Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter; my refuge is humanity. I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds, and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live - Rabindranath Tagore
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high. Where knowledge is free. Where the world has not been broken up into fragments. By narrow domestic walls. Where words come out from the depth of truth. Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection. Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way. Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit. Where the mind is led forward by thee. Into ever-widening thought and action. Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Considering modern usage of the word, I can't tell what you mean by this. I've explained why here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17059121
EDIT: Aaaaand, immediately downvoted with no reply. I rest my case. :)
Politics such as this: The real winners are the political and financial elite. But their supporters experience trickle down participation.
Professional sports: Trickle down participation.
A bit simplistic, and ignoring local-scale advantages to the participants. But I'm going to keep it in mind.
A few people getting very rich and powerful. And the rest celebrating this, while propping them up through their participation.
I recommend reading the seemingly unrelated The Knowledge by Lewis Dartnell. It describes the skills that would be necessary to rebuild civilisation after a hypothetical global cataclysm. Why is it relevant? If you read it, you will realize that all of civilization is fundamentally based on global markets and the global shipping of crude oil and other resources. Without these, nearly all technologies of daily life would break down in a very short time frame, including agriculture and medicine. The connections and dependences between countries are massive and completely unavoidable at our current level of technological development. In the long run, all countries have to work together or modern society will fail. (It may also fail because the resources dwindle extremely fast, viewed at an evolutionary time scale. Expanding mankind into space is unavoidable, or at least robot mining will be needed.)
Add to this the fact that we can communicate in real-time with the whole world and get news about distant events and politics within minutes, and patriotism starts to appear in a completely different light - as a silly appeal to traditions with no substance. Bear in mind that nations are entirely artificial entities and territorial conflicts have become (almost) impossible due to the global trade dependences.
This doesn't mean that there is anything wrong with mild forms of patriotism, of course, just that there are no particular advantages to it in the long run.
In a nutshell, we live in an essentially transnational society and this cannot change unless you're willing to give up almost all of modern technology.
On the contrary, if we want people to think long-term, it's important to get them to associate personal motivations (love of their grandchildren, love of their neighborhoods) with the sacrifices needed to keep civilization healthy (taxes, public service, military service, compliance with environmental regulations, etc.).
I guess it's possible you see "patriotism" and "nationalism" as requiring negative isolationism, xenophobia, etc. If that's true, is there a word for "thinking locally, acting globally" that allows for appreciating your homeland, ancestors, neighbors, etc.?
The nation is an integral part of the global economic and social structure not because of petty adherence to "tradition" as you believe, but because it plays a necessary and valuable role.
Given this, to say Patriotism is unproductive or backwards is foolish.
Nations are fundamentally a collection of people and entities that accept (sometimes begrudgingly) living in a union is better than living apart. It's important that people feel proud of their union and value its existence just as two people in a romantic relationship must value that relationship in order for it to survive and thrive.
People said the same thing in the late and early 20th century before ww1 and ww2. They were wrong.
> If you read it, you will realize that all of civilization is fundamentally based on global markets and the global shipping of crude oil and other resources.
Modern nations are dependent on oil for sure. That's what ww1 and ww2 was fought over.
> In the long run, all countries have to work together or modern society will fail.
That's fundamentally not true. Certain nations, like the US, don't have to work with anyone. We are one of the few nations who have enough resources ( including oil ) to keep our civilization running. If you expand the US to include the anglo-nations ( Canada, Australia, etc ), then we are more than able to keep our society running without the rest of the world.
> In a nutshell, we live in an essentially transnational society and this cannot change unless you're willing to give up almost all of modern technology.
What? Maybe if you are denmark or iceland, but that doesn't hold true for the US.
Also, your entire argument is about international trade, not transnationalism. You need nations to have international trade.
And as I said, your argument isn't new. It's been long debunked. The same argument was made in the midst of pax britannica before ww1 and ww2. People argued that nations were too dependent on each other for wars to break out. Hell, people argued that germany would never attack the soviet union since most of germany's oil/resources came from the soviet union.
The current international system will continue as long as nations deem it beneficial to themselves. If it ceases to be, then it will end.
There is nothing inherently good or bad about any system. And I highly doubt china, russia and much of the world will adhere to the US/European led international system for much longer.
Pax americana will come to an end like all "pax" in the past. Instead of clinging to silly utopian transnationalism, we should be preparing ourselves for a multipolar nationalistic world.
