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The liberalness of Canada is overhyped. The reality is Canada is deeply conservative. It's possible to have universal health care and be conservative, that's

The liberalness of Canada is overhyped. The reality is Canada is deeply conservative. It's possible to have universal health care and be conservative, that's only a oxymoron in the US. To quote this excellent article[1]: "the default setting of the Canadian male: a dull but stern dad, who, under a facade of apparent normalcy and common sense, conceals a reserve of barely contained hostility toward anyone who might rock the boat. To these types, those who make a fuss are bothersome and ignorant at best, and probably dangerous and destructive too." I was born in Canada. I went to school in Canada. Only once I moved to the US did I feel like I could express and be myself. That I am surrounded by people who think like I do and value the things I value. Dogmatic adherence to the way it's done, because change is dangerous is the default state of many Canadians. For those who it's not, well, you know them, they're already living in the US. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/06/opinion/jordan-peterson-canadian-deference.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/06/opinion/jordan-peterson-c...

digianarchist 8y ago
>"The reality is Canada is deeply conservative." Agreed. Ontario is a few weeks away from voting in a conservative government with Doug Ford at the helm.
- jgh 8y ago
  I think the conservativeness of Canada is a bit different from conservatives in the USA though. It's less focused on "morality" and religion and more an aversion to change. Which is why I think it's possible for the culture to be simultaneously conservative and OK with things like gay marriage and legal cannabis, neither of which would be conservative positions in the US.
  - digianarchist 8y ago
    We're insulated because provinces cannot pass laws on gay marriage or legal cannabis. Canadian federalism is incomplete in that regard. However Ford could pull a Mike Harris and start firing nurses. His economic plan promises a balanced budget with no job cuts and no tax rises. He claims there are efficiencies to be had whatever that means.
    - yarosv 8y ago
      Canada has gay marriages since 2005. Why would provinces need to pass more laws on that? As of legal cannabis, it is better when it is federal. In US you will go to jail in one state, and can be just fine in another.
      - digianarchist 8y ago
        Passing laws on those issues isn’t even possible in Canadian provinces they don’t have the constitutional right.
  - TulliusCicero 8y ago
    Same thing in Germany. In the political sense, Germany is more liberal than the US (especially economically), but there's this sort personal conservatism that manifests in paranoia about data/privacy, aversion/skepticism around change and technology and risk, less acceptance of weirdness. German culture just feels...rigid. It's stable and very functional, but also inflexible.
    - Pica_soO 8y ago
      Don't forget the incremental perfectionism, which wont allow for a product to ship, unless its polished to a mirror-shine, and at least a year behind any competitor. And the constant skepticism to anything that is not a physical product. Writing Software in the eye of the layman is something between boring and con-artistry.
      - phatfish 8y ago
        To be fair the polished product for physical goods is the better choice. If you buy the rushed appliance with design flaws you will just have to spend money again to replace it, or time to get it returned and fixed. Software is different in that problems can be fixed instantly (since online updates) and the first to build the user base is often the winner. The real problems occur when the "software startup" model is applied to a product that it does not fit.
  - briandear 8y ago
    Legal cannibis is absolutely a conservative opinion in the US. Most conservatives want government to just leave us alone. Republican authored bill: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/975/ https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/975/ And Diane Feinstein opposed California’s 2016 legalization. It’s ridiculous to suggest Democrats are more likely to legalize than Republicans because the facts don’t really support that. It’s much less of an obvious partisan issue. Remember, Democrats controlled the house, senate and White House in 2009-2011 and not a single legalization bill even made it to the floor.
- s4vi0r 8y ago
