The Swinging Pendulum

The delicate balance between immigration and culture

Open any app on your phone today and you can watch the pendulum swing hard to one side, smashing everything in its way.

Many people see this as a bad thing.

I sit here alone without my herd of sheep wondering what, exactly, the swinging pendulum is smashing to bits on its way to the other side.

Do we need to dismantle every single thing we have accomplished as evolving humans in order to advance as a species?

Or is there another way?

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My current position is that neither side is correct.

Harmony cannot be achieved if you take from Peter to give to Paul.

Equally, harmony cannot be achieved if you take from Peter, bypass Paul, and give it all to Mohammed. Or Kamal. Or Chen.

Harmony also cannot be achieved if you take from Peter and Paul and give to ___ (fill in the blank), bankrupting everyone else in the process.

Why can't we coexist in harmony?

Why do we have to swing the pendulum so far to one side or the other that the intricately woven fabric of society is ripped to shreds?

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One of the things I like about having lived on two continents in my lifetime was the exposure to both national and international cultures.

In Switzerland, the cultural differences between the predominantly German-speaking northern part were very different from their southern, Italian-speaking neighbours. I saw this in the architecture, the nature of the communities, and especially in the cuisine.

Canada, a country so immense that flying from Toronto to the west coast takes longer than driving across Switzerland's entire border-to-border length, harbours just as many - if not more - cultural diversities. It is a source of pride that Canadians can celebrate with food and festivals the customs brought to the land from abroad.

But only to a point.

If the incoming culture begins to snuff out the existing culture, what happens to the harmony?

The pendulum swings harder.

There is a lot of confusion at the moment, feeding and inflaming the already rampant negativity bias in the communities across North America (and, based on what I’ve seen and read online, across various nations in Europe).

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My parents were immigrants. We came with little and made a life. It wasn't easy, and we grew to relative comfort with a healthy dose of doubt and a lot of hard work. We managed despite deep recessions, job losses, language challenges and inflation spikes which almost caused us to lose the house.

We ate a lot of soup and spaghetti in those days, purchased and made at home from scratch with discount groceries.

We came for optimistic reasons, mostly to do with cultural mindsets. A house was beyond our financial reach in Switzerland but within reach in Canada. A relatively normal future for a child with a hearing loss was deemed possible, even probable, in Canada whereas the Swiss powers in health and education industries shut that door with rigid mindsets.

We came to Canada and brought with us customs and traditions from Switzerland. At age 11 (me), 9 (my sister) and 7 (my brother), we were foreigners despite us girls having been born in Canada. We were raised in Swiss-German culture with some Italian influences throughout our formative years and brought these customs with us to our new home in Canada. Friends came over for cheese fondues and raclette.

We fed them fruit Wähe for dessert (puff pastry rolled flat like a pizza bottom topped with fruit or berries and sprinkled with nuts), and educated them of the differences between good quality Swiss chocolate and North American candy bars. (Whole ingredients vs emulsifiers, wax, artificial colour and other fillers).

We made a unique life immersed in several cultures present in our orbit. We met Portuguese and German families, people from Arab countries, people from India and the south Pacific. I went to school with Italian-Canadians, Indian-Canadians, Chinese-Canadian and Korean-Canadian kids. There were British, Irish and Scottish people who crossed our paths, as well as Indonesians, South Americans, Japanese and islanders from the Caribbean. We knew various people with various sex or gender orientations, some of whom belonged to our inner circle of friends. We had intimately close relationships with Jews, Catholics and self-proclaimed Atheists, associated regularly with a variety of other religious or agnostic people, and somehow we all manage to get along in mutual respect and acceptance. We managed to adapt to new climates and shopping habits, preserved our Swiss traditions through changing decades, and forged unique educational and career paths which added distinctive threads to Canada's multicultural tapestry.

Things appeared a lot less tense back in the 1980s…

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It seems to me the current majority of people emigrating their country of origin are families escaping political or religious oppression or war. These families are in deep distress and look for nations who allow their cultural traditions to remain intact (if not outright celebrated). Their adjustment to western culture in a cold climate country like Canada is assuredly a much steeper hill to climb than what my family experienced.

Both Switzerland and Canada experience four-season climates, but the temperature ranges differ dramatically. In Switzerland, daily temperatures remain mild, whereas Canada's extremes - from scorching summers to frigid winters - took some time getting used to. Enduring Canada's winter wind-chills of -20°C and summer humidity exceeding 30°C was challenging for us as a family, especially during those early years without air-conditioning.

I can't imagine the shock Middle Eastern or subcontinent immigrants must feel when they arrive here in north-eastern North America during our severe, punishingly harsh winter conditions.

We must not forget however that our skies are free from the threat of bombs. Our culture promotes a tolerance toward religious and other belief systems as a matter of course.

Until it doesn't.

Today, the swinging pendulum in the USA is echoed in many western countries. Canada, on the cusp of a federal election, is paying close attention.

I don’t have any answers. Just more questions.

And so I sit here wondering what kind of future we are building for our youths.

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The swinging pendulum of cultural integration reveals our collective struggle to balance [extreme] left and right ideologies. We aim to preserve and adapt, but wading through massive misinformation and unfounded, biased and often ego-driven opinions makes this anything but easy.

As immigrants and established communities in many western nations continue to navigate the volatility prevalent in today's political upheavals, I believe the only way forward is to maintain mutual respect and empathy.

The future of our society depends not on rigid adherence to a single perspective, but on our capacity to listen, learn, and grow together.

Thank you for reading.

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