Quote:
Originally Posted by wave46
There's a weird disconnect in this idea. Much like the idea of "Everyone is unique" - if everyone is unique, isn't uniqueness by definition common?
The idea of Canada being multicultural unto itself, is seemingly a noble idea. However, it is a very vague and nebulous idea. If Canadian-ness can be any aspect of any culture, what is Canadian?
A lot of ideas fall apart when people get too attached to them and take them to extremes. To use an example to our south, an extreme version of individual liberty is simply everyone putting themselves first all the time. That's not how humans function though - we live in societies and those societies require other humans to cooperate to make it work.
Multiculturalism - when taken to its extreme position - simply means that every culture gets to live how they want in a country regardless of the whole. It's a country as a bland hotel/international airport. There has to be some countervailing force or value the whole takes on, otherwise it's a free-for-all. Where that line between 'traditional Canadian values' and the values of the newcomer collide is always testy.
If 'Canada' defines its culture by not having one, how does that work long-term?
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I'm not speaking for all of Canada, for the record, I can only really speak to my own milieu (hence why I deferred to Acajack's descriptions of Quebec). For a province that is overwhelming composed of immigrants, or children of immigrants, it's pretty hard to have a shared cultural identity. It makes sense to me, then, that multiculturalism would have a greater resonance here.