless adventure. Country is more aspirational and its adherents see themselves as salt-of-the-earth folks who love their family, flag, and God. I guess that doesn’t go over so much in Europe, so we mostly export rock culture. (Even in the US, urban upper-middle-class people tend to get the two cultures confused since they both equally reject things like suits and liberal arts degrees and clever hipster music.)
Even in the US, urban upper-middle-class people tend to get the two cultures confused since they both equally reject things like suits and liberal arts degrees and clever hipster music.
(European here. Also an amateur rock musician, FWIW.)
It sounds like American urban upper-middle-class culture (you mean the one which Mencius Moldbug calls Optimates, Yvain calls Blue Tribe, Christian Lander calls SWPL, etc., right?) is even more foreign to me than I thought: I’m mildly surprised they find rockers outgroupish enough to lump them with country music folks. I’m also surprised by the association of rock/metal with “rural”—the first place in the US that springs to my mind when I hear about rock would be somewhere like Los Angeles.
No, it’s not that all rockers are poor, rural, and white, it’s that one of the poor, rural, white subcultures likes rock and metal more than country music.
There are roughly four prototypical white American regions/cultures, which correspond to fairly clear demographic events. Two of these are distinct white “rural” cultures (crudely: the western cowboy and the southern redneck) but these are often misleadingly combined into a unified “rural” stereotype that doesn’t really describe many actual people. This makes about as much sense as combining New York and San Francisco to create the archetypal “urban” American. Alas, the media is based in big coastal cities, and so even many Americans conflate the two.
So I think what you’ve noticed is that the cowboy culture has this individualist current, that leads to fewer public displays of religion, even though the people tended to be privately religious. Whereas the redneck culture has a more group-based history, with an theological approach (Evangelicalism) that requires more public displays of faith.
The huge region of self-identified German ancestry is centered on historically cowboy culture areas, and the Grey region labeled “American” is redneck culture. The “American” self-identification usually means Northern England / Southern Scotland / Northern Ireland, but far in the past.
The Grey region is the so-called Bible Belt, sometimes just referred to as “the South”, or as Appalachia. The lower-class whites in this area are the basis for the redneck stereotype (see Google images for pictures), but the area really doesn’t have the cowboy flavor. The cowboy or frontier rural culture historically spread out over the modern-day-German-ancestry areas in waves. The modern impact of this is complicated, but it’s sufficient to say that the rural cultures of the West are rather different from the rural culture of the South.
So I’m not too surprised if aspects of cowboy culture appeal more to Europeans today than redneck culture, because the modern areas where cowboy cultural flourished were inhabited by the descents of immigrants who were closer to modern Europe (culturally and temporally) than the people who founded redneck culture.
This makes about as much sense as combining New York and San Francisco to create the archetypal “urban” American
Why, wouldn’t both be “Blue Tribe” ?
The huge region of self-identified German ancestry is centered on historically cowboy culture areas
This is very, very interesting! The romantic interest in the Wild West in Europe was started by a German writer, Karl May, who never even travelled to America… could there be a possible connection i.e. part of that culture is a German import he could observe around him in the original version near Dresden? On the superficial level, clearly no, the whole horse-and-saddle thing is Mexican in the origin and goes back to Spain actually. Its ancestry is still visible in the richly embroidered boots that give up a clearly Mexican vibe. But maybe some kind of a deeper connection?
About the South: if it is so distinct from the West, here is what I am wondering. AFAIK the culture of the South was dominated by rather aristocratic, kinda French-styled (esp. in Louisiana) slave-owners and their slaves. Poor whites, as far as I can tell, did not play an important role in the South’s economy around, say, 1830. How would that dynamic work out? In the West, the poor white could become an indepenent farmer, shopkeeper, rather quickly, hence the individualistic ethic. In the South, he would always feel playing second, or rather fourth fiddle to the plantation owners. Am I reasoning right and if yes what were its consequences?
I think the “everybody” is really an American-centric thing. As far as I can tell, all of the New Atheist types are non-European, or who focus most of their polemics on American audiences.
I’ve never lived in Europe, but this was my experience growing up in the US:
“You don’t believe in Jesus/God? I must not have raised you right”
“You’ve treated me better than all of my previous boyfriends/girlfriends, but you don’t believe in Jesus so I’m breaking up with you”
“You’re new to the area? Where did you move from? Oh, Nowhereville, Alabahoma? I’m from Otherplace, Nevexico. So what church do you go to?”
“How come you’re not going to the prayer breakfast/luncheon?”
“You didn’t get the job/your car broke down/lost your wallet/etc.? Don’t worry, god has a plan for you”
“Can you believe these scientists and their evolution/global warming/sciency science talk? They’ll say anything to reject god, right? My pastor says XYZ so therefore it’s true”
I’ve lived in a lot of places in the US and in my experience the places where this sort of stuff doesn’t happen are mainly large cities like NYC or San Francisco. And even then, it has to be the parts of those cities that are leaning on the more affluent side of things. It’s not just a USA Bible-Belt phenomenon… I’ve actually never lived in or visited the Bible Belt so it must be a lot worse there.
The funny thing is that everything I read (mainly fiction) or watch (movie) about the “cowboy” culture of rural America does not seem to reflect it much. OK it is clear that religion tends to ebb and flow, have low and high tides and there was a sort of a high one after 1970 (“moral majority”), still. Random example: Axl Rose from Guns’n’Roses. He is such a typical rural guy, in fact, he kind of revolutionized rock fashion by doing away with leathers and chains and basically dressing on stage like like a rural US agricultural tractor driver. There is hardly any reference to either religiousness or atheism in the songs. Just seems to not care. The whole rock and roll culture does not seem to care much and apparently never did, no matter how much I go back in time, Easy Riders, or even further. That matters, because that is the most popular aspect of America over here :) Many an aging Euro guy imitates all this ride choppers, wear cowboy boots and hats, indian jewelry, booorn to be wiiild kind of thing and it is authentic so far that at the very least the American musicians whose songs get listened to really don’t seem to care either way.
