patriotism
There is a mental reflex in the human psyche that assumes the preservation of your group’s identity is a preeminent human value. This intuition, like all others, evolved during the hunter/gather phase of humanity, and it is easy to discern how it came about. If you live in a world in which there is competition among human groups for resources, your survival depends on your group’s success in this competition. Moreover, it is often the case that in such cultures the understanding of being “fully human” is limited to members of your group, with the members of other groups being regarded as less than a full expression of the human condition. This mentality is often reflected in language in that the terms “man” and “human being” apply only to members of your group.
This primitive intuitive ethnocentrism is what sustains the concept of patriotism. That is, patriotism assumes the preservation of your group’s identity is a paramount human value. Indeed, there is even a surviving vestige of the “fully human” limitation. Even in highly civilized cultures (which ordinarily recognize the fully human nature of all human beings), there is a recrudescence of that primitive mentality during times of war. The most common cultural response in this circumstance is the dehumanization of the enemy.
The conventional modern understanding of patriotism is that of devotion to the concept of the “nation-state”. Nation-states were engineered out of the particular historical events that occurred in Europe. They did not evolved over time through the gradual voluntary acceptance of a common group identity by the inhabitants of some geographical area. Quite to the contrary, the triumph of the concept was achieved through wholesale violence and intimidation.
The “group identity” defining the nation-state is composed of a common language, a common culture (usually arising from a religious ideology), agreement on what constitutes the group’s “history”, and the idea of “homeland” – that is, there is a particular piece of “real-estate” which belongs “inherently” to the group.
The common language of the current European nation-states did not arise from the natural evolution of linguistic events. They are the product of purposeful social engineering. The justification for this engineering seems to be rooted in making a distinction between a “language” and a “dialect”. The assumption being that a “language” is the proper expression of the linguistic intention, with the dialect being an inferior version of that expression. But as every linguist knows, this is a bogus distinction. The linguistic expression of every group is a “language”. Closely related languages can be defined to as “dialects” descended from a common source. But there is no way to objectify the choice of one of those dialects as being the proper current form of that source. As some wag once said: “The difference between a language and a dialect is that the language has an army and navy”. In more primitive social circumstances there was some value in expanding the population of people who could mutually communicate. But since each nation-state has a different language, the cumulative effect in the modern era was to create a number of language ghettos. In any event, we understand from the section on culture that language diversity can be of positive value in the human condition as long as there is access to the universal language. Therefore, pursuit of a common language at the level of the nation-state (other than the universal language) is of no particular value to the human condition.
Since culture and language are closely related social expressions, the above reasoning applies generally to culture. The exception being that there is no justification for the idea of a “universal” culture. Cultures can exist in splendid diversity and that diversity can be of positive value in the human condition. Therefore, pursuit of a common culture at the nation-state level is also of no particular value.
The idea that there is such thing as “history” implies that there is a universal acceptance of which historical events are significant and how those events should be understood. But the significance and interpretation of events depends on who writes the history. That is, a change in perspective can change the concepts of significance and understanding. For example, consider what the significance of the American Revolution is from the perspective of Afro-Americans. The victory of the rebels did nothing to alleviate the monstrous oppression that afflicted them. From their perspective, the success or failure of the revolution was simply irrelevant, that is, without significance. In fact, the failure of the revolution might have been to their benefit since the British Empire abolished slavery several decades before the United States. From the viewpoint of the colonial elites, however, the success of the revolution was highly significant since that victory transferred political power from Westminster to themselves, and subsequently produced a system that secured their property. In consequence, it is apparent that there is no such thing as “history”; there are only “histories”. How each individual chooses between those “histories” is dependent on the values he/she thinks should prevail in the human condition. Each person has a right to determine their own values and be free from the imposition of the values of others. The attempt to foist the mentality that there is a single history on which there is universal agreement is false.
With regard to the concept of “homeland”, the whole history of the human species is one of migration. In consequence, the occupation of a particular territory by any group is simply the result of a series of random historical events. This would be the case whether the homeland concept is based on current occupation or arises from a historical memory of a past occupation as a justification for that “inherent right”. Also, we know that once a group has been settled in a particular place, through “imprinting”, that place can appear to have a unique significance for that group. But it is clear that a group’s self perceptions and a series of random events cannot constitute an “inherent right”.
It appears that the modern “intuitively” justified idea of patriotism is “objectively” supported only by two irrelevancies and two fictions.
Since reliance on patriotism as a human value has been the primary justification for centuries of fairly horrific European warfare, it is beginning to occur to some Europeans that the concept of patriotism in the modern era, far from being a human value, is a “virus” of the mind that fatally compromises the attainment of the ultimate human goal. As a result, they have taken the first tentative steps to create social institutions (as expressed in the European Union) that attempt to replace the primitive notion of devotion to the nation-state with a commitment to the enlightenment concept of human decency as the principle providing social cohesion. Whether or not this attempt will succeed is still at issue. But the fact that it is being made is surely a momentous event in the human condition.
In summary, it seems clear that the survival and success of the human species requires that the primitive notion of patriotism be transcended by a commitment to the enlightenment principles of human decency.
- Home
- Introduction
- Part 1
- Truth
- Insights
- The Human Condition
- Education
- Human Decency
- Enlightenment
- Part 2
- Culture Demystified
- The Elite
- Mediocrities
- Self-regard
- Self and Society
- Part 3
- Morals, Ethics, and Virtue
- The Concept of Evil is a Bad Idea
- Religion
- Patriotism
- Freedom
- Market Capitalism
- Wealth Distribution