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i'm excited about in being in europe for the history. directly, in the sense of architecture or music, but less in the artifacts than in the deeper more nebulous cultural things. stuff you barely can feel if you come from it and are made of it.

i think about most things in the context of evolution. it's a pretty useful and general way to explain things. and one thing you can use it to look at is the whole european colonial process. compare the different english colonies and how they compare to mother england in relation to the time they split off from under her wing. you can use spoken accents as a good guide. the greater the time of separation (age since the colony became independent), the farther from the queen's english the native accent is likely to sound.

one interesting thing about evolution is that you often need to shake things up a bit to really find a better way of doing things. culture as well as anything can get caught in a rut. often, either the environment changes radically, or a mutation pretty far from the norm happens and new options and ways of doing things result.

the founding of america seems like one of these major sideways jolts. maybe it works better, maybe worse, but definitely things are different. the joy of the US is that of big open space and possibilities. (since this is a sociological analysis, we have to ignore the presence of the first peoples and treat it as "empty" land, as did the new occupiers.) but you have the sense of things starting fresh and clean and with vast potential.

of course it's a double-edged sword. children have a lot of energy and a lot of it gets misdirected, wasted, or put to childish things. they also have to reinvent anew what every old person already knows. adults can only look on and roll their eyes.

i'm very curious to see what things have been lost when europe decided to become born again as america. europe has had so much more time to develop. there are many different groups in close proximity interacting with each other. there has to be a ton of built-up knowledge that got thrown out: how to put up with your loud neighboring factions (intolerance as well as tolerance), how to focus on living well rather than on simple survival and expansion.

the flip side of that is stodginess. ruts need shaking up too or things stagnate. the formation and expansion of the EU appears to be doing just that for europe. the BBC had an interesting opinion piece today about just that. back when miss and i were staying in hotels and had a TV, we saw a lot of coverage on Turkey's (still) controversial entry into the EU, about the constitution that was voted down, and how lowering barriers to global and regional trade was stirring up a lot of hornets' nests. it's an interesting time to be in europe. they're getting a much needed jolt, and it'll be interesting to see if they respond properly to become the new best place to be on the globe, economically and socially. there's a lot of potential.