Can European café culture cure America?

UnHerd ^ | July 2024 | Chris Arnade

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Americans are not a healthy bunch, neither physically nor mentally. And we we getting sicker. We have an unnaturally high level of mental illness…We are addicted to medicines…We are killing ourselves in record numbers.

Yet Americans often miss the strength of Europe because they rarely stray beyond its touristy city centres. Big city Europe is in the process of being smoothed into a generic, boring singular entity. This soulless Americanisation has accelerated dramatically over the last few decades, driven by globalisation, tourism and secular capitalism. The result is McEurope — a chain of big cities where chunks of each are the same.

….Of all the smallish towns I have stayed in along France’s Rhône Valley, Tournon-sur-Rhône is my least favourite. It’s a loud town with an old expressway, Route Nationale 86, running through it.

Yet even in Tournon, on a boring Wednesday afternoon, there was an active social scene, a communal sense of needing to be, if not directly with other people, then at least near them. At one local café, friends, colleagues, couples, families came and went. Those who arrived alone, mostly older regulars, came to sit, watch the world and chat with waiters and fellow patrons.

… This cafe culture, which I saw every day in every community along the Rhône Valley, is just one example of France’s healthy sense of communalism. The socialising here isn’t “networking” — but rather to become part of a collective, with a shared understanding of who you are (in this case, French) and why it’s good to be that. This sense of self so ingrained, it’s not explicitly recognised.

That feeling of knowing who you are, of recognising that you’re a valuable part of something bigger and better than yourself, is far less common in the United States…

[9YearLurker]

It’s odd. They are in lots of ways more of a nanny state, but then less so in some other ways.

[aquila48]

Civilizations fail because of the disease called “affluenza”.

It’s when the majority of the population no longer appreciate how well they have it and who and what made it happen.

[GingisK]

Yes, that is virtually what causes collapse.

[anthropocene_x]

Americans are always pressurized to hustle and work more more more faster faster faster harder harder harder. They don’t have time for healthy eating and cooking and fitness, except housewives and the rich.
Europeans have a much better work culture and more vacation days.

[Uncle Miltie]

European cities are being islamicized.

muslim ghettoes are expanding and will take over all of them within our lifetimes.