  To be fair, Doug Ford winning would be partially the liberals' fault. Kathleen Wynne is hated, and they for some reason had her lead again. They've got some great plans, but the way elections work makes it really easy for Doug Ford to pander hard to suburbites who only give a shit about lower taxes and real estate. Frankly, as a Toronto area dev Doug Ford winning the election would definitely cause me to consider looking for work in the US. Toronto's in a pretty crucial moment right now wrt growth and infrastructure, and I don't really see the point staying if the party of stagnation wins - whatever tax cut they may introduce is dwarfed by higher salary + lower CoL in the US anyways.
threatofrain 8y ago
A lot of Canada's GDP seems to come from mining, and some of it seems to come from places that could be disrupted by technology or ecological concerns, so I'm not surprised at resistance to disruption.
- pm90 8y ago
  Hmmm that is an interesting observation. I wonder if and when more of the GDP comes from Services/Software, it will impact the culture of the country as well?
- christocracy 8y ago
  Real-estate (in addition to associated construction) is bigger for than mining and oil: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/gdps04a-eng.htm http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/g...
  - mmt 8y ago
    But can one really count that, at least in the context of how the people understand where their money really comes from? Consider the adage, "Buy land: they don't make it any more." A growth in the value of land isn't, in and of itself, an actual product, though I do agree the construction is. However, how much of that construction is actually in service of a different industry (i.e. would never have happened but for, say, mining and oil)? Similarly, how much of that real estate value would drop to approximately zero if the industries supporting it disappeared? I'm sure there's some construction, especially residential, that must be happening just due to population growth, but I'm skeptical if that accounts for even a majority of that number.
    - christocracy 8y ago
      Certainly not all that construction is related to real-estate. Still real-estate as a % of GDP eclipses "mining, Oil & Gas". http://www.investorsfriend.com/canadian-gdp-canadian-imports-and-exports/ http://www.investorsfriend.com/canadian-gdp-canadian-imports...
wk_end 8y ago
Where in Canada did you live and gone to school? I live in the US now, and don't disagree that Americans as a people are more...well, I like the word 'ambitious'. But I think your characterization of Canada is overly harsh: in Toronto and Montreal I know (and love) misfits just as individual, wild, and free as anyone I met during my years in Brooklyn.
- caiob 8y ago
  'Free' as in as long as you both have the same socially-acceptable opinion.
- __erik 8y ago
  Also Canadian (Vancouver / Victoria), spend a lot of time in SF. This has also been my experience but I'm wondering if its just a big city thing in CAD.
  - lambdasquirrel 8y ago
    I’m a New Yorker, grew up there and now living in SF. Brooklyn was cool, but it didn’t “get” the kind of experimental intellectualism that’s needed in a tech startup scene. Not ripping on my old hometown. They have the intellectualism but haven’t applied it to tech. If I were to go back to New York, I wouldn’t go into tech, I’d go into finance because that’s where the nerds would be. If I may, when I visited Vancouver (several times), I couldn’t find a coffee shop culture there. For some reason this seems like a big deal. In Manhattan and in San Francisco, people write in coffee shops and it’s kind of a thing. This seems like a big deal too. There’s more startups that started in a coffee shop than you’d think. Again, it goes towards a certain kind of intellectual experimentation.
    - victorjuluis 8y ago
      I remember this Ted Talk titled “Where Good Ideas Come From” [1] where the speaker suggests that coffee or the combination of coffee and stimulating conversation catalyzed the generation of ideas and the rest is history up to the birth of Enlightenment. It seems like it’s still happening around coffee shops. [1] https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_johnson_where_good_ideas_come_from/transcript?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_johnson_where_good_ideas_co...
jahvo 8y ago
>To quote this excellent article[1]: "the default setting of the Canadian male: a dull but stern dad, who, under a facade of apparent normalcy and common sense, conceals a reserve of barely contained hostility toward anyone who might rock the boat. To these types, those who make a fuss are bothersome and ignorant at best, and probably dangerous and destructive too." Just being a conservative or a right-winger is bothersome and ignorant and dangerous and destructive and lots of bad things. What a way of seeing the world. :-)
- moorhosj 8y ago
  What does this description have to do with being a "right-winger"? Looks like you are the one bringing a preconceived worldview into the discussion. You are not a victim.
