A weekly series asking the BNT readers to sound off on the topical issues of travel.
Carving up the globe. Image from Emory Libraries
I sometimes find myself at odds with the concept of nationalism. This is much more apparent when traveling abroad.
Suddenly, it’s easy to believe that, as an ambassador for your country, you have certain immutable qualities shared by all people from your humble area of the planet.
Canadians are polite. Americans are arrogant. Germans are efficient. The list goes on.
That’s the relatively benign side of nationalism.
The ugly side manifests itself as the belief that your people are somehow “chosen” in the eyes of God, or the universe. And with the declaration of “you” the idea of “them” quickly follows. A separation grows between the shared human community.
As Carl Sagan wrote in his1974 book, Broca’s Brain:
Much of human history can, I think, be described as a gradual and sometimes painful liberation from provincialism, the emerging awareness that there is more to the world than was generally believes by our ancestors. With awesome ethnocentrism, tribes all over the Earth called themselves “the people” or “all men,” relegating other groups of humans with comparable accomplishments to subhuman status.
Such views or their equivalent are only slowly changing, and it is possible to see some of the roots of racism and nationalism in their pervasive early acceptance by virtually all human communities. But we live in an extraordinary time, when technological advances and cultural relativism have made such ethnocentrism much more difficult to sustain.
The view is emerging that we all share a common life raft in a cosmic ocean, that the Earth is, after all, a small place with limited resources, that our technology has now attained such powers that we are able to affect profoundly the environment of our tiny planet.
With that in mind, consider the following question:
What good is nationalism in a global society?
Let’s get the discussion going. Share your thoughts in the comments!
And if you’ve got an idea for upcoming “Ask The Reader” questions, send me an email.
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Nationalism tends to be used in the negative sense these days. It’s easy to forget nationalism is partly responsible for creating identity, as well as grouping traits to help communicate with one another. For example, I’ve got an Indian friend I’m taking to lunch. It’s silly to ignore traits I associate with Indians and take her to McDonald’s (without at least confirming that she doesn’t eat beef). Nationalism at a certain level is necessary and healthy.
But too much of a good thing isn’t necessarily good. It’s important to reserve judgment when taking part in the international chorus - not always easy to do, but there’s the challenge of dialogue for ya. If Americans or whatever nationality in question is so benighted, it’s only in relation to how well they promote the dialogue, not in how often they appear in it (or dominate it).
I don’t know how it’s possible to make everyone the same, and the demand to do so is laughable. I can hardly understand my own family members, and somehow we can perfect communication with someone on the other side of the planet? LOL Please, spare me!
When I met my fiancee’s family - solid Russian stock from Siberia - I had little to work with in approaching them constructively. I never believed the whole of Russian life was about standing in lines and singing the greatest hits of the Volga Boatmen, but what I didn’t know about Russians at the time could just about fill the Grand Canyon. This lack was further tested when her father asked me, “Who won the Great Patriotic War (what Russians call WWII)?”
I responded, “The history I know tells me the Allied forces defeated the Axis, but I don’t think anyone can win in war. Governments come and go, but it’s the people who fight. With so much loss and destruction, no one wins. I think we can only survive.”
In order to really reach out and communicate to these folks, I had to table my patriotism and see things from a wider perspective. This was much larger than “win/lose,” it was about honoring a meaningful event in our shared history. My fiancee told me later that if I’d answered the question badly, I wouldn’t have been allowed to enter their home - and honestly, I wouldn’t have blamed them one bit.
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While I think that we do need to destroy any attitudes that a certain nationality of people is better than another, I do think the concept of a nation and having a homebase does provide an important connection to the earth. As I travel, it’s easy to feel a little disconnected from everything, especially in places where they don’t speak my language or look at all like me. In some senses, you start to feel a little like a cultural anthropologist, observing and interacting but in a way that ensure that the culture isn’t disturbed.
I think after a time, without a identity and place to call home, we’d start to become to emotional disconnected from the rest of humanity, feeling a little like an alien on Earth - a visitor on the planet, but not really a part of it. That could lead us to being less concerned about the limited resources of our little blue and green globe.
I think having a nation and having a national identity helps keep me connected to humans and to the earth in a way that is easy lose.
Plus, without nations, how would you run events like the World Cup, Olympics or Euro 2008? Think of the poor sports fans!
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While I’m not a fan of actions corporate America has taken and ideas it propagates, I would never be able to lie about my background (particularly while traveling) without a heavy conscience. Nationalism, according to the Encyclopedia of Sociology, is a “concept that combines a sense of identification with a people, an ideology of common history and destiny, and a social movement addressed to shared objectives.” I’m not ready to turn my back on the country that raised me, and while the actions and ideas of America helped shape me, fighting against them shaped me equally.
What else unifies a country? Shared despair, I should think, is hardly an effective motivator. Nationalism is emotional loyalty to the common ties that bind. While it is often taken too far and is responsible for international wars, without it, governments wouldn’t be functional whatsoever, and when governments become dysfunctional, those in authority get scared, and the doors open to despotism.
I think that travel is actually the best argument for (rational) nationalism: it allows people to discover other people on a highly personal basis, and understand each other as individuals, and not just as representatives of nations. But it also helps people to understand and more importantly, respect the unique attributes garnered from living in different nations.
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On the other hand, everything I said above is wrong. I watched the video on the front page and enlisted in the Marines. Is that wrong? I think not…
Ian, you should’ve put Top Gun on your mind-blowing movie list. %$#!n’-A.
