"But enough rambling – what did I learn? That the OC is like the rest of the West Coast – expansive in their thinking, ideas, and actions. I used to chalk it up to materialism, but what I see now is just an expansive mindset, where "no" means try another way until you get to yes. I see it as a continuation of Manifest Destiny, where the earliest settlers headed west to escape the confines of the east and were essentially self-selecting. If you had an expansive mindset, you headed west. If you did not, you stayed in the east."