Am sitting in the Starbucks across the road from the British Library connected to the web wirelessly and feeling very amazed, cool and complacent....my love affair with London isn't over....only real time in the States can make you really appreciate Britian...here people assume that they belong to single society, in the US the terms under which people will participate socially seem always under negotiation: that's the basic difference....it's true that capitalism there is more efficient and has, as they say, colonised more of the life-world so that money rules everyday life to a greater degree than it does here, and it's true that, for instance, over there blacks have their own culture and dont connect to whites in ways which are just not the case here so that whenever a white man (or even more woman) meets a young black man walking towards him on a lonely street late at night there's trepidation..but all that's secondary: it's the relations between individuals and community which is key to differences between the places...of course in the end there are benefits to the US's individualism too, especially for loners....but here in London (as against NYC) it's nice to bathe in at any rate the perpetual promise of a collectivity we all share...even if most people on the streets are transients...tourists, students whatever... and what about Australia????...why have I always been so indifferent to it???