Our Disintegrating Country

In a G&M essay today (click on title to view essay), Michael Valpy writes about signs of the disintegration of social cohesion in Canada. Remarkably - and I say remarkably because the Globe's comment boards are usually dominated by a handful of foaming morons - there are some thoughtful reactions from readers to Valpy's observations.

The piece elicits a mixed Rupert reaction. Some top of mind thoughts:

• Valpy's assumption of a previous state of cohesion is a departure for the national intelligensia. I don't recall seeing any general acceptance of Canada as a social unity before. When did this happen? Did I completely miss a golden age of social cohesion? I thought we were all a-warring in the bosom. Now we're disintegrating from a cohesion we never had the joy of experiencing. Is Valpy a revisionist? Why? What's his angle?
• Trudeau remains a watershed event for Canadians. He has become a symbol that marks the fork in the road between conservative and liberal positions. Maybe PET is our focal point, our source of social cohesion, and we circle his memory like wrestlers, looking for holds in multiculturalism, bilingualism-biculturalism, the Indian Act, Meech Lake, the NEP and immigration. Will we spend the next century arguing about this man? How can we resolve this and move forward?
  
• Discontent over multiculturalism bubbles like raw sewage under the surface of this country. Is it resentment? Did the English and the French have a cozy mix-up going on, and now the Muslims have horned in? Can these "others" assimilate fast enough, or can we find another group to fixate on quickly enough, for them to avoid the fate of becoming our new source of social cohesion? What do they respresent in our national narrative?
  
• And where will the First Nations land? I sense the approach of a tipping point. How far will the FNs have to push their ill-tempered sovereignty, self-government, pay-us-back arguments before they estrange the rest of the population? With their "wedges are us" standoffishness, do they aspire to become Canada's Roma? At what point do Canadians begin to view them as an economic and existential threat?
• Canadians are fanatically nationalistic. We love this country! We revel in who we are. We may not know how to express it, but we all have a view of what it means to be Canadian. And we love us. Threaten our sense of nationalism at your peril. Many on the left don't understand this. They like to pick up arguments holus-bolus from their colleagues in other countries and trot them out as original thought. As if we don't know shop-worn when we see it. Yeah, I read the Guardian too.
  
• Canadian intellectuals are underachievers. They are mostly derivative of American leftist/rightist intellectuals and dead European philosophers. They carp at us for navel-gazing, but they miss the point. Since Canada is the greatest, most wonderful, most butt-kicking country in the world, at least in our heart of Canadian hearts, it is only right that we should obsess over its meaning and its nuances. Of course, the proper study of Canadians is Canada.
  
• Americans piss us off because they take us for granted and they treat us like rubes. We know they will be sorry one day. Another source of social cohesion.
• Toronto is the centre of the universe. Get over it. It's also full of people from somewhere else. Many of them are from the small towns where people love to hate Toronto. Toronto is a mirage. The real Toronto is made up of 72 families in the east end who are not doing very well. They deserve your sympathy.
• Do our detractors - and we have many more than our share - have any chance of making us curl up like babies in whining balls of guilt, ready to move back to our "homelands" without a fight? I think not. But they keep trying, don't they?

Interesting reaction, eh? Who would have thought?

The Importance of Being a Regular Rupert

It is important, I think, to be post often, in a regular fashion, about topics that are important to you.

This is not to say that regular posting will entice readers. No, it is more to cultivate a habit of frequent and regular self-examination. To constantly inquire: What do I think about that? Why do I think this about that? How is my thinking flawed, or deep, or shallow, or insightful?

And that is the name of this Rupert game. Self-discovery. Self-examination. Self-criticism.

The three pilars of a well-examined life and the foundation of personal growth.

For how do you grow without challenging yourself and your most fundamental beliefs? Your thoughts will get stuck in the cement of certainty and you'll become a curmudgeon, half-sister to the cur with a mudgeon of self-righteousness.

No growth potential there.

Of course, there's always the question of why one would want to grow. Why not rest and snuggle down in the warm seas of stasis? Why not accept what is and go on with it?

Hmmm. Why indeed? Dunno.

Self-improvement can seem so bourgeois and petty, don't you think? So 20th century, narcistic hippie-turned-old-boomer, maybe? A tad self-indulgent and aren't-I-the-centre-of-the-universe type of thing? Is that what the Xs, Ys, Zs and Omegas see when they survey the social landscape? Should I care? Do I care?

Nope. Not a wit. Not my job.

Besides, what have they -- the Xs, the Ys, and the whole roiling alphabet of youth -- done for me lately? Except make ignorant assumptions about my life, insult my being, threaten my future and generally piss me off. (I note some anger there, and I wonder why. Subject of another post perhaps.) But life's cruel, and they really owe me nothing. Which is probably twice as much as I owe them.

So onward and upward, you self-identifying, self-obsessive boomer Rupert.

Let Us Try This Again

I few years ago, I started a blog. I wrote on it faithfully. And nobody read it.

Naturally, I got very discouraged.

Hell, who wants to write your innermost thoughts, put them out there for the world to read and have the world respond with a resounding yawn.

Tough stuff, eh?

So I gave up. And that was cowardly. I should not have done that, and I regret it.

The solution?

Pick it up. Soldier on. Try again.

I will, however, change the name of the blog. Like the NDP, I look for renewal in the mystical renaming of the thing.

Let's try it again. With feeling.

And damn the readers.