Re: [tied] Scientific Nationalism

My 2 cents about the naturalness of nationalism...

Isn't nationalism a quite recent thing, perhaps not older than the 19th century?

If we are asked today "Who are you" we (are supposed to) answer "I'm a Swede", "I'm an Englishman" etc, but if you asked someone the same question a couple of hundred years back he would answer "I'm the son of so-and-so, from the village of so-and-so." His ideas of roots and identity had nothing to do with the idea of nations.

In my mind, nationalism is connected to 19th-century industrialism. Industrialism broke up the villages and a lot of old traditions; people needed a new basis for their identity, and the basis that was given them was the idea of the nation. There was a lot of nationalistic work being done during the 19th century, as if people were trying to grow into their new nationalistic clothes, from the composing of pompous national hymns to the collecting of folk tales, which previously hadn't been worthy of any serious interest.

Please do not pick examples from animals if you want to justify nationalism or any other human behaviour. The variety of animal behaviour is very large - no matter what (human) behaviour you wish to defend, you won't have any trouble finding a fitting animal example. Wolves live in packs led by a male, so if you want to argue that patriarchy is natural, use wolves. On the other hand, some bovine animals live in herds led by old females, so if you want to show that matriarchy is natural, use them. Herrings swim about in large schools without the need for any leader at all. And lemmings, so I'm told, prefer living alone and don't give a crap about other lemmings. Now, which of these four examples is most natural? Which one of them should our society look like?

Hakan