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Comment by bluthund | Hacker News Reader

We can circle back to the psycho analysis later if you so desire, but I'll be sticking to the topic at hand for the time being.

You seem to have made a connection between nationalism and being furious about other people. I respectfully disagree that there is a necessary relationship there.

I have no ill will against other people. I would like people who share my culture to govern me, and I would not like people of my culture governing people of a different culture. They can govern themselves and we can govern ourselves. We can share ideas, trade, sport, etc., But multiculturalism within borders is an inevitable failure and globalism is an inevitable failure

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I find that despite my national background, there are tons of people in my country whose ideas and principles I don't share, and lots of people from other countries/cultures that I would team up with anytime.

Drawing a line primarily along cultural lines means ignoring or downplaying all of the other lines that other people might find similarly important or more so.

Why would I bias my decisions about people over other people just because they grew up within a few hundred kilometres of me? Why would I prefer helping a bunch of deadbeats from my own country over a bunch of promising bright people from halfway across the world? Because they'll stand up for me in return?

Because it's always one team against another? Fuck teams. There are my immediate friends, and outside of that I'll fight only for principles, not arbitrary teams. Everyone's a different person in their own right. Everyone deserves to be treated as who they are, not where they're from. (Cue Backstreet Boys.)

Having written this, I think it's worth pointing out the main flaw that I see in nationalism: it's that it uses culture and nations as a proxy for principles, as opposed to digging for the actual principles underneath.

As an example, I stand for freedom of speech, in the form of a diverse, largely independent set of publishers and authors that allows me to make up my own mind by exposing me to different viewpoints. Many Western countries have a better track record at this than authoritarian countries. But this doesn't mean that I'm on Team "The West" - if my country drops this value, I'd rather drop my country than my values.

If my country thinks that skin color or wardrobe of a person is more important than what that person is saying, I'd rather drop my country than team up against that person.

If my country decides that Islamic Law or autocratic dictatorship is a better form of government than democracy, I'd rather drop my country than abandon my principles.

It's great to be in a shared space where you agree with everyone. The question is, when you eventually disagree (because you don't get to choose what your neighbors think, and because nationalism is just a proxy for actual values), then are you going to follow your principles, or do you let your nation and culture dictate what your principles should be?

>the main flaw that I see in nationalism: it's that it uses culture and nations as a proxy for principles, as opposed to digging for the actual principles underneