Do I miss the place I used to call home?

I feel the same way about the UK at times, love the people, don't miss the country. Whenever I get homesick (which is not often) I simply think about the fact that you have to have a license to watch TV. 

And if that other waste of flesh gets in, then this country won't be as nice as Canada or the UK. 
 
(Oops!  There we go, dooming this thread with politics.  Oh well, sorry about that Rain!)

No place is perfect. On the one hand, Canada has some great television. On the other hand, one of the best CBC shows tells you stuff like this...
 

sharke

ampfixer
I'm dissapointed with both of you. Why slag your native country? Does it make you feel better? If Trump gets in you'll both be on watch lists. 

It's called having a subjective opinion and not being afraid of expressing it. I find patriotism to be a little, how shall I put it, anti-intellectual.

Wow. Even duct tape can't fix that.
 
 
 
 

spacey

sharke

ampfixer
I'm dissapointed with both of you. Why slag your native country? Does it make you feel better? If Trump gets in you'll both be on watch lists. 

It's called having a subjective opinion and not being afraid of expressing it. I find patriotism to be a little, how shall I put it, anti-intellectual.

Wow. Even duct tape can't fix that.
 
 
 
 

spacey

sharke
Fix what? The fact that I judge things on their own merit?

I've been riding Harleys for quite a few years and as far back as I can remember there's been a saying;
"If I have to explain it you wouldn't understand it anyway". Not that it matters to me anyway. Hell, I can't believe half the **** I read here.
  

Believe me, the feeling is mutual! If you can explain to me, using logic, why I should judge a country simply by virtue of the fact of having been born there instead of on it's own merits, then I'm all ears. "If I have to explain it you wouldn't understand it anyway" is just another way of saying that you don't know. 

sharke

spacey

sharke
Fix what? The fact that I judge things on their own merit?

I've been riding Harleys for quite a few years and as far back as I can remember there's been a saying;
"If I have to explain it you wouldn't understand it anyway". Not that it matters to me anyway. Hell, I can't believe half the **** I read here.
  

Believe me, the feeling is mutual! If you can explain to me, using logic, why I should judge a country simply by virtue of the fact of having been born there instead of on it's own merits, then I'm all ears. "If I have to explain it you wouldn't understand it anyway" is just another way of saying that you don't know. 

You're missing the point. I don't want to change your mind. " I find patriotism to be a little, how shall I put it, anti-intellectual." Your words and that's fine by me.
"Even duct tape can't fix that" My words and fine by me.
Ok, I'll try to explain it....you think it isn't broke and I think it is and don't care to fix it.

spacey

sharke

spacey

sharke
Fix what? The fact that I judge things on their own merit?

I've been riding Harleys for quite a few years and as far back as I can remember there's been a saying;
"If I have to explain it you wouldn't understand it anyway". Not that it matters to me anyway. Hell, I can't believe half the **** I read here.
  

Believe me, the feeling is mutual! If you can explain to me, using logic, why I should judge a country simply by virtue of the fact of having been born there instead of on it's own merits, then I'm all ears. "If I have to explain it you wouldn't understand it anyway" is just another way of saying that you don't know. 

You're missing the point. I don't want to change your mind. " I find patriotism to be a little, how shall I put it, anti-intellectual." Your words and that's fine by me.
"Even duct tape can't fix that" My words and fine by me.
Ok, I'll try to explain it....you think it isn't broke and I think it is and don't care to fix it.

So again with the cop out "if I have to explain then I'm not going to" nonsense! Come on man you can do better than that. Just a small clue as to the intellectual value of patriotism would suffice. 

I don't think patriotism is intellectual. It's something that comes from the heart. I never thought I was patriotic until somebody started to say how happy they were not to be here anymore. It struck me as odd that the price of a bottle of wine could be enough to make a person happy about leaving their country. That assumes the person was actually happy to be there at some point. Perhaps they were not. 
 
Everyone is entitled to express their opinions freely. We should all be happy if this is a fact, regardless of where we live. There are many places on the earth that I couldn't exist in, and there are more refugees roaming the planet than the population of many sovereign countries. So sad.

ampfixer
I don't think patriotism is intellectual. It's something that comes from the heart. I never thought I was patriotic until somebody started to say how happy they were not to be here anymore. It struck me as odd that the price of a bottle of wine could be enough to make a person happy about leaving their country. That assumes the person was actually happy to be there at some point. Perhaps they were not. 
 
