Intelligent analysis of the Pico Iyer article I discussed yesterday over at Big Hominid.

I tried to be “balanced” in my own initial analysis, mainly because I hold the author in such high esteem and couldn’t imagine he would write anything blatantly stupid. (After I discovered his article on the Tiananmen tank man back in May I must have gone back 20 times to re-read it.) As Hominid says, I was “too kind,” and he gets right to the point:

I fucking hate the relentless attempt to paint America as irrevocably juvenile. Yeah, there’s plenty that’s juvenile about American culture, but we’ve gone places other countries can’t go because we’re not quite so shackled to the goddamn past, where tradition leads to inertia. I don’t see how a modern Europe that allows the ethnic cleansing of moderate Muslims (anybody remembering this?) and appeases its burgeoning fundie Muslim minority (France, Germany) contains any special wisdom from which we should learn. The same is true of so much Asian “wisdom,” when it comes under scrutiny.

These are valid points. It still leaves me wondering whether there is anything America can do, ever, to shift world opinion of us as an oafish teenager using the world for one giant night on the town.

Now, this perception may be entirely wrong, but the fact that it’s become so ingrained is a problem we cannot simply dismiss with a “Fuck you, world!”, which only makes things worse. In practical terms, it can make cooperation with the rest of the world a nightmare and it’s simply unhealthy. The unhealthiness may be on their side, but it can mean serious probelms over on our side.

Big Hominid is an interesting site, by the way, with a focus on Korea. I’m adding it to my prestigious Pearls of Asia list now.