Sampson

The definition of patriotism is literally feeling pride in your country. That penultimate paragraph is my point, ultimately humans have to work together and patriotism is so often invoked to drive people apart: There are way more things that define us than our nation and feeling pride in it just feels strange to me and yes I believe it inherently leads people to exclusionism.

I’m not sure on your point here though.Even if so, what does any of that have to do with patriotism and why is it any reason whatsoever of being proud of your country?

It’s not a bold claim to make. You are arguing it is “natural” for humans feel patriotic and that nations are natural things, that inherently means it is something that should be universal for all of humanity. If you admit that you’re looking at it from a purely English perspective then aren’t you disproving your own hypothesis that it’s natural? And English is an official language in many other countries besides England too. So it clearly can’t be language that you feel proud of your nation and inherently have more emotional attachment to someone from Plymouth than Dublin, Vancouver or Lagos if they all have English as their mother tongue. Of course I’m using obvious examples, because it helps give obvious demonstration to the debate. I don’t get your point here? Language does have very little to do with nationhood in 2024, because nationhood is just a level of governance. The majority of countries in the world have more than 1 recognised language and many have countless regional languages and many languages are spoken in multiple countries and billions of people speak multiple languages. Languages changes, culture changes and culture and language are not the same thing as a nation at all. That’s why I just can’t get my head round why anyone would be proud of their country and feel more affinity to the people within it regardless of class or anything else.

But this has always been the case. Even in England we had Celtic languages and English and it was only through years of prosecution that Celtic died or was forced out. In India or Switzerland or Papua New Guinea you have always had multiple languages. And most standardisation of language is extremely manmade and modern. Modern German for example has only been standardised in the past few of hundreds of years and those previously speaking Bavarian and Saxon likely would not have been able to understand each other. Then you have languages like Norwegian and Danish that are mutually understandable and branched off from one another relatively recent in human terms. Talking about language just kind of just emphasises that modern nations are unnatural and manufactured and that this idea they are some natural collection of cultural ideals of a group of people who are naturally more aligned than those in a neighbouring country just falls down as soon as you remotely look into it.

There’s loads of multi-lingual countries though where people can’t communicate with each other, some with tens or hundreds of languages and it’s 2024, billions of people can speak English. Language has very very little to do with nationhood and culture in 2024 and will only continue to have less and less to do with it.

I have an inkling you might be sealioning now and ignoring everything I’ve written. But to give you the benefit of the doubt, I’ll say it again: Nations are not just “updated versions of tribes” because they have nothing to do with caring about and protecting the people you know and working together which gives you an evolutionary advantage to getting food and to surviving in a hunter-gatherer society. I find the idea that you should inherently tie yourself to one person you have never met within your imaginary set of lines with an entirely different class, upbringing and living style than someone else you have never met with a similar class, upbringing and living style outside your imaginary set of lines to be entirely manufactured and an extremely recent invention (considering the history of humans as a whole) and detrimental to humanity as a whole. That “traditional borders” are a relatively extremely new and artificial invention and that we should be extremely conscious of that is my point. Humanity as a whole requires global understanding and solutions to problems being faced in 2024 and caring about short term national issues over global issues is extremely detrimental. And the fact that we have been able to manufacture the feelings of pride for landmasses spanning tens of thousands of miles with over a billion people suggests we should be able to manufacture pride in humanity as a whole and the earth as a whole, which would be far more beneficial to humanity if not essential to its very survival.

No it doesn’t, humans are hundreds of thousands of years old. Nations have existed for less than 1% of human history. Tribes of around 100 people are natural to humans, not nations of tens of millions. Favouring nations of that size over humanity as a whole is an extremely manufactured and recent invention. And if humans can successfully manufacture pride of nations spanning tens thousands of miles and containing over a billion people then it should be able to successfully manufacture pride of humanity and the earth as a whole and get rid of patriotism.

It doesn’t matter whether it had existed for centuries it’s still an unnatural invention. Religion has existed for way longer and has a far bigger influence on shared culture than nationdom but no one would consider it “natural”. I just chose Carlisle because it was near the border. Sure, but Stoke has a similar class structure and history to Leicester as similarly sized post-industrial cities which is my point. That isn’t the comparison you should be making it’s whether you are culturally closer to the multi-millionaire financiers in the city of London who have maids and don’t even know how to shop or the agricultural workers in rural Somerset who have never left the county than you do people in similar industries with a similar backstories to you in similar cities in Italy. Which I really don’t think anyone does if they actually interact with those people separately

But that isn’t a country is it? A country is just a relatively recent idea of a level of governance. It might be natural to have that connection to say Blaby, but what does that have to do with having an emotional connection to Carlisle or Dover? There might be something natural about about favouring a local area of land, but not something as huge as a country over favouring your continent or the earth as a whole. There’s absolutely nothing natural about someone having a closer emotional connection to Carlisle over Cowdenbeath (or Derry over Dublin if you’re considering the UK and not England) when you or your ancestors have never even been to Carlisle or Derry, that is all entirely manmade and contrived.

