Give your patriotism a boost here: Share what makes you feel patriotic

[HungaryTom]

I must disagree

I think the abuse of patriotism i.e. all the beauiful and intimate feelings like all the loungers described here in their posts for the sake of manipulating the population for dubious reasons (preparing the collective opinion for a war, or to accept a crisis that equals a war in terms of losses i.e. the failure of leaders)- , well for me THAT is the virtue of the vicious.

 

[Dr Doran]

I think the abuse of patriotism i.e. all the beauiful and intimate feelings like all the loungers described here in their posts for the sake of manipulating the population for dubious reasons (preparing the collective opinion for a war, or to accept a crisis that equals a war in terms of losses i.e. the failure of leaders)- , well for me THAT is the virtue of the vicious.

But ...


1.) A love of one's community, and a desire to see it succeed, are pretty basic, though. I believe these desires are largely inborn.

2.) The question is how one's community is defined.

3.) One can argue that it is "arbitrary" (I do get sick of the overuse of that word) that the community to which one feels allegiance be identical to the borders of one's nation-state.

4.) Clearly in the case of certain very recently formed nation-states, such as those formed by the British in the Middle East and Africa, or formed after WW1 and WW2 in the Balkans, the boundaries are indeed arbitrary and include tribes that have historically warred.

5.) In these cases, the difficult trick is to harness the love mentioned in #1 to the entirety of the nation-state rather than to the tribe or family (or "population group" to use a less potentially derogatory term than "tribe"). It is difficult and requires the formation of a national consciousness, a national myth like what Benedict Anderson talked about in the book Imagined Communities, and like Vergil was doing in the Aeneid: that is, stitching together a sense of commonness and purpose for people. That is, changing "people" into "a People."

6.) Then the question is whether this sense of commonness (which is perhaps somewhat fictive) is in the best interests of the people.

7.) It is not enough to point out gleefully that there is a manufactured quality to the sense of commonness (not that I am arguing that you were doing that). I would have to argue that very, very often, this semi-fictive sense of allegiance is better than the alternative, namely warring "tribal" groups who don't trust each other. If it can be maintained peacefully, that is.

Unless, as the socialist would argue, this sense of allegiance to people who happen to live nearby, prevents people from allying with others outside the boundaries of the nation-state and seeing their common interest with them. I am not a socialist, and I do believe in the efficacy of nation-states; however, I don't think that argument is stupid, nor that it should be dismissed out of hand.

 

[carter]

I hate having to THINK his early in the day.

But ...
1.) A love of one's community, and a desire to see it succeed, are pretty basic, though. I believe these desires are largely inborn.
2.) The question is how one's community is defined.
3.) One can argue that it is "arbitrary" (I do get sick of the overuse of that word) that the community to which one feels allegiance be identical to the borders of one's nation-state.
4.) Clearly in the case of certain very recently formed nation-states, such as those formed by the British in the Middle East and Africa, or formed after WW1 and WW2 in the Balkans, the boundaries are indeed arbitrary and include tribes that have historically warred.
5.) In these cases, the difficult trick is to harness the love mentioned in #1 to the entirety of the nation-state rather than to the tribe or family (or "population group" to use a less potentially derogatory term than "tribe"). It is difficult and requires the formation of a national consciousness, a national myth like what Benedict Anderson talked about in the book Imagined Communities, and like Vergil was doing in the Aeneid: that is, stitching together a sense of commonness and purpose for people. That is, changing "people" into "a People."
6.) Then the question is whether this sense of commonness (which is perhaps somewhat fictive) is in the best interests of the people.
7.) It is not enough to point out gleefully that there is a manufactured quality to the sense of commonness (not that I am arguing that you were doing that). I would have to argue that very, very often, this semi-fictive sense of allegiance is better than the alternative, namely warring "tribal" groups who don't trust each other. If it can be maintained peacefully, that is.

