The problem I feel is that we humans work well in small groups or any group where we feel we can identify with others in the same group. To have 'a' group there must by logic be at least one other group to measure or compare against. These groups can be our work company, or our sports team, or our city or area, or our nation can all be our group but that is where it ends, never do we work together in total as humanity or as people of our Earth.
There seems to be an upper limit to how far we can accept ourselves in groups and it ceilings at Nationalism and of course I feel pride as I stand under my own flag as I'm sure you do under yours. But we do look at those standing under different flags from ours and wonder and narrow our eyes (laughs) with suspicion!
Leaders, demagogues and tyrants have all loved this strange sense of nationalism and dress it up as patriotism to make all manner of evils into something much more acceptable.
Remember 'our city' as part of the list in my example of groupings?
Suppose our government came into our city and they told all of us who reside in the east of the city to take weapons and go and kill all those who lived in the west of our city?
How stupid does it sound to you? How crazy, how preposterous, how monstrous?
Yet if the same government came to us and asked us to go kill these other people in another country it somehow becomes acceptable under a rule of war. Salute your flag, fight for your way of life, these infidels, commies, tyrannical invaders, mindless minions, soldiers of the great Satan (just insert any title that separates them from you), are a threat to your way of life.
I have heard individuals from the American public on TV aghast with horror at the deaths of American boys in Iraq, utter such comments as "Get our boys out and nuke the bastards!" I'm sure the comment was said with the idea of saving more lives of their countrymen and metering out a distant and callous punishment that should remove a part of the threat and act as some deterrent but at what expense?
Luckily these people are not the people with their fingers on these devastating red buttons!
The idea of these leaders that instill such feeling within us is as I've said, a presentation of truth and untruth. They tell us simple truths and then they add lies in a logical manner that are all designed to confuse us.
Fellow countrymen do you relish your present freedoms?
Yes!
Do you want to keep our way of life and keep our flag flying?
Yes!
The situation in COUNTRY X is a threat to our way of life and THEY (describe a group by any attributes not found on home soil) wish to undermine us. They wish to impose their (reel off as many negatives as you can) on us and remove our (positive things now) good home values and traditions.
Paint a scenario where they are killing your children and raping your wives and Mothers. If you are a good Orator you should now have your people incensed and looking for someone of that foreign group to hang from the nearest tree!
People have attacked and still attack other groups of people over petty concepts such as religion, politics, territory, resources, skin color and the ugliest of all reasons, ethnic cleansing in a eugenic war.
That's even more tragic because these 'races' or 'sub-races' do not exist - there is only one human race and we are it. Your DNA is almost exactly the same as my DNA no matter where in the world you are.
Every single one of us came from Africa. There are no superior or inferior strains (that should upset White supremacists!) there are only mutations and if you define mutation at its basic level then since we are not exact duplicates of fifty percent of our parents then we are all mutants. Mutations, no matter how slight and how unnoticeable are nature's way of introducing and testing evolution.
Nationalism viewed in this way must be evil. It is a trap that we have all fallen into and we accept it and follow these xenophobic dictates as the whims of our leaders demand. I'm not going to say any one side is wrong I am going to say collectively that we all together, all six billion of us are wrong and I can't see a way out until 'we' (any group you like) impose our will and our way on 'them.' Then we know we are safe.
Are we?
There will come in its place another label to distinguish another set of people from the set to whom you belong.
You may feel like I'm victimizing you. You may feel the need to point out the 'evils' of another group to justify your position. Sadly they can do exactly the same thing and they, like you, believe that they are right too!
Imagine if you will County 'X' and Country 'Y' and neither of them is your country. They share a common border and a common language. The food they eat is similar, their folk dances and traditional costumes resemble each other and their flags have the same colors except one has horizontal stripes and one has vertical stripes. The name of their God (it's not your God) is the same too.
But Country X says that this God they share lives on a mountain and Country Y says he lives in the sky.
