The United States can rightly be regarded as one of the most ambitious experiments in human history in which members of different nationalities, ethnic groups and even races were taken and placed together in a vast area cut off from the outside world. As a result, in a fairly short period of time, a new community emerged, with its own quite definite traditions, mores, values, manner of behavior, perception of the world – in a word, everything that is called the national character.
As early as 1824, a now forgotten public figure of the young republic, in his acceptance speech at Harvard University, proclaimed: “In Europe the disunity of peoples begins with the difference of languages and ends with the difference of races, institutions, and national prejudices… At the same time all the vast territories which make up our republic are united not only by one language, but also by one national government, basically by the same laws and customs, by the same roots. Humanity here has been given an opportunity for unity that has hardly ever been known on earth before.” And this at a time when Americans were not even recognized as one nation, considering them just a collection of misfit Europeans.
The Origins of the American Dream
The American value system was originally constructed in strong interaction with the European value system. Americans’ relationship to Europe is a key to understanding many of the peculiarities of their nature. It is a bizarre mixture of love-hate: rejection and dependence, outright contempt and covert ogling. On the one hand, there were roots in Europe, and this has never been forgotten. The attraction to origins, a kind of ancestral call, did not fade even after several generations, was felt by those born and raised in America. On the other hand, children who left their mothers for good or ill often harbored bitter resentment. Those who were forced to leave could not forgive the abuse. Those who voluntarily left their homeland did so because they found no peace, happiness, or prosperity there. In both cases there was a kind of rejection of the past world, a rejection and protest. To prove one’s superiority and independence, to catch up and overtake the leading European powers in economic, military and social indicators became the most important goal of the American state.
Attitudes toward European civilization have always been contradictory. For the American citizen, Europe has always been the center of culture, art, fine taste, historical traditions and high spirituality, and the lack of all of this was very keenly felt in American society. But there was also a flip side to this: tradition was often associated with conservatism, aristocratism with stagnation, culture and art with yesterday’s past, which is over and will never be repeated. This attitude allowed us to look at the shortcomings of our world from a completely new angle: yes, the advantages of European culture are missing, but so are the shortcomings of European society. There are no traditions, but there is democracy; there are no ancient monuments, but there is a future; there are no refined manners, but there is directness and energy.
The influence that Europe has had on the American perception of the world has also been ambiguous. On the one hand, it has been significant and pervasive. Europe was the primary measure of values. In determining the place of this or that phenomenon in the general picture of the world, the American unwittingly looked back to the European model. The intrinsic dependence – moral, moral, spiritual – was evident here. At the same time, there was also the exact opposite feeling, akin to a childlike spirit of contradiction.
The process of national self-determination of the American people was inextricably linked to the process of self-disassociation from European roots. The idea of America’s uniqueness, its special destiny, the manifest destiny, the “American dream”-all these concepts and doctrines were born primarily in comparison, or rather, in opposition to Europe. Already in our century, a number of works have appeared devoted to an analysis of Americans’ attitudes toward Europe. Emphasizing the diversity and ambiguity of that relationship, one author wrote: “Europe has always been for us a stern father and a good mother, a formidable foe and a brave ally, a good teacher and a naughty pupil, a constant motivator and a constant irritant. And further, “America became unique and great precisely because it was anti-Europe, Europe became aesthetically appealing because it was anti-America.” The famous American scholar D. Burstyn defined this relationship as follows: “To this day, when we start talking about the uniqueness of America, we almost always end up comparing us to Europe … In the United States, until about the beginning of this century, the terms ‘American’ and ‘European’ were used less as specific geographical terms than as logical antitheses.