Unless, as the socialist would argue, this sense of allegiance to people who happen to live nearby, prevents people from allying with others outside the boundaries of the nation-state and seeing their common interest with them. I am not a socialist, and I do believe in the efficacy of nation-states; however, I don't think that argument is stupid, nor that it should be dismissed out of hand.

Doran, I am in awe of your virtuosity in discussing this topic.

One observation. You describe allegiance as sharing a common interest(s). I would include commonality of purpose in this description. That would not necessarily preclude an alliance(s) with other nation-states outside their borders.

One could argue that the commonality in such alliances is often limited to a common enemy.

One could also argue that the commonality might be against a former ally who received a [perceived] unequal share of the spoils from a previous conflict. (i.e. Japan's frustration over lack of opportunities for colonization after WWI).

It seems that allegiance is an alltogether different creature than alliance. There is an inherent question regarding whether allegiance is a product of nature or nurture. Are human beings predisposed genetically to bond as a community and is their allegiance a product of this bond or is allegiance something that is learned? In either case, blind and unquestioning allegaince could result. This certainly could lead to some of the negative connotations ascribed to patriotism.

However, allegiance and patriotism are not necessarily one and the same. Nor should they be. There are, it seems to me, heartfelt as well as cerebral elements to patriotism that are not a prerequisite for allegiance.

An alliance, on the other hand, has a different bonding agent holding it together. It's basis, it seems to me, is of a cerebral nature. It is a product of consideration by the parties involved. It also may have/often has a finite time of existence and, perhaps, an open-ended escape clause.

An alliance, it seems, may be considerably easier to abandon than one's allegiance.

 

[Kassia]

I think the abuse of patriotism i.e. all the beauiful and intimate feelings like all the loungers described here in their posts for the sake of manipulating the population for dubious reasons (preparing the collective opinion for a war, or to accept a crisis that equals a war in terms of losses i.e. the failure of leaders)- , well for me THAT is the virtue of the vicious.

I guess for me there is a very very fine line between patriotic and being a zealot also....
I am sure there where Germans, Nazis in particular, and Italians who firmly believed that they where patriotic during WW2.

Ok ok i know that's a really controversial thing to say but it is true, imho..

 

[dhermann1]

I think anthroplogists would tell us that primitive people lived in tiny groups of 25 to 50 people. The name they gave themselves was always the word in their language for "the people". Somehow psychologically there is a natural tendency to think of anyone not a member of "the people" as not really people.
As groups got larger and larger, various rituals and traditions developed to help individuals identify with their own "people". This is how tribalism evolved.
Historically tribes lived in defined areas, but still the identity was just the people, not the territory. Thus many tribes were able to pull up stakes and migrate to distant lands, and retain their sense of group identity. The so called barbarians who invaded the late Roman Empire are good examples of this. The Goths wandered around for centuries before finally settling into national home lands in western Europe. The Armenians have had several different home lands over the centuries, but still remain uniquely Armenian.
Tribes evolved into nations in different ways. Ancient Athenians traced their ancestry to 16 original tribes. The Romans were the same. The Latins, and the Sabines, etc., combined to become the Roman state.
The further from the basic hunter gatherer group a society grew, the more elaborate ritual was required, and the more of an edifice of a belief system was used as an underpinning.
The modern nation states, France being the very first one in the middle ages, evolved from tribes that grew into powerful nations who dominated and eventually integrated their neighbors. In France it was the Franks, in England the Anglo Saxons, etc.
In the last two centuries nation states became the only viable form of government. The successful nation states dominated the world. Societies that did not have cohesive nation state systems, based on a single tribal group that dominated their neighbors, became subject to societies that were integrated nation states.
In a lot of these countries newcomers have been able to integrate only by dropping some aspects of their identity and becoming more like their host countries. In the United States, Germans comprise the largest single ethnic group, even larger than Anglo Saxons. But they are almost entirely integrated culturally. German Americans are basically virtual Anglo Americans. In Britain there are an amazing number of ethnic groups who, to my eyes, have become awfully British in the last couple of generations.
But even today, not all social groups can fit into the mold of the tribal nation state. And not all immigrants are able to adapt adequately to new home countries.
What has been happening is that all sorts of social groups that are perfectly viable as tribes, that have been subjected to dominance by other tribes lucky enough to have established states, are attempting to establish themselves as nations.
The world would be a more peaceful if the Kurds and the Pashtuns were separate nations states, for example.
The other side of the coin is that the larger and more complex a society becomes, the more artificial the connection becomes of the individual to the group. Also, the more diverse the society, the more elaborate rituals are required to keep the connection strong.
The small nations of northern Europe are pretty homogeneous. They don't need artificial rituals to keep them coherent. The big diverse ones do. Germany and France are having a heck of a time deciding how much they want to stretch and reinvent their sense of self in order to accommodate the many newcomers.
Patriotism is a word that sums up a lot of the rituals, folkways and belief systems that keep the larger more complex societies cohesive. To the degree that these societies are successful in reconciling all their inherent internal issues, the more healthy that patriotism can be. A nation that relies on domestic suppression and external aggression to keep itself together, exhibits a form of patriotism that be poisonous.

