On culture and its treachery

In my province there’s a political movement of folks wanting to separate from Canada. One of the reasons given for this is that Alberta has a distinct culture, different from the rest of the country. This has prompted me to think more about culture. We tend to get embedded in our home culture, never giving it a second thought. Our cultural perspective simply seems to be what is normal and proper. 
    Recently, I spent a few weeks in Newfoundland and experienced the culture there. What a shock it was in comparison to Alberta. I consistently found the Newfoundlanders to be warm, spirited, kind, and content. Their eyes are lively and their smiles at the ready. They are oh-so-proud of their province and history. 
    Newfoundland is not a wealthy province, especially out in the remote areas. Not only that, but the weather there can be rather awful as the damp, bitter cold comes down from the Arctic on the coastal current (bringing icebergs!). And talk about adversity… the main employment for the oceanside villages completely collapsed 25 years ago with the moratorium on the cod fishery. It’s just trying to get going again but will never be the same. So you’d think the people there would be anything other than warm, spirited, kind and content. But this a people who see hard times as about pitching in to help each other rather than about blaming and complaining.
    In contrast, I expect the rest of Canada is getting the impression that the Alberta culture is outraged, resentful, bitter, and entitled. Not Albertans are that way of course, in fact it seems only about a quarter of the population is. However that quarter is loud (vocally and with truck horns). As angry as they are, the rest of us are equally anxious these days. 
    Both angry and anxious are the opposite of how we experienced the people of Newfoundland. There simply seems to entirely different cultures in the two provinces.
    Culture defines which emotions are communally felt. In Newfoundland in addition to their bright and friendly spirits there are feelings of melancholy and a sense of tragedy. There’s sadness with many losses, but never did I experience people being resentful or embittered about it. They remember it all, that’s important to do. Much of the remembering comes in their songs with their storytelling lyrics. Singing those songs with their guitars and accordions brings a sense of community as they remember together. They don’t feel entitled to a better life, just watch out for others worse off than themselves to be able to help. In Alberta the separatist culture is focuses on being victims and blaming. 
    Ah, what a contrast between grief and grievance!
    Culture can limit us, take away the breadth and depth of who we can be. It can obscure our values. Culture defines for us what things mean. It limits meaning by disqualifying any suggestion that things could be understood differently.
    
I began to notice culture on a micro level when I was working as a psychologist. In my professional role I visited schools and found that different schools had different micro cultures, ones immediately apparent walking into the teachers’ room. In one school the teachers’ room had brownies on the table to share, one teacher was helping another with her marking. A different school just had teachers sitting silent and exhausted with grim looks on their faces. 
    I worked in human service agencies. In some of them there was a spirit of superiority, self-protection and resentment. Others were welcoming, with staff engaging each other through laughter, celebration and story telling.
    Over my four decades as a psychologist I watched the culture of my profession drift. The profession became increasingly legalistic. Fear replaced passion for engaging the human condition and helping those suffering. We feared being caught if we weren’t doing things in the only approved way or ticking the boxes properly. 
    The conformist culture of the profession worked against our ability as professionals to engage in critical thinking. I entered the profession having studied the sciences at university. I was keen to observe, generate hypotheses, test them out, hone my understanding and go back through it all again to deepen my perspective on what was in front of me. However, professional psychology didn’t want us to be scientists at all but technicians who let someone else do our science for us. As a result our critical thinking skills atrophied to replaced by dutifully following the protocols of best practice. Unfortunately, what the textbooks and professional development conferences declared to be best practice could never be better than tailoring our interactions to the specific characteristics of the client and their circumstances. 

So what do we do when we realize the culture in which we are embedded has limited us, has led us away from our personal values, has effected negatively the emotions we feel? I will hazard some suggestions.
    First, check in with what your personal values are, the priorities and perspectives you’ve had throughout your life. It might be things your grandmother taught you or you learned from a school teacher who took an interest in you, or decisions you made in your adolescence about who you were going to be as an adult.
    Secondly, talk to people from outside your micro-culture who see you as being as a person separate from your context. Is your toxic workplace, social media feed, religious group, or friendship circle pushing you to be a different self?
    Thirdly, think for yourself using reliable inputs. Influencers don’t have your best interests at heart; they’re working for power and profit and you are their mark. Get off social media as much as you can because it is driven by algorithms for achieving its capitalistic objectives. Limit yourself to professional journalists for politics and global reporting. Read widely, particularly things not recommended by people in your own cultural group. 
    Finally, work to create a culture around you that fits your own integrity and values. You may not be well liked for it. However, in the long run, you’ll be happier within yourself.