(Quinn Nachtrieb • The Student Life)
There are archaic stereotypes about Europe versus America that persist today: Americans are all about hustle culture, Europeans laze around in cafes all afternoon before going to work, the French are always on strike, etc.
The roots of these stereotypes — believe it or not — lie in early cultural exchanges between Europe and the (then) newly-founded United States.
Alexis de Tocqueville, in his infamous “Democracy in America” which he published after visiting the United States in the 1830s, articulated a central dichotomy that would define the distinction between European and American cultures from then on.
“The chief reason of this contrast is that [Europeans] do not think of the ills they endure,” Tocqueville said. “[Americans] are forever brooding over advantages they do not possess.”
Americans are always dissatisfied, no matter how frugal or lavishly they may live.
“When all the privileges of birth and fortune are abolished, when all professions are accessible to all, and a man’s own energies may place him at the top of any of them … an easy and unbounded career seems open to his ambitions, and he will readily persuade himself that he is born to no vulgar destinies,” Tocqueville wrote.
In a world where “all men are created equal” (theoretically but certainly not in reality), everything is fair game. It’s like choice overload.
Donning my fedora and beige trench coat, I prepared to investigate whether this notion — that Americans work, work, work and Europeans just enjoy the scenery — is indeed true.
The results of my inquiry have been somewhat ambiguous.
Europeans work hard, do not be mistaken. My host parents are up at the crack of dawn, slaving away at the computer. Walking down Rue de Sèvres towards my 8 a.m. literature class, I see plenty of Parisians lugging around heavy suitcases on their way to work.
“Americans are always dissatisfied, no matter how frugal or lavishly they may live.”
Europeans take pride in their work and speak of it with dignity. The difference is that, unlike Americans, they get five weeks off each year and take more time to enjoy the scenery because Europe is full of it.
While taking a walk with my aunt in Parc de Sceaux, a 17th-century French garden on the outskirts of Paris, I couldn’t help but marvel at the picturesque stone of the park’s estate and how the lavender-blue roof top contrasted with the purple sunset. Around us, the cherry trees and chirping birds emitted life. Why would anyone cross the ocean when this is what awaits you in the Old World?
Sprawling landscapes, ancient buildings and history inform the terrain. You work all week to spend your weekends in a beautiful chateaux in Normandy. On your way to work, you admire the Haussmannian gildings adorning the French balconies. Of course Europeans are happier.
Contrast that with our New World and the gray brutalist architecture, 50 year-old strip malls and endless expanse of highway that mark our view to work — life is muted and colorless.
I can’t help but ask myself: Why leave Europe when you’re born and raised to inherit this way of life?
I’ve met many Europeans fascinated with America, not including Tocqueville. Some are even interested in living in the United States. Is it for opportunity? To be in the center of the universe, around which everything else revolves?
I suppose that’s America’s appeal, even to me. Assimilation into America, its culture and history and way of life is so complete that I find it difficult to imagine living anywhere else (I’m literally an American studies major).
In the United States, you feel like the whole world is at your fingertips. But this perceived reality is a mirage. It’s here where our voracious appetite for feeling and experiencing everything, living everywhere and working all kinds of jobs comes from. Even after all is said and done, we’re left with an emptiness because those opportunities are shallow and lacking in substance.
As Americans, we are living in the heart of the empire — and yet we couldn’t be further away from the rest of the world.
Something I’ve come to appreciate while in Europe is the mélange of different languages and cultures that I come across. It’s incredible how each European country has maintained its cultural and historical idiosyncrasies, its differences.
When Europeans left the Old World for the new, they severed themselves from those roots forever.
This severance might prove to be the American empire’s ultimate downfall. As despotic anti-Western regimes rise around the world, I can’t help feeling that, as a country that spawns its own enemies, this global stratification is due to a lack of imagination on America’s part.
Rather than looking to a globalized world where everyone adopts the American model, abandoning the Old World for the new, we need to remember our discarded past.
When Tocqueville returned to France, it seems he had only endless praise for what he deemed the “American Experiment.” Tocqueville wanted to import the elements of the American system that worked in order to help France change and thrive.
For those of us who, like it or not, have become sewn into the American tapestry, we must do the same with the Old World. If the “American Experiment” is to survive, we need to traverse the ocean once again and remember what we left behind when we set sail.
Columnist Tania Azhang PZ ’25 is currently studying abroad in Paris. She often wonders if Sartre was right about hell and other people.
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