Quora response to questions re Americans, "roots" and authenticity

It occurs to me most Americans are doubly detached from a time worn and established culture. (Life in the vacuum of manifest destiny became the reverse, a compression of looking for internal frontiers of meaning.) That is to say it was an easy way out of the anxiety of alienation to pine for ancestry but worse it further detached one from rural life—the earth itself—to sentimentalize it such that few Americans could actually survive if they had to grow their own food. There are movements these days though to regain that connection, to establish an agrarian lifestyle through intermittent farmers’ markets, permanent community gardens and such. The problem now partially is the resistance of civil offices and the food industry against residents storing rain water or husbanding in urban areas. Anyway, it could be said that the expression of having blood ethnic roots is greatly emphasized when there is want for visible roots, a many centuries old history embodied in architecture for example—the proofs that ancestors were here can best be had when life remains in one place or is easily found by a short railway trip. Just some thoughts on that, sorry… but, yes, many Americans do seem at a loss for a heritage amongst the hordes of strangers; thus the recent advertisements of DNA tests to find one’s continental and ethnic origins.


Authenticity.  My only thought here is that considering the complicated history of shifting territorial borders of central and eastern Europe outsiders might assume one had to hold faster, so to speak, to ethnic or cultural norms. Regardless, how could an outsider know what is intrinsically Romanian or what have you? It might be said that a non-Romanian etc may merely recognize some unfamiliar attributes, or rather the person in question brings to mind stereotyped images. So, perhaps the obsession, or rather the insecurity of the claim reveals the reverse of the question, a lack of self-assuredness. Why do we compare our centeredness. Should it even matter? Authenticity could even be evidence of a deliberate individuality as opposed to a specific cultural homogeneity.