The best country to be born in...

[fajrdrako]

I went to an exhibit of Chinese art today.

At one point, our Chinese guide was explaining about the Cultural Revolution. She talked about how, when she was in kindergarten, the teachers in China taught her that she was exceptionally lucky to be born there, because in the rest of the world everyone lived in poverty and suffering (except for a few rich people). She believed it.

My first thought was of the beginning of Serenity, where River is told by her teachers how lucky they are to live under the Alliance because the alternative is suffering and savagery. And River says that the Alliance is 'meddlesome'.

Then I remembered Bill Bryson's book The Lost Continent in which he says he was taught from kindergarten that he was lucky to be born in the United States because it was the best of countries, better than all the others, because people in other countries were poor and unfree.

I guess a lot of countries teach that they're the best.

I mentioned this to maaseru and she said, "Not ours. Did they ever tell you in school you were lucky to be Canadian?"

I thought about it. "Never," I said. "The subject just... never came up." In fact, I couldn't even imagine it coming up.

There's something about the concept of being the best... or being willing to say that you're the best... that seems very un-Canadian. I don't think it's because we're modest, or because we hate our country. Maybe it's just our way of being perversely self-confident? Or maybe because, in our ongoing attempts to balance two cultures on a national tight-rope, we prefer not to pass judgement on the rest of the world? Even in kindergarten?