The Listening Project

Opinions are like farts...
While it was interesting to hear what a handful of people from around the world thought of America, the video also seemed a little too cliched and cheesy for me at the end. The somewhat stupid advice that 'Americans' should get to know more about Tanzania, India, Brazil etc etc etc and act like a 'Global Citizen' seems impossible to me. Of course it's easy for the rest of the world to know about the US. It's ONE country. The biggest, most successful one (so far). I highly doubt that the average citizen of India knows all about Italy...or Brazil about Afghanistan. Etc. In other words these people don't know all about EACH other either.

Also, isn't going around the world asking people what they think of America just a tad conceited? I mean if you think about it, can you imagine walking around your neighborhood, knocking on doors and asking the person that answers what they think of you. "Hello, I'm America, your global neighbor. Tell me all your many and various thoughts...

Towards a better understanding.
The Listening Project is an interesting and important first step towards helping Americans to better understand our nation and ourselves, and, by extension, to gain a better understanding of other nations and their people. Americans generally think of themselves as decent, generous and compassionate people, and to a large degree like to think that our own government is good and has the best of intentions in our conduct of both domestic and foreign affairs. Not all Americans have been blessed with an opportunity to travel to other nations, so their world view is of necessity limited to the scope of what they see and hear through our own corporate controlled mass media. One reviewer points out that film makers (like the producers of this documentary) will impose their own bias on such a film through the editing process, and I would make the observation that the same applies to what we see on a daily basis through the corporate controlled media that Americans rely on for their news and...

Reality Check for Insufficient Funds
If you are so "proud to be an American", you should likewise be so humble as to watch this film, and get a crash-course of what it means to be a human being living on planet earth as it is now. Be willing to bust your cultural bubble and expand your perceptions, to take what is seen here with a little more than a grain of salt--this is how the world feels, and what the world thinks (sentiments which are not unsound or ungrounded)! Playing the game of haughty-obstinacy--in the context of a cultural superiority with an indefinite timeline of social dominance--is a sport for idiots, and you are definitely not that type of American, right?

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