Patriotism

Contrary to popular belief, I consider patriotism to be undesirable and dangerous to world peace. Yes, I know we all like that feeling of national pride, that surge of emotion felt when our national anthem is sung or our national team plays sport. But I think we should be suppressing, not indulging in that emotion; it stems from our tribal past and is not appropriate in the modern age.

Politicians encourage patriotism but it’s clearly more in their interests than ours. By standing apart and looking in as it were, I see that nations displaying a high degree of patriotism also display the most warlike tendencies; the USA, Israel and to a lesser extent, the UK, are good examples. At the personal level, I notice that the most patriotic persons are often religious and of limited reasoning capacity.

I know some will feel insulted by what I’ve just said but I can’t help that, it’s just the way things are, those prepared to cast off their tribal dress and take a dispassionate look, may see the same thing.

In the days when one tribe clashed with another, the primitive weapons were capable of causing a few deaths but posed no danger to the species as a whole. Nowadays, our weapons are easily capable of destroying humanity entirely and many of us are obviously still largely driven by primitive, tribal instincts; that’s why patriotism is dangerous.

Since tribal days we have made huge technological advances but very little progress in learning to live with each other has been made. Actually, all we have really done is to increase the size of our tribes and call them nations.

We must change our behaviour before the notions of nationality and patriotism cause us to eradicate ourselves.