ith the Protestant ethic, encouraged personal and community achievement, emphasized the importance of education, and stressed the need to plan for the future. All of these philosophies, which emanated from the Protestant ethic, encouraged and abetted economic development. French Canada, whose society was based on the Catholic ethic, did not emphasize education to the same extent as occurred in English Canada, and the so-called zero-sum global perspective of the underlying Catholic ethic, tended to discourage entrepreneurship and, in turn, economic development and growth.
"Culture conditions the way people see the world, their neighbors, themselves." The culture of French Canada during earlier periods of Canadian development tended to focus on the present and the past, while the culture of English Canada during these periods tended to focus on the future. As predicted by Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, the culture that focused on the future attained the greatest level of economic growth and development. The Iberian way inculcates a passive view of lifeùsomething that happens to people rather than something people can influence. For this reason, and also because it does not promote social responsibility, the culture attaches a low priority to education.
The culture of French Canada, based on the Catholic ethic, "propagates an egocentric view of the world that exaggerates self-interest and limits the radius of trust and identification to the family, at great cost to the broader society. The culture operates within an elastic ethical system strongly influenced by what Max Weber described as 'the very human Catholic cycle of sin, repentance, atonement, release, followed by renewed sin.'" In such societies, "the authoritarianism that permeates the home, the school, and the church is often viewed as license; that à has also disdained labor, innovation, and entrepreneurship and has encouraged a zero-...