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Sometimes, what scares me about nationalism is the temptation to think that all people from a country subscribe to the same set of values, ideas, and political beliefs.
When I return from visits to Cuba, for instance, people often ask me, “What do THE CUBANS think of Fidel?” My answer is that the Cubans are as diverse in their thinking about their politics and leaders as we are in ours. We Americans tend to balk at the notion of being lumped together as one big old nationalistic group, so why do we so often think that everyone in other countries shares a singular opinion?
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Globialization has brought an increase in nationalism. Borders are going down and people suddenly deal with each other. I think the shock of people dealing with each has lead to an increase in nationalism (south africa is a good example).
I think extreme nationalism is pretty bad. I could list tons of examples where it turns out the wrong way. But nationalism as a source of pride is not inherently bad. The french have a lot to be proud of. As do the italians. The Thais. Aussies. etc etc
I think the world will just degenerate into a global community where borders are just a nuisance. National pride will simply be another form of ethnic pride.
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It’s worth checking in to make sure we’re not confusing nationalism with patriotism. I’m not a nationalist, meaning, I don’t think the US is somehow a superior nation (that would be a hard call to make given our flaws and our [adjective] current government. I am, however, a patriot, in that I really do love America, bless her, warts and all.[Living overseas made me a crazy patriot, but that's another story.]
The only place that nationalism is useful is in giving us a baseline from which to observe other nations. The Americans are arrogant thing (all this time I thought we were undereducated gun toting thugs!) is a global conception worth breaking. A little nationalism when it comes to our shining qualities isn’t a bad thing (as Nomadic Matt suggests) but I think that’s patriotism, not nationalism.
Nationalism gets messed up when it’s used a rationale for expansion. Nationalism makes nations think, “Everyone should be like us” and then, well, that’s not a good way to set global policy. Lording it over others from your national high horse “we’re better” isn’t the same as loving your homeland on the same level as your global neighbors.
Rambling now. But thanks for the interesting ideas.
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Thanks for the great discussion everyone! I agree, there has to be a distinction made between “patriotism” and “nationalism.” The former has an air of ‘our country is better than yours’ while the latter can be seen as simply celebrating diversity and shared identity.
Still - I think some day, in an enlightened future, we’ll all be judged on our actions and merits, rather than our nationality….
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What good is nationalism? It sure beats corporatism which seems to be replacing it, that is, the combination of globalism and corporate ownership, directly or indirectly, of the government.
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Personally I think healthy nationalism is,….well, healthy. I am German and I think everybody knows that we, just 60 odd years ago, represented the worst kind of nationalism imaginable. So because of national socialism it was frowned upon when we showed that we were proud of our country. Frowned upon by our own and foreign media and by other governments.
2006 and the World Cup in Germany changed that. Suddenly everybody realized that Germany won’t start another WW just because you get people dancing in the streets with German flags and painted faces, yelling at the top of their voice.
The world is going to get smaller, nations will grow closer and over time many countries will have to surrender parts of their national identity. Won’t happen anytime soon though, if the European Treaty is anything to go by. And when it happens it will probably just be replaced by some other form of nationalism.
In the meantime, I keep on being proud of my heritage…in a healthy way…
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As a black American who has traveled extensively and lives in South America, I’ve always personally found the concept of nationalism beyond the technicality of birthplace and passport issuer to be outdated, or even inapplicable in my case. I’m constantly reminded in the media and politics about how un-American I am (Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff arguing that “the Democrats cannot win with just eggheads and African-Americans” being a recent example), just as I rarely have any serious cultural bonding experiences with my fellow white co-workers from various parts of the US, since I certainly don’t know any Bob Dylan or Beatles songs and I’d definitely be hard-pressed to find any Smokey, Stevie, or even Prince on the karaoke machine. Besides speaking English and my penchant for Gap khakis and maybe Coldplay, what do we really have to unite us as countrymen? We have different recollections of the 80s, sports figures and entertainers, church and family events, and, of course, the stereotypical divergence in dancing ability and opinion on OJ’s innocence (I say he couldn’t have done it single-handedly). Honestly, I feel more comfortable at a salsa bar, samba school rehearsal, or Santeria ceremony. And unlike my co-workers, I can walk down a street in Sao Paulo, Caracas, Cali, or Havana and not have my “nationality” give me a way (just as I wouldn’t be looked at twice in London, Paris, Joburg, or NYC). But then, I never did have that “All-American look.”
My point is, if the idea of nationalism is a shared set of values, beliefs, traditions, experiences, history, and geographic area under a shared set of symbols, then I am a citizen of the United African Diasporic Peoples of the Western Hemisphere. And I’m sure that any reasonably intelligent person who reads this comment and carefully considers the history behind my sentiment would realize the old “USA - love it or leave it!” retort smacks of the blind patriotism that fosters forced assimilation and mainstreaming that the whole idea of culture-based travel is supposed to refute.
Just my 2-Cent.
PS - I always smile to myself when I hear my Cuban friends on the island refer to American football as “futbol rubio” (blonde football). Shame they don’t get SportsCenter.
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Like some of the writers above, I don’t feel attached to my country of citizenship, simply because I haven’t spent much time there. So, I’m not very keen on the concept of nationalism, or even patriotism, which I think is a bit silly.
On the other hand, there si something which does need a bit of nationalism: human political and administrative cooperation. Without the feel that you, me and everyone else needs to take a bit of care for their country (which is to say a bit more than we usually care about the Earth, environment and different culture), we would all stop participating in decision making for the common good, both at the national and at the regional level.
So a bit of constructive nationalism is welcomed.
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