Great info. I'm especially eager to see the national identities diminishing greatly. They're as bad as religion.
Query what the dissolution of national identity does to the modern welfare state. Can we maintain that when people feel more allegiance to their social class or profession than to their countrymen?
My family emigrated away from the sub-continent, which has a deep-seated culture of elevating class bonds above national ones. And in places like India you see wealthy people living in enclaves treating the working class around them like a different species. I'm frightened that a decline of nationalism and populism in the US could see a move in the same direction.
Did you just put nationalism in a good light by comparing it with classism? First of all, the two are not necessarily opposed and often go together.
Also this is a false dilemma. Humans can live without a group identity or identify as living beings instead of being a "proud $skin_color $religion $nationality $gender".
It's not far-fetched to say that this could prevent a lot of social conflicts and wars. Can someone prove me wrong?
Human beings are fundamentally social creatures. Consider the ritual of meeting someone for the first time. People grill each other trying to figure out what they have in common. "Oh, how do you know $PARTY_HOST?" Oh, are you from Chicago too? How about the Cubs this year, huh?"
I do agree that the modern welfare state would likely be difficult to maintain without national identity.
We used to live in paradise but then man was corrupted and if we don't repent fast enough we'll be doomed to eternal damnation.
"Birth control? Just stop having sex when you don't want a kid."
"Carbon sequestration? Just stop being so wasteful."
Given that, I'll leave the topic to rest.
I think you may wish that was the case, but the evidence for this is rather lacking.
Even the people who think they identify that way actually identify as people who identify that way and freely indulge in "othering" the people who choose a different identity basis.
The rich people and most importantly rich companies are basically a class on their own and their look after themselves on global scale. Their profit and their power is distributed. Nationalism however stop at the border allowing larger than country entities to play a social race to the bottom between different countries. Everyday the fraction of wealth that is stuck by borders diminishes meaning regardless how much solidarity you have for your countrymen the pot of national money is getting smaller.
Not that I have a solution and I don't really disagree with you or agree to GP. Just some counter example: Socialism that looked after working class across all of Europe did shape the social fabric of Europe and is arguably better than the US version. Nationalism, as in the case of Brexit or in France, Austria, Belgium, Holland is difficult to see in a positive light. Sure all those movement do the talk about caring for the little man but their policies are all clearly on the dismantling of the welfare state, not strengthening it.
We're already there, we just don't yet see it for what it is.
Yesterday I watched a man on the phone while paying for his goods at a convenience store. The cashier spoke to him several times, he completely ignored her in favor of his phone. He made no sign of apology, it was literally like she wasn't there for him.
And of course, she had to keep smiling because that is her place as a customer service provider.
It would be one thing if this were isolated, but (anecdotally, of course) I only see it increasing. We're already at that point where some, at least, fail to consider the working class around them at all.
Certainly it's possible that some of the situations I've seen are of that type of origin - but IMO if you're interacting with a live human it's not an excuse. "I'm sorry , I just got terrible news" takes about two seconds to say.
I don't know, I see very little that could excuse the behavior. If someone is able to get into the store and conduct a transaction, then that person is generally able to acknowledge the person assisting him or her on a minimal level as a human.
> "I'm sorry , I just got terrible news" takes about two seconds to say.
But the wherewithal to do so in that circumstance is considerably less available!
I don't know that we've established that class actually paid a role. Do we expect he wasn't simply so oblivious that he'd also not have noticed a peer trying to get his attention?
My gut reaction to national identity is "gross", but having seen the alternatives (personal identity politics), I'm starting to think that national identity can be quite useful, especially to counteract the natural entropy in a multiethnic, liberal democracy.