 

[Dr Doran]

Carter, dHermann, brilliant points. DHermann, I particularly like the following points you are making which are very much in accord with my thinking:

The further from the basic hunter gatherer group a society grew, the more elaborate ritual was required, and the more of an edifice of a belief system was used as an underpinning ... In the last two centuries nation states became the only viable form of government. The successful nation states dominated the world. Societies that did not have cohesive nation state systems, based on a single tribal group that dominated their neighbors, became subject to societies that were integrated nation states.
In a lot of these countries newcomers have been able to integrate only by dropping some aspects of their identity and becoming more like their host countries ... What has been happening is that all sorts of social groups that are perfectly viable as tribes, that have been subjected to dominance by other tribes lucky enough to have established states, are attempting to establish themselves as nations....
The other side of the coin is that the larger and more complex a society becomes, the more artificial the connection becomes of the individual to the group. Also, the more diverse the society, the more elaborate rituals are required to keep the connection strong .... Patriotism is a word that sums up a lot of the rituals, folkways and belief systems that keep the larger more complex societies cohesive. To the degree that these societies are successful in reconciling all their inherent internal issues, the more healthy that patriotism can be. A nation that relies on domestic suppression and external aggression to keep itself together, exhibits a form of patriotism that be poisonous.

I see everything in a Darwinian sense: the fact is, as you point out, THOSE SOCIETIES WHICH DID NOT DEVELOP NATION-STATES AND A FORM OF WITHIN-GROUP CONNECTION LOST OUT TO THOSE WHO DID. Exactly as you are stating.

And hence patriotism, and long may it (the benevolent version of it, not the ugly version) live.

It is a fine and decorous thing (for an individual) to die for one's country;

-- and even if I did not personally believe that sentiment to be true, it is quite obvious that this sentiment has prevailed because the societies who did not emphasize it sufficiently will, in the long run, in general, die.

I really hope no one complains that this is offtopic. A comprehension of these issues is crucial to understanding patriotism. And I say this as a reasonably patriotic person, not as a detractor of patriotism.

 

[reetpleat]

But ...


1.) A love of one's community, and a desire to see it succeed, are pretty basic, though. I believe these desires are largely inborn.

2.) The question is how one's community is defined.

3.) One can argue that it is "arbitrary" (I do get sick of the overuse of that word) that the community to which one feels allegiance be identical to the borders of one's nation-state.

4.) Clearly in the case of certain very recently formed nation-states, such as those formed by the British in the Middle East and Africa, or formed after WW1 and WW2 in the Balkans, the boundaries are indeed arbitrary and include tribes that have historically warred.

5.) In these cases, the difficult trick is to harness the love mentioned in #1 to the entirety of the nation-state rather than to the tribe or family (or "population group" to use a less potentially derogatory term than "tribe"). It is difficult and requires the formation of a national consciousness, a national myth like what Benedict Anderson talked about in the book Imagined Communities, and like Vergil was doing in the Aeneid: that is, stitching together a sense of commonness and purpose for people. That is, changing "people" into "a People."

