July 20, 2003

Canada: Land of Mediocrity

According to Perry Michael Simon, Canada isn't the place where success is nurtured and glorified:

I've known several Canadians who told me the same thing about their country. They all love it, but they all feel that in order to really make it in their work, they have to move south of the border. I asked one guy why he felt that way, and he said "Canada has a weird mindset. They don't want you to succeed too much. You're not supposed to get too big, too successful. And there are plenty of people up there who are content to stay there, be medium sized fish in a medium-sized pond. If you have a creative or enterpreneurial bone in your body, you get out as soon as you can. You don't want to, you have to."

And that's the opposite of the mindset of Americans who want to bolt to another, less "competitive" country. If you truly don't think you can cut it in a competitive situation, what you're saying is that, deep down, you think you're not good enough. It's easy, then, to want to go someplace that cuts all the tall grass down to a more manageable size, rewards success and failure at roughly the same rate, treats everyone as the same (in other words, socialism). In America, you're rewarded by the success you achieve, the ability you demonstrate, the value the market places on what you do. If you're afraid that you're not good enough, if you're afraid of your own individuality, that's when you want the government to take care of you, to subsume you into the whole. You make a run towards a system that celebrates mediocrity.

[via Cam Edwards]