To me patriotism is one of the worst and most detrimental inventions of mankind and it’s a complete unnatural invention. Humans are tribal animals and it is totally natural to care more about protecting your friends and family for sure. But that’s supposedly a group of roughly 50-150 people we have genuine connections with not tens of millions. And I don’t buy the “shared culture” reasons either because so much of culture is based on class and the reality is your average postal worker in Leicester shares way more in common to an average postal worker in a similarly sized post-industrial city in Ireland, Germany or even Japan than he does some upper class multi-millionaire from the Home Counties who goes on about his nanny.

Still can’t believe on of the main arguments Farage used to trot out for Brexit was that people wanted to get closer ties to and try to get a trade agreement with America, as if they care about us. Our values are much closer to other western and central European countries than the US anyway and given we’re a small player nowadays in the geopolitical game, I’d far far rather that we side with the EU, despite some of its faults than with the US, Russia or China.

The problem is - it’s a common theme around the west that leaders have record low approval ratings. People automatically see candidates as bad now. You can romance how popular people like Tony Blair or Barack Obama were when they came to power but today they’d just be slaughtered and made to be unpopular by everyone else, because someone would find some quirk of their personality to focus on. It’s how divisive our politics have become - every candidate, be them Left, Right or Centre or anything in between is seen negatively and with negative approval rates.

You make it sound like that’s a good thing. “Disputed territories” is a euphemism. It’s a war of aggression, we shouldn’t be happy that one nation has just declared war on another then we settle for a peace where that nation takes territory off another. It shows Putin can just get away with it, NATO don’t really care enough and likely leaves other nations on the border of him on edge and no reason he wouldn’t just invade Ukraine again in the future anyway.

Usually like kurgzegagt for their science videos, this one is more of a didactic short story, but the animation is absolutely beautiful

Where did you see that? Frightening for the guy if his photo is being falsely shared

Ok that’s fair. I’ll change my post. I guess more will come out in the coming days

Shooter been named on sky news as Thomas Matthew Crooks.

Why should we? I care about watching decent football and seeing Leicester do well, couldn’t give a flying feck about which set of imaginary lines our managers or players’ parents happened to **** between tbh, no one chooses their nationality. Why should anyone care why English grassroots football is prioritised over French, Gambian or Brazilian grassroots football? If it helps human beings find an outlet why should we care which set of human beings it is?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cxw2k9dnjmno Orban pining to Russia. This democratic backsliding in Europe and the US does scare me.

Hope he get start to get his life and career back on track now although I doubt he’ll ever recover mentally from knowing he accidentally killed someone and having to face the horrendous anxiety of trail knowing the state deliberately withheld evidence against you.

Just been reading about Project 2025 on bbc and Wikipedia. Surely hope that is a conspiracy and the checks and balances that hold up democracy would work to stop it. https://bbc.com/news/articles/c977njnvq2do

I agree with most of your post but will also add that according to yougov, immigration was only a huge issue at the election amongst older voters, especially pensioners, it was actually the issue with the most notable age gap in terms of importance and wasn’t really a big issue amongst under 50s. It was comfortably behind climate change and not much more than issues like the relationship with the EU and education amongst the under 50s, all of which got very little airtime during the election.

I agree with what you’re saying but I think you overestimate why the average British person goes on holiday tbh. Most just go to party, get some sun/beach weather.

Yeah, it’s a weird argument US is basically as big as the EU. I would imagine most UK citizens have only ever been to the UK and EU too and if UK had adopted national ID cards like the rest of the EU when it was a member I imagine an awful lot of UK citizens would never have had reason to get a passport before Brexit either. You have no reason to travel outside the US if you live there, going to Greece or Spain on holiday as someone living in the UK is only like going to Florida to someone living in Oregon or something. I agree I much prefer the values and work/life balance and general values in Europe but I think the travel thing is a bit unfair

I struggle to get my head round the free will debate tbh. Maybe I’m wrong but as far as I can see, we’re all just bags of meat driven by our dna and inputs in our life throughout our life. It seems very unlikely to me we aren’t just slaves to how the neurons in our brain fire and the way they fire is governed by our dna and previous experiences. And that absolutely all of us would do immoral things if put in certain situations, with certain life backgrounds and a certain amount of social pressure was applied. I remember a YouTube video with Neil DeGrasse Tyson where they said it will probably take 100s of years for the prison system to governed by “compassionate determinism”. Society absolutely needs to protect the rest of us from people who are a genuine danger for others, but I’ve never really understood the “prison as punishment” argument tbh, it feels like a very outdated way of how humans function.