6.) Then the question is whether this sense of commonness (which is perhaps somewhat fictive) is in the best interests of the people.

7.) It is not enough to point out gleefully that there is a manufactured quality to the sense of commonness (not that I am arguing that you were doing that). I would have to argue that very, very often, this semi-fictive sense of allegiance is better than the alternative, namely warring "tribal" groups who don't trust each other. If it can be maintained peacefully, that is.

Unless, as the socialist would argue, this sense of allegiance to people who happen to live nearby, prevents people from allying with others outside the boundaries of the nation-state and seeing their common interest with them. I am not a socialist, and I do believe in the efficacy of nation-states; however, I don't think that argument is stupid, nor that it should be dismissed out of hand.

Two thoughts. One is that I was struck a while ago by the thought that Independance Day, the movie, was interesting because it brought the world together against a common ally. ZSuddenly, everyone was an earthling, but it was okay to villify anothe race as evil people with no redeeming qualities. I guess it may be true as they were aliens, but it was an interesting perspective.

Read of a study in your neck of the woods, Doran. At Cal Berkley, they showed a picture of the school mascot and asked questions designed to test empathy, sensitivity to others, etc, against a test group who did nto see the pic of the mascot. The results wre that those who ostensibly had just had their pride in group membership stimulated by showing the mascot tested lower for sensitivity etc. Or maybe they used the same people at different times.

Obviously, it could mean something all together different, but that was the way they interpreted it.

Secondly,

 

[reetpleat]

Doran, I am in awe of your virtuosity in discussing this topic.

One observation. You describe allegiance as sharing a common interest(s). I would include commonality of purpose in this description. That would not necessarily preclude an alliance(s) with other nation-states outside their borders.

One could argue that the commonality in such alliances is often limited to a common enemy.

One could also argue that the commonality might be against a former ally who received a [perceived] unequal share of the spoils from a previous conflict. (i.e. Japan's frustration over lack of opportunities for colonization after WWI).

It seems that allegiance is an alltogether different creature than alliance. There is an inherent question regarding whether allegiance is a product of nature or nurture. Are human beings predisposed genetically to bond as a community and is their allegiance a product of this bond or is allegiance something that is learned? In either case, blind and unquestioning allegaince could result. This certainly could lead to some of the negative connotations ascribed to patriotism.

However, allegiance and patriotism are not necessarily one and the same. Nor should they be. There are, it seems to me, heartfelt as well as cerebral elements to patriotism that are not a prerequisite for allegiance.

An alliance, on the other hand, has a different bonding agent holding it together. It's basis, it seems to me, is of a cerebral nature. It is a product of consideration by the parties involved. It also may have/often has a finite time of existence and, perhaps, an open-ended escape clause.

An alliance, it seems, may be considerably easier to abandon than one's allegiance.

Aside from country, ethnicity is a big factor that can bring up what would be considered patriotic feelings if it were one country. For example, WWII had a big component of English colonies coming together, while the Germanic people felt bonded together, and in fact, Germanic blood was a big excuse for invading countries.

Meanwhile, Japan was trying to unite asia under a pan asian attitude, which only got them so far, but it was a definite factor.

Latin Americans tend to have a common bond, that goes beyond country.

ALso, the communist movement seems to bond people together under class, proposing transcending borders in favor of clss solidarity.

And as Doran mentioned, in the Middle East, tribe is a big factor.

And of course, there is religion. Pakistan and India, ofr example, East and West etc. I think it is human nature for people to feel us and them.

Perhaps someday, we will have a war between the EU and THe Americas, or maybe someday we will be a UN, fighting against aliens from mars.

 

[Mojito]

OH BTW, Australians and New Zealanders, do you still sing God Save the Queen/King?

Usually only on occasions involving the Queen or her representative, the Governor General. Advance Australia Fair officially replaced it in 1984.

 

[Chas]

When I consider that in recent history this country (Canada - which was never homogenous to begin with) and many others are seeing a wider and more diverse range of ethnicities and widespread patterns of immigration, with commonality of ethnic and/or cultural origins becoming less and less important.

