Originally Posted by JetteroLo
But why have nations? Why not go for a Universal One True religion/government?
But why have nations? Why not go for a Universal One True religion/government?
the simplest answer to that is that the bigger the government, the less nuance it has. A given nation understands its local climate, culture etc and makes policy accordingly. Federalism goes even deeper by allowing states to legislate within a country (which I personally think is an abhorrent practice). It's all about balancing coordination and the sight of broad concerns that effect everyone with the fine details and situations of unique locales.
All that being said, I don't think any of this entails that nationalism is necessary.
"For as long as atomic energy and armaments are considered a vital part of national security no nation will give more than lip service to international treaties. Security is indivisible. It can be reached only when necessary guarantees of law and enforcement obtain everywhere, so that military security is no longer the problem of any single state. There is no compromise possible between preparation for war, on the one hand, and preparation of a world society based on law and order on the other." - Albert Einstein
When One True owns the world, there is no longer any room for you.
There are certainly benefits to governments, otherwise people wouldn't have invented them. But while zero government is not good (Somalia), and all-encompassing government is not good (1984), you could assume that there is a best size and scope for government somewhere between zero and one hundred. But what size and scope is that?
It doesn't appeal to me personally.
good question. better question: why don't we have a Universal One True Government?
nationalism and nations emerged in history together as motive forces of history. by that i mean these ideology of nationalism emerged and moved history into such a way to create the nation state as we know it [perhaps this began at westphalia 1648, but i think it began with henry VIII divorcing rome] and the emergence of these nation states generated nationalist emotion right up until the present day leading to things like brexit.
it seems like one world government is actually coming, and today the supranational forces have much more power than any other governing organ has had at any time, including the empires of rome, ulan baatar and london. some supranational forces can commit entire armies to enforce their order (the closest thing pre-industrial history ever got to this was the crusades) and they can determine the manner in which economic goods and services flow and under what conditions they flow, and they can also guarantee the safety and right to organise of their operatives in practically all parts of the world.
anyway, my point is that the trend is towards centralised power because technology allows us to rule centrally more effectively [as the road did to rome, the postal system to mongolia, and the telegraph to great britain] is happening already and we'll probably see it in our lifetime. it will be opposed by nationalists: this is fine. kings opposed nationalism. the last one to do so got his head in a basket. i suspect, in the very final analysis, the same fate will befall the last nationalist.
i'm trying to divert the conversation away from whether nationalism is a good thing or a bad thing, necessary or unnecessary, to ask people to think about where nationalism as a political ideology originated, its role in the history, and how nationalism, as now an old idea, responds to new, emerging ideas and motive forces that govern the change of the world today
CETERUM AUTEM CENSEO WASHINGTON D.C. ESSE DELENDAM
actually i think the main mongol tech was the stirrup ? whatever
CETERUM AUTEM CENSEO WASHINGTON D.C. ESSE DELENDAM
The best cure for nationalism is intercourse with your countrymen.
Yes, and talking with them is also good.
:/
Some people in America are nationalist, many more are patriots without really being nationalist or if they are nationalist they don't really care if the government's policies aren't.
I'm against most aspects of nationalism, but I'm more sympathetic to the nationalists than the left, the globalists, and social justice warriors, people who loudly demand more LGBTQIA+ privileges, etc. More of my friends are right wing and I've noticed that many left wing people make just as many errors of fact, and omit just as many facts as many far right people do.
I generally favor decentralization of political power. I do oppose birthright citizenship, which is a nationalist position I hold. I think the federal government should end birthright citizenship and assist states with immigration enforcement; immigration should be based on cognitive testing (especially picture arrangement subtest) and beauty (which is highly correlated with the PA subtest), which I know is hypocritical, but I want to maximize beauty where I live and I'm sure others do too; beauty is real, equality is abstract. You need the brightest minds and i think the world is far away from a global government, so there should be some restrictions on immigration.
Really, the Wilsonian globalism and it neoconservative offshoot have been a failure. Woodrow Wilson was one of those Gamma SFs who thought he and his ideas were greater than they really were; he was evidence that Serious types as politicians cause more long term damage... the world wasn't ready for democracy to be spread everywhere and for him to depose the leaders he hated (at least according to Hans Herman Hoppe which I think is true... he seems to understand people), just made everything worse.
