Are you patriotic?

[Dovdimus Prime]

I'm well interested in the little differences between people in different countries. Part of the reason I spend so much time on here I guess.

So I'm gonna hit you all with some questions. First up, patriotism. Are you patriotic? What's your view on patriotism? If you are patriotic, what is it about being from your country that makes you proud or happy?

What do you dislike about being from your country? If you could be from another country, what would it be?

Huh???

[Ponk]

I am not patriotic at all. At least not in the way the word seems to be defined here in Finland. Somehow it's very much connected to war around here. Patriotism makes me think of neofascist idiots, but then again my opinions are quite strongly pacifistic. Quite a lot of Finns have this attitude that if a man doesn't go to the army then he has betrayed his country. OK, that used to be worse before, but still... I couldn't live with myself, had I went there.

There are things I like about Finland and things I don't. The best thing in my opinion is that the Finnish society won't leave anyone out. We have healthcare, education and all that. I like to pay a lot of taxes to get well-being for everyone.

But the weather here is something I can't stand. Couple of decent months during the summer, if we're lucky. The rest of the year is wet and cold. The winter in the northern Finland is something more tolerable, because it snows unlike here in Helsinki where it just sleets.

Anyway, I find it quite difficult to think of being from another country. That's of course because I haven't lived anywhere but Finland and this feels like home to me. But no, I wouldn't die for it and I definately wouldn't kill for it.

[ian-s]

As fond as I am of dirt and rocks and stuff, I can’t say I love my country more than any other part of the earth. I also find it strange taking pride in the achievements of strangers who happen to live within the same geographic or political borders. That said, when travelling or speaking with people from overseas, I often embarrass myself by going on about how great my country is.
I think the underlying drive behind patriotism is genetically programmed. Protect and promote genes similar to your own (individuals from your tribe), this causes humans to instinctively clump together in ever increasing groups.
I have 5 brothers and sisters, 2 live in Brisbane, 1 in Oklahoma, 1 in London and 1 in Tokyo. I have no desire to live anywhere else.

[mosc]

When I was a child I was very patriotic. I was taught that America was the Land of The Free. The Freedom was what America was all about. Superman was for Truth, Justice and American Way; Freedom and Justice For All.

Now I'm not a child anymore and I realize that the United States represents the best and the worst of humanity. I've learned that America is not the name of this country. I still love my country, but I'm ashamed of what it does quite often. It's hard to get enthusiastic about slavery and the extermination of the Native American people, for example. Electing W is a bummer. But I'm proud of a lot too. Martin Luther King inspires me tremendously. Patriotic people seem to want to change things for the better.

I agree with Ian that patriotism is sometimes an ugly group superiority thing. In the USA, a part of the culture is being the biggest or the best. We get ridiculously involved in sports teams, but there is never any of the absurd violence seen in other countries.

The concept of the melting pot where people from all cultures is a great thing. In many ways, the US is a model for what must happen on the entire Earth. We will all have to live together.

So, I'm still patriotic, but not blindly. I don't feel being American makes you superior to anyone else. I believe in building an international community here with electro-music.com. I don't think we have to forsake our heritages in order to do that. The international community works best when everyone brings something of their culture with pride and dignity.

I meet people and make friends with people from all over. I've visited some of you in Norway and Holland recently. I'm proud of those countries too. I have picked up some strong feelings of national pride from you - not arrogance but pride. I identify with both of those countries now. I've learned a lot from my friends in Germany too. My mother of blessed memory hated Germany and the German people for the rise of the Nazis and for the holocaust. Now I have many German friends. I'm very impressed at how they are dealing with the ugly part of their history; they aren't hiding it. I think they are pretty realistic - very anti-militaristic. They recognize that Germany represents the best and the worst, and so does the United States to some extent. They are helping me deal with being an American.

I guess "are you patriotic?" is related to "do you love humanity?" I guess sometimes I'm ashamed to be human and sometimes I'm very proud of us. I feel more identity with humanity than to the United States. I look forward to feeling part of an inter-stellar civilization.

Sorry for the long post.

[seraph]

Italians are generally too individualist and disenchanted to bother being patriotic (of course there are exceptions). actually very often we tend to be "esterofili" meaning that we love everything coming from abroad, for example we have a few TV news speakers that are not Italian native speakers who speak Italian well but with an accent. I wonder if anywhere else in the world something like this could happen and listening to the TV news you can notice that very often English words are used instead of the Italian ones with the same meaning (often also mispronounced, which I hate). Many perceive anything "English" as cooler than Italian
you only see Italian flags around during the World Soccer Championship as long as the Italian team wins

[dnny]

i have never thought that finland would be something better than other countries - they say here :"that if you have born in finland you have won the lottery" well statistically yes but in all other means no.

i totally agree what Ponk wrote :

[diskonext]

Well spoken Mosc!

-diskonext

[mosc]

[Kassen]

I think the Netherlands are reasonably cool in many ways (even aside from pot and prostitution). It's just a shame that generally my country men look up to the U.S. in the wrong way.

Instead of going "hey, we have a delta too, let's import some Cajun cooking" they are currently all going "hey, we have innocent civilians too, let's also set up innefective checkpoints and while we are at it let's wiretap the hell out of everybody".

I visited quite a few places and figured out that it doesn't matter all that much where you are, what the laws are or what it looks like, at least not compared to who you have with you.

[elektro80]

No offense.. but I tend to remember this one when someone mentions patriotism:

[gsga]

I hate to be negative, but our healthcare is fucking mess and our foreign policy and current administration revolts me. We're the richest country in the world and we couldn't care less about the people dying in our own streets. But what's worse is the lack of caring/activism/outrage. Where's the revolution? We're being backed into a corner, our personal freedoms are being eroded, and what do we do about it? We go to work. We wave our flags. We watch people being bombed on tv.

