If being proud to be American makes me a fool, then let me just say-
Thank you Korey, for setting me straight on that.

Thats what I love about the nexus, I learn something new about myself every time I log on!

edit: Nvm

Sorry If I offended you, everyone does have foolish aspects though, so don't take it too hard buddy!

Its all good brother, Ice House is a happy camper as well as extremely understanding and respectful of the opinions of others.

I get where you are coming from.

I have more than my share of foolish aspects.

Maybe believing in my country is one of them.

One planet, one people. Globalism, not nationalism.

I don´t think that believing in your country is foolish on itself: the fact that there are at least SOME places on earth where people don´t immediately start cutting eachothers throat, the very moment a disagreement arises is definately worth something. In russia, nigeria or pakistan, any simple disagreement can cost you your life and that of your relatives as well.

A peacefull society is something worth cherishing, and worth fighting for as well. People who disagree with this, simply don´t know what they´re talking about.

It would be foolish to believe that americans (or europeans) are the only people who´re entitled to live in such luxurious circumstances. But you don´t seem to be the type of guy who doesn´t grant this very precious thing to others.

You don´t seem to be an egoistic or envious type of guy at all. And you´re smart enough not to buy any of the cheap political rhetorics that usually tends to come with patriotism.

So i don´t think that believing in america is foolish. Believing in american politic´s would come closer to foolishness (or an unworldly sort of naivity). But that´s realy a different thing.

Nice post poly.

BTW I think the being patriotic is OK, but when it's taken to the extreme it pretty well sucks.

The real high road IMHO is to become a citizen of the Earth first and your country second.

This.

To answer the OP:

No (with a caveat)
No
Ha! Hell No.
No hate... love them all more or less (even when they are f*cking up big time).

Nationalism is retrograde IMO. It may have served a purpose at some point, but the human race is clearly entering its global phase now. Globalization, at this point, is not a what if, but merely a question of how we go about it. Right now it is the multinational corporations and banks that are leading the way... to our detriment.

If the human race hasn't killed itself off in 1000 years, I am 99.9% sure we will have a global governance system and a resource based economy.

"The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion."
- Thomas Paine (greatest thinker of the Founding Fathers era)

Old Thomas Paine got it pretty much spot on with that one.

That said... I have some pride for California.

It has a lot of shitty things about it, but it is also an impressive place full of ambitious and impressive people. Every nation on Earth is represented... and usually by their best and brightest. The prettiest girl in any given village on any given continent will usually make her way to LA at some point. Same goes for the best musician in the village, best filmmakers, best dancers etc. etc. The place is literally built on dreams.

Computers were (and still are) developed in our Silicon Valley... and the entire worldwide psychedelic scene owes a huge debt to Haight Ashbury, the Grateful Dead, and the Merry Pranksters.

California is not a nationality, but a frustrating mix of a progressive model for global culture/ forward thinking... and a repressive police state with swaths of backward agribusiness zones and a ridiculous amount of superficial plastic fluff, replete with track houses and overnight pop up communities.

California has gone from one of the wildest and most remote places in the US to the center of the world in many respects... and it did this basically overnight. The last "wild" native american "Indian" Ishi was found in California many decades after there were none left anywhere else in the US. Despite being far and away the biggest state population wise, there is still a great deal of wilderness in California. We still have bears, mountain lions, condors and Sequoia trees (the most massive living thing on Earth).

The thing that gives me some real flashes of pride is that if something is new or cool, there is a very good chance it came from California. I have lived in many countries around the world, and in every one... no matter how much the people disliked America and Americans, they basically to a one loved, respected and (often) idolized California. This is no accident IMHO.

Even still, my foolish pride in CA embarrasses me and I pine for a day that we are all just humans on a unified Earth.

Amen and a great reference!

nationalism is useless, we are all brothers and sisters with the animals and humans alike

Nationalism doesn't have to be retrograde. Not only did it serve a purpose when it first developed, it continues to serve a purpose as part of the foundation for what has come after. Healthy pride in one's groups, including countries, helps preserve cultures and the sense of places being different from one another. This is part of the problem of corporation globalization, the homogenization issue. Do we really want Thailand to look like Paris to look like Ohio, all with a convenient Starbucks?



Unless we've reverted to a permanent tribal stone-age, unable to access easily worked metals that were already long ago stripped from the easy to reach depths of the earth's surface. (This is the scenario laid out in Hank Wesselman's Spiritwalker.)



Your description was beautiful... I'm also a person oriented more toward a global perspective but with some remaining California pride :-) I really wish our state would continue to progress and make me more proud, but it seems like we're slipping instead.

I'm not sure about this. The attacks in Libya & Egypt yesterday have flared up a very nascent nationalism in me. I'm still very much against nationalism in principle... but the idea that people attack the US because we have freedom of speech (to an extent) and that an Egyptian filmmaker could make his critique of Islam film in California both sickens me and angers me. That anger is the basis for the nationalistic feelings that I see in distorted and grotesque forms in über patriotic militia, xenophobes, right wing fascists and isolationists.

The quandary here is that the starkest representations of evil we have witnessed tended to be expressions of nationalism. The NAZI party was the embodiment of nationalism gone awry.

I think your fear that cultures will disappear is only justified in part. Europe, for example, has not lost their very distinct cultures by becoming the EU and one of the most globalized zones on the planet. Germans will never be French despite sharing a border, a history (each being almost 1/3rd of the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne), religious affiliations and more. There is no danger that the Dutch will lose their Dutchness and become like Spain... or that the Irish will wake up one day and be Italian.

Of course, on the other side of the coin... you do see a lot of homogenization around the world. Embarrassingly, the bulk of it seems to be the rest of the world becoming more like Orange County. No offense to the OC, but there are far cooler areas of California to ape... far cooler areas of SoCal even.

My experience, though, is that a lot of this is by choice in the people.

I used to be part of an organization that was dedicated to preserving languages. We have lost 60% of the world's languages in about 100 years and are set to lose 50% of what is left in the next 30. And yet, time and time again... I would find that these languages were being lost on purpose. Not always, but in 80% of the cases I observed, the elders were purposefully not teaching the language to their kids and forcing them to learn the lingua franca (usually Spanish or English) because they wanted them to have more opportunities in life.

This is rough, but at some point you realize that you can not force people to preserve their cultures if they don't want. Anthropologists and linguists can rush around the world and do their best... but they work too slowly. And, meanwhile, good chunks of human discovery, wisdom and ingenuity fall by the wayside. People can not be forced to continue to make local fermented millet mash in Africa when they prefer to drink German beer.


Yes. That is also a possibility... though probably not from lack of metals as much as from a cataclysm that only kills off 90% of us or so. Asteroid strike, supervolcano, nuclear winter etc.

I should have said that in 1000 years we will either be extinct, a global unified human race that has spread to the stars, or isolated tribal remnants scratching out subsistence in a hostile environment.

I vote for option #2. Note there is no option for the continued existence of today's nation-states model. (OK, if the cataclysm happens in 200 years... it is possible the tribal post-apocalypse might have progressed into the nation-state period by then.)

I still vote for option #2.



Anyway, glad to meet another progressive, global minded Californian... even in the virtual. California Über Alles!