  - astrange 8y ago
    It’s a quote from an article about a paleoconservative, Jordan Peterson. Isn’t it?
- Nomentatus 8y ago
  The usual phrase is "psychologically conservative." Sticking to the comfort zone. Therefore, a psychological conservative who grows up in a politically Marxist household will remain Marxist, and of the same stripe of Marxist. They'll never consider political Conservatism seriously as a worldview, or switch to that.
- chickenfries 8y ago
  Bothersome is describing “those who would not rock the boat,” aka the enemies of the conservative, not the conservative.
bgirard 8y ago
That's because Canada is socially liberal and financially conservative.
- bonestamp2 8y ago
  Socially liberal in some ways, but not in everything. 4 states decriminalized and/or legalized marijuana before any Canadian provinces. 2 of them did it years before Canada was even planning to do it. That is very telling of the two cultures.
  - caenorst 8y ago
    Summarizing the social liberal aspect of Canada by the legalization of marijuana seems very narrow minded. There are far more important social aspects than marijuana legalization.
    - bonestamp2 8y ago
      Agreed, like I said, "in some ways". Of course, there are more important social aspects, and it's not an in-depth analysis of the two cultures and it wasn't meant to be -- it simply highlights just how open-minded Americans can be and how conservative Canadians can be and that's all it was meant to be.
  - querulous 8y ago
    marijuana has been de facto legal in vancouver for two decades
    - bonestamp2 8y ago
      Toronto too. I've been "caught" smoking weed by the police in Toronto and they literally don't give a shit. That said, not everyone is willing to accept that -- there's a huge portion of very conservative Canadians who think "drugs" are for dropouts and losers (and don't realize the opposite is true too -- nearly half of the most successful people are doing "drugs" too).
  - 8y ago
ahelwer 8y ago
Honestly I gotta agree with you here, bud. When I was growing up in Canada I had to keep my dreams a secret. If you had any grand goals people thought you were an egomaniacal weirdo. It wasn't until I seriously dated someone here in the US that I realized the difference: as part of the "delving into each others' inner lives" phase of the early relationship, I sheepishly admitted I had dreams of doing some pretty big things. I was greeted with an eye-roll and her saying "everyone wants to do something like that". Here in the USA it's normal for everyone to have big dreams, and weird if they don't. I think I like it.
- vhodges 8y ago
  I agree there's more ambition/drive in the US (Just observed, never having worked there), but there's lots here too. People do start companies. I think the bay area tends to do a lot more experimentation darwinian style, but I suspect it's because they can (more seed money/angels, etc)
  - antoniuschan99 8y ago
    It's the East Coast vs West Coast mentality. West coast has always been about experiment wheareas east coast is more conservative. I've always wondered if it was because the Europeans took hold of the East coast first and it was only the more brave who would take on the Westword journey. Perhaps that mentality is still engrained in the culture? I think Dragons Den vs Shark Tank is a clear example of how much stronger the US is (population is 10x too though).
    - maxerickson 8y ago
      Sailing across an ocean to who knows what is pretty brave. I expect the enormous wealth captured by computers and software gives people the leeway to experiment.
    - rock_hard 8y ago
      California and Japan are the farthest people and ideas can travel...those who survive the journey will have been refined by it! When those people meet those ideas at the end of said journey is when then magic happens
tomc1985 8y ago
My experience in here in the 'States exemplifies your comments "that I am surrounded by people who think like I do and value the things I value". But this does not lead to healthy social communities. We as a country are drunk on the idea that our friends are people who think and act like us, when this is only part -- IMO, a very small part -- of group chemistry that this outlook overlooks. Group interaction is so much more complicated and beautiful than that. At least in my case, my best friendships are with people very much unlike me. If you look at the current political situation here we are all banding together along lines of common interests and beliefs, and not things like proximity, or economic need, or other factors. And one wonders why we are so divided, when nobody wants to find common ground... I hate to use the word diversity but it's as important in life as water, now more than ever.
