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OK, I've considered that. It's not really saying anything to me that would make me think that the people in Canada on average value the collective over the ind

OK, I've considered that. It's not really saying anything to me that would make me think that the people in Canada on average value the collective over the individual in terms of how they personally behave and more importantly how they tell others to behave. A phrase we often hear a lot is 'It's a free country'. Sometimes we say it as a justification that 'this is my preference / choice and regardless of what you think I do believe I have some justification in making it' and sometimes others use it to come to our defense to tell someone to back off and just let us be. That's individualism. In contrast I've had thousands of conversations with Japanese people where they use the opposite kind of justification 'because I'm Japanese I must behave this way because this is how Japanese people behave' or someone instructing you to act/not act in a certain way because your behavior is expected to (roughly) line up with cultural norms and there is constant and heavy emphasis on this. I can appreciate Canadian politics being different to that of the US. Indeed NZ and Australian politics differ both from each other and from that of Canada and the US. But I think we would all sooner blurt out 'it's a free country' than admonish ourselves for not behaving how everyone else behaves. That is to say there are some core philosophies that are held by all of us and then there are a bunch that differ.

int_19h 8y ago
I don't think anybody would disagree that Canada, and really all Western countries, are more on the individualist side of of the global spectrum - that's our shared Enlightenment culture at play. But OP was talking comparatively, US versus Canada. In that context, I think it's quite true that Canada (and, again, most other Western countries) are not quite as individualist as US. When you compare both versus Japan, yeah, it's a very minor difference.

int_19h 8y ago

I don't think anybody would disagree that Canada, and really all Western countries, are more on the individualist side of of the global spectrum - that's our shared Enlightenment culture at play. But OP was talking comparatively, US versus Canada. In that context, I think it's quite true that Canada (and, again, most other Western countries) are not quite as individualist as US. When you compare both versus Japan, yeah, it's a very minor difference.