Canada's National Identity Crisis

If those 'so-called greenhouse gases' keep causing major environmental problems like the dreaded global warming, some people are apparently concerned that Canadians will lose our national identity.

Bill Gough, a climatologist at the University of Toronto, suspects warmer winters could change how Canadians relate to the typically harsh season, especially as it becomes easier to live through.

"I think we really do define ourselves by the weather - it's the first thing we say in our conversations," says Gough.

"If you go to a literary route, Margaret Atwood has this whole theory that for Canadians, survival is our identity. And it's becoming less true. It's easier to survive."

Well, maybe it's time we stopped living on the bottom of Maslow's pyramid of the hierarchy of needs and began the path to true self-actualization because then we could actually deal with the environment...or something...of course then it would be too late...if you take these things in a strictly vertical kind of way...


(That's us. On the bottom.)

The need for self-actualisations is "the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming." People who have everything can maximize their potential. They can seek knowledge, peace, aesthetic experiences, self-fulfilment, oneness with God etc. It is usually middle-class to upper-class students who take up environmental causes, go off to a monastery, etc.

Yes, it's time we Canadians moved beyond mere survival in our parkas and toques and started scaling the mighty pyramid of promise. Screw winter and that national identity stuff.

I think cloistering ourselves in those monasteries sounds like fun. Do they have room service?