- lopmotr 8y ago
  I think the appropriate term here is "diversity of thought" which is sort of opposite to the unqualified "diversity" which usually means diversity of genetics and uniformity of thought.
- netheril96 8y ago
  > we are all banding together along lines of common interests and beliefs, and not things like proximity, or economic need, or other factors. And one wonders why we are so divided, when nobody wants to find common ground... I believe you are reversing the cause and effect. It is never easy to find common ground. In the bad old days when people could not band together along lines of common interests and beliefs easily, common ground were found by the powerful suppressing the opinion of the powerless, and other times by resolution of war.
- ryanobjc 8y ago
  Not everyone in my environment thinks as I do, but I can find enough that I can live a happy life. This is not so in other areas.
holdenk 8y ago
When I graduated and tried to find work in Canada multiple firms told me I was "too weird" and "should move to California", so I did and I'm super happy that it worked out the way it did -- but I still feel sad about having to leave my home country to be my authentic self.
bonestamp2 8y ago
So true. I'll give you a poignant example... I was a Canadian exchange student at a California University. I was walking from one class to another when I noticed somebody on a skateboard coming my way on the path. Just as he was passing I realize it was one of my professors. That surprised me and I turned my head as he went by to take it in. But what surprised me more was that I was the only person who gave a shit that a 50-year-old guy in dress pants and a sweater just road past on a skateboard. That's when I first realized people were much more open-minded. It took me about 10 years after University to move back to California and I can't imagine I'll ever move away.
fierro 8y ago
This thread and it's comments have been super enlightening. Living in California my whole life has skewed my perception of what is normal with respect to ambition. Ambition is not inherently good, but Eve as a small child we are inundated with messages about success, "hard work" (whatever that means), and reaching
coldtea 8y ago
>I was born in Canada. I went to school in Canada. Only once I moved to the US did I feel like I could express and be myself. That I am surrounded by people who think like I do and value the things I value. So to escape the uniformity of Canada you left and went to find a place were people think like you and value the things you do? Isn't that what those Canadians are all about as well? Seeking the company of other similar thinking people? The really open mind thing would be to recognize that some cultures like to experiment, others not, and both are fine.
jkoudys 8y ago
Awesome article, and should be required reading for anyone who has only heard of Jordan Peterson through his fans. I'll say that there's a huge difference in values between the big cities, the suburbs, and Alberta. Alberta is much more socially conservative than most of the states (if you ever see a Canuck unironically call someone a "cuck", 9/10 times they're Albertan). Montreal/QC are cool but still hosts an extremely ethnonationalist element that's all but crippled their local economy (remember that a little over a year ago, we had a terror attack where some altright guy shot up a mosque in QC). Toronto is incredibly progressive (I'd argue it's the most diverse city on the planet), but is surrounded by some of the worst, overtly racist, politicians you'll ever meet. Because of a first-past-the-post voting system, even though they're in the minority, the vote among reasonable people is split among reasonable candidates, and hateful buffoons get a consistent voting bloc. (The late) Rob Ford was mayor, in spite of making violent rants, being repeatedly publicly drunk, using every racial epitaph in the book, smoking crack (sometimes on video), and smoking crack with his KKK-member sister. His brother, reported former drug dealer Doug Ford, now stands a real chance of being Ontario's next premier. Vancouver is a great city, but somewhat isolated from the rest of Canada. Toronto's pretty expensive, but Vancouver is even worse. Unlike Toronto, though, there aren't a lot of options for anyone but the most wealthy who want to live there. While the Conservative party is very weak there (they didn't even have a location there hosting the federal leadership convention, when even people in PEI had one in driving distance), BC's influence federally is minimal. You could argue they're becoming something of an oligarchy due to the huge influence of corporate money. You either need to have a high-paying job, or be very old, to live there.

