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America
has been described in such words as Bush and McDonald’s. References to
Hollywood and Cowboy show that the attractions of America have been
reduced to what can be seen through media (i.e. Hollywood).

The
students at l'Ecole Polytechnique often associate President Bush with
the United States, but there is only one reference to Chirac on the
list for words associated with France. In the US, there is little news
about Chirac, his policies and the support he has from the French
people. How much coverage is there on President Bush in France? For the
students at l'Ecole Polytechnique, do you hear about his policies, his
decisions, his popularity or other aspects of his presidency? How much
do his actions affect your opinion of the United States?

Je
trouve l'analyse de Zahra P Karimi un petit peu rapide : des deux cotes
nous avons reagi de la meme facon. Au pays d'en face nous avons
associes des mots ou des images qui nous viennent de stereotypes, des
medias ou des souvenirs de vacances. Pour nous l'amerique c'est la NBA,
Mac Donald, Hollywood, Coca-Cola, le WTC, les cow-boys, les hot dogs et
le baseball. Pour vous l'Europe et la France vous ont fait penser a
"bread", "Eiffel Tower", "cheese", "wine", "fashion", le Tour de
France, les baguettes, les cafes, les croissants (miam!!), Napoleon,
les crepes, la provence, les "nice cities" et les "small houses".

Pour notre pays nous avons chacun plutot associe un jugement :
pour les americains, leur pays est "great", "powerfull" et "world
leader", mais ils reconnaissent les defauts de leurs compatriotes
"ignorant of other culture", "fat", "greedy", "morons" (jugement
parfois severe). De meme nous avons juge notre continent en parlant
d'avenir, de projet, de reve ou bien de merdier et de desaccord.
(d'ailleurs je pense que le mot Europe nous a plus inspire que le mot
France. En tout cas ce fut mon cas.)

Apres
la comparaison des reponses en ce qui concerne plusieurs mots, il se
degage une tendance generale. Je m'interesse plus particulierement aux
mots "Etats Unis", "Democracie" et "France", et je prends en compte les
reponses dans leur globalite. A mes yeux la grande difference entre
etudiants du MIT et mes camarades de l'Ecole Polytechnique reside dans
la difference de profondeur de vue, meme si elle ne reflete pas, je
l'espere, une difference de profondeur d'esprit. Les reponses
americaines sont assez centrees sur des situations, des faits qui les
touchent, sans en chercher les causes. Au contraire seules les concepts
et les raisons semblent interesser en general les Francais. Ainsi en ce
qui concerne le mot "Etats Unis", l'adjectif "fat" revient souvent du
cote du MIT, alors que la cause de ce mot est plus souvent citee du
cote francais : "Mc Donald", "puissance", sans insister autant sur les
consequences. Pour repondre a Zahra P Karimi, ce n'est pas le Mc Donald
en lui meme qui interesse les Francais mais le modele economique et
social et dont il est le relais, ainsi que ses consequences. On
retrouve la meme dynamique en ce qui concerne les reponses au mot
"France". On retrouve evidement du cote francais des mots faisant
reference a la gastronomie, mais en faible proportion par rapport aux
reponses americaines pour les USA. Et alors que ceux ci ne semblent
voir la France que sous l'oeil d'un touriste, les Francais insistent
plus sur l'identite de leur pays : "culture, histoire, pays". Neanmoins
les exemples les plus flagrants viennent de la comparaison des reponses
pour le mot "Democratie". Le plus important au MIT reside dans ses
applications directes : " vote", "freedom of...". De l'autre cote de
l'Atlantique la tendance a une vision plus profonde : la Democracie est
le regime politique qui permet le mieux la liberte (ce mot revient 7
fois), avec toutes lons consequences ideologiques qui en decoulent.
Cette difference de profondeur de vue vient elle du caractere plus
pragmatique des Americains ou de la tendance naturelle des Francais a
se croire obliges de reflechir plus que le reste du monde ? Sans doute
les deux. Cependant reste a savoir quelle est la meilleure attitude.
Voltaire n'a t il pas ecrit

"Travaillons sans raisonner, c'est le seul moyen de rendre la vie supportable" ?

Avez vous des avis sur cette question ?

Desole pour ce message sans accents et assez autain, mais il parait que c'est tout l'interet du jeu.

