What is time? What is space? (I Dialoghi)

by Carlo Rovelli

For a European, though, to stay in the United States is also difficult. The values are different, human relations are different. Too many aspects of American culture are intolerable for a European: the urban violence, the racial tensions, the death penalty, the absence of medical assistance for all and of social security, the abandonment of the weakest and the poor to their fate, the arrogance of money and power. The very idea of “social justice” is understood in almost exactly opposite manners, the two sides of the Atlantic. In the US, social justice means that anybody who has the capacities can reach the top, wherever he or she comes from. In Europe, the other way around, social justice implies the defence of the weakest, and therefore in particular those who do not have the capacities. The characteristic European solution for a depressed area is to put money in the local school; the characteristic American solution is to give money to the best of the children in the school, and take them out of that school. The European asks: yes, and the others?