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American Values Research Paper

Robert Kohls, most Americans are unaware of the values that shape their worldviews. I completely agree with the author's assessment in "The Values Americans Live By." Americans are extremely concerned with values such as self-reliance and independence because these extend from the myths of American exceptionalism and concepts like Manifest Destiny. Americans have been taught to celebrate pioneers of the Wild West and the cowboy culture that goes along with it. Collaboration and cooperation take a back seat in America to values like self-help. For example, Kohls notes that in other cultures, a person asking for directions will often find that someone will walk with them until they find what they are seeking. This is of course not true for all other cultures, but certainly some. One of Kohls's goals is to show readers why some foreigners seem perplexed about American culture, and the seeming dichotomies therein. Americans see themselves as being friendly, and often are. However, foreigners often perceive American's fierce independence as being a sign of selfishness.

Interestingly, Kohls claims that the future-orientation of American society is also what prevents a person from showing the stranger how to reach a destination. I do not necessarily agree with this assessment, because I find that Americans tend to be unconcerned with the future to a fault. Americans are, for example, in deep debt and willing to numb themselves with consumerism without considering the future consequences. Americans are obsessed with things like material acquisition and celebrity culture, to the extent of even celebrating a culture of ignorance. Values such as self-reliance can at least be construed in a positive way, but there is no way that valuing ignorance or denial can be seen as positive. Therefore, I do agree fully with the gist of Kohls's assessment of American values, but I would also add that there are a collection of more sinister values that have crept into American consciousness and identity. These are the values that underlie permissiveness toward religious conservatism, for example, and the hypocrisies it entails, or the permissiveness toward gun ownership. Unfortunately, values like extreme self-reliance also obscure the unavoidable need for cooperation and acceptance.

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