I'm sorry, but I'm psychologically disturbed.
yeah i mean, this is one of the problems that both british and american nationalism have: they generally want their country to be engaged in the world but they also want to restrict people from coming to it, but the material fact is that just can't happen: forces and pressures from all sides of the society, including the very rich, have resulted in unchecked immigration to both countries and all attempts to control it so far have been failures. those are social forces that are outside the control of a society that also wants to have an active foreign policy - we wanted to remove the government of libya and syria but then became upset when the resulting social chaos in those countries meant migrants came to us. you can't have both - the japanese have been very able at both dislocating themselves from world affairs and controlling the flow of migrants to their country. i can respect that but i can't respect the current anglosaxon trend.
unfortunately the kind of nationalism that we see combines a sense of "our values are universal and we have the authority to police the world with them" AND "entrance to the country should be difficult and controlled" but when a nation takes a leading role in global affairs it both has the economic and social pull to bring people from the countries that it polices. marxists speak of contradictions and the resolution of those contradictions and this is one of the leading contradictions today: how our governments can create social upheaval and disorder in the global south and then institute border controls to prevent the people whose lives we've ruined coming here, and at the same time attempt to claim we've actually liberated those people. if we helped them so much then why tf would they want to come and live in the us or britain lol?
the real fact is that The Border, which is much more significant than simply passport control at the Mexican border or the English Channel, exists to make sure that there must be a body of cheap labour that exists outside our countries. it only gets justified by the metropole in order to serve that purpose.
if we want to have a rational system of migration controls for the west we need to simultaneously respect a. the right of nations to determine their own policies, and b. the right of all countries to engage in economic exchange on equal terms. we can't pretend to be an imperial power and still institute The Border - the contradictions are too great and too weighty, and the social forces engaged in maintaining migration too powerful if that remains the case.
CETERUM AUTEM CENSEO WASHINGTON D.C. ESSE DELENDAM
Nationalism is dumb cuz it cherishes the status quo too much instead of improving on it, but really the second my country is threatened too much by foreign powers I make sure to wear that orange t-shirt and sing the national anthem and I really hope my fellow countrymen do so too.
@Teslobo
I have decided to address you again, maybe perhaps you can correct me because I would like you to do so.
'Ideology' by definition is a system of thought. 'Nationalism' is not a system of thought. It is sentiment towards an object. That 'political scientists' [Te-tards] bicker over it's 'definition' makes little difference to me.
Nationalism is a system of thought. You'll find sentiment towards a country isn't sufficient to engage in nationalism. You have to adopt policies that align with the selfish uplifting of one's own people, you have to create a framework of lines in the sand between one's own people and others, and you have to rationalize why a more directly selfish approach to foreign policy is more beneficial than cooperation and mutual aid between nations. Mere sentiment would just be called patriotism in my opinion - nationalism is structured plan and action upon feelings.
As for the political scientist point, I shouldn't really need to elaborate on why that has no bearing.
Lol I forgot about this thread.
The Barnum or Forer effect is the tendency for people to judge that general, universally valid statements about personality are actually specific descriptions of their own personalities. A "universally valid" statement is one that is true of everyone—or, more likely, nearly everyone. It is not known why people tend to make such misjudgments, but the effect has been experimentally reproduced.
The psychologist Paul Meehl named this fallacy "the P.T. Barnum effect" because Barnum built his circus and dime museum on the principle of having something for everyone. It is also called "the Forer effect" after its discoverer, the psychologist Bertram R. Forer, who modestly dubbed it "the fallacy of personal validation".
My country is very nationalistic. We've been culturally isolated for most of history so we're not really aware of cultural differences. When immigrants come here we expect them to adapt our values because they're so obviously superior. "They came here because our country is the beacon of civilization!". Our previous prime minister said our country is a "humanitarian great power".
It's not nationalistic in the fervent, WW1 fashion as nationalism is usually conceptualized but there's nonetheless a commonly held belief that our culture and values are the natural way of things. Most (middle-class) people don't see immigrants as bad people or anything but I think they're actually more nationalistic than the "xenophobes". The xenophobes (working-class) have seen what multiculturalism means and have become embittered by the fact that they might have to adapt somewhat to another culture. The richer crowd who is yet to have faced multiculturalism hold on to their belief that the new people are no problem at all. They eat, dress and speak in a weird way but in the end we all want the same things: equality, democracy, trust between everyone. They don't, btw.
Being quiet and not flaunting means you're powerful. Lashing out and puffing up your chest is a sign of weakness. Hence nationalists who are weak in their beliefs get the most attention and give nationalism its current, bad reputation. As my favorite philosopher once said about nationalism:
The he cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which he shares with so many millions of his fellow men. The man who is endowed with important personal qualities will be only too ready to see clearly in what respects his own nation falls short since their failings will be constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.
And I think he's mostly on point. When you're poor and weak you adapt your last line of defense, group affiliation. You have no reason to do so when you're rich and hence, nationalism is for the weak. And it is, but that doesn't mean that nationalistic beliefs are only held by the weak.
Whether you liked it or not , it's important
It's a right for every country to be proud of its land and the achievements of its people, and for citizens to feel belonging to their homeland, but it is rejected if it leads to an illusory feeling of superiority.
Souls know their way back home
Nationalism is everywhere in my country, on the media, in school textbooks, on social media, etc.
The idea of nationalism is manifested in my country in a broader sense than my country itself. We are taught from childhood that Syria is part of the larger Arab world (we call it the homeland, not the world by the way), we are taught that the Arab nation is one, and that the Arabs are brothers and so on
Also, Palestine is considered an Arab country and its people are Arabs (warning: I will not argue with anyone about this, do not waste your time)
Souls know their way back home
I like that Shopenhauer quote.