Everyone is entitled to express their opinions freely. We should all be happy if this is a fact, regardless of where we live. There are many places on the earth that I couldn't exist in, and there are more refugees roaming the planet than the population of many sovereign countries. So sad.

But to claim that Rain is happy to leave his country solely over the price of a bottle of wine is disingenuous to say the least. He was just citing one example and never gave that impression at all. 
 
Up until I left the UK I had multiple friends who left at one time or another and came back to visit and said they were glad not to live in Britain any more. I have to say I didn't feel any kind of patriotic emotion in defense. I don't feel any "loyalty" to a place. It's a geographical location, not a person. 

Maybe we should all take a step back here. IT's just words on the internet and I don't want to see anyone getting banned. How it turned into a road kill rant is beyond me.

An interesting thing happens when you live outside your home country for a long time, which is that you start to view your homeland through the eyes of the foreigners you've come to identify with. It's a distorted view.
 
The longest I've lived outside the U.S. was three years split between England and Germany. At the end of that time, I was apprehensive about going back "home". I had this image of America as being a dangerous and unfriendly place, with horrific crime, an oppressive government, a crumbling economy and deep philosophical divisions. Thank you, BBC. Thank you, Bayerischer Rundfunk, and thank you, Stars and Stripes for only reporting the most bizarre and depressing stories from America.
 
It took a few months to get comfortable in America again. I had to rediscover that it was in fact mostly populated by sane, peaceful, charitable folks who would give you the shirt off their backs. That the most unassuming redneck farmer might in reality be a thoughtful, well-read intellectual. That some really good music had been happening here in my absence. That drivers here are the most restrained in the world - the first thing that struck me on day one (hitting the turnpike in New Jersey) was everyone was going the same speed, and traffic was moving smoothly despite being quite heavy. 
 
Now, as for the hard-working reputation of Americans, meh. Yes, we are rivaled in workaholism  - and heart attacks - only by the Japanese. But my time spent in more relaxed atmospheres (especially the Philippines) has shown me a better way, a compromise between hard work and low-stress attitudes. 
 
I should also point out that New England and the West Coast are as different as any two countries might be. Sharke has not become an American, he has become a New Yorker. And that's about as different from, say, a Californian as a German is to an Italian.

I totally get what you're saying about your perception of the "old country" being tainted by your newly adopted country Bit. However in my case, I had started to become disillusioned with aspects of the UK many years before I left it. And I think there is a difference between the way each country's respective medias portray the other country. For example, you're totally right about the UK media's biased portrayal of the US. There is a snobby anti-Americanism prevalent in much of Europe, and I have to deal with it from my friends all the time, most of whom have never set foot in the US let alone lived here and seem to have built their entire opinion of it from movies, the BBC and Guardian editorials. 
 
As an example, a frequent opinion I hear expressed from friends is "I would never want to go to the US, I wouldn't feel safe, it's so violent." And then the very same people are jetting off to Brazil, with 4x the murder rate of the US, or Jamaica, with 10x the murder rate of US. They come back and they can't wait to tell everyone what a paradise it was and how they would move there given half the chance. Personally, despite the relatively high murder rate of the US compared to the UK, I feel safer walking around New York than I ever did in Newcastle, in which I saw far more violence. I was the victim of violence many times back home simply crossing paths with some random drunks in the street who were looking for a fight, and whereas I'm sure that goes on here too I just see it a lot less. I can count on one hand the number of street fights I've seen in NYC in almost 15 years (seriously), whereas I would see mindless violence on almost a daily basis in Newcastle. 
 
Now let's move onto the way Europe is portrayed by the US media - I have to say, it's almost on the point of being fetishized. There is this meme in the media that Europe is a better, more civilized place where everyone is well educated and healthy and happy. Especially when it comes to Scandinavia (which has one of the largest rates of antidepressant prescription in the developed world). The editorials I read about Scandinavia are bordering on ridiculous, and I have both a Norwegian and a Swedish friend (one here, one back in Newcastle) who find them funny. My Norwegian friend, when asked about how great Norway is by people who have read glistening write ups about it in the US media, just laughs and says "it is not so good. You live there, you find out for yourself." Beautiful place of course, but just not the social wonderland it's portrayed to be. 
 
