Outright Barbarism vs. The Civil Society

from OurFuture.org:



Outright Barbarism vs. The Civil Society
By Sara Robinson

May 6th, 2008 - 6:35pm ET


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I live in a nice place.

I mean that literally. It took some getting used to. After 20 years in Silicon Valley, where people put a premium on being direct and to the point, have no time to waste on small talk or personal sharing, and will call a stupid idea stupid to your face, moving to Canada required a whole lot of gearing back on that brusque American aggressive-in-your-face thing. The humbling fact was: We had to learn to mind our manners.

Much of the adjustment work that first year involved re-learning the art of Being Nice. We had to get used to meetings that started with 10 or 15 minutes of personal chit-chat. We had to train ourselves to stop interrupting people, and to be more careful to say "please" and "thank you." We had to discover (sometimes, the hard way) that losing your temper with Canadians means that you will invariably lose the conflict. The more terse and irritated you get, the more determinedly calm and polite Canadians become, until you're standing there looking like a raving idiot and they're still firmly in control (though they're very sorry you're having such a bad day).

We also learned the unofficial Canadian motto, which is "I'm sorry." Canadians will say "I'm sorry" even if you were the one who bumped into them. (Americans, on the other hand, won't say it at all: apologizing is admitting fault, which is an invitation to lawsuits.) We used to respond to this by pleading with them out of our own misguided sense of Niceness: "No. Please. Don't be sorry. It was MY fault." But after a while, we gave up, went with the flow, and started apologizing for everything, too. It was really...well, nice, once we got used to it.

The whole world makes fun of Canadians' resolute civility -- but once I'd read a little Canadian history, I realized that this Being Nice thing isn't just a cute cultural quirk. In fact, up here, it's is a deadly serious matter of national survival. Canada's 13 provinces and territories are, effectively, three separate nations—each with its own culture, language, religion, and history. On top of that, the country is the world's largest importer of new immigrants, a large fraction of whom are from cultures very different from Canada's aboriginal and European bedrock. The federal constitution that binds all this together is very weak (it's not unlike the U.S.'s original Articles of Confederation), and the overwhelming bulk of government power is still tightly concentrated in the hands of the provincial premiers (that's Canadian for "state governors"). Secession is eminently possible, as the Quebecois so often like to remind us. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/outright-barbarism-vs-civil-society

... believe it or not, we have a place like that in America.

It's called The South.

It has its faults, but you've described MY life in Texas. We call the people you describe by a special word: "Yankees".

Please recognize the tongue firmly in cheek here. But it's partly true. Not everywhere in the US is rude.

and yes, I've said "I'm sorry" when it was the other person's fault. This is a trait I find common in the Midwest, where I was born and where I have lived most of my life. It is also seen in the South; unlike what the other poster said, however, I will politely disagree about Yankees--we can be polite as well. Where I have found rudeness, etc, is more in urban areas. There are places in DFW where people have been as rude as they are in Chicago. But this doesn't mean that everyone is like that.

take seriously the "tongue in cheek" part.

But let me tell you something about us down here... being a "yankee" has not as much to do with what part of the country someone's from as the attitude. So you're not a Yankee in my book, smile! lol...

call pushy people "carpetbaggers" rather than Yankees. (Perhaps that is because I sit amongst them, as Yankee as you can get.) And I live amongst a number of transplanted Texans, my husband included. He was born in Texas but grew up in New Jersey. Funny, when we visited his "home town" there, I found everyone to be friendly, which sort of surprised him. He didn't recall people taking the time to "visit", which is what we tend to do. Maybe people are changing?

People I know would have to have "carpetbagger" explained to them.

I think you are absolutely right about this being an urban phenomenon.

I live in a small city, it's pretty perfect actually.