North Americans and Perfection

"... The North American wants to use reality rather than know it. ... We get drunk in order to confess; they get drunk in order to forget. ... We are sorrowful and sarcastic and they are happy and full of jokes. North Americans want to understand and we want to contemplate. They are activists and we are quietists; we enjoy our wounds and they enjoy their inventions. They believe in hygiene, health, work and contentment, but perhaps they have never experienced true joy, which is an intoxication, a whirlwind. [It's not so much fun to be characterized from the other side, is it?] ... What is the origin of such contradictory attitudes? It seems to me that North Americans consider the world to be something that can be perfected, and that we consider it to be something that can be redeemed." (Mexican writer Octavio Paz in The Labyrinth of Solitude)