UK2018 - aftermath
Dec. 21st, 2018 04:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johncomicGonna share a few random thoughts related to my recent travels that have come to me over the last few days:
- much as happened last year, I find myself a bit unsettled by Canada's sprawling, spread-out bigness. The streets look sinfully wide here, people's yards look sinfully huge. I look at how businesses are surrounded by parking lots, because "we need them for the cars so people can come here". But then I see that, when every business is surrounded by a parking lot, each one is spread so far from its neighbour that most places get pushed farther away than one can comfortably walk to, so that you now need a car to get there. So in a sense, it is the parking lots that make the cars necessary.
The culture here is clearly shaped by the presumption of cars. In England, so many sections of the cities are blocked off from car traffic, in a way that I almost never see here. In England, there is a so much clearer investment of time and energy and resources into public transit, so that you don't need a car to get to work, you don't need a car to go shopping. [I'm not saying that no one there has a car, clearly many people find a use for one, but the system does not cater to them the same way.] Over here, the lack of a car cuts you off from more than half of what the city has to offer. Over here, pedestrians and transit customers are routinely disadvantaged for the sake of accommodating the cars.
Once again, I find myself feeling that British society is built for human beings, and Canadian/American society is built for cars. One of the things I enjoyed about being over there was not driving, and not needing to. Driving does have its subtle pleasures, but for me the trade-off isn't worth it -- I would gladly adjust to the British pedestrian way of life if I could.
- I have remarked on how I am struck by the beauty of the English landscape. I realized on coming home that Canada is also a beautiful land:
but I could see that it is a harsher beauty [I could almost call it brutal in some places] compared to the softer, gentler beauty of England. And it now occurs to me that this suits my nature as a soft, gentle person. This is part of what makes England feel like a better fit for me.
- I was recently on a Facebook forum where someone asked "if you could get one thing for Christmas, what would it be?" My answer was "an all-expenses-covered relocation to York". A Scottish guy asked, clearly incredulous, if I meant York, England. When I replied yes, he LOL'd at me and said "it's a shitehole".
I thought for a while about whether to answer him, and how. For a moment I could feel that cultural mechanism in place whereby, if someone insults someone or something we love, we have a "moral obligation" to "defend their honour", like if someone said my wife is ugly. And I became aware of the irrationality of that cultural mechanism. All that's really at play here is people with differing value systems -- this is an area where there is no real objective truth. I also found myself wondering if he knew things about York that I didn't, and perhaps if I did live there a while, the honeymoon would end and the city would reveal its dark underbelly to me. I don't know.
Finally I decided to give him the truest and wisest answer I could. In reply to his calling York a shitehole, I said, "Not to me, so far."
He very likely still thinks I'm a fool. But how much does that really matter?
- much as happened last year, I find myself a bit unsettled by Canada's sprawling, spread-out bigness. The streets look sinfully wide here, people's yards look sinfully huge. I look at how businesses are surrounded by parking lots, because "we need them for the cars so people can come here". But then I see that, when every business is surrounded by a parking lot, each one is spread so far from its neighbour that most places get pushed farther away than one can comfortably walk to, so that you now need a car to get there. So in a sense, it is the parking lots that make the cars necessary.
The culture here is clearly shaped by the presumption of cars. In England, so many sections of the cities are blocked off from car traffic, in a way that I almost never see here. In England, there is a so much clearer investment of time and energy and resources into public transit, so that you don't need a car to get to work, you don't need a car to go shopping. [I'm not saying that no one there has a car, clearly many people find a use for one, but the system does not cater to them the same way.] Over here, the lack of a car cuts you off from more than half of what the city has to offer. Over here, pedestrians and transit customers are routinely disadvantaged for the sake of accommodating the cars.
Once again, I find myself feeling that British society is built for human beings, and Canadian/American society is built for cars. One of the things I enjoyed about being over there was not driving, and not needing to. Driving does have its subtle pleasures, but for me the trade-off isn't worth it -- I would gladly adjust to the British pedestrian way of life if I could.
- I have remarked on how I am struck by the beauty of the English landscape. I realized on coming home that Canada is also a beautiful land:
but I could see that it is a harsher beauty [I could almost call it brutal in some places] compared to the softer, gentler beauty of England. And it now occurs to me that this suits my nature as a soft, gentle person. This is part of what makes England feel like a better fit for me.
- I was recently on a Facebook forum where someone asked "if you could get one thing for Christmas, what would it be?" My answer was "an all-expenses-covered relocation to York". A Scottish guy asked, clearly incredulous, if I meant York, England. When I replied yes, he LOL'd at me and said "it's a shitehole".
I thought for a while about whether to answer him, and how. For a moment I could feel that cultural mechanism in place whereby, if someone insults someone or something we love, we have a "moral obligation" to "defend their honour", like if someone said my wife is ugly. And I became aware of the irrationality of that cultural mechanism. All that's really at play here is people with differing value systems -- this is an area where there is no real objective truth. I also found myself wondering if he knew things about York that I didn't, and perhaps if I did live there a while, the honeymoon would end and the city would reveal its dark underbelly to me. I don't know.
Finally I decided to give him the truest and wisest answer I could. In reply to his calling York a shitehole, I said, "Not to me, so far."
He very likely still thinks I'm a fool. But how much does that really matter?
no subject
Date: 2018-12-22 02:22 am (UTC)Not at all, because he is balanced by me, and I was nodding my head all the way through reading this post. I had almost exactly the same reaction in 2003 when I first came back from England and thought "Oh, we've done it all wrong here in various ways -- it's all just badly implemented and needs to be rethought and redone, almost like what Apple did to the computer interface in 1983."
I mean, I still approve of our history as the first major nation in modern Western civilization with no inherited aristocracy or monarch. Good on us. Culture of innovation, check. Lots of good businesses; lots of good contributions. Hollywood has gotten a lot better in my lifetime too.
But when it comes to everyday life... architecture, designed towns or cities, energy efficiency, climate change, common courtesies... no, I'm afraid America has gotten it badly wrong . And England does it better in ways both subtle and overt, and it sounds like you had the same reaction to Canada.
As for Mr. Scot in your post, let me suggest in reply this quote from the good Samuel Johnson:
"Sir, let me tell you, the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England!"