Proud to Be an American...hum

Friday concluded the new international student orientation. We watched a pretty disturbing movie right before we dismissed for lunch. The new students were required to watch so that they could be more informed about the dreaded culture shock that most of them will go through. I finished watching the movie with somewhat of an embarrassment about our American culture and society. The students that they interviewed said that they encountered strange occurrences when they tried to start friendships with Americans. They said that they found that the Americans are much more shallow with respect to relationships than people worldwide. The international students said that the locals did not truly appreciate friends and relationships with others like people do in their home country. The experts that deal with global students said that this is a common discovery among most students that move to the US; these experts that were interviewed said that our society is much more fast paced than most other countries and that most Americans do not have enough free time to form the strong bonds that people in other countries usually do. I talked to an American that has done a lot of mission work overseas, and she said that she has found that this is true that our relationships are much more "shallow" than in other countries. Is this how we have based our society? We move too fast to form the strong bonds that makes life special? Maybe this explains the unusual high rates of depression and suicides in the US. I find this to be highly disturbing! I started thinking about some of the people that I refer to as friends, and I found that a lot of those relationships are indeed shallow. There are a lot of people that I call friends, but I don't keep in regular contact or go to the extremes to make sure these "friends" are ok. I guess we all form many friendships that are more from convenience and for our basic survival. How sad that is! I will say that I will always be proud to be an American, but this revelation sure does make me doubt our society and our way of life.

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