Glen is the "or something...". I'm an American and I think that
nationalism is evil. I'm not sure if that goes along with your
theory or not since you imply on one hand that the younger a country
is the less of a national tradition it has, but on the other hand you
say that the younger a country is the more extreme is its nationalism
Funny that you should say "paradoxally" (in more ways than one)
because your statement is just that, a logical paradox. I don't
doubt for minute what you say about the herd mentality being bred
into humans but the point that you miss is that what is natural is
not necessarily morally right. Nationalism comes from the same dark
place in the human psyche as racism, sexism and superstition. It's a
reflex behavior of animals to close ranks when they feel threatened.
Decisions made and actions taken on the basis of fear are usually the
worst. The first to go out the window are things like fairness and
compassion, both for the perceived "outsider" but also to those of
your "own" who won't fall in line. Think of the atrocities commited
by a mob that the individuals in the mob would never think of doing
on their own. Please notice that on the IndianCivilization list
accusations of treachery at fellow Indians are almost as common as
accusations of eurocentrism directed at Europeans. Another thing
expected of the loyal member of any group is not only to act in
accordance with the herd's interest but to also perceive reality
according to its prescribed model (read Orwell's 1984 for more on
this). So too you see this on the Indian Civilization list. An
example is the idea of an India divided between "Aryan" northerners
and "Dravidian" southerners being a threat to national unity and
therefore heresy and so attempting to prove that Sanksrit and
Dravidian are from a common root. As terrifying as the Islamic
threat must be for Indians, responding to it with nationalistic
fervor could lead them along the road to becoming something far worse
than the thing that they fear. Now that *I've* had my say I hope
that the moderator will close the list to any more off topic posts. :P
-David
--- In cybalist@..., "Che" <almogaver69@...> wrote:
> Glenny, are you an American or something...? I can understand your
position if so, as you have no national tradition (paradoxally the
younger the country, the more xtreme its nationalism, like the US).
Here in Barcelona we have to deal with lots like you and with the
same "argument" (?) you expose. If you don't think nationalism is
something natural or kinda that, if you believe that nation is an
invention of the powerful to control the poor and the ignorant, you
are so wrong! How do you call the cetaces' groupal behavior (orchs
(is it orchs or orks? I mean "killer whales"), dolphins and all that
stuff), obessed about protecting tgeir territori against strangers?
Or even better, how do you call primats' social and political
behavior? Have you heard about the "ape nations"? There's no
a "cheetah conductual model" as there's no "human conductual model",
when they shoot those national geographic films about apes they
realise that each group is different (imagine those green alien guys
comig for a shot and landing in Alaska. What would they think about
us? And if they landed in Beijing?) and that apes' social structure
is political, as ours is. Nationalism is something natural, like it
or not. The only problem is that stupid antropocentrist sense of
superiority towards animals we have that often doesn't let us see
evidence. The more developed an species is (and we're supposed to be
the most), the more complex is this behavior, not the weaker, as you
may think. And it's science.