Mackenzie Wenner Blog 4

Reflect on your own position and experience with what makes you an “American” in reference to the other notions of “Americanness” Anderson describes in ch4.

Anderson principally describes the traditional protestant northern culture which was inspired largely by Puritans throughout New England as classic “Americanness”. I believe other factors have modified what most people refer to as traditional American culture and ideals since then. The largest probably the separation of church and state and focus on the merits of industrial spirit which were somewhat later addendums to the highly religious town-hall style communities of the earliest New Englanders’ American culture. I myself derive most of what I sense to be my own American culture from my own industrial spirit and deference to the market. From an extremely young age I participated with eagerness in various forms of commerce. Undoubtedly inspired by my father’s family’s business and the entrepreneurial spirit that runs through his side of my family. I began selling bread and vegetables at the end of my driveway when I was 5 years old. When I went away to camp at twelve I paid a counselor to buy me several boxes of microwave popcorn and various other snacks which I sold at an extreme mark-up. Some time between those two ventures I bought my first share of stock, and would check the price weekly in the Sunday paper. I derive a large degree of self worth from always providing a service to a market, the value of which I am happy to collect and enjoy. I believe in many of the lofty principals of the US, a country founded on ideas, but the American individualistic, market-based system value allocution is what most tangibly resonates with me.