I'm reading this book, The Imaginary Indian by Daniel Francis. It brings up an interesting point: That Canadians, and perhaps North Americans in general, have constructed this imaginary image that we call "Indian" which is not very representative of the actual Native American Indians, but the image is a conforting one. This image shows Indian culture as doomed to be subsumed by North American culture, and there is nothing to be done about it; this is simply progress.

Take a medieval European person and grant them the technology of the steam engine, electricity, levi jeans, sun glasses, etc. and they are still considered European, albeit one transported into a more advanced era of European culture. Give the same technology to an Indian, and they have "lost" their Indian heritage, and have somehow "become white". It seems that the Indian culture unfairly carries with it the connotation of being primitive. An Indian wearing jeans isn't a Indian that has been transported into a more advanced era of Indian culture, but an Indian which has been "converted" in a sense into white culture.

Why is this image conforting for Canadians? Because it demonizes white society, and yet conveniently is inevitable. The person who is comforted by this image of the Indian can claim that he knows that wrong is being done, and if he were in charge, things would be better, but he isn't. Without lifting a finger, this person has been elevated to a more humane, good-natured person than his peers.

I can draw parallels between this and the comforting idea that there are "so many stupid people out there". If you're a perfectly average person, then half of the people out there will be more stupid than you (and equivalently the other half will be less stupid than you). People generally don't like to draw attention to themselves, so when you walk out on the street, people who are smarter than you are able to avoid drawing your attention to them. In other words, you don't notice the people who are smarter than you. When someone makes a fool of themselves, it becomes noticeable to you, and it reinforces the belief that you are surrounded by idiots. One may claim that when they take a random sample of people around them, more often than not, these people are stupid, but the source from which the random sample is drawn is the collection of memories one has retained of particularly noteworty people; that is to say, stupid people.

Obviously, not everyone you know is stupid, because you've learned that only a fool believes he is the smartest person around. So you may remember a handful of people whom you consider to be smarter than you, but for the most part, everyone believes that they are smarter than average. And as evidence for this belief, they point to the vast number of stupid people out there.

On a completely different topic, the same book also speaks of how the Mounted Police, or "Mounties" are portrayed in (at the time, contemporary) Canadian culture. The literary fiction at the time painted the Indians like children, gullible and slaves to their base desires (which were invariable whiskey and violence). The Mounties were supposedly icons of (British) justice and authority. There were many legends which followed the archetypical plot structure of a large band of Indians, perhaps hundreds, perhaps thousands, who were causing mischief, and either a single Mountie, or at most, a group of four mounties, would show up, and simply tell the Indians fearlessly, as if questioning who was in charge here was unthinkable, that the Indians should behave. The Indians would invariably meekly comply, like children complying to an adult's request out of respect for authority, despite the children's obvious tactical advantage.

The Mounties, as I interpret it from Daniel Francis, was the first thing for which Canada, as a unified country, could feel superior to Americans. Another folk tale tell of a tribe of Indians "illegally" crossing the border southward, and the Americans rounding these Indians up, contacting Canada, and agreeing to transport them back north. When the platoon of American soldiers arrived, they were shocked to see only a four Mounties awaiting them. "Where is your regiment?" the Americans asked. "Right here", the Mounties replied, and the four were sufficient to maintain order over the Indians over the remaining trek. The Canadians Mounties pride themselves in being able to avoid using force (and inherently being more "just") than their American counterpart.

All of this to say that this strongly reminds me of the Jedi, if only because I've recently beeing playing KOTOR 2. Francis describes the Mounties as being ideal diplomats of a sort, as does Lucasarts of their Jedis. The authoritarian voice of the Mounties sounds like the "Force Persuade" power of the Jedis, and the Star Wars literature likes to balance their Jedi characters by giving them undue arrogance (something which Francis writes that Americans attributed to the Canadian mounties).