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Posted on July 23rd, 2003 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, socio.

We are a Culture of Nomads

The Europeans are always all het up about their national identity. Every hovel on the continent has 600 years of history behind it and the inhabitants will gladly translate the brass plaques commemorating the important events which transpired on that patch of dirt. Whole wars have been fought over dead-end canyons and bare patches of dirt which have nothing to reccomend them but the quantity of blood absorbed into the soil. The only people who could coordinate all this into todays EU are the Belgians, who have been successfully scrubbed from all the history books. Such effacement is necessary in the present context.

The Americans have their fat ol’ homeland myth with its dreams and lies of beautiful glories. Picturesque anecdotes of down-homey folkiness and pithy vigour set cheek by jowl with epic bravura. Posse Comitatus. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. No matter where you come from, once you’re an American you’re one for good. They’re the beautiful people with the vaguely defined dream that promises liberty and cargo.

The Japanese polish their shards of bushido and zen.
China waits and feeds her people to the inscrutable furnace.
The Phillipines shovels her people out into the world but they still feel the islands.

So many flags.

The Russians have about as much space as us, a little more to be truthful. And goodness knows thae whole of what was once the Soviet Union encompassed a variation of peoples dazzling in its breadth. But touring around the country was discouraged for reasons of proletarian progress.

And like it or not I’m Canadian.

Now I don’t know about our government. They’re a wily bunch, skilled at the primate games of hoot and holler, not averse to the flinging of a little dung now and then and certainly versed in the finer points of acting like a fatuous dink in public so as to divert attention from one’s backroom exploits.

I don’t have much to do with them.

But there’s this absolutely enormous chunk of the planet on which I am allowed to move about as I see fit. I meet people and I never know where they’ve come from. Colour of skin is no indicator of origin or distance travelled. A fellow native of this soil might have come from 3000 km away. Some come from bloodlines which have been here for thousands of years. Some may be the first of their line on this soil.

There was a lot of talk at the folk fest by performers from nations other than Canada, particularly the American performers - though Billy Bragg got in on the action too - about how different Canada is from America and Europe and other places in general. Lots of patriotic self-effacement. I felt like the idea of Canada constituted some sort of confessional.

I think it’s because we have less baggage. There’s always somewhere else to go.

-w.

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