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Nationalism
Nationalism is in essence feelings of patriotism and national pride although it is also often characterised as a sense of superiority over other nations. Do you think it makes sense to feel pride or superiority based on where you live or where you were born? Is nationalism beneficial, harmful or otherwise?
Discuss and feel free to go into more detail than just with those couple of questions. |
Nationalism is good thing, it's the immune system of a nation. It's shame that people in western world is forgetting that because it has been made "politically incorrect", they even teach kids in schools that nationalism is bad thing.
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Nationalism is for the weak of mind who have no substance to themselves so instead they pretend the place they were born in someone makes them special.
Loving your country is patriotism, believing your place of origin to be a factor of value in yourself is nationalism. |
It's not a feeling I see why why people should feel. Why feel proud that the lottery of life happened to place you in this one specific geographic location (out of many), and when whatever might be great about it has fuck all to do with you?
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What kind of nationalism are we talking about here?
Nationalism in a fascistic sense, where the benefit of the State supersedes the individual? (pro-government) Nationalism in the sense that we should do what is best for most people on a national scale? For example, Henry Clay's American System. Nationalism regarding race? Such as white nationalism (KKK) or black nationalism (Black Panthers). Nationalism regarding culture? I think these various types of nationalists can either be good or bad. Like fascistic and racial nationalism is nasty and horrid, but cultural nationalism can be good. American System sort of nationalism can either be good or bad depending on the policy, but at the very least, the intent is good, unlike racial or fascistic nationalism. |
Do I think I'm better than others because I'm Canadian? No
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Patriotism, that is, standing up for good values embodied in your country or homeland, and generally feeling good about your country is anything from benign to good. Nationalism is the ugly backside of patriotism where, at best, it's benign, but very easily can turn to scapegoating or get violent. Not to bring up the Nazis, but, well, the Nazis.
It's understandable that people are wired to protect "their own" and to have an "us vs. them" mindset, but since we're rational human beings capable of higher thinking and we can learn from past mistakes and successes, we should be able to see that there is a great benefit to being open and accepting of people outside of "our own" and that marginalizing is dangerous. Like, imagine if every country was all super nationalist. There'd be wars, most likely, but even without wars there would be other problems that could lead to wars. Competition over resources (like, for instance, fish) could wipe out that resource. Calls to limit the amount each county fishes would be ignored because you'd have a prisoner's dilemma situation. It would be in each country's interests to take as much as they can. Another thing that could happen is a pandemic. If one country collapsed or otherwise couldn't provide for its people, then no other country would and you would have a large, desperate population of people carrying disease which would eventually spread to other countries. Cooperation is just the better option. |
Hard to not feel pride when you're born in the nation that built the world.
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We raped and pillaged a bunch of poor people, enslaved them, wiped out indigenous cultures and peoples wherever we went, we deliberately spread deadly diseases to the Native Americans through plague blankets which we pretended were acts of kindness, we caused numerous wars, had the worst living conditions in Europe for our people, ran our own children into slavery, oppressed our neighbour and put them into a serious famine and absolutely demolished Africa before pulling out and creating a massive power vacuum in several countries. If you're proud of that then you're frankly terrible. |
I don't want to talk about the whole nationalism discussion, but I would lile to tell a few things about the pride someone feels.
I'm sorry but I think it makes 100% sense to be proud of your country. I'm very proud of my country. I think we contributed a lot, especially in Medicine, medical science, maths, even vocabulary because you're using many Greek words. Also, don't forget that here is the start of democracy at the ancient times. I think everyone would be proud of all these. And actually, there are other reasons that I'm proud. I just don't understand why is it so bad if someone feels proud of his/her country. |
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I think the difference here is between being proud of the accomplishments of the people that came before you and thinking that those past accomplishments other people did get channelled into every newborn and somehow make you personally better by default than someone else from a different country.
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I don't think there's anything wrong with being proud of positive things your country or people from your country have achieved. Although patriotism makes as little sense as nationalism since you have no control over where you're born. At least patriotism isn't harmful though.
Nationalism on the other hand is kind of repulsive. Not only does it have the same nonsensical nature as patriotism but it's harmful because it creates an "us" and "them" mentality that promotes conflict both within your borders and between nations. |
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More saying that it just really doesn't make sense to me, not so much that it's "bad". Though there are a good chunk of people who are nationalistic whose pride kinda makes them.....basically xenophobic really. |
i don't understand why anyone would be proud of america and be proud of living here considering all the terrible things we've done
whatever floats their boat though i guess |
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Pride in your country is fine but it shouldn't be necessary. Also, you shouldn't feel superior to others just because you happened to be born in a particular country.
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Nationalism, in a sense, is wanting to put the interests of one's own country over those of others. Such sentiments are, I would argue, borne from wanting a sense of belonging (part of Maslow's hierarchy of needs), which is, more often than not, provided amongst people who live in the same country as you do by sharing common culture, birthplace, country, and language.
As for feeling superior over other nations... yes, unfortunately extreme nationalism can lead to jingoism/chauvinism, which isn't something I advocate as such sentiments have led to devastating wars. But extremism isn't healthy in any ideology anyways. Lastly, I think it's important to separate nationalism and racism, which I think are two different ideas that are conflated too often, although there are some instances of overlap. |
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