These two countries then go to war saying that the war will end only when the other country will acknowledge that 'we' are right and 'they' are misinformed. Bullets and bombs from both sides fly towards the other side. Towns and cities are leveled, millions of non-combatants die or are injured and children orphaned. Treasures and monuments to glorious histories are lost or damaged and all for the sake of something that YOU know them both to be wrong about.
How petty does it seem to you?
I paint my picture with very simple colors but the composition of these masterpieces of political and nationalistic speeches with great swirls of design and artistic flair are these self same simple colors.
Yes ignore me and my paint-box of colors, let's stand instead for the colors on 'our' flag. My chest can now swell with nationalist pride because I am a patriot first and a human being second!
That's my controversy of today off my chest - let's see if I get a response for that one!
My first week back at work fatigued me a great deal but I can understand that I am still recovering from hospitalization (that's my excuse) and that my fitness levels need increasing.
Hitomi is back on Sunday Evening and I'll go to collect her up from the airport.
I have no intentions of going out over the week-end other than shopping for groceries. I plan to do all that I said I was going to do and take advantage of Miss Disaster-Zone's absence and get our home organized once more before she's back like the storm to disturb the calm.
I wish you all a peaceful life.
People always form groups, tribes or whatever you may like to call them. They do so to feel a sense of belonging and acceptance. Groups are formed by people who share a common language, interest or some political ideology.
I guess we just have to learn to be more tolerant of each other and not fight and start wars over petty issues.
I can sympathise with Hitomi as I am also an untidy person who is surrounded by disorder and clutter. Maybe it's due to having a creative nature; who knows? I just need someone like you to clear up.
Unknown
November 10, 2009 11:25 AMThis one I kept coming back to again and again, thinking and pondering the reason for it and what it was that set you off in this direction. Gave up on that, not a mind reader and I know that you had your reasons, but I do have some thoughts concerning this.
In this world, sad to say the majority of people fall into few categories, there are exceptions to this and in this comment I will not expound on that, but rather on my take concerning what I see is wrong with humanity today.
Actually I do not see it any different than it was in Alexander's day, the only thing different are the weapons that are used in order to obtain that which another has and what that one wants and with more devastating effects.
We elect those we choose to lead us, in most cases and in others they are self appointed either by some religious edict that they were ordained to lead a mass of people to their death based on some obscure passage in a transcript or by divine right to hold such a power wielding position and decide for the masses how they should think and like sheep those without insight or those too lazy to look for the truth blindly follow to these egotistical Napoleons to their slaughter. They are trained and taught that the right way, the only way to obtain peace within is to kill anyone that opposes or does not see their way as the "divine" way and then will peace be achieved and the world set in order. This is not new, since man has been able to throw a rock and wield a club he has basically taken what he feels belongs to him and further feels he is justified in doing so by the mere fact he can do it. No one country has not through history been been immune or guiltless of atrocities in the eyes others against humanity even though the offending country see themselves as being justified in their actions, whether it be called a purification,preemptive action, removing a threat to humanity or returning to their people what is rightfully theirs. It has many labels, many masks and many reasons used to validate itself to the masses.
In most cases we find a small faction or a single individual behind "stirring" the masses, using religion, poverty, starvation, politics, hatred, fear and closet full of other tools in order to meld individuals into one cohesive mass, feeding them the "moral" beliefs they feel the less educated need to be fed. This message is used to instill confusion and chaos which they use to control them. Masters of deception, smoke and mirrors they twist the words that "illuminate" their cause and justify their means. They are nothing but war mongers out to place themselves in the annuls of history, to be martyred as being a "savior" of mankind and defending the rights of the less fortunate, the down trodden, the morally abused, the starved and the impoverished.
All through history man has witnessed this played out over and over again, the tribal leaders, chiefs, dictators, emperors, khans, pharaohs, kings and presidents and the reasons are always the same, greed and egos, two of the most driving forces in life. The drum beat is the same, the rhetoric polished and the weapons sophisticated and the only thing that has remained the same is the person who wields it, man.
Later...
Smiling Pig
November 21, 2009 8:38 AM