En
reponse a Zahra, il est vrai que nous voyons les Etats- Unis au travers
de media comme les films ou les series tv, qui sont d'ailleurs a la
base de la fascination qu'exerce votre pays sur beaucoup d'entre nous,
au meme titre que vous ne semblez connaitre la France que grace aux
cartes postales. Je ne pense pas que ce genre de cliches (les fast food
et bush pour vous, le vin et la culture ou l'arogance pour nous) soient
inutiles et dangereux, au contraire ils peuvent etre la base de
reflexions plus profondes, a commencer par se demander comment et
pourquoi les autres nous resument a ces cliches.

Par ailleurs j'ai eu la chance de me rendre aux Etats- Unis
cet ete, et je me suis rendu compte que la critique sociale faite dans
les Simpsons (dont je suis fan depuis quelques annees), si elle peut
paraitre stereotypee, n'en est pas moins revelatrice.

De plus, et pour repondre a lee, je pense que le president
Bush est cite plus souvent que le president Chirac dans la mesure ou
ses actions ont infiniment plus de repercussions sur la vie du pays et
meme du monde que celle de sont collegue francais. De plus, en France
le president n'est que le chef de l'etat, et il s'appuie sur le premier
ministre qui est lui le chef du gouvernement et decide donc de la
politique a mener. Il faut de plus ajouter a cela la campagne de
denigrement menee contre bush en france,et qui a pour consequence que
beaucoup font un amalgame entre les choix contestables de Bush (
politique ecologique, reduction des fonds pour l'enseignement, mis en
avant des religions pour justifier les conflits, mauvaise gestion de la
catastrophe Katrina) et les traditions et modes de pensees americains.
Pensez vous que le president Bush soit un bon ambassadeur des valeurs
americaines?

It's
interesting to see that most of the subjects have become a polemic
between europeans and americans. I think both sides start with their
own biases, after all it's much easier to see the wrong things of the
other one and conveniently forget our own. Obviously there is
absolutely no excuse for Bush's actions in the United States and all
over the world. I think most people in this forum agree on that.
However, many europeans, including myself, tend to forget the political
situation in Europe. The Germans just voted for the Christian
Democrats, the austrian fascists were in the government and in France,
Le pen (sorry for the spelling) has 15% of the vote and was Chirac's
opponent in the last presidential election. And talking about the
arrogance of the Americans, Europe had the same imperialistic policy
for centuries, colonizing and terrorizing the entire world. I'm not
trying to find excuses for the dispicable foreign policy of the US,
however rather than letting ourselves be consumed by intercontinental
differences, we should instead recognize the fact that the main
differences exist between classes and not nations.

Flavien
asked if President Bush is good ambassador of American values. First of
all if you ask MIT students most are likely to say no, mainly because
college students are more liberal than the rest of the population and
most liberals disagree with pretty much everything President Bush says.
There are also other factors such as the fact that most of us are
scientists and we are living in Massachussetts, a "liberal" state.
Personally I would disagree with all these people, and so would the
majority of the US because obviously we elected him, not once but
twice. Why? Because he stands for what most of us believe in. So if it
seems like a lot of Americans don't like Bush, it might be because
freedom of speech allows people to rant, rave, and complain all they
want and the media likes to cover all the negative stuff in the world.

In response to Felix:

I think you have made an interesting observation as to the
different characters of the responses, but I can't say I completely
agree with your resolution into the two categories of pragmatism and
reflection. I think that a better way to characterize the difference is
perhaps by instead invoking the difference between post-modernism and
modernism. The american responses are like a stream of consciousness
work: when someone says "green," I immediately say "blue," not "color."
The reason for this is the essence of post-modern culture (to put it
paradoxically), which is currently american culture: the culture which
has no hope for a better tomorrow; the culture of driving along in a
car made in Japan in a city filled with people who weren’t born there
to get a slurpy from 7-eleven; the culture of being estranged from
one's own country because of ideological and social disconnection; the
culture of living in a region where there is no history to speak of but
rather just rich, white americans who become more rich, white americans
who drive big cars. I personally grew up in Dallas, TX, a city with the
least culture one could think of; I call myself and act a Texan only in
the absurd sense: pointing out the absurdity of my vegetarianism, which
completely clashes with the general tone of a region to which not even
my parents (or my car, or my shoes) are native. It is a culture devoid
of culture which has no hope for the future and no ideals: one cannot
respond to the word "democracy" with the word "freedom" because both of
these notions are absurd, contaminated, and ravaged by post-modern
cynicism and disregard. The only thing left for post-modernist culture
to recall when considering democracy is the purely physical act of
voting.

