On Patriotism
Monday, February 1st, 2010Seeing as we’ve lately had yet another Australia Day, with all its flag-brandishing, swearword-screaming and beer-spilling-on-train-floor (at least, that was the bit I saw), I’ve been compelled to give some thought to the subject of patriotism.
Patriotism can be loosely defined as “national pride”, and it is something that I have always found a bit hard to logically understand (although I can see some people’s need to have an object of pride to give their life meaning, whatever that object be).
Because, seriously, the country where you happen to be born is in no way chosen by you - it is an entirely random outcome. So why should you feel proud about it? Being proud of belonging to a certain nationality makes just as much sense as being proud of being 173.6 centimetres tall or of belonging to blood group A.
As for the “democratic” argument for national pride, i.e. “Look at us, we’re such a free country compared to such-and-such, we’ve got freedom of speech, sexual liberation and free and fair elections, etc. etc., so we can feel proud of our country because it’s so much better than such-and-such” - apart from sounding arrogant, this argument is excessively simplistic, failing to take into account possible advantages of other societies over one’s own.