Conversation

I get patriotism. That’s recognizing and appreciating the abstract principles a state is founded on, and occasionally making courageous choices to defend them. Nationalism though is a weird symbols-and-history emotional apohenia. Personalizing impersonal meta-institutions...
5
47
You’re essentially inserting yourself *personally* into a story that doesn’t really exist at a level where personal identification is even possible. Kinda like how psychopaths imagine non-existent personal relationships with victims...
1
7
American nativists might feel inclined to argue that as a naturalized citizen and adult immigrant I don’t “get it” and that it’s about some ineffable Big Sky and Apple Pie sentimental connection I can’t access. BS. I didn’t get it in India either. So maybe I just lack a soul?
Replying to
Cf: Walter Scott poem. Possibly, but the simpler explanation is that “nationalists” mistake visceral responses to things like music for something deeper.
Image
1
1
If you doubt me, listen to the national anthems of other countries. Or any military band. Or the kids in Harry Potter in ceremonial school robes. It’s ALL soul-stirring theatrical compositions. None of it implies personal connections to, or a role in, a coherent story.
2
4
If you feel more than good feelz and a brief sense of fellowship and camaraderie; if you feel a deep sense of belonging to ancient battles, and a tearful, joyful personal connection to the stranger next to you who looks like he could play your brother in a period movie...
1
2
...It’s not that people who don’t feel such things in response to mere artful sensory theatrical spectacles crafted by composers lack souls. It is that YOU have a streak of dark psychopathy that is revealed in crowd settings. I mean that literally. You’re a psycho.
1
4
It is easier for you to imagine yourself into fake stories built on manufactured emotional resonances than to see living people as human and actually form real connections and author and inhabit real stories. Easier for the same reason video games are easier than real life.
1
12
Actually creating a real human role for yourself in a real human story evolving live is ugly, messy, dissonant work. No strident Wagnerian music accompanies it. Reality is not color-coordinated. It’s just you, tough decisions, and hard ethics principles in a room together.
1
8
Patriotism is hard, lonely, uncomfortable, THINKING work seeking commonality and connection with people who are not like you. Nationalism is a matter of blending into a pleasant concert crowd and chanting slogans, pretending your basest psychopathy is your highest human self,
1
12
You look at a photo of a crowd of hungry, desperate, dirty people on a journey towards your borders. None of them look like you. Do you do the patriotic hard thing and apply hard-won and history-tested principles to what you see, and attempt to connect to the present reality?
2
3
Or do you do the easy, “nationalist” thing of contrasting the real picture to staged visual and musical theatrical backdrops, finding dissonance, and concluding they are monsters to be slayed? The choice is yours. Patriotism or nationalism? Individual courage or mass psychopathy?
1
13