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Re: Being nice
| quote: | Originally posted by Jayx1
A few recent immigrants have recently told me their thoughts on niceness in Canada. Their conclusion? That people are nt very nice and in fact are down right cold. The reason? well it seems that when you are nice people take advantage of you like crazy.
This is absolutely true. It was a wierd change living overseas where EVERYONE seemed to be overwhelmingly nice and didnt expect anything in return. The hardest part was trying to keep up with the niceness since growing up in Canada numbs you to it.
I compare my old apartment in Argentina that had 5 other apartments in the building. When i moved in the neighbours knocked on the door to welcome me. One neighbour who was very poor baked me a cake before she even knew who i was. The neighbours kids came over all the time for peanut butter sandwiches and kool ade (2 things i brought with me that dont exist in argentina).
Ive lived in my new place for 3 weeks now and there are 25 apartments in this building. The one neighbour i did run into practically ran away when i said hello to them. The only person who knocked on my door was trying to sell me gas (i have electric and no gas LOL). Im still waiting for my cake too. The only kids ive seen are 10 year olds smoking up under the stairs in the lobby.
Its sad |
I tend to think of this as a Canadian/USA mindset, more than anything else, in comparison to a country like Chile (where I used to live for some time), you see the difference in the way people are to each other, especially within one's own community. One thing I notice is that in countries like Chile, there's not a large diversity in multi-culturalism. When you look at it this way, you tend to see that this country (Chile) is bound by one culture, one religion, one's own people. The very fact I wasn't born there, but still was born of two chilean parents, was more than enough for me to be accepted within the community as one of them. In countries like Canada and USA, you notice that there is no one people, or one culture, its many cultures and many people's race.
Even in a modern day society (North America), with internet and high tech-communications devices that supposedly bring everyone together, we still alienate ourselves by the color of our skin and the country on our passport. Its not to say all of Canada is like this (I've never visited every part of Canada or USA, so I dont know how small towns are), I just tend to think its not as easy to cope with the multi-culturalism that comes with living in metropolitans like Toronto, or New York (example of a USA city with huge multi-culturalism).
Sometimes, we tend to forget that we are all living under the roof of a single, multi-cultural community, that also has to develop its roots and culture. It's probably never going to happen, atleast not anytime soon (I think). But we need to change our minds in how we are going to treat North Americans as one people. We still fear our neighbours cause we dont know what to think of their families, traditions, rituals and superstitions (the age old "what you dont know, you fear" ideology). In the end, I just think that we are not where are ancestors are from, or what flag we decide to put on our car when World Cup is going on, we are where we live and where we want to stay. We are North Americans, and when we decide to erase the invisible lines that divides our roots, maybe one day we can see we are all just one race, the human race.
Anyhow, enough of my stupid rambling...take it how you want, this is just my take of the whole "coldness of canada debate".
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