And yes I'm speaking as a New Yorker, but the thing about that is New York is a melting pot - not just of nationalities but Americans too. I regularly meet, talk to and do business with people from all over the US - Arizona, Oklahoma, LA, Ohio, Kentucky, everywhere - so I've had personal experience with a wide range of Americans. While it's impossible to generalize too much, you do start to discern a common thread. That's not to say that certain things don't annoy me, of course they do. The weirdest things annoy me that are frankly so petty I won't even go into them 
 
 

jamesg1213

sharke

jamesg1213
I'd be interested to hear more pros and cons of living in the US from the two ex-pats (Rain & Sharke) - apart from TV and wine.

For me the biggest thing is the general attitude of people. Now I'm not knocking any of the British friends and family I have back home, but I find that in general that people in the States are more motivated and ambitious, and more positive about crazy ideas that you have to make money. There is more of a "go for it!" attitude in the states than there is in the UK. Of course you're going to find exceptions in both countries, but I'm talking about in general. When I first came to the states I lived in Nantucket and was immediately impressed by how many people had built their own houses, deal with their own sewage, take their own trash to the dump etc. Back home I just never saw that level of independence as the general feeling is that the government should do all of those things for you. 
 
The US is just a far more colorful, interesting place than the UK overall. There is more variety, more individualism, more color, more culture, more positive people, more ambition, more opportunity. 
 
Let me just give you a little example of attitudes which sticks in my mind. I remember a year or so before I came to the states, waiting for a bus in Newcastle City Center. It was December, but a very sunny day, so I had shades on. There was a couple of young women standing nearby and one of them says to the other, "sunglasses in winter, who does he think he is, a film star?"
 
I'm not claiming the US is perfect or not without its own serious problems. But having lived a long time in both countries, I do feel qualified to make an overall comparison. 

 
Exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to read when I asked, thanks. A good friend of mine lived in the US for many years and has given me quite an insight into living there (California, Chicago and Northern Michigan mainly) so I was interested to hear another point of view.
 
It's been interesting living in Scotland for 14 years and looking at England from a (smaller) distance. Like I said before, I do miss The Cotswolds but I suspect that if I went back it wouldn't be how I remember it (even if I could afford to go back, which would require a lottery win).
 
Nonetheless, if anyone ever asks me, I never refer to myself as 'British', I will always be English, and a Glosterman at heart.
 

 
Scotland has this romance about it though, yes? I have family on Skye and as a kid we used to drive up there every year from Newcastle, through the Highlands, and it's so spectacularly beautiful that I was deeply moved, even as a 10 year old. And I used to visit Edinburgh quite a bit in my early 20's, again a very beautiful city that just has an amazing vibe about it. However I remember visiting Edinburgh again in my late 20's and feeling a little "meh" like I just didn't feel it any more. I did also experience a bit of anti-English snobbery from some Scots - not too much, but enough to make me think that if I moved there (and I did think about moving to Edinburgh for a while, to take up a voluntary position with the Scottish Wildlife Trust - didn't happen though) that it might grate after a while. 

spacey

sharke
 
 
Why get so emotional? It would help to actually think about what I said first rather than go off on a rant based on something I didn't say. I didn't, for instance, say that I thought patriots were stupid, or incapable of intellect. I just said that patriotism is not an intellectual stance to take.  

Only one thing was emotional....that you were insulting me.
 
Patriotism is an intellectual stance. Many patriots know a great deal about their government and the officials within and don't show up at voting booths following their hearts. (as I've read here )
They know how to go about making changes within the system or how to strive for improvement.
 
Maybe you and Ampfixer are right and I'm wrong. Many do think that majority of voters know nothing more than voting straight for a party or go with whomever seems to feel right at the moment. Blindly doing their patriotic duty with not a thought one while leading others to think as you.
 
So.....I write to you and I'm off on a rant based on something you didn't say...I will not be ranting another word to you and yes I'm emotionally moved...I'm glad you're not my neighbor.

The fact that you're emotionally moved about it confirms to me that it's not an intellectual stance. I'm not saying that all non-intellectual stances are a bad thing, and again let me repeat that I have my share of non-intellectual feelings and emotions, it's just not intellectual, period. Yes many patriots know a great deal about government. But that's an aspect of their intellect, not their patriotism. A lot of non-patriotic people know a great deal about government too.