American Cultural Experience Analysis

The basic objectives of this course: American Cultural Experience was to basically understand American culture better, at least that is what I am getting from it. I don’t believe that you can understand another countries culture, unless you understand your own, so this class is helping me understand my own culture. I believe that the course has addressed questions like “what does it mean to be an American” very well, and through that I feel that I am understanding my country’s culture better.
One of the concepts that interested me a lot, was the “ideology of individualism” which is basically a concept that is about how the wants, interests and dreams are important to a society, and should be protected by said society. The ideology of individualism
A good example of this would be The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald the novel explores a lot of very American ideals like the American Dream, which is at least in this novel to have so much that you are taken care of for the rest of your life. Also it explores the need that some Americans have for wanting more, we are always expanding, and a good example of this would be the migration to the west. We as a country even tried to rationalize why moving to the west was a good thing. I believe we as country have a lot of the same ideas Gatsby does in this
Does America have a national identity? I thought about this a lot when I was writing about “America is the world”. How can our country be the world if it may not have its own identity? If the United States does have its own identity what is it exactly? Is our identity that of a bully? Or is our identity that of a hero who protects the world? Or is it a combination of both? I’m not so sure yet. Our country is countunially evolving into something new, each year, so I believe maybe that is what is so unique about our country, is that we don’t have an identity. Our identity as a country is different. As a country we do have our problems, however I believe these struggles is what is and has shaped our country, and maybe in time we will have our own identity, until then however, we should attempt to better ourselves as a country so that when we finally do have our own identity, it will be something that everyone can be proud