Whether Sir Walter Raleigh placed his cloak on a puddle so that Queen Elizabeth may walk over it and thus avoid stepping on the muck is perhaps a legend or a myth, or perhaps it could have been a true incident. The veracity of this reported incident will never be fully determined. Whatever the fact was, the very glorification of this incident in history and literature speaks volumes about a social zeitgeist of a certain period; it is an integral part of a certain conduct that is congruent with an expected image of a true man or gentleman in a chapter of our western cultural history. This simple anecdote, and others similar to this, from a past era in history, point to the relevance of certain qualities that were deemed to be an integral part of manliness and gentlemanly character. It defines the quality of chivalry as essential in being macho in the right way.
In Canadian history, too, we discover the relationship of chivalry and manliness. Every gentleman had certain principles that needed to be pursued to be considered a gentleman, chivalry and bravery being the important ones. Now in Canada the special status once allocated to chivalry has been entirely stripped away. Unfortunately, men have been morphed to the extent that chivalry has been long past buried and this is nothing to be proud of.
It is sad to see bad trends develop and good traditions wither away in Canada. And if we don’t pay heed but readily trade rich cultural traits for inferior, shallow and poor ones, just because they are different, then very soon we will be a nation of lost souls and head toward cultural bankruptcy. The civilized cultural traditions instituted by herculean efforts of our ancestors will soon be lost because of negligence and disrespect to our past history.
It is sad that the emphasis now is on how to be diplomatic and politically correct. This quality of political correctness has inundated all our institutions and as such has defined the character of citizens of our society very differently than the way it
was defined in the past. Those who can exercise political correctness are the successful people in our midst. Politicians, leaders, professionals and every individual is judged as good or bad, intelligent or dull, a success or a failure, based
on how good the person is at executing political correctness. A gentleman same as a lady is defined as one who excels at the game of being politically correct. In other words, whoever is on the top of the ladder of pretense is the hero.
So why should this cultural trait be considered undesirable and even detrimental to the development of any civilized or dynamic society? Why is it lamentable that we have elevated political correctness to the status of a sacred cow? Primarily because the phoniness of practicing political correctness compromises spontaneity and creativity.
By censoring free and unbridled expression political correctness muzzles varieties of expressions and by streamlining the thought process to conform to a certain pattern it stifles the very pattern of expression. Political correctness becomes another form of pandering to dominant or vocal groups who take the role of a policing body in dictating what may be said or expressed. To fall in line in trying to please certain dominant partisan views imposed by those powerful enough to dictate what may be expressed and what may be censored, the quest for truth and knowledge is curtailed. Eventually this affects what and how one can even think.
Since political correctness is chameleon like in character and is defined arbitrarily as being correct or flawed, it creates further confusion and legitimizes untruth simply because people are forced to comply to the special interests of certain groups and people, who become the rightful owners of the very protocol of any public discourse. Various societal institutions and instruments, including the media, subdue the public and force them to think and act in certain fixed patterns thereby atrophying any possibility of diversification in thinking.
In addition to curtailing free expression and plurality, hypocrisy and an expected role playing in a certain `correct way`, affects the very psyche of our social growth. Unfortunately, by acquiescing to the need to conform to forms of political correctness we have effectively muzzled any passion and conviction of the thinking process and limited the very range of freedom of speech and expression. We have truly devolved into a civilization that encourages phoniness and effectively punishes any passionate expression or quest for truth, in order to simply please dominant and influential groups. To top it all, unabashedly our leaders lie to citizens when they say we are a society that prizes free speech and expression.
Besides, as there is utter confusion about what is right or wrong, as everything is arbitrary, we are cultivating a generation with no intrinsic idea of right or wrong. We have transformed into a generation which is putty in the hands of spin doctors and a prey to predators with hidden agendas.
This all becomes like a tale, where a father and son with a mule go to market and change their stance just to please different people at different times. When the son rides the mule some say that it is cruel that the son comfortably rides when the father walks. And then when the father rides the mule, some say the poor mule is burdened by this heavy person. The result: The father and son land up carrying the mule on their backs.
If we consider Canada we need to realize that the real mule on our collective backs is the misplaced importance placed on multiculturism. The whole experiment of multiculturism has failed and we have failed our country in our eagerness to erode and scrap the rich traditions of this country and substituted these with nothing sound but with utter confusion. It is the undue importance to half -baked multicultural traditions relayed by self-appointed gurus of perceived cultural entities that are being given currency. We have tried to replace our cultural traditions artificially and deliberately and encouraged misinformation rather than let our culture change progressively, subtly and intuitively in due course of time.
The result is that instead of evolving into a better society we are in fact devolving. So the experimentation of multiculturalism which started with all good intentions has now been hijacked by special interest groups and self- anointed\spokespersons of different groups and their vocal lobbying. This trend has been a disservice to the majority as well as it has hurt minorities it was supposed to help.
The policy of Multiculturism in Canada has benefited a paltry few people and the beneficiaries have been, without exception, aggressive, in your face, personalities from different communities. These opportunists have used the rich traditions of egalitarianism and liberal traditions of our cultural heritage to their advantage and are determined to make these redundant. The people who have benefited are the ones who are self-serving, with hidden agendas of promoting their doctrine under the guise of parlaying half-truths in support of their distorted religious and political beliefs and using their privileged position as some God given right to become spokespeople of certain groups and communities. In the process these people are doing a great disservice by alienating members of different communities from each other by misrepresenting the true nature of their beliefs
and cultural practices. Above all, these individuals and groups in a position of the privilege to ‘discourse’ have been able to wield undue pressure on the very thinking process of the general public.
It is about time Canada reworks its policy and redefines its cultural integration policy in a proper way than the present form which has been a complete failure. By not rewarding opportunistic groups and charlatans to stealthily usurp the rights of different communities, and becoming the spokespeople by default by exercising their ill gained position of prominence, Canada will be able to move in the right direction. It could then be a direction where culturally, Canada would become richer rather than devolve into a third rate country with shallow cultural norms.
As for the medieval chivalry of past, I am not yearning for its comeback. But rather I am arguing we let traditions take their course and die or remain without superimposing the will of the privileged few in determining what tradition can stay and what may be eliminated.
Canada would be better off if it was wary of its over generous misguided liberalism and let multiculturism thrive without superimposing the views of the aggressive few, generally the vocal minority, in enunciating for others as what is correct and incorrect. This can be done by not being hostile to our cultural traditions and readily legislating change against these traditions to accommodate a politically correct stance thinking it is helping multiculturism.