The desire to move to a new country - C/D?

Is this always the result of whiny, misguided ennui, or is it ever a good decision? I'm reconsidering a move to England where I have some family and family friends. I've never fit into the culture of the US, never had any friends here, and my girlfriends have always been from elsewhere. Can a person ever be born somewhere and be out of place?

do it - living overseas is classic in many many ways. if you have some connections there already and no commitments keeping you where you are, i can't see any reason not to give it a try.

Classic but deceptive. It's normal to feel out of place within your own national culture but you can't completely evade it either.
England is rainy and expensive. On the other hand, if you don't do it you're likely to miss out on things that attract you overseas and remain unable to someday appreciate the good things your birthplace certainly has, so why not. If you decide to go for it, plan carefully.

I've never fit into the culture of the US

Should I make fun of this now, or wait for someone else to go first?

Go for it. Today is the only today.

I've never fit into the culture of the US

I can definitely relate to this, and I don't think it's a trite or overly dramatic notion. I lived abroad for 5 years and now live in the U.S. again (albeit 3,000 miles from the mainland). I can hear the clock ticking on my moving abroad again (to the same locale). Probably will happen in the next few years.

So yeah move abroad. It's a great thing to do.

Yeah do it, although if/when you start doing it very often, you realize that this is just escapism. It's often easier to move than to sort out the shit in y rlife and/or deepening what you already have.

I did it for about 6 years in the Netherlands. I should warn you though that you might never "fit in" anywhere. You'll fit in even less in a foreign country. When I eventually came back to the US, it was partly because I realised that if I stayed there, I would never become Dutch, would always be a foreigner there, but also was increasingly becoming a foreigner in the US when I went home for visits. Of course there isn't the language barrier in England, so that might help for fitting in. My Dutch is good, but I started to feel that there would always be a membrane or wall or one level of separation between me and everyone else. I missed being able to make jokes and cultural references and have people get me. It probably took me a good 3 years after returning to the US to feel American again. Living abroad really does expand your mind, though. It can't hurt to try it. The best way perhaps to learn to appreciate where you're from is to leave it.

Luckily, I don't fit in anywhere 100% but I always do my best not to be a total pest wherever I live. I loved living in France and I would do it again, Italy, too. Japan was mostly fun and Spain, alas, I only know from the time I spent in Barcelona. Britain I don't think I could do but it's a nice place to visit. ;)

the first time in my life I felt like I did fit in was when I moved to NY and immersed meself in the culture of the US

then again, most of the Americans I know constantly contemplate moving to Europe. Barcelona, Berlin, Bethnal Green, etc etc

someone plz make a "welcome home burt_stanton" jpg in preparation for His Coming

if i had the money or any decent career prospects i would totally do it. for a while, anyway. i spent last week in london visiting some friends from high school and really took to it. they've been there for right at two years and absolutely love it, especially the guy (he moved over there for a sweet job). it took a little longer for his wife, but now that she's working & meeting folks & has a baby on the way she's totally on board with staying indefinitely.

I've never fit into the culture of the US

maybe you wear too many sweaters?

burt i thought you were in law school in America

i feel bad for those who cant appreciate the american awesomeness - regardless traveling and living abroad is sweet too

Sorry "american awesomeness"?

I've lived in six different countries (Canada, Australia, Germany, Sweden, Finland, and now New Zealand) over the past fifteen years. I agree with the feeling of being an outsider, but then that has plenty of advantages, too (not the least of which is discovering all the funky music you can then cart on to the next destination, as well as quirky culinary habits and local turns of phrase, etc.). I don't think I'll ever feel "at home" anywhere, in the end, but I've grown used to that and have just learned to deal with being "the stranger."

yes tvdisko "american awesomeness" - you know the place where "funky music" comes from

maria is right about your appreciation for your home country being at least the one thing you will get out of moving to a new country.

i was super excited to move to the US, excited about the art scene and the small press scene, lots of stuff. and i do like it here, but MAN do i miss the much simpler way of life back in home in new zealand. i miss how uncomplicated life is in new zealand, just on a day to day basis. it's hard to explain. i also miss being able to be a lot more relaxed about stuff - here, i feel like i have to exercise a much higher degree of caution about everything.

xpost - Having grown up in the shadow of the cultural juggernaut that is the U.S., and not ever being able to truly escape it, wherever I go, I've never been really convinced that its "awesomeness" is any better than the "awesomeness" of wherever I happen to be, which is often more subtly and modestly "awesome."