The post ww2 era is an anomaly in human history where one nation ruled the world. The only comparable situation in human history was the mongol empire where mongol's established direct or indirect control over pretty much all of eurasia. That system crumbled also.
This is simply, objectively, not true.
>Certain nations, like the US, don't have to work with anyone. We are one of the few nations who have enough resources ( including oil ) to keep our civilization running.
Doesn't the US import almost double what it exports (https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=727&t=6)? Also, why has the US worked so hard in the past 70 years to maintain influence across the world, warring and pillaging and murdering, and trading and bribing as well? Doesn't their standard of living rest on the global state of affairs they strive to maintain (or further exploit)?
>The post ww2 era is an anomaly in human history where one nation ruled the world.
In terms of technology, the last 100 years have been more transformative than the 10,000 before. It's silly to compare this to the mongol empire.
What if most hegemonic powers in a "pax" period tend toward your pragmatic attitude and as a result create a societal gestalt which becomes a self fufilling prophecy of paralyzed stagnation? Why should we assume that just because a "silly utopian transnationalism" hasn't happened yet it can't possibly happen at all? The technology available to a hegemon in the 21st century is unlike anything a previous hegemon has ever known. Betting the future will follow the patterns of the past is a safe bet until it isn't.
Bingo. Nation states drove society, and they'll continue to drive society.
"As the nearest existing equivalent I have chosen the word ‘nationalism’, but it will be seen in a moment that I am not using it in quite the ordinary sense, if only because the emotion I am speaking about does not always attach itself to what is called a nation — that is, a single race or a geographical area."
"By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’(1)."
"But secondly — and this is much more important — I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests."
"Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality."
Now, maybe this is somewhat skewed by when it was written, but based on my interpretation of modern people's usage of the word nationalism, it seems completely consistent with current times.....so my question is basically: why is race (and force/violence) considered inseparable from nationalism? Or even more precisely, why is it seemingly only people who live in extremely ethnically diverse societies who think this way (go watch some "man on the street" interview videos on YouTube and you'll see that Modern Western Progressive values that only originated in the last 20 years aren't shared universally across the planet)?
Let's check the dictionary:
Nationalism:
1. spirit or aspirations common to the whole of a nation.
2. devotion and loyalty to one's own country; patriotism.
3. excessive patriotism; chauvinism.
4. the desire for national advancement or political independence.
5. the policy or doctrine of asserting the interests of one's own nation viewed as separate from the interests of other nations or the common interests of all nations.
6. an idiom or trait peculiar to a nation.
7. a movement, as in the arts, based upon the folk idioms, history, aspirations, etc., of a nation.
The only definition even remotely close to race/racism is #3, yet do a google search for "nationalism" in the news and on forums (including this one, and in this very thread) and I bet you'll discover that in the vast majority of cases you'll find it being used in a way that's synonymous with racism.
I will often ask people I see doing this why they do it, what their exact meaning is, but no one will ever answer. In my opinion, these types of people are, ironically, similarly as evil as racists, in that they hate a group of people based on falsehoods or false stereotypes.
I'd love to know if anyone can think of a good explanation for this phenomenon. And considering how widespread it is, "people are dumb, get over it" seems like a completely disingenuous copout, equivalent to a racist-apologist.
> oil ... That's what ww1 and ww2 was fought over.
> Certain nations, like the US, don't have to work with anyone
> expand the US to include the anglo-nations ( Canada, Australia, etc )
etc.
These are arguments of white christian nationalists, who, as Orwell pointed out about nationalists in general, have no interest in reality, only justifying their hateful cause. They ignore the incredible, outrageous evil of Nazism, the universality and priority of human rights and freedom, basic economic reality, and the predictable destruction that comes with nationalism.
The American-led world order since WWII has led to an expansion of freedom and prosperity orders of magnitude beyond anything else in human history. It also embodies a just and fair way of managing international affairs, through law and democracy rather than the undemocratic system of the strong forcing the weak (it has a long a way to go, but it has come a very long way since WWII). A person must really embrace hate in order to give that up for nationalism, racism, and the destruction that inevitably follows, a return to pre-WWII or even pre-WWI. I suspect many of the white christian nationalists take that peace and prosperity for granted; they don't realize it was constructed by the survivors of WWII, who knew far more of nationalism and the world without a rules-driven world order.
Here specifically, I don't think he's clear and timeless.