I actually believe that 'multiculturalism' in the sense it is supposed to be understood, as pluralism (of views, expression) is itself more good than bad, but the way in which it is usually used, to defend a neoliberal consumer-based monoculture, is harmful. It is the opposite of 'multi'culturalism, it is monoculture. The same is true for the neighbourhoods in European cities that have become 'muslim ghettoes'. The culture in these places is anything but pluralistic, and if the imams (here in Belgium they received funding from Saudi Arabia for the longest time) that shape the thought of these neighbourhoods had their way and managed to convert all of European society (a very unlikely event in itself, but bear with me) there would be anything but actual 'multi' culturalism.
The kind of identity-defining radical views espoused by many in the working class (populism) and that espoused by many people issued from a lower class wave of muslim immigrants to Europe are both desperate stances. Hence why they are both so loud and vocal.
Another thought is that nationalism in big states (such as China or Russia) is different from nationalism in smaller states like Sweden. In order to unify a large territory like China has historically, you need to unify people who are different culturally, ethnically, linguistically, economically (because not everyone has the same climatogolical and geographic factors under such a large territory) you need to impose a common culture and wipe out differences in the aforementioned factors. It is the only way to maintain cohesion in these large states which are what Réné Gučnon would call a form of syncretism because it is an assembly of parts that are ultimately incompatible. On the other hand, smaller nation-states often have more cohesion as well as more freedom to express pluralistic views because there is no need to artificially force a cohesion through authoritarian methods (or at least, less of a need to do so).
Last edited by Ave; 04-30-2022 at 05:59 AM.
@Teslobo
Nationalism is a system of thought??? really????
okay.
so what is the program of 'nationalism'?
what are it's tenants? can you possibly explain???
who is the principle ideologue of 'nationalism'? mazzini? bismarck? who??
because you are just again spouting nonsense about what it is you think is nationalism. you are literally spouting ahistorical nonsense.
as if nationalism again, was 'one thing'. when it never was.
you look so retarded from where I am standing there can be no possible communication between us.
it's better for me to stop engaging period.
@Teslobo
'mutual aid between nations'
You are already presupposing the nation state in your argument. an idea which men have fought and bled for. it's in your presupposition. Absolutely ridiculous. Be honest, have you ever picked up a piece of literature in your life, much less understood the contents of what was recorded inside?
He is presupposing the existence of the state as implied in nationalism it because it is how he defines the latter.
Why would you even argue over this? You guys are talking semantics. Not about the same concepts, in other words.
@Hardware Punk
He is presupposing the existence of other nations which is not implied in anything. It has nothing to do with our discussion. If you are going to complain about semantics then you should stay the hell away from philosophy. You are already a materialist decadent in that you perceive the nation as existing objectively apart from the state. A material presupposition. In other words, your understanding of the nation is steeped in enlightenment ideology. And you are arguing with me about the merits [or lack thereof] of nationalism, whilst you already believe in it, and a shittier rationalist interpretation of it.
I'm not arguing with you about the merits/non-merits of nationalism. Nor am I complaining about semantics, but they are a thing since words can have different usages and are often used by people for emotional effect without being intelligible to the person using it. For example, I once made a thread (don't think it was on here, but on another forum, TypoC iirc) asking people to define "democracy" and there were as many definitions as they were people answering. It goes to show to what extent people use terms for like "democracy" as a synonym of "good government" without defining "good", and "governement", or bothering to think about what such a thing would look like, what examples or counter-examples of it exist in history, and what its purpose is.
Basically, my point was that Teslobo, at least as I see it (not sure since I'm not in his head) was using the term "nationalism" in an emotionally loaded way, to mean something bad. He did give definitions, and said that nationalism implies mechanisms of the state, and that the mere sentiment of identity towards a people was patriotism, not nationalism. Not sure I agree with this idea, I need to think about it more.
But I was simply pointing out that you guys were the ones arguing over semantics, at least it seemed to me as an outside observer (though I haven't followed the whole discussion), and I wasn't saying anything more. I don't really appreciate having those labels attached to me since I am not sure how you define "materialist decadent", I get you're bantering, but I don't really enjoy having labels thrown at me when I'm not even sure what they mean nor why they are being brought up in this context lol.
Last edited by Ave; 05-26-2022 at 11:19 AM. Reason: grammar
@ipbanned
Sorry! I called you a materialist decadent (when I didn't take you as one) because I thought you were defending his definition! It was not banter that time but I did misunderstand you! Presupposing the existence of the nation state in 'nationalism' is a materialist conception of the nation. Whereas I am arguing the opposite, the nation is not a material presumption- but rather it is sentiment and the 'state' is merely the nation in it's concrete, political manifestation.
Gotcha man, it's all good.
I think I agree with your definition.
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