Insightful/Fascinating - "the difference between the Latin and the Anglo..."

An interesting look at cultural differences...  More at the link.

Fred On Everything:

"...the difference between the Latin and the Anglo, the Protestant and the Catholic, the engineer and the painter, between the Nordic and the Italian. As you move northward through Europe, efficiency grows, orderliness rules, things feel scrubbed and well managed and comparatively there is much industriousness. At the same time color dies, the arts give way to practicality, emotion ebbs, leisure becomes suspect and the richness of life diminishes. Germany rules classical music of chill grandeur, and has oompah bands, but one cannot imagine a German writing Carmen. The condition becomes extreme in the US where the Protestant work ethic dominates, the view that labor is the purpose of life rather than just the means of paying for it.

On one hand, the northern peoples have produced almost alone the spectacular growth of science, technology, and industry from the Industrial Revolution to the present. The benefits have been enormous. On the other hand, the Italian Renaissance alone produced more of the arts, of painting, sculpture, and architecture than the northern, English-speaking world has yet managed. In the US, music has been way-a-a-y disproportionately the work of Jews, blacks, Cajuns, and Southerners who, like Latins, have been poor, inefficient, and artistically fertile.

For people raised in places settled by northern Europe, Latins seem lazy, their churches garish, their lesser concern with time and precision frustrating, their music wild and their celebrations chaotic. It is no accident that Carnival occurs in Rio, Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and neither in Indianapolis. By contrast, to Latins America seems sterile, uncultured,weirdly driven, impersonal and, ultimately, boring, with its bland suburbs and emotional restraint. Take your pick..."