digianarchist 8y ago

>"The reality is Canada is deeply conservative." Agreed. Ontario is a few weeks away from voting in a conservative government with Doug Ford at the helm.

jgh 8y ago
I think the conservativeness of Canada is a bit different from conservatives in the USA though. It's less focused on "morality" and religion and more an aversion to change. Which is why I think it's possible for the culture to be simultaneously conservative and OK with things like gay marriage and legal cannabis, neither of which would be conservative positions in the US.
- digianarchist 8y ago
  We're insulated because provinces cannot pass laws on gay marriage or legal cannabis. Canadian federalism is incomplete in that regard. However Ford could pull a Mike Harris and start firing nurses. His economic plan promises a balanced budget with no job cuts and no tax rises. He claims there are efficiencies to be had whatever that means.
  - yarosv 8y ago
    Canada has gay marriages since 2005. Why would provinces need to pass more laws on that? As of legal cannabis, it is better when it is federal. In US you will go to jail in one state, and can be just fine in another.
    - digianarchist 8y ago
      Passing laws on those issues isn’t even possible in Canadian provinces they don’t have the constitutional right.
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  Same thing in Germany. In the political sense, Germany is more liberal than the US (especially economically), but there's this sort personal conservatism that manifests in paranoia about data/privacy, aversion/skepticism around change and technology and risk, less acceptance of weirdness. German culture just feels...rigid. It's stable and very functional, but also inflexible.
  - Pica_soO 8y ago
    Don't forget the incremental perfectionism, which wont allow for a product to ship, unless its polished to a mirror-shine, and at least a year behind any competitor. And the constant skepticism to anything that is not a physical product. Writing Software in the eye of the layman is something between boring and con-artistry.
    - phatfish 8y ago
      To be fair the polished product for physical goods is the better choice. If you buy the rushed appliance with design flaws you will just have to spend money again to replace it, or time to get it returned and fixed. Software is different in that problems can be fixed instantly (since online updates) and the first to build the user base is often the winner. The real problems occur when the "software startup" model is applied to a product that it does not fit.
- briandear 8y ago
  Legal cannibis is absolutely a conservative opinion in the US. Most conservatives want government to just leave us alone. Republican authored bill: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/975/ https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/975/ And Diane Feinstein opposed California’s 2016 legalization. It’s ridiculous to suggest Democrats are more likely to legalize than Republicans because the facts don’t really support that. It’s much less of an obvious partisan issue. Remember, Democrats controlled the house, senate and White House in 2009-2011 and not a single legalization bill even made it to the floor.
s4vi0r 8y ago
To be fair, Doug Ford winning would be partially the liberals' fault. Kathleen Wynne is hated, and they for some reason had her lead again. They've got some great plans, but the way elections work makes it really easy for Doug Ford to pander hard to suburbites who only give a shit about lower taxes and real estate. Frankly, as a Toronto area dev Doug Ford winning the election would definitely cause me to consider looking for work in the US. Toronto's in a pretty crucial moment right now wrt growth and infrastructure, and I don't really see the point staying if the party of stagnation wins - whatever tax cut they may introduce is dwarfed by higher salary + lower CoL in the US anyways.

threatofrain 8y ago

A lot of Canada's GDP seems to come from mining, and some of it seems to come from places that could be disrupted by technology or ecological concerns, so I'm not surprised at resistance to disruption.

pm90 8y ago
Hmmm that is an interesting observation. I wonder if and when more of the GDP comes from Services/Software, it will impact the culture of the country as well?
christocracy 8y ago
Real-estate (in addition to associated construction) is bigger for than mining and oil: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/gdps04a-eng.htm http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/g...
- mmt 8y ago
  But can one really count that, at least in the context of how the people understand where their money really comes from? Consider the adage, "Buy land: they don't make it any more." A growth in the value of land isn't, in and of itself, an actual product, though I do agree the construction is. However, how much of that construction is actually in service of a different industry (i.e. would never have happened but for, say, mining and oil)? Similarly, how much of that real estate value would drop to approximately zero if the industries supporting it disappeared? I'm sure there's some construction, especially residential, that must be happening just due to population growth, but I'm skeptical if that accounts for even a majority of that number.
  - christocracy 8y ago
    Certainly not all that construction is related to real-estate. Still real-estate as a % of GDP eclipses "mining, Oil & Gas". http://www.investorsfriend.com/canadian-gdp-canadian-imports-and-exports/ http://www.investorsfriend.com/canadian-gdp-canadian-imports...

wk_end 8y ago

Where in Canada did you live and gone to school? I live in the US now, and don't disagree that Americans as a people are more...well, I like the word 'ambitious'. But I think your characterization of Canada is overly harsh: in Toronto and Montreal I know (and love) misfits just as individual, wild, and free as anyone I met during my years in Brooklyn.

caiob 8y ago
'Free' as in as long as you both have the same socially-acceptable opinion.
__erik 8y ago
Also Canadian (Vancouver / Victoria), spend a lot of time in SF. This has also been my experience but I'm wondering if its just a big city thing in CAD.
- lambdasquirrel 8y ago
  I’m a New Yorker, grew up there and now living in SF. Brooklyn was cool, but it didn’t “get” the kind of experimental intellectualism that’s needed in a tech startup scene. Not ripping on my old hometown. They have the intellectualism but haven’t applied it to tech. If I were to go back to New York, I wouldn’t go into tech, I’d go into finance because that’s where the nerds would be. If I may, when I visited Vancouver (several times), I couldn’t find a coffee shop culture there. For some reason this seems like a big deal. In Manhattan and in San Francisco, people write in coffee shops and it’s kind of a thing. This seems like a big deal too. There’s more startups that started in a coffee shop than you’d think. Again, it goes towards a certain kind of intellectual experimentation.
  - victorjuluis 8y ago
    I remember this Ted Talk titled “Where Good Ideas Come From” [1] where the speaker suggests that coffee or the combination of coffee and stimulating conversation catalyzed the generation of ideas and the rest is history up to the birth of Enlightenment. It seems like it’s still happening around coffee shops. [1] https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_johnson_where_good_ideas_come_from/transcript?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_johnson_where_good_ideas_co...