(Although of course there is one confounding factor: all this kind of thing feels very American but is often surprisingly not so, Born to be Wild is actually a Canadian song and so on, these things have a prairie-cowboy-freedom feel, but not really sure to what extent do the reflect actual American experiences or aspirations. This may be a different topic, but I think it is relevant to understanding. There is an America-as-a-concept many an aging Euro guy loves and religion does not seem to play much a role in it. It is based on various things. Like westerns. Who makes the westerns? Surprisingly, Italians like Mario Girotti!
Let’s test this! I love this shop, and wear some things from here, and it is not out of place at all for an older Euro guy esp. a bit outside cities. How does it look like with American eyes—completely fake? Or normal? http://www.world-of-western.at/ and especially: http://www.world-of-western.com/shop?00000000000000fa04720fdc0000004a26150000&&kcc&navid=23007&kat=%5BSchmuck%5D&currblock=1&suche1=& )
My point is, is this “real America” AND I should imagine religion as part of it, or is the whole thing completely off?)
It looks like a very exaggerated version of one particular America. There are shops that sell this kind of merchandise in the Western US, but they sell as much to tourists as to folks who actually dress like this.
What you need to understand is that there is more than one distinctively American subculture in the US. In particular, there are at least two major poor, rural, white American cultures: the high-religiosity country music culture, and the low-religiosity rock/metal culture. Though they can often be found side by side in the same trailer park, the same home, or even sometimes the same individual, there is also some real tension between them. Rock/metal appeals more to teenage rebellion, rejection of responsibility and civilization, rootless adventure. Country is more aspirational and its adherents see themselves as salt-of-the-earth folks who love their family, flag, and God. I guess that doesn’t go over so much in Europe, so we mostly export rock culture. (Even in the US, urban upper-middle-class people tend to get the two cultures confused since they both equally reject things like suits and liberal arts degrees and clever hipster music.)
(European here. Also an amateur rock musician, FWIW.)
It sounds like American urban upper-middle-class culture (you mean the one which Mencius Moldbug calls Optimates, Yvain calls Blue Tribe, Christian Lander calls SWPL, etc., right?) is even more foreign to me than I thought: I’m mildly surprised they find rockers outgroupish enough to lump them with country music folks. I’m also surprised by the association of rock/metal with “rural”—the first place in the US that springs to my mind when I hear about rock would be somewhere like Los Angeles.
No, it’s not that all rockers are poor, rural, and white, it’s that one of the poor, rural, white subcultures likes rock and metal more than country music.
There are roughly four prototypical white American regions/cultures, which correspond to fairly clear demographic events. Two of these are distinct white “rural” cultures (crudely: the western cowboy and the southern redneck) but these are often misleadingly combined into a unified “rural” stereotype that doesn’t really describe many actual people. This makes about as much sense as combining New York and San Francisco to create the archetypal “urban” American. Alas, the media is based in big coastal cities, and so even many Americans conflate the two.
So I think what you’ve noticed is that the cowboy culture has this individualist current, that leads to fewer public displays of religion, even though the people tended to be privately religious. Whereas the redneck culture has a more group-based history, with an theological approach (Evangelicalism) that requires more public displays of faith.
For the immigration element, look at this is map of self-reported ancestry.
The huge region of self-identified German ancestry is centered on historically cowboy culture areas, and the Grey region labeled “American” is redneck culture. The “American” self-identification usually means Northern England / Southern Scotland / Northern Ireland, but far in the past.
The Grey region is the so-called Bible Belt, sometimes just referred to as “the South”, or as Appalachia. The lower-class whites in this area are the basis for the redneck stereotype (see Google images for pictures), but the area really doesn’t have the cowboy flavor. The cowboy or frontier rural culture historically spread out over the modern-day-German-ancestry areas in waves. The modern impact of this is complicated, but it’s sufficient to say that the rural cultures of the West are rather different from the rural culture of the South.
So I’m not too surprised if aspects of cowboy culture appeal more to Europeans today than redneck culture, because the modern areas where cowboy cultural flourished were inhabited by the descents of immigrants who were closer to modern Europe (culturally and temporally) than the people who founded redneck culture.
Why, wouldn’t both be “Blue Tribe” ?
This is very, very interesting! The romantic interest in the Wild West in Europe was started by a German writer, Karl May, who never even travelled to America… could there be a possible connection i.e. part of that culture is a German import he could observe around him in the original version near Dresden? On the superficial level, clearly no, the whole horse-and-saddle thing is Mexican in the origin and goes back to Spain actually. Its ancestry is still visible in the richly embroidered boots that give up a clearly Mexican vibe. But maybe some kind of a deeper connection?
About the South: if it is so distinct from the West, here is what I am wondering. AFAIK the culture of the South was dominated by rather aristocratic, kinda French-styled (esp. in Louisiana) slave-owners and their slaves. Poor whites, as far as I can tell, did not play an important role in the South’s economy around, say, 1830. How would that dynamic work out? In the West, the poor white could become an indepenent farmer, shopkeeper, rather quickly, hence the individualistic ethic. In the South, he would always feel playing second, or rather fourth fiddle to the plantation owners. Am I reasoning right and if yes what were its consequences?