Culture shock
When I was planning to move to the US from Canada, I didn’t think it would be such a big change. After all, I’d spent lots of time in the US — often two months in the summer, and then Labour Day,Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Victoria Day, maybe St-Jean-Baptiste . . . a lot of time.
Vacationing in the US isn’t like living there. I’m not an idiot. I realised that much.
A friend of mine had moved to Australia. I knew that sharing a language wasn’t enough.
But I didn’t realise how much of a change it is. How *different* places are. I’m fairly middle-of-the-road in Canada — maybe a bit liberal for Canada, a little conservative for Quebec — but overall, fairly average.
In the US, I’m a flaming left wing pinko commie. (Not so much on a campus — it verges to the left some — but off.) And I never felt so much like a religious minority as I have here. So many people are so evangelical.
I hate having to drive everywhere (except the grocery store. That’s luxury). The politics are getting horribly ugly (though no one’s called anyone a reptilian kitten-eater from another planet yet). It’s just — the whole feel is different. And two years on and I’m still not feeling comfortable here.
A friend from Australia told me she feels that Canada is much like home, while the US is not. I am not much surprised.
Edit: right wing, left wing, whatever.
April 15th, 2004 at 8:18 pm
Er, *right*-wing pinko commie?
‘Round here most of the pinko commies are left-wing.
Not that I speak from experience or anything. *ducks the Thought Police*
April 15th, 2004 at 9:20 pm
See, another reason I don’t fit in here. :>
I’ll be fixing that, though. Thanks.
April 15th, 2004 at 9:35 pm
Of course our politics is crazy, but most of *us* don’t pay any attention to it — why should you?
Notice when someone starts haranguing someone else about politics. Occasionally the one being harangued turns out to be interested too, and harangues back — but most of the time they just glaze over until the haranguer runs down. They don’t really express any agreement; they only emit an occasional uh huh when the haranguer pauses, until a pause stretches out long enough to indicate the haranging is over. Then they come to life and have a conversation — about something else.
You can probably avoid even that by mentioning you’re a Canadian — but you might not want to; you might enjoy having some time to think about whatever you like without any demands on your attention.
We don’t pay any attention to the religious whackos, either. If you find them amusing you can listen to them, but if you don’t you don’t have to be polite to them. Most of us aren’t, at all. Being harangued by a religious whacko is an occasion to let off steam! Accuse them of hypocrisy, curse them out, they love it! It lets them feel almost like a real martyr….
I don’t do that. I just tell them I’m a Buddhist and watch them go into shock. They had no idea a real person they could actually meet could have another religion. Telling them you’re Jewish will probably work just as well. They knew there were Jews and Buddhists but only somewhere else, on television — not in real life! They don’t know what to say to you. So they just listen, tonguetied, and you can tell them whatever you like, talk as long as you want and move on whenever you feel like it.
-Cougar :{)
April 15th, 2004 at 10:36 pm
*urge to migrate to Canada grows stronger*
I don’t run into the freaks you describe too much in my daily life; the nuts I encounter tend more to be crazy homeless people. But the same technique works, as Cougar describes — you tune them out in the hopes that they get bored and move on, unless you want to entertain yourself by teasing them.
But that’s in daily life, with encounters with actual people on a one to one basis. Great mobs of Americans in the aggregate, though… When I look at the news, or when I realize that our “president” is a blithering idiot AND that our press is strangely reluctant to point that out (instead opining about how “forceful” or “resolute” he is) AND that a good chunk of the citizenry thinks he’s “a good man” or “a powerful leader”, I want to weep/yell/run in little circles pulling at my hair — or… move to a sane country like Australia or Canada.
I love my country, but I share it with people who disturb me deeply, and lately it seems they’re running the show. How depressing is that?
April 15th, 2004 at 11:49 pm
I’ve been told that you can scare off some of the religious whackos by telling them you’re a Catholic, which makes them give up on saving your soul. A friend of mine recommended that strategy during our first year of graduate school, when we both kept having random encounters with proselytizers.
I’m kind of hoping that we’re starting to see a reversal in people’s unquestioning approval for the current administration — in the way the reporters started asking about Bush’s failures at Tuesday’s press conference, and the way he dodged most of their questions — surely commie pinkos like myself weren’t the only ones who noticed the evasions and the non sequiturs and the prevarications.
If people don’t start to notice this kind of thing, though…well, I always did like visiting my Canadian grandmother in her little corner of Ontario, and I hear Montreal is a fabulous place to live, and Toronto’s quite nice from what I’ve seen of it. (*also casting a speculative eye northwards*)
April 16th, 2004 at 12:11 am
I find it very hard to avoid all of politics. In the impossible sense. It’s as divisive as pre-referendum 1995 (we’re now fighting about which side corrupted the process more). That was a miserable time. This is similar. A friend said I respond too much to things like this, but I was more normal than many in 1995.
Crazies haranguing me I can ignore. It’s the general subtext, the things people bring up as if it were so self-evidently true. Bush is Hitler! Kerry is Hitler! America is evil! Islam is evil! It just comes up when you’re talking about other things. That’s what amazes me. Religion is personal. Your sex life is personal. I don’t want to hear about either from any politician.
Not that Canada’s politics are any less crazy, but they’re a lot less ugly. And religion and sex stay in your bedroom, with your drug use, too. (Don’t get me started about the weird drug/alcohol subtext here.)
There are many lovely places ot live in Canada. Montreal’s great — if you know French. Toronto’s not bad, Vancouver and Victoria are lovely if you like that coast, and if Halifax were a little less isolated, I could see living there, too. Jobs are no less scarce, though.
I wonder how much culture shock there is for the other left wing pinko commies (I got it right this time) who move to Canada. I know a lot of other Canadian grad students in my position.
All this said, I do like the US. (And I know there are things it does better than Canada.) I will go back for vacations. I hope that al Qaeda never has another chance. Etc etc. I just can’t live here.