jahvo 8y ago

>To quote this excellent article[1]: "the default setting of the Canadian male: a dull but stern dad, who, under a facade of apparent normalcy and common sense, conceals a reserve of barely contained hostility toward anyone who might rock the boat. To these types, those who make a fuss are bothersome and ignorant at best, and probably dangerous and destructive too." Just being a conservative or a right-winger is bothersome and ignorant and dangerous and destructive and lots of bad things. What a way of seeing the world. :-)

moorhosj 8y ago
What does this description have to do with being a "right-winger"? Looks like you are the one bringing a preconceived worldview into the discussion. You are not a victim.
- astrange 8y ago
  It’s a quote from an article about a paleoconservative, Jordan Peterson. Isn’t it?
Nomentatus 8y ago
The usual phrase is "psychologically conservative." Sticking to the comfort zone. Therefore, a psychological conservative who grows up in a politically Marxist household will remain Marxist, and of the same stripe of Marxist. They'll never consider political Conservatism seriously as a worldview, or switch to that.
chickenfries 8y ago
Bothersome is describing “those who would not rock the boat,” aka the enemies of the conservative, not the conservative.

bgirard 8y ago

That's because Canada is socially liberal and financially conservative.

bonestamp2 8y ago
Socially liberal in some ways, but not in everything. 4 states decriminalized and/or legalized marijuana before any Canadian provinces. 2 of them did it years before Canada was even planning to do it. That is very telling of the two cultures.
- caenorst 8y ago
  Summarizing the social liberal aspect of Canada by the legalization of marijuana seems very narrow minded. There are far more important social aspects than marijuana legalization.
  - bonestamp2 8y ago
    Agreed, like I said, "in some ways". Of course, there are more important social aspects, and it's not an in-depth analysis of the two cultures and it wasn't meant to be -- it simply highlights just how open-minded Americans can be and how conservative Canadians can be and that's all it was meant to be.
- querulous 8y ago
  marijuana has been de facto legal in vancouver for two decades
  - bonestamp2 8y ago
    Toronto too. I've been "caught" smoking weed by the police in Toronto and they literally don't give a shit. That said, not everyone is willing to accept that -- there's a huge portion of very conservative Canadians who think "drugs" are for dropouts and losers (and don't realize the opposite is true too -- nearly half of the most successful people are doing "drugs" too).
- 8y ago

ahelwer 8y ago

Honestly I gotta agree with you here, bud. When I was growing up in Canada I had to keep my dreams a secret. If you had any grand goals people thought you were an egomaniacal weirdo. It wasn't until I seriously dated someone here in the US that I realized the difference: as part of the "delving into each others' inner lives" phase of the early relationship, I sheepishly admitted I had dreams of doing some pretty big things. I was greeted with an eye-roll and her saying "everyone wants to do something like that". Here in the USA it's normal for everyone to have big dreams, and weird if they don't. I think I like it.

vhodges 8y ago
I agree there's more ambition/drive in the US (Just observed, never having worked there), but there's lots here too. People do start companies. I think the bay area tends to do a lot more experimentation darwinian style, but I suspect it's because they can (more seed money/angels, etc)
- antoniuschan99 8y ago
  It's the East Coast vs West Coast mentality. West coast has always been about experiment wheareas east coast is more conservative. I've always wondered if it was because the Europeans took hold of the East coast first and it was only the more brave who would take on the Westword journey. Perhaps that mentality is still engrained in the culture? I think Dragons Den vs Shark Tank is a clear example of how much stronger the US is (population is 10x too though).
  - maxerickson 8y ago
    Sailing across an ocean to who knows what is pretty brave. I expect the enormous wealth captured by computers and software gives people the leeway to experiment.
  - rock_hard 8y ago
    California and Japan are the farthest people and ideas can travel...those who survive the journey will have been refined by it! When those people meet those ideas at the end of said journey is when then magic happens

tomc1985 8y ago

My experience in here in the 'States exemplifies your comments "that I am surrounded by people who think like I do and value the things I value". But this does not lead to healthy social communities. We as a country are drunk on the idea that our friends are people who think and act like us, when this is only part -- IMO, a very small part -- of group chemistry that this outlook overlooks. Group interaction is so much more complicated and beautiful than that. At least in my case, my best friendships are with people very much unlike me. If you look at the current political situation here we are all banding together along lines of common interests and beliefs, and not things like proximity, or economic need, or other factors. And one wonders why we are so divided, when nobody wants to find common ground... I hate to use the word diversity but it's as important in life as water, now more than ever.

