View from the Chapel window, Pizzaonian Monasteries, Pizzaonia
The most difficult thing Pizzaonians have to deal with when they portalize to the United States is trying to assimilate the American notion of community, when from our perspective; very little real community actually exists there.
The various meanings of the word community also contribute to our confusion. Community can be as simple as people living in the same area. Or on a deeper level, community can be people brought together to share common values and aspirations.
The latter definition suggests a significant amount of empathy must be present for this type of community to exist. This is the area where we have the most confusion when we try to figure out what is going on in the U.S.
Whether it is the nature of a culture that requires “busyness,” or the nature of how the United States has evolved in the emerging digital world – something has caused a detachment in the American personality that is very different from what we experience here in Pizzaonia. What you consider true friends and community in the United States, is what we consider here as acquaintances.
On a national scale, your lack of national community is evident by the way you react to being at war. As an example, everyone in the U.S. honors military service, especially on your Memorial Day, and immediately afterward, without a second thought, everyone goes back to “business as usual.” It seems it has become mandatory "to honor someone else’s service.” Unfortunately, from our view in Pizzaonia it has become lip service and little else. Your wars go on and on and will do so until the majority of Americans have a personal, vested interest in their ending.
As long as it is someone else’s son, daughter, husband or wife fighting and dying, there will be little pressure to end these tragedies. This remains the major flaw in the concept of an all-volunteer army. Just imagine how you would feel about the virtue of your wars if you had a loved one drafted into service to fight, and perhaps die in these armed conflicts that the average American has little personal stake in. It does give you a different perspective - a necessary war requires all citizens to sacrifice.
It goes without saying that those who bear the brunt of military service do it with honor and purpose. They always have. The sin is not theirs, but belongs to the citizens who allow wars that they do not personally sacrifice for to be fought in the first place.
Please regard these protestations of life in the United States as “Pizzaonian lament.” Many of us here are portalized Americans and what happens there is very important to us - even though we can now travel to a beta-world- alternate universe with ease, once an American always an American.
So always know we speak from the heart.
Commenting from Pizzaonia, ….. Brother Giovanni for “The Pizzaonian.”
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