Expatriation

One of the many effects of living in exile—even in a country so much like home as Canada—must be that the longer one stays away the more one loses the desire to return. I feel this not because I am developing any patriotic affections for my new place. Nor do I lack homesickness, though in me that feeling is more associated with a region than it is with something so large as the country the United States, which I find too large to love. I mean first that it is easy to lose track of current events back home, so that when one does receive recent news it cannot be understood in its connection with the events that came immediately before, in a chain of cause to effect. I am simply no longer aware of what came immediately before, so I am forced to see any recent news in the light of longer-term trends, which I do remember. I have gained distance on my home, and the distance is in this case critical distance. Trends are things that can be evaluated as good or bad, whereas when I previously received news in its usual sequence of cause to immediate consequence, it was too difficult to discern any pattern. It is best for a critical understanding not to sample the news too frequently, for the same reason mathematically that it is of no value to sample a stochastic process beyond a certain frequency: all you see is noise.

Now I flatter myself to imagine that in living elsewhere I have regressed to a less modern, less nationalist psychology and instead possess more of the feelings of a medieval citizen of an old imperial state. The feeling is enhanced, I believe, because I live in a country so similar to my previous country. Were Canada too different it would be easy to react against the locale with a renewed sense of difference and identity and to develop a desire to return home and be with one's people. Here there are only small differences, numerous but expressed in shades and matters of degree. I am not quite at ease yet have nothing definite to react against. This must have been how many a medieval peasant felt about nearby towns that were yet affiliated with the same jurisdiction. A peasant could be a lover of his place but not of his country and king, merely legal realities. In his fellow citizens he recognized a family resemblance but did not emphasize the ties of a common language and political history, so valuable to dislocated moderns. Ironically to feel less modern it was essential for me to become more dislocated! It is because the modern nation-state has become more homogenous.

Travel is good for the heart in so many ways. Living abroad doubly so. I find I have lost a few of political passions living here and seeing how little laws matter relative to the importance I accorded to them. In addition to losing some politics I have also gained a political sense, a Burkean one and I suppose one that is conservative in the older sense, that it is more the locale (the little platoon) than the country that matters to an individual and that provides him with support and meaning.