The Risk Takers

[Jolly]

https://www.realclearpublicaffairs.com/articles/2020/12/11/into_the_unknown_the_pilgrims_adventurous_risk-taking_legacy_652742.html

[taiwan_girl]

Explorers are very cool and I love reading about them.

But to say that 300 people defined how the US turned out is a bit, ummm, stretch.

I think that the land shaped the people as much as the other way around.

[Jolly]

@taiwan_girl said in The Risk Takers:

Explorers are very cool and I love reading about them.

But to say that 300 people defined how the US turned out is a bit, ummm, stretch.

I think that the land shaped the people as much as the other way around.

You don't think that a Puritan ethos exists in America even today?

[taiwan_girl]

@jolly said in The Risk Takers:

@taiwan_girl said in The Risk Takers:

Explorers are very cool and I love reading about them.

But to say that 300 people defined how the US turned out is a bit, ummm, stretch.

I think that the land shaped the people as much as the other way around.

You don't think that a Puritan ethos exists in America even today?

I really don’t know. I know a fair amount of history of the US, but I don’t really know about what you mentioned above. I will try and read about it.

I just think that after one or two or three generations, people have changed and adapted.

I am sure that I am a different person from my great great grandparents. Just like I think you are a different person from your great great grandparents.

[Aqua Letifer]

@taiwan_girl said in The Risk Takers:

I just think that after one or two or three generations, people have changed and adapted.

Look into How the West Was Won. Taken into context of other western countries, it's bizarre. And it happened centuries after the Puritans came over.

In pretty much every other society in the West, colonization and expansion happened first through mobile military action. Then more permanent military encampments. Then the missionaries would move in and last would be new residents.

Not so in the American West. In droves, civilians went west with supplies and maybe some halfassed map with no military protection, no business backers, no support of any kind. They traveled thousands of miles through hostile nations and territories as unwelcome trespassers. If the natives didn't kill them, the unknown terrain often did. Those who survived, though, set up shop. It's completely backward from how the Vikings started to colonize England.

[Rainman]

@taiwan_girl said in The Risk Takers:

I think that the land shaped the people as much as the other way around.

Yes! That's how mountains shaped Booooooobs!!!