Cherishing my land
Jul. 13th, 2020 11:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brin_bellwayI know some people, some governments--fewer than there used to be, but still--worry about dual citizens with split loyalties. But honestly, being a dual citizen makes it so much *easier* to be patriotic about where I live!
Being coerced into having an emotion about something squashes my capacity to have any genuine emotions about the thing, including the target emotion. Even if I'd have *genuinely* cared about a cause if given a choice (who can say?), I can't feel it for a cause I've been *forced* to care about: all I can manage is a thin shell of emotion over an underlying resentment.
But when it comes to the cause of Canada, I have a choice! I have exit rights! Even now, the US/Canada border is *restricted* but it's not *closed*: if I showed up at a passage from here to the United States, flashed a U.S. passport, and said "I'm a U.S. citizen and I want to take up residence here", I'm pretty sure that's one of the things they still let you in for.
It's true that I didn't get to choose whether to come here *in the first place*: my parents moved and took their kids along with them. But when I turned eighteen I was granted the right to undo what they did, and I haven't done it. Having a choice makes my choice to stay here meaningful.
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(This post inspired by readingsophia_sol's review of Open House, and feeling a dissonant surprise at them running "the importance of community and heritage" together into one thing. To me "community" has positive connotations and "heritage" has negative connotations, because communities are consensual (they have exit rights) and heritages are non-consensual (they don't).)
Being coerced into having an emotion about something squashes my capacity to have any genuine emotions about the thing, including the target emotion. Even if I'd have *genuinely* cared about a cause if given a choice (who can say?), I can't feel it for a cause I've been *forced* to care about: all I can manage is a thin shell of emotion over an underlying resentment.
But when it comes to the cause of Canada, I have a choice! I have exit rights! Even now, the US/Canada border is *restricted* but it's not *closed*: if I showed up at a passage from here to the United States, flashed a U.S. passport, and said "I'm a U.S. citizen and I want to take up residence here", I'm pretty sure that's one of the things they still let you in for.
It's true that I didn't get to choose whether to come here *in the first place*: my parents moved and took their kids along with them. But when I turned eighteen I was granted the right to undo what they did, and I haven't done it. Having a choice makes my choice to stay here meaningful.
---
(This post inspired by reading
sophia_sol's review of Open House, and feeling a dissonant surprise at them running "the importance of community and heritage" together into one thing. To me "community" has positive connotations and "heritage" has negative connotations, because communities are consensual (they have exit rights) and heritages are non-consensual (they don't).)