I heart NZ.

yeah i like america a lot and would probably never leave for very long, even though it is frustrating sometimes. i think the feeling of not fitting in would not be helped by moving to another country. probably it would get a lot worse once your novelty wears off.

If there was some interesting shit going on in NYC it'd probably be a better time. Most of the shit out here is just boring old suburban hardcore kids grown up and people who want to make mega ca$h and be rock stars, so it's all "let's do lunch b4be". Losers and failures are way more interesting than these irritating, bright smiled go getters. Maybe it's just my generation.

Yeah, moving around a lot can be another form of escapism. But there's some value to it if you aren't totally naive about it.

so u think all places are equally awesome then tvdisko

i like losers and failures better than irritating go-getters too but you could try another U.S. city

burt u know youll never approach any sort of sense of ease until you scrape away that misanthropic cholesterol

Unique and distinct, each and every one, in their history, their culture, etc. How can they not be? Savouring the pleasures of a Finnish christmas dinner, a summer day in Stockholm, watching the World Cup in Berlin (or Montreal for that matter), seeing dolphins, seals and killer whales off the coast of Wellington, chowing down on poutine on St. Laurent in Montreal, or savouring gelato on Lygon St. in Melbourne. Even the minutest everyday detail seems awesome to me, so to claim that one place somehow trumps all others seems misplaced (if you'll pardon the pun).

so then why u taking issue w/american awesomeness

go. you only live once.

in america every day is a struggle. it's dog-eat-dog.

yeah, probably. I'm murky and sarcastic, and the few American girls I've dated have been like, "I fucking hate your sense of humor. I'm going to strangle you if you say something like that again. Be more positive!!! Make some sense!" It's all just having fun. The only ones who've tolerated it come from cultures where irony doesn't exist. Perhaps it's genetics; American girls ain't biting "{

Yeah, moving around a lot can be another form of escapism. But there's some value to it if you aren't totally naive about it.

― burt_stanton, Wednesday, October 15, 2008 11:55 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

All the new exciting places eventually became the same old places.

i really hope that Finnish Christmas dinner is not capped with Tuomassundae

xposts

No, but it is eat in the nude and between each course have to beat your neighbor at the table with birch twigs and a kind of pudding made of rotten fish and reindeer meat.

Familiarity might be the great enemy; and everywhere is familiar soon. probably one o thems brain thigns

What is familiar today, is no longer tomorrow.

while today is familiar tomorrow is no longer - because of the apocalypse

nothing personal, friend, but if you haven't actually lived outside the US then this question was in fact cringeworthingly poorly phrased, especially since it sounds like you want to leave the US because American girls don't find you funny. only an American would be dumb enough to say something like that, so you probably fit right in.

seriously, though, living outside the US is a great way to get perspective on it (you'll probably find you appreciate it more from there) not to mention learn about someplace different. the latter is the real reason to move to another country.

that said, as was mentioned above, you are hardly likely to feel that you "fit in better" anywhere else. you will lack the shared cultural and social history, and you'll never be able to make that up. i also think - huge generalization here - that there are few cultures as "rootless" as the US, and therefore the odds will be even further stacked against you (i.e. not only will you not be able to relate to, say, the grade school experience of the locals, you'll may very well find people in their 30s whose circle of friends still revolves around people they went to school with when they were 6. (i know this happens in the us, again i'm talking generalizations and probabilities).

wherever you go, there you are.

