Here is the debate: what are the things we have caused and can be accounted for and what are the things we have not and can therefore not feel responsible?
Nationality is as accidental as eye colour. We did not consciously choose them. We cannot yet say they are our fault or responsibility.
Another example is the current war in Iraq. People do not currently feel their actions or lack of them are part of the reason for this ongoing massacre, even though our life-style might be part of the reason. Nonetheless, we hear countless amounts of people feeling proud of this or that empire’s achievements, regardless of the destruction it has brought upon others. Maybe your ancestors were very active in it. I do not know. But I have seen people very willing to ascribe the achievements of certain historical periods upon themselves; and of course, we have a selective memory on what events really took place, and which ones we are ‘proud of’.
To me, to belong to a nation is a violent act as it starts the mindset of division we live under. The concept of otherness is one of the first steps towards violence. It justifies hurting other people, we thus create 'the enemy'. The argument of tribalism is far too removed from our current black-tie politics. Thus I look at nationality as it currently stands.
Nationality is not the only division we accept; there is also race, religion and gender, just to name a few. Have we not learnt to accept and acknowledge our humanity first? No, we insist on wearing flags as drapery and as a poor excuse for selfhood, for an identity. Who are you? An English man? A Hungarian woman? A Congolese child? Or are you not David first? Are you not yourself first? An autonomous individual perhaps. A thinking-feeling-breathing being. I believe that before you subscribe to your assigned political identity you might want to have a look at the aspects of yourself that you are actually responsible for.
Nationality as such, for millions of human beings, is a very new thing. It may come as a shock to the English for example, who have a relatively old nation, to hear that there have been over 30 new countries created since the 1990s. How would you feel if you were an old man from current Croatia but who grew up in former Yugoslavia before its dissolution in 1991? Who is he? A Croatian? A Yugoslav? A man. A human. With rights and an identity, regardless of politically designed borders. We owe it to ourselves to have an independent outlook on political maps and divisions. Maybe you can see how to be a patriot is a difficult matter, a very confusing matter indeed, for millions of human beings. There are other examples of this, the artificially created nations and their manufactured culture, such as America the land of hamburgers from Hamburg and Israel who now wants to claim hummus as its very own. Hummus comes from Hum, a city in Syria.
Please don’t think that with this article I am trying to undermine the feeling of community that belonging to a culture brings. I believe nationality and culture to be different to a great extent, and saying that, I do believe we can and should feel pride and joy about other people’s achievements. But in our world, to speak about the achievement of a nation usually has imperialistic or colonialist (or underdog) connotations. Culture is a very relative thing which usually means variety on our outlook on life. Whereas nationality usually brings political connotations as it is derived from borders, not from common goals.
Speaking from a mixed background I perhaps have a more flexible outlook on this. I come from a nation where ‘our’ biggest achievement for a while was to qualify for a football cup. Perhaps you remember us, Ecuador? The whole country celebrated together as if we did it together. I do agree that the sharing is all very nice, but looking at it objectively, it was all a bit artificial and there was nothing of substance to really cheer about. We all went back to our lives, judged by our passports. My other half belongs to a recently dissolved ex-Soviet Union country. The day I was born, Belarus, where I was born, gained independence from the Soviet Union.
Shall this inflame my chest with a feeling of passionate patriotism and belonging? No. Why? Because some political figures that do not remotely care about me or the people (Belarus is still a nation under a dictator, look it up) signed a paper? No. To identify me, my personhood, my mind, my body, my experiences with a nation, is simplistic, is separatist. It would be a lazy outlook that we have designed to classify fellow human beings and to put them in boxes. We enjoy the classifying and standardising everything. After all, this is a confusing world, is it not? And getting to know someone is way too hard, is it not?
I do understand that belonging to a nation such as England, with its proud history, which I do appreciate in terms of inventions for example, can become overwhelmingly appealing for someone. It might really want to make you go out and run and shout in the streets, “I’m English goddammit! Well done me! I made the Victorian era myself! Woooo!”
You would do this rather than thinking, ‘Is what I am doing with my life of any consequence?’ We only have to have to look upon Rhodesia, named after Cecil Rhodes, one man, one name, to see the strangeness of the act. I would feel very weird indeed to be proud of my children being from the country Cecil Rhodes ‘invented’ so to speak. I would feel proud of the daily smile on my children faces, not on them belonging to this random territory.
Yet to subscribe to a nationality, to this principle of division is to me, to ignore the long history of humanity, our migration, our sharing, our eclectic cultural heritage, it doesn’t matter where you are or who you are, you have a little bit of everyone in you. Time to act like it. Time to feel proud of the work you do every day for whatever piece of land you happen to be standing on, rather than reminiscence on a past you might not even understand properly. It’s time to acknowledge your humanity first, our similarities. The sense of community will naturally follow when we actually interact and respect each other. A community is formed of people you have shared interests with, not interests bestowed upon you by politicians and individual interests.
One day I want to hear a story that goes like: “Once upon a time there was a planet where people feared each other, they built walls to hide from each other, but still looked upon others to make their life decisions. Once upon a time there was a planet where people had everything they needed but they denied it from each other, because they felt different from each other. Once upon a time, there was such a planet, were everyone was waiting to be saved by another, instead of saving themselves and one another. Once upon a time there was a thing called patriotism which kept them away from one another. Believe it or not, that is how people lived on this so-called planet. Once upon a time…but not anymore.”
Good bye
Eliza Veretilo
The Philosophy Takeaway Issue 47 'Open Topic'
