A quote from a recent Atlantic blog post named Immoderation Nation caught my eye, “extreme behavior of all kinds is both our glory and our potential downfall.” It is hard to dispute such a statement, given the American propensity to take all matters to an extreme. Why is this the case?
The pioneering mentality has to do with a lot of it: the wild-wild-west drive where it’s all or nothing. The collective mentality of a people where the land was wrangled from the supposedly savage Indians; followed by flights with its numerous foes: the Spanish, the French, and the British. All these make the society much more resilient and accepting to rapid rises and even more dizzying falls, where the rags to riches stories are stuff of the legends and the possibility is open to all.
Political and social policies have followed suit in propagating and affirming the American way. It’s a land where self-sufficiency and bootstrapping oneself is valued above all else; where the value, and the power of the individual is almost mystified. The government, whether in theory or in practice, has stepped back along with much of a social safety net, and one is asked and told to sink or swim on his own. It is the land of the ultimate social experiment, where one needs to shoulder the burden of all ramifications of one’s choices, good and bad.
Like I said in an earlier post, one simply cannot slack off in America. When you do, you get taken to the cleaner. This in effect, brings out the best in us. Combine this irrepressible upwardly-mobile drive with an ultra-competitive culture, where any measurable activity can become a test of competency and worthy of trophies, it is not hard to see how the pursuit of the extremes becomes an American specialty.
This tunnel-vision pursuit sometimes impose an incredible mental and physical strain that is hard to shake off. Perhaps in an effort to compensate for an apparent lack of control over one’s long and demanding to-do list, Americans seem drawn down one of two paths. One of indulgences, one of obsessive activities.
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