phantasmagorical

In psychological terms Canada is very much an introverted country, and it lives cheek by jowl with the most extraverted country in the world, and indeed the most extraverted country know to history. Let me explain the terms. In personal psychology, the extravert is one who derives his energy from his contacts with the external world; for him, everything lies outside and he moves toward it, often without much sensitivity to the response of that toward which he moves. The introvert, on the other hand, finds this energy within himself, and his concern with the outside world is a matter of what approach the outside world makes to him. It is absurd to say that one psychological orientation is superior to the other. Both have their value, but difficulties arise when they fail to understand one another.

The extraversion of the United States is easy to see. It assumes that it must dominate, that its political and moral views are superior to all others, and that it is justified in interference with countries it thinks undemocratic, meaning unlike itself. It has also the unhappy extravert characteristic of seeing all evil as exterior to itself, and resistance to that evil as a primary national duty. This is what makes so much trouble between the United States and the U.S.S.R.; the fact that the U.S.S.R. is, and has been all through its history, a strongly introverted state makes for continuous trouble and ill will, and assertions of moral superiority on both sides.

Canada, the introverted country, feels no impulsion to spread its domination beyond its own boundaries, and has shown itself generous and sometimes absurdly permissive in its acceptance of the behaviour and customs of numberless refugees that seek our shores. We are prepared to put up with almost anything to avoid trouble. This looks like weakness, and sometimes it is. But it also brings the introvert trait of selfishness. Americans are generous to a fault: we sometimes behave as though it were a fault to be generous, and we are used to being rapped over the knuckles because we do not give enough to the have-nots of the Third World. We wonder, deep in our hearts, how they are ever to make a place in the world if they are always on the take. That was not the way we had to do it. Deep in our hearts we are what you might choose to call a thrawn people. Such a description is not wholly justified, but it is not without some grounds.