Vault101 said:
Westaway said:
I said that was incorrect and asked you for proof.
Canada was settled by I think the French and British, both French and English are the main languages spoken there, if I assume correctly it is predominantly Caucasian in population, you live in first world standards the reason being its one of the many country's we classify under the "west" which due to a ton more reasons is a more developed nation, while culturally very similar to America the accent is noticeable in its pronunciation of words like "out" it is known for ice hockey maple syrup and a stereotype of people being incredibly polite
how is this not a culture?
I missed the initial message, but the bottom line is there is a difference between a nation and a culture. A culture is a long standing set of traditions, beliefs, rituals, and a way of life that exists in of itself.
To put things into perspective I frequently go off on attacking Muslim culture throughout The Middle East, as the culture as a whole is something that exists in more than one nation despite some regional differences. It's also different from Islam itself since it comes down to specific ways Islam is practiced in terms of daily prayers, and an indoctrinated belief in superiority and a need to assimilate others into the religion or destroy them, or at least in there being a destiny for this to happen one way or another. I typically identify regional "Muslim Culture" as the enemy that needs to be fought because the ideas are what keeps the conflicts alive, different groups and nations in/from the region are at the forefront of the threat at any given time, but as a general rule destroying say Al Qaida, ISIS, or even nations like Iran, won't really achieve anything because the ideas and culture go beyond those particular institutions and nations. As long as the basic culture and set of beliefs exist (that way of viewing and practicing Islam and it's various subcultures... Islam CAN be practiced peacefully unobtrusively as has been shown elsewhere so Islam itself is not the enemy) the threat never ends, it just takes on different names.
The thing is that in "The New World" it's been argued that the US and Canada are pretty much non-cultures which is both part of our appeal, and also why a lot of people don't like us. We're very new nations, who largely rejected large parts of our parent cultures, and we took a lot of the things we do, think, believe, and use from different groups all over the world.
Canada is doubtlessly a nation, but without reading the initial message (can't find it for some reason), I'm guessing the other poster is saying it's not a culture because there isn't really a whole lot that you can say is distinctly Canadian or helps define Canada and what it is. Perhaps because it hasn't existed all that long in the scope of the world, but also probably because it's a melting pot.
See, if you tell someone from Canada to "do something distinctly Canadian" or "show off something distinctively from your culture" there isn't a whole lot you can do. People from Japan or China could show various dances, styles of crafts, martial arts, and people like say Geishas, or objects like Samurai Swords and Armor which are incredibly distinctive and automatically associated with them because they tend to be very distinct. None of these kinds of things ARE a culture, but they all contribute to having one. As a Canadian you might be able to show off things like say a Mountie in uniform, but really he's one of the last remnants of the British Colonial Army (seriously, that's actually a point of pride apparently) in terms of dress (which has admittedly been modified) and ritual, you could show off maple candy, but I don't think Canada is the only ones who make that. An accent or saying "Eh" a lot (joke) don't much count. Pretty much everything Canada has it took from someone else (and perhaps modified).
The USA is largely in the same boat, which is why so many people make a joke about "American Culture". We have a some distinctive ideas and attitudes, and produce a lot of media, and even inventions, but there really isn't many things that distinctive about Americans that you can point to and say "That's American". Certain things like Rock music and
the like could be trotted out, but it can be hard to really point to a cultural identity since we're such a melting pot, and pretty much everything America created it wound up giving to the world.
Arguably the US, Canada, and Australia could all arguably be called "Culturally British" because that was the core of our identity more than anyone else, as we all sprung off of The British Empire and became independent, and that's the deepest root we have. We just happened to have branched off a bit in our various ways and put our own little spins on things based on what cultures we melted into ourselves and so on.
I'm sure some can make the opposite argument, and quite well. I'm mostly posting this because especially back when I was learning sociology the whole issue of "American Culture" and "What defines a Culture" came up and it's not an easy thing to pin down, but at the end of the day while it's possible to defend nations like the US and Canada as having cultures, pretty strong, reasonably valid cases can be made for us being non-cultures, basically we'll need to be around for centuries yet before we really come into our own, as we're mostly a mass of things we've assimilated. We don't have the weight of history yet to be truly distinctive. I mean the USA isn't even 300 years old yet, and most of the big cultures have existed far longer, even thousands of years, and developed their own identities and distinct styles very slowly over that time.
