I was recently arguing about the United States and their lack of a long term history, which distinguishes them from other states and ethnic groups. But I have to start from the beginning of my thought. There's a term in anthropology, "invention of tradition" which was introduced twenty or thirty years ago and describes the fact, that in many states tradition and history was "invented". For example, the idea of the Indian caste was a concept build in colonial India by the British, but the society stated it to be older (correct me if I am wrong with this example)(1)(The first book dealing with this idea was Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T (Eds.): The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1983) . First of all, this invention of tradition, or at least its constant redefinition, is not only bad. It could enable communities to change themselves, without "officially" changing its values. Change without a revolution. In many ethnic groups we have those kind of movements, with refer to a time so far away, not exactly being present in the common memory of a society anymore. Its so far away that the community could interpret and define those traditions in a new way, while still keeping the basic ideas of its self identity. My argument now was this. The United States lack this kind of "old enough history". Or in other words, the one they have, is not suitable for most Americans. And because of that their own steady definition of "itself" as a nation is not able to rely on this "old enough history". They have to define themselves by defining "the other". But this definition of the self by the outer world instead of the inner world probably is one source for the constant confrontation with other states. Well, this was my argument. Now, as I wrote it down, it seems rather simplifying. But maybe it has still a true point. Another question I have is if I borrowed this argument from another debate. Is this a common claim, that the Americans have to define themselves by the "other" because of their lack of free interpretable, "old enough history"?

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After writing by short description of how to use modern footnotes in scientific online publications (as reported earlier) I decided that it would quite practicable to use this also in this weblog, as you can hide some parts of long articles or the bibliographic information. (Try it out) But, well it was only some quick hack, so use it if you wan't and don't use it if you don't like it. There's no rule to make articles short. How to use it? Take a look at "add a story", it's quite self explanatory. But theres no automatic numbering, you can define the text of the footnote-anchor by yourself (just as above). The standard is (1)(nothing more to read here). If nothing is happening or the red text is visible right after loading the page, leave a comment please. Or try updating your browser.

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Just found this page Etymologie, Étymologie, Etymology - Wortgeschichten, des histoires autour des mots, the history of words by surfing for information on a totally different subject ... but it seems to be quite interesting in regards to anyone who wants to know about the origin and history of words... maybe someone with time can check it out and reply !!!

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