Am I a Foreigner?

Among the special articles in The Economist magazine's 2009 year-end double issue, I found a thoughtful three page piece on Being Foreign. The writer makes several points:

• That in today's global society, being a stranger in a different land, nation or community is perfectly normal;
• There has been long philosophical consensus that the human social animal is best off at home, in the comfort and stability of his own country, nation, people, religion, culture, and familiar laws;
• The philosophers have been in error, he says as he reviews the history of foreign travel, in assuming that people should belong to some particular society. He cites the many joys people have experienced by straying from the home group, saying "you could re-invent yourself, if only in your own mind. You could be irresponsible. Irresponsibility might seem to moralists as an unsatisfactory condition for an adult, but in practice it can bring huge relief."

As an old man now I am finally forced to believe that my life-long search to feel at home, to be a core part of some group, to feel safe and secure in a stable environment, has come to nought. Like every human animal I have been part of many social or working groups from birth and generally adapted to them, but from my closed religious village of childhood, through schools, businesses, churches, political parties, lodges, clubs and professional organizations, I have often felt myself to be a foreigner in their midst. In many ways I still do, as witness my expressed opposition to the forthcoming Vancouver Winter Olympics already claiming the almost total absorption and large support of our west coast population and media.

Another example is my continued opposition to the multicultural policies of the national Canadian community. For fifty years I have scribbled about that opposition until today that policy has become the pride of Canadian nationhood. Have I been proven wrong? Who knows? I still believe as I wrote in my memoirs twenty years ago that Canada's cultural and linguistic multiplicity is in danger of spreading division into more and more regions and local communities, and that "With increasing migration pressures such policies will confirm the shifting foundations of our Canadian nationhood to the point that the people of one city block may have no common ground with their neighbours down the street and the country may develop into a series of minority ghettoes on every side, all competing for the attention of the state. Will we become a country of neighbourhood nationalism on a rampage?"

At the beginning of my personal memoir I said, "... ultimately we are each of us, a minority of one." In the end, that is what I called the book. So in a sense, we may all be foreigners, even in our own homes. The trick is to deal positively with the feeling of isolation that goes with not belonging. As The Economist's writer said, "The dilemma of foreigness comes down to one of liberty versus fraternity--the pleasures of freedom versus the pleasures of belonging. The foreigner chooses the pleasures of freedom, and the pains that go with them."

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