lopmotr 8y ago
I think the appropriate term here is "diversity of thought" which is sort of opposite to the unqualified "diversity" which usually means diversity of genetics and uniformity of thought.
netheril96 8y ago
> we are all banding together along lines of common interests and beliefs, and not things like proximity, or economic need, or other factors. And one wonders why we are so divided, when nobody wants to find common ground... I believe you are reversing the cause and effect. It is never easy to find common ground. In the bad old days when people could not band together along lines of common interests and beliefs easily, common ground were found by the powerful suppressing the opinion of the powerless, and other times by resolution of war.
ryanobjc 8y ago
Not everyone in my environment thinks as I do, but I can find enough that I can live a happy life. This is not so in other areas.

holdenk 8y ago

When I graduated and tried to find work in Canada multiple firms told me I was "too weird" and "should move to California", so I did and I'm super happy that it worked out the way it did -- but I still feel sad about having to leave my home country to be my authentic self.

bonestamp2 8y ago

So true. I'll give you a poignant example... I was a Canadian exchange student at a California University. I was walking from one class to another when I noticed somebody on a skateboard coming my way on the path. Just as he was passing I realize it was one of my professors. That surprised me and I turned my head as he went by to take it in. But what surprised me more was that I was the only person who gave a shit that a 50-year-old guy in dress pants and a sweater just road past on a skateboard. That's when I first realized people were much more open-minded. It took me about 10 years after University to move back to California and I can't imagine I'll ever move away.

fierro 8y ago

This thread and it's comments have been super enlightening. Living in California my whole life has skewed my perception of what is normal with respect to ambition. Ambition is not inherently good, but Eve as a small child we are inundated with messages about success, "hard work" (whatever that means), and reaching

coldtea 8y ago

>I was born in Canada. I went to school in Canada. Only once I moved to the US did I feel like I could express and be myself. That I am surrounded by people who think like I do and value the things I value. So to escape the uniformity of Canada you left and went to find a place were people think like you and value the things you do? Isn't that what those Canadians are all about as well? Seeking the company of other similar thinking people? The really open mind thing would be to recognize that some cultures like to experiment, others not, and both are fine.

jkoudys 8y ago

Awesome article, and should be required reading for anyone who has only heard of Jordan Peterson through his fans. I'll say that there's a huge difference in values between the big cities, the suburbs, and Alberta. Alberta is much more socially conservative than most of the states (if you ever see a Canuck unironically call someone a "cuck", 9/10 times they're Albertan). Montreal/QC are cool but still hosts an extremely ethnonationalist element that's all but crippled their local economy (remember that a little over a year ago, we had a terror attack where some altright guy shot up a mosque in QC). Toronto is incredibly progressive (I'd argue it's the most diverse city on the planet), but is surrounded by some of the worst, overtly racist, politicians you'll ever meet. Because of a first-past-the-post voting system, even though they're in the minority, the vote among reasonable people is split among reasonable candidates, and hateful buffoons get a consistent voting bloc. (The late) Rob Ford was mayor, in spite of making violent rants, being repeatedly publicly drunk, using every racial epitaph in the book, smoking crack (sometimes on video), and smoking crack with his KKK-member sister. His brother, reported former drug dealer Doug Ford, now stands a real chance of being Ontario's next premier. Vancouver is a great city, but somewhat isolated from the rest of Canada. Toronto's pretty expensive, but Vancouver is even worse. Unlike Toronto, though, there aren't a lot of options for anyone but the most wealthy who want to live there. While the Conservative party is very weak there (they didn't even have a location there hosting the federal leadership convention, when even people in PEI had one in driving distance), BC's influence federally is minimal. You could argue they're becoming something of an oligarchy due to the huge influence of corporate money. You either need to have a high-paying job, or be very old, to live there.