We are good drones.

Did the concept of this 'melting pot' help us have compassion or understanding for other cultures? We act like we're living on an island. We don't understand other cultures, neither here nor abroad.

Am I patriotic? If this machine wasn't broken, maybe I would be. There's alot of beauty here and alot of people doing beautiful things, but it's fringe culture at best.

And that's too bad.

[Monkeyfinger]

For some fun check out this:
http://www.whitehouse.org/initiatives/patriot/index.asp
Register yourself as an American Patriot!

On the serious side, patriotism, at least in the USA, is a device of politicians to prey on the conscience of average citizens in order to control us better.

I haven't seen one person, in the name of American patriotism, that isn't trying to convince me to A) support killing foreigners, B) limit my individual rights, or C) give up more of my money through taxes.

And lately patriotism seems to verge on becoming a religious test.
Once again, that is my American perspective.

I lived in Norway for a year (2002-2003).
Keep in mind that in that time period, USA went from 9-11 and chasing Osama to invading Iraq.
After Feb/March of 2003 Norwegians were afraid to talk to me.
They assumed that because I am American that I was probably patriotic and automatically support these actions.
I had to assure many people I talked to there that my point of view wasn't that different from theirs.
I could understand why the US was invading Iraq.

The experience showed me what modern day patriotism means.
It results in a lot of talk about 'us' and 'them'.
I'm not as interested in political borders as I am in interesting and useful experiences with anyone good-natured.
I found a similar percentage of Norwegians that I would or would not want to be around as I find in Anyplace, USA.
That seems consistent for any country I've been to.

Divisions are for the divisive.

Patriotism gives support or justification that 10% of the world's population somehow deserves to use up a majority of the world's resources.
Patriotism has tried to convince me that the guy just like me in a foreign land doesn't deserve the same rights or his life is worth less than mine.
I am not patriotic.

[Kassen]

[zynthetix]

Quick note on revolutions....although I'm only analyzing France and Russia, it is my observation that revolutions happen when people are hungry. Starving, in fact. Despite general disagreement with the current administration and its actions, we are still pretty well fed in the US. But revolutions due to gas shortage and a staggering lack of public transportation systems....we'll see about that one in a few years.

Who was the philosopher who claimed to be "citizen of the world" when asked his nationality? I always get the founding Greek philosophers mixed up.

[v-un-v]

[elektro80]

I understand what Kassen is saying. This is a pretty complex issue and I am sure Kassen can dig up the proper references and weblinks and whatever.

This is about who owns what and how they own it, where the real money is going, investments and national debt. Kassen´s statement is of course controversial and I am sure it was meant that way too. There is however some truth in this statement, but if we seriously look into these issues then it will become pretty evident that Europe is in deep shit too.

[Kassen]

Well, it's a while since I read the "third world" statistic but, yeah, it should be out there. One of the defining things is a huge gap bewtween the rich and the poor.The debt thing is well known, a portion of that is also credit cards.

Suppose, you and me go work. We both get 10 gold pieces per hour. You work three hours, I work two. By noon we go out. You have 30 pieces in your pocket, I got 20. Who's richer? You. Ok.

Now I borrow 500 Pieces from the MoscBank. Now I got 520 gold pieces in my pocket and you still have 30. Who's richer now? Well, I'm certainly *feeling* richer! I'm gonna buy a suit of armour and a horse!

That's basically what the U.S. is doing, except on a larger scale. You can't keep doing that indefinately; at some point the people who saved will want their money back and at theat point there will be a huge problem. The U.S. has the largest debt in the world and it's growing very, very fast. It's mainly based on that that I say it's the poorest country; it simply has the least money.

[Kassen]

And, yeah, it *IS* a fairl provocative statement and it's meant as such. True.

Alo; If you are amongst the world's largest nations then you can have a fairly large debt, but the problem is that nearly all citisens also have a debt. A fairly huge one.

One thing that made me wonder about the sanity of some of my oversea's fellow humans was this idea of a "credit rating" and determining a person's dependability on that. I for one do not have a credit rating at all; I don't borrow, I don't have a credit card.

[gsga]

Kassen, I'm a little short this week. Can I borrow $100? I swear I'll pay you back.

[Kassen]

Sure.

But what if you come back next week?

What if in fact the amounts you borrow start rising twice as fast as your income rises? We are not talking about a few bucks untill next weeks here. We are talking about increasing amounts of money, entire generations structureally spending more then they make.

There's nothing wrong with borrowing a few bucks every now and then, but there is something wrong -to me- with basing a entire culture on it. By the time you start basing some metric for dependability on the way in which people borrow then you have a problem, IMHO.

There has to be some backing somewhere.

[Dovdimus Prime]

Thanks for derailing my thread, Kassen. For a minute there I thought noone was going to do it. I was preparing to stomp off and sulk!!

I'd be interested to learn more about this claim of yours. I understood that countries had credit ratings too. America must be servicing its debts in some way, otherwise surely it couldn't borrow any more...?

Reading this thread has taught me that people from different countries do seem to think the same, regardless of individual national cultures. [At least educated, white, middle-class males....!]

I had thought that cynicism about patriotism was quite a British thing, but clearly not. Is this homogeneity of culture a good thing or a bad thing?

[elektro80]

The debt clock:
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/


Today the debt of the US is:

[elektro80]

Great fun: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-10-03-debt-cover_x.htm

[elektro80]

[Kassen]