I've been abroad, and my extended family is established the UK ... my aunt was the editor for the Financial Times and my uncle was the managing editor for the Guardian for a while, as well as some other papers. A close friend owns a bunch of property in Cambridge. It's not like moving there would be some world of mystery... my family was middle class there since the 1500s, until my great great grandfather moved from London to Manhattan to become an investment banker. Half of my family ended up moving back, or to Brit expat communities elsewhere, and maybe they had a reason. Most of my relatives are abroad now.

o just figured out whos sock burt is!

It's not gabbneb

it sounds like you want to leave the US because American girls don't find you funny. only an American would be dumb enough to say something like that, so you probably fit right in.

owned

well if you're half-britisher then this makes a lot more sense, misery is in the dna of u ppl

try some therapy instead tho

it sounds like you want to leave the US because American girls don't find you funny. only an American would be dumb enough to say something like that

Oh, I don't know about that. His complaint was that his sense of humor is too dark and sarcastic for the tastes of most women he's dated. I've heard people from several countries -- Finland and Russia especially -- comment that American humor is very broad and nudge-nudge compared to what they're used to at home, which (according to them) is much drier, darker, and less overtly "jokey".

Of course, you can find plenty of deadpan humor in the States, and plenty of eager-to-please humor in countries like Japan and France. Still, I think there's some truth to the idea that, to people from other countries, Americans often seem like they're trying too hard to be funny.

i am funnier than anyone from any other country

It'd actually be really interesting to look at a bunch of countries, see how much of a taste they have for humor with a lot of "mugging" (shamelessly playing to the audience, Jerry Lewis style) vs. humor where the protagonists act indifferent or contemptuous towards the audience, and then correlate that with their attitude towards tall-poppy individualism vs. keeping your mouth shut and your head down.

(xpost)

that there are few cultures as "rootless" as the US

Or as heterogeneous -- we don't have one big culture here. There are people who live in my building who I have very little in common with culturally. It's not so much that Americans are at each others throats all the time, but we have huge differences in cultural experience between, for instance, black and white, middle-class and poor, educated and uneducated, and all kinds of combinations. When Palin says that Obama doesn't see America the same way as her base does, she's talking in code to bring out her base's worst prejudices, but she's not actually wrong. There are a million stories in the naked city, so to speak.

At any rate, is feeling out of place really so bad? Beats feeling stuck, I find. In your original question, you don't sound culturally bewildered as much as bored and self-pitying. It's all very 20-something. It'll pass. :)

Maybe just move to a bigger city. Worked for me.

This life is a hospital where every patient is possessed with the desire to change beds; one man would like to
suffer in front of the stove, and another believes that he would recover his health beside the window.
It always seems to me that I should feel well in the place where I am not, and this question of removal is one
which I discuss incessantly with my soul.
'Tell me, my soul, poor chilled soul, what do you think of going to live in Lisbon? It must be warm there, and there
you would invigorate yourself like a lizard. This city is on the sea-shore; they say that it is built of marble
and that the people there have such a hatred of vegetation that they uproot all the trees. There you have a landscape
that corresponds to your taste! a landscape made of light and mineral, and liquid to reflect them!'
My soul does not reply.
'Since you are so fond of stillness, coupled with the show of movement, would you like to settle in Holland,
that beatifying country? Perhaps you would find some diversion in that land whose image you have so often admired
in the art galleries. What do you think of Rotterdam, you who love forests of masts, and ships moored at the foot of
houses?'
My soul remains silent.
'Perhaps Batavia attracts you more? There we should find, amongst other things, the spirit of Europe
married to tropical beauty.'
Not a word. Could my soul be dead?
'Is it then that you have reached such a degree of lethargy that you acquiesce in your sickness? If so, let us
flee to lands that are analogues of death. I see how it is, poor soul! We shall pack our trunks for Tornio. Let us go
farther still to the extreme end of the Baltic; or farther still from life, if that is possible; let us settle at the Pole. There
the sun only grazes the earth obliquely, and the slow alternation of light and darkness suppresses variety and
increases monotony, that half-nothingness. There we shall be able to take long baths of darkness, while for our
amusement the aurora borealis shall send us its rose-coloured rays that are like the reflection of Hell's own
fireworks!'
At last my soul explodes, and wisely cries out to me: 'No matter where! No matter where! As long as it's out
of the world!'

