24/09/06, Ivan Morgan, Rant & Reason, The flaw in our collective psyche
Post
A nation defines itself — at least in part — through its collective history. The Japanese, for example, don’t teach their children much about the more unpleasant aspects of Japanese actions in the Second World War. Nations such as Germany wrestle with how to account for the Holocaust.
In Spain, a new generation of young people are trying to learn the truth about the Spanish Civil War. Seventy years later, young Spaniards are facing conflict with the oldest of Spain’s citizens, who have lived for decades with unspoken truths of neighbours killing neighbours. In Rwanda, the memories of atrocities are still fresh — one wonders how Rwandans will ever be able to face each other.
Luckily in our little neck of the woods we don’t have such great scars in our history. The treatment Beothuks received at the hands of the earliest settlers is not our proudest moment, but we know of it, we teach it to our young people, and it is discussed and debated.
Yet many Newfoundlanders and Labradorians have a collective trait that I have always thought odd. I refer to theretro self-loathing so many of our fellow citizens indulge in. What is it about our collective psyche that so many of us feel the need to blame ourselves for our troubles?
I went to school in Ontario for five years, where I studied Ontario history. While boring, it was presented in history books as a logical progression of hardworking, thrifty and sensible people, deserving in their rise to great prosperity. They love themselves and it
showed.
People from Ontario I knew spoke of their politics and history with pride and, when they talked to me, with a certain condescension. We were taught Newfoundlanders and Labradorians were “brought into” Confederation “for their own good.” I can still recall not just the words, but the tone, of my Grade 10 geography teacher, who wasnot very good at, or interested in, geography.
I remember sitting in class simmering with resentment as he made the other students snicker at the pathetic shape Newfoundland was in when we (meaning they) “let us” join. I didn’t speak up because I knew he was right. That was how I thought.
That weird collective self-loathing — which I have long since cured myself of — still rears its head in Newfoundland politics. You don’t have to go too far when talking about
Newfoundland’s past, as we have been doing lately about the Terms of Union, before you get a lecture on how pathetic, desperate and miserable we were, and how lucky we were to join Confederation.
It’s like a real life version of Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen sketch, where four cigar smoking men sit around in tuxedos sipping brandy and trying to out-do each other’s tales of hardship growing up.
How bad was it?
The Great Depression was bad for almost everyone — there was global misery and suffering. It left a scar on the conscience of many cultures, but —and this is only my impression — Newfoundlanders seem more inclined to tie all the woes of the province to that collective memory.
We joined Canada because … Yes, we sold out to Confederation, but we had to because … Sure Joey was a crook, but he brought us … We have all heard excuses for our province’s condition that start like this.
In the face of Japan’s calculated historical denial, Spanish generational confrontation or the self-satisfied recount of victories that was the history of Britain and Canada that I was raised on, the Newfoundlander’s penchant for wallowing in self-loathing has always been odd to me.
I have heard prominent Newfoundlanders say the most outrageously negative things about their home and fellow citizens. Paradoxically, all of them claim to be passionate Newfoundlanders. Many would have you believe that it is their passion for this place that
breeds their poor opinion of their collective history. Go figure.
The lessons of history are what we infer from what we know. There are no immutable moral lessons in history, history just is. To quote Homer Simpson: “It’s just a bunch of stuff that happened.”
How people view their past colours how they view their future. Not that I want to pick on any group, but the Newfoundland New Democrats constantly applaud and honour their predecessors. One could look at their political history and see decade after decade of humiliating loss and stagnation at the bottom of the political barrel. That’s not how they see it.
Was life hard in Newfoundland in 1949? You bet. It was tough in northern Ontario too. Four years after the war, life was no party in most of Europe either. Is it me, or do Newfoundlanders seem to think themselves, because of their imagined humble beginnings, somehow beholden to Canada for the prosperity the rest of the world also enjoyed in the latter part of the 20th century?
In Spain, a new generation of young people are trying to learn the truth about the Spanish Civil War. Seventy years later, young Spaniards are facing conflict with the oldest of Spain’s citizens, who have lived for decades with unspoken truths of neighbours killing neighbours. In Rwanda, the memories of atrocities are still fresh — one wonders how Rwandans will ever be able to face each other.
Luckily in our little neck of the woods we don’t have such great scars in our history. The treatment Beothuks received at the hands of the earliest settlers is not our proudest moment, but we know of it, we teach it to our young people, and it is discussed and debated.
Yet many Newfoundlanders and Labradorians have a collective trait that I have always thought odd. I refer to theretro self-loathing so many of our fellow citizens indulge in. What is it about our collective psyche that so many of us feel the need to blame ourselves for our troubles?
I went to school in Ontario for five years, where I studied Ontario history. While boring, it was presented in history books as a logical progression of hardworking, thrifty and sensible people, deserving in their rise to great prosperity. They love themselves and it
showed.
People from Ontario I knew spoke of their politics and history with pride and, when they talked to me, with a certain condescension. We were taught Newfoundlanders and Labradorians were “brought into” Confederation “for their own good.” I can still recall not just the words, but the tone, of my Grade 10 geography teacher, who wasnot very good at, or interested in, geography.
I remember sitting in class simmering with resentment as he made the other students snicker at the pathetic shape Newfoundland was in when we (meaning they) “let us” join. I didn’t speak up because I knew he was right. That was how I thought.
That weird collective self-loathing — which I have long since cured myself of — still rears its head in Newfoundland politics. You don’t have to go too far when talking about
Newfoundland’s past, as we have been doing lately about the Terms of Union, before you get a lecture on how pathetic, desperate and miserable we were, and how lucky we were to join Confederation.
It’s like a real life version of Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen sketch, where four cigar smoking men sit around in tuxedos sipping brandy and trying to out-do each other’s tales of hardship growing up.
How bad was it?
The Great Depression was bad for almost everyone — there was global misery and suffering. It left a scar on the conscience of many cultures, but —and this is only my impression — Newfoundlanders seem more inclined to tie all the woes of the province to that collective memory.
We joined Canada because … Yes, we sold out to Confederation, but we had to because … Sure Joey was a crook, but he brought us … We have all heard excuses for our province’s condition that start like this.
In the face of Japan’s calculated historical denial, Spanish generational confrontation or the self-satisfied recount of victories that was the history of Britain and Canada that I was raised on, the Newfoundlander’s penchant for wallowing in self-loathing has always been odd to me.
I have heard prominent Newfoundlanders say the most outrageously negative things about their home and fellow citizens. Paradoxically, all of them claim to be passionate Newfoundlanders. Many would have you believe that it is their passion for this place that
breeds their poor opinion of their collective history. Go figure.
The lessons of history are what we infer from what we know. There are no immutable moral lessons in history, history just is. To quote Homer Simpson: “It’s just a bunch of stuff that happened.”
How people view their past colours how they view their future. Not that I want to pick on any group, but the Newfoundland New Democrats constantly applaud and honour their predecessors. One could look at their political history and see decade after decade of humiliating loss and stagnation at the bottom of the political barrel. That’s not how they see it.
Was life hard in Newfoundland in 1949? You bet. It was tough in northern Ontario too. Four years after the war, life was no party in most of Europe either. Is it me, or do Newfoundlanders seem to think themselves, because of their imagined humble beginnings, somehow beholden to Canada for the prosperity the rest of the world also enjoyed in the latter part of the 20th century?
Home