This is an essay about British politics of the time, for the British. Nationalism meant the bad guys from the war, which was just ending. Orwell is warning against fanatical politics likes those of the 1930s. Besides the war, the British Empire was ending. Orwell is warning the British about paranoid, nationalist politics the loss of empire was stirring up.
He is being delicate with his labels to avoid just calling his readers fanatics^. I think this leaves us with something less timeless.
Anyway.... First, he splits hairs to define nationalism separately from patriotism, the safer & less violent flavour of nation-centric "ism". Then he extends his definition of "nationalism" to include also... "such movements and tendencies as Communism, political Catholicism, Zionism, Antisemitism, Trotskyism and Pacifism."
So, wtf does Orwell mean when he says "nationalism". It's not like patriotism, but is like Trotskyism? I think he just means fanatics. Ideologists that care more about winning arguments and wars then morals & greater goods supposedly furthered by ideologies.
That is relevant today. I think this essay would have been gone on to the top shelf of timeless political writing if Orwell had pretended to write for the French about the British, instead of "anticipating the troll" and mincing his words in response. Name the thing.
^Orwell's essay on Gandhi is written for Brits too. He doesn't hold back pointing out the fanaticism of Gandhi. This makes his positive points about Gandhi's nonviolent political methods clearer and more honest, having already named the superstitious elements what they were.
I think he was also trying to piggy-back. To the British of 1945, "Nationalism" meant Germany, Japan, Italy and their other recent enemies. Everyone knew they were irrational, destructive fanatics. I think he was warning of similar in British politics.
Orwell defined what he was meaning exactly, in the second paragraph...
> By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.
The sentences I quoted above resonate with me today, here in Scotland, pertaining to the Scottish National Party and especially with their rather foaming-at-the-mouth Nationalism. To see their behaviour - despite the 2014 Independence referendum in which the people of Scotland voted against breaking away from the United Kingdom - is to behold exactly the kind of irrational and in my view outright dangerous form of nationalism Orwell is writing about.
I consider myself a Scottish patriot, not a nationalist. I also consider myself a British patriot, not a nationalist, and it is for those reasons that I voted against Scotland becoming independent, breaking away from the UK, and it is also the reason why in my opinion the quicker the SNP lose their minority government in the Scottish parliament - they are being propped up by a handful of Scottish Greens who themselves demonstrate a propensity towards Communistic ideals hiding behind a thin veneer of "green" - the better.
The definition of "patriotism" was (I think) intended as a disarming "I don't mean you" to British moderates. It's interesting that this part still (as you say) resonates in British politics today. I don't think it's quite honest though.
I think patriotism as Orwell defines it here is a moderate nationalism. More sentimental than ideological, as moderate political positions often are. It's not really different to modern european "democratic socialism" or whatnot. It is very different to early 20th century socialism, which were very fanatical.
What I meant overall is that I think if he was writing about the french, he would have just said "fanatics" instead of light stepping around local political sensitivities.
I find this somehow hard to believe. I can buy that the British intelligensia was probably full of people who thought communism was a good philosophy. But outright supporting Russia as their homeland? That doesnt make sense, unless there was some huge ex-patriation of Russian intelligensia types to other countries?
The Soviets appeared to be an answer to those problems, as they had replaced the most reactionary of legacy states with a new thing. Also, comintern was a thing that invested a lot of resources into influencing western thinking.
What he meant is some flavour of what we'd call "ideologist" today, whether or not the ideology has much to do with nations or nation states. Communism was a major political movement all over europe (and the world) at the time. Most labour movements considered themselves communists.
Anglo-American liberalism was the biggest ideological faction, but Orwell doesn't seem to count that as "Nationalism." After that, communism probably was the biggest faction in universities in 1945.
And they are not Russians, or particularly care about the land or the people, it's a support of the Russian nation specifically.
¹ By irrationally, I mean what Orwell describes - defending actions they would never defend in other countries and ignoring inconvenient facts
So, if you asked 100 members of the ‘intelligentsia’ which form of nationalism they preferred, 95 might say ‘none thanks’, with the other 5 opting for Soviet communism.
And here Orwell is being "nationalistic" (in his sense of the word) over his preferred ideas, doing what he accused others of: "there is always a temptation to claim that any book whose tendency one disagrees with must be a bad book from a literary point of view. People of strongly nationalistic outlook often perform this sleight of hand without being conscious of dishonesty."
