Form: Short Note

If you go to a restaurant or club, or a shopping center in ukraine, or even a hotel lobby, their equivalent of ‘elevator music’ is a set of televisions, half of which are tuned to a series of fashion shows and the other half to soccer games. And that’s about all you see. this has a little bit to do with the difference in music: western music is theatrical (you’re sort of in church) and it’s supposed to entertain, whereas in that part of the world, it’s background for you and your friends to talk, drink, and kill an entire evening enjoying each other.

Now you can make a youtube channel equivalent by just searching for and playing a stream of fashon shows. I did it by accident today since auto-play just keeps a stream going. But it reminds me of yet another of the vast differences I notice:

Russians and Ukrainians live in a civil society. Americans live in school, academy, and consumer-church. We are over-told, over-sold, over-indoctrinated, over-fed, over-worked, over-isolated, and we’re fat, confused, and too many americans are lonely because of it.

If I could go back in time and Kill Keynes it would be almost as valuable as going back and killing zoroaster.

Americans are more friendly, humble, playful and optimistic at the cost of a general ignorance. Pub-Manners are a good protocol in small towns, Restaurant manners in cities and suburbs. We don’t really have a cafe culture outside of the coffee shops in the big cities. I love small town New England. But Europe is better. And I’m totally in love with L’viv. The irritating thing in america is obvious: that people lack the awareness of their privilege, and the lower classes have ruined the commons.