On Fri, 3 Aug 2001, Lawrence wrote:
> Is there a place for some of what people refer to when the refer to
> nationalism? Loyalty to place? Loyalty to one's culture? Loyalty to the
> traditions one was brought up with? The world is full of many cultures. I
> can't imagine a world free of nationalism unless the world was wholly
> homogenized such that only one culture existed. Nationalism, as bad as it
> is, seems like a natural extension of loyalty to culture, tradition,
> religion, and language. It seems odd to me so say, as was said in an earlier
> post, that it's a tool of the ruling class. It seems to grow up rather
> naturally from people's comfort with what they know and distrust of what
> they don't.
>
Nationalism and the modern state are not "natural extensions" of anything. I think it's useful to keep in mind that humans survived quite nicely on the planet for many millenia without any social organizations like the modern nation state. People can have a sense of place and culture without nations. --So why have nations become so important to everyday life that people treat them as "natural"? Because they facilitate the economic exploitation of workers. Allegiance to a nation state is allegiance to oppression, injustice, and inequality, regardless of the purported "democratic" values of the nation.
Miles