Countries that until recently had little or no immigrant communities now have significantly-sized immigrant communities. This, I believe, is an evolutionary process. The growth and integration of these communities will undoubtably alter the political and cultural map of the developed world.

I don't think that it will happen in my lifetime, but it is my hope that human civilization will outgrow and mature beyond it's need for patriotism/nationalism, the same way that it is out-growing and maturing beyond the need for religion.

Patriotism and nationalism, like organized religion, served it's purpose in the evolutionary process, and the time is fast approaching for us as a species to "let it go".

Assuming, of course, we survive the challenges of surviving the coming ecological crisis....[huh]

 

[LordBest]

One of the reasons I am a devoted Monarchist is that I find it safer to 'believe' in an institution which represents duty, service and honour to ones country, rather than the country itself. Like most things patriotism is corruptible, and it is best indulged in in small, reasoned doses.

 

[Smithy]

OH BTW, Australians and New Zealanders, do you still sing God Save the Queen/King?

I'm a Kiwi and we used to have to sing "God Save the Queen" first at school assembly followed by "God Defend New Zealand". This was in the 80s so things may have changed in that respect now. Interestingly NZ passports carried the statement "British Subject" right into the 70s.

I'm a strong believer in constitutional monarchies being a NZer and having lived in Norway twice. I'll admit that being only a 2nd generation NZer I probably have stronger ties and affinities with the UK than a 5th or 6th generation NZer, but at the same time I am very happy and proud to have ERII at the head of my country.

 

[Nighthawk]

I thought I'd be all patriotic and wear a campaign button of a certain presidential candidate to classes last week.

I got a lot of compliments from those who also supported my candidate. At the same time, I've gotten a lot of hatred from those who didn't. When I say hatred, I mean it.

NH

 

[The Wolf]

Yeah, I hate that guy too.

Sincerely,
The Wolf

 

[PADDY]

Gents...

We'd appreciate it if you endeavour 'not to' stray into a political arena here gentlemen. Think of patriotism in the context of flying your country's flag, not a political candidates. Thankyou.

 

[Kassia]

We'd appreciate it if you endeavour 'not to' stray into a political arena here gentlemen. Think of patriotism in the context of flying your country's flag, not a political candidates. Thankyou.

Good advise! And we are a multi national forum too so not every one understands the politics of other countries... Or wants to!

 

[reetpleat]

One of the reasons I am a devoted Monarchist is that I find it safer to 'believe' in an institution which represents duty, service and honour to ones country, rather than the country itself. Like most things patriotism is corruptible, and it is best indulged in in small, reasoned doses.

Funny, because to an american, the idea of one unelected person, let alone one from another country coming in and affecting our democratic politics would be quite unacceptable. but then again, we already let the British monarchy know what we thought of them.

 

[reetpleat]

We'd appreciate it if you endeavour 'not to' stray into a political arena here gentlemen. Think of patriotism in the context of flying your country's flag, not a political candidates. Thankyou.

Agreed. The true patriotic statement would be to wear a button that aid Vote. That is at the heart of our american ideal.

I recently heard two radio commentators on a conservative/liberal show. In other words, two guys are friends but differ in viewpoint and one takes one position and the other takes the other.

One of them was suggesting that he resented all the uneducated, uninformed voters cancelling out his vote and suggested that there should be some type of test or other requirements. Callers even suggested that restricting voters to land owners was a good idea.

I was aghast. To me, there is nothing more unpatriotic or unamerican as an american than suggesting that some people not be allowed to vote.

 

[reetpleat]

Good advise! And we are a multi national forum too so not every one understands the politics of other countries... Or wants to!

True to a point, but it is the rare world citizen that does not get subjected to quite a bit of american politics, wether they want to be or not.

 

[tempestbella42]

back to the origonal question..its quite simple
the time i feel most patriotic (and humble) is at Rememberance day and in the pressance of any war veterans from any nation! [angel]