To believe in ideals one must have hope. And there is no hope in America today.

A question to Silvia: When you say "Because he stands for what most of us believe in", what exactly do you mean?
Do you believe that abortion should be illegal?
Do you believe that global warming doesn't exist?
Do you believe that Bush succeeded in the war against terror?
Do you believe that intelligent design is a sound scientific theory?
Do you believe that the tax cuts for the 1% wealthiest americans helped the economy?
Do you believe that letting the underprivileged black population of New Orleans die was fair?

The rest of the world is almost happy when something bad happens
in the US and this is really really sad. But instead of blaming
everyone else for being jealous and hateful, maybe we can start
thinking about how power and wealth has corrupted american "democracy".

A
Iordanis, "The rest of the world is almost happy when something bad
happens in the US and this is really really sad." Je ne suis pas du
tout d'accord. Nous ne sommes pas anti americain, et nous sommes juste
antipathiques à la politique étrange des Etats-Unis. Quand le
catastrophe est arrivé, nous avons eu le même sentiment que vous. Une
chose que je suis tout à fait d'accord, si nous ne mettons pas l'accent
sur le pouvoir et le fortune, le monde se dévelopera vers une meilleure
direction.

A
Cramer,"To believe in ideals one must have hope. And there is no hope
in America today." Je ne sais pas pourquoi tu es si trist(e). Le future
se fait par nous. Si tu as déjà perdu l'espoir, quand la culture
americaine s'améliore?

In response to Yang:

I'm not being pessimistic at all. To say that "I have no hope"
and that "I don't encounter the notions of freedom and liberty and etc.
on a daily basis" is not in itself "good" or "bad." One can embrace the
notion of our hopeless, meaningless, absurd existence without
defaulting to platonic notions. I think Walt Whitman's poem "I sing the
body electric" is a good example of this notion. One could, on the one
hand, praise the human body by looking at its mathematical properties,
its almost geometrically perfect features or its most perfect
specimens, like works of ancient greek art. The poem by Whitman is
completely different, however. Instead he speaks of the human body in
all its disgusting, imperfect and awful details, ending the poem with
simply a listing of physical objects associated with the body: "Food,
drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,...The
circling rivers, the breath, and breathing it in and out,...The thin
red jellies within you, or within me...O I say now these are the Soul!"
This pronouncement, that truly the utter physicality of the body is
actually the soul, is the essence of the optimistic post-modernist view
that requires no hope. It is not necessary to rely on the platonic
world of ideals for our happiness; we can find it just as well in our
absurd, destined, futile, earthly lives.

To
Iodanis: I believe this forum was meant to be a form of communication
between the french students and american students. Also I hate that it
has turned into a political debate because I am not one to get into
politics. But since you asked, yes, no, kinda, yes, don't know enough
about that to comment on it, and no one "let" anybody die.

"we
can find it just as well in our absurd, destined, futile, earthly
lives." Je suis tout a fait d'accord. Mais la dépendance de "platonic
world of ideals" est un point essentiel à nous faire avancer sans
cesse. IL pourrait changer un peu la qualité de vie.Comment tu peux
expliquer que tu lis beaucoup de livres littéraires si tu as plutôt
envie de chercher la plaisirdans la vie réelle et matériale.

To Yang:

When I say "It is not necessary to rely on the platonic world of
ideals for our happiness" what I mean is the view towards platonistic
ideals in the manner in which it was originally conceived. That is to
say, viewing the world of ideals as a realm

above

our own,

more important

than our own; the notion that each chair in our world is striving to be
like the ideal chair, not that the ideal chair is a product of all
earthly chair; that man was made in the image of god, not that god was
made in the image of man. In fact, I'm a pure math major, so all I do
all day is revel in the world of ideals. That doesn't mean that I
completely dismiss the human element involved in mathematics. In fact,
the recognition of the human element in mathematics is a main feature
distinguishing late 19th century Hilbertian optimism with the definite
restraint of Gödel's incompleteness theorem which characterizes modern
mathematics. One can effectively wield the world of ideals, but one
should never forget their utterly human, physical dependence.