(Though it doesn't really take much to figure out that embittered, downtrodden countries will probably tend to like embittered, go-to-hell humor.)

xpost #2

i have known plenty of international pps and they all had goofy, 'normal' senses of humor that fit in w/all the americans they hung out with

except for bosnians, they are pretty dry

only intl humor difference i have ever really noticed is sarcasm wrt usa vs uk - americans use sarcasm when they want to make a point, limeys use it all the time cuz they're miserable assholes

ಥ﹏ಥ

and yeah, the idea of not being able to fit in w/the 'culture' of the US is weird to me - this is such a pluralist nation, american culture is world culture etc, not sayin the ol' u s of a is for everyone but the idea of there being one overarching american sensibility to hang ur hat on is just dang crazy imo

american culture is world culture This is patent bs.

I think there are a few overarching American qualities that exist fairly across the board. The cult of positivity, unending optimism, superficial friendships, allthat jazz.

du tell mike

NB i've never left the country so wut do i know

http://www.barbaraehrenreich.com/hope.htm This woman speaks my language. Hope is stupid.

maybe you ought to just jump off a bridge.

Barbara Ehrenreich is American.

She is a lone crier in the wilderness, an anomaly, one in a sea of 300 million. It was also a joke.

burt stanton, jokesmith

Well, not really a joke, more like me making fun of my attitude in a self-knowing way. My last girlfriend would be like, "you're so negative!!! LOVE THE WORLD!" and I'm like "I was just making fun of myself. It's light hearted"

burt stanton, ladies man

She is a lone crier in the wilderness

Well, her and the working poor and hopelessly disenfranchised that she writes books about

hey ilx poster burt_stanton want to move to iceland i think the ppl their might have the sort of worldview that u can relate to + all the time u can wear sweaters. sweaters w/ reindeer even probably and girls will love your deep, uncompromising and sarcastic sense of humour. u can design flash games and practice whaling law and talk about how much u hate other europeans.

Heh. I was thinking Russia.

I honestly have no idea who that lady is crusty but benign

hey ilx poster burt_stanton want to move to iceland i think the ppl their might have the sort of worldview that u can relate to + all the time u can wear sweaters. sweaters w/ reindeer even probably and girls will love your deep, uncompromising and sarcastic sense of humour. u can design flash games and practice whaling law and talk about how much u hate other europeans.

― ******* (Lamp), Wednesday, October 15, 2008 2:40 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

greatest post in board history imo

Sweaters with reindeer are tempting, though. Maybe I'll even grow a beard! But I already live in Brooklyn, so that's a moot point.

I honestly have no idea who that lady is

Check her out! She fits well into the conversation, in a way.

http://www.amazon.com/This-Land-Their-Reports-Divided/dp/0805088407/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1224095912&sr=8-1

Oh yeah, she's one of those 'take it to the street' types. So when she gets all the rabble out there she'll pull up in her limo and feel an empowering sense of self-satisfaction.

Speaking of which, I should renew my subscription to the Nation.

i am in full support of ilx poster burt_stanton expatriating

Ha! Yeah, people raved about her book "Nickel and Dimed" where she pulled a kind of Morgan Spurlock and went to sleep with common people, living off minimum wage, etc. But she's much funnier and angrier.

xpost

she's the "Nickled & Dimed" chick, right?

ah xpost

Case in point, an uber liberal friend of mine on facebook, I posted that ridiculous "Liberal Hunting Permit" picture I found on here, and she's all, "god you want to fight or something??" and I'm like, "relax, it's just a joke." So serious.

Enh?

Burt be moving to PRAGUE!

can i move to antarctica? and take along a really strong space heater?

but then who will see your cute new haircut? Seems a waste.

the penguins. they're gay, right? they'll love it.

Only if you're gay. Penguins can totally tell if you're a real lesbian or just doing it for attention.

Didn't you see the movie? Morgan Freeman totally talked about that.

Totally.