Does Patriotism Make Sense?

[Lancer]

Hopefully we adopt a global rather than a national patriotic view before the space faring skull sucking locust aliens arrive.

[Lancer]

Not that we as a species couldn't use a good skull sucking.

[C0ckney]

I conclude that biologically, patriotism should be a rather weak emotion.

as you're from the former yugoslavia, i find this slightly surprising.

[thesilentone]

How is it surprising? I'd think seeing your countrymen killing each other is a great reason to think patriotism is stupid.

[Wiglaf]

Originally posted by Cort Haus


Why don't you just f*ck off then and do everyone a favour?

Would you care to enlighten me as to how this topic doesn't suck, and do me a favor?

[C0ckney]

but he didn't say it was stupid did he, he said it was weak. completely different.

where you see a war in which a nation state breaks up, and the people re-assert their national identities, to the point where neighbours wants to kill each other because one is a serb and one a croatian, for example. to then conclude that patriotism (or nationalism) is weak, seems very strange to me.

[Wezil]

The topic seems to have attrcted your interest. You're still reading and posting in the thread.

[Shrapnel12]

Originally posted by Lancer
Hopefully we adopt a global rather than a national patriotic view before the space faring skull sucking locust aliens arrive.

I think they'll starve if they come to this planet.

[Theben]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
You assuming that partiotism is directly at a hunk of land rather than the people who live on it. I always viewed patritism as an us-against-them concept:

"We Americans are better than everyone else because we have the 4th of July, and George Washington, and because one of our teams always wins the World Series."

Well Washington was very charismatic. I for one don't mind the extra happy face.

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by C0ckney
but he didn't say it was stupid did he, he said it was weak. completely different.

where you see a war in which a nation state breaks up

Yugoslavia wasn't really a nation-state, it was an undemocratic federation of nation-states.

, and the people re-assert their national identities, to the point where neighbours wants to kill each other because one is a serb and one a croatian, for example. to then conclude that patriotism (or nationalism) is weak, seems very strange to me.

Nationalism is a strong force, but I'm differentiating between nationalism and patriotism.

Nationalism can exist without reference to a particular piece of land (I think).

Patriotism is having feelings, emotions with regards to some particular real estate.

[DaShi]

Patriotism is probably just an evolved form a racism. From a evolutionary standpoint, it's good to love your country because it contains the most genes like your own.

[Whoha]

Re: Does Patriotism Make Sense?

Originally posted by VetLegion
People evolved from monkeys and for millions of years we were hunter-gatherers who always moved in search of game and edible berries.

Human psyche evolved to suit that lifestyle. Living in relatively small groups of hunters and migrating.

Sedentary lifestyle which we practice today is only a couple of thousand years old.

Therefore I ask: does patriotism make sense?

Obviously it exists as an emotion, people do get attached to land. But how strong should this emotion objectively be?

If hunter-gatherers of old had been too connected to some particular area, they would have starved when they spent its resources.

I conclude that biologically, patriotism should be a rather weak emotion. Most of it is probably learned, not least from the state propaganda machine (I always wanted to use that phrase ). On a scale of things to which people should feel attached to, homeland should be pretty low.

I'd add that loving your people is another matter. Compared to patriotism it actually does make sense biologically.

What do you think?

When we moved away from being wandering nomads to improving land, defending that improvement makes a hell of a lot of sense.

[VetLegion]

Well if we gave up on patriotism (but not nationalism), we could do some interesting stuff. Two countries could trade real estate. Poor countries could sell real estate. Sweden could swap a chunk of Sweden for a chunk of Italy. Italians get to see polar bears at home, Swedes get to swim in the mediterranean at home.

OK, clinging on to territory probably makes a lot of sense, but it has to be for some other reason than people really wanting that territory and no other.

[DinoDoc]

Other territory won't pay for the costs of taking it?

[C0ckney]

Originally posted by VetLegion
Yugoslavia wasn't really a nation-state, it was an undemocratic federation of nation-states.

i'd call it a nation state with several different national identities within it. however, that's probably another thread in itself.

Nationalism is a strong force, but I'm differentiating between nationalism and patriotism.

Nationalism can exist without reference to a particular piece of land (I think).

Patriotism is having feelings, emotions with regards to some particular real estate.

i think that's a somewhat artificial distinction. the two, whilst in some ways different, are very closely linked. nationalism is a feeling of being part of a group of people with whom you share a language, history, ethnicity and culture. patriotism is a feeling of pride in your country.

nationalism need not be linked to land, but in reality it always is. imagine if a new island was discovered and it was offered to the basques to have as their own country, do you think they'd take it? they wouldn't, because what they want as their country, is the land which the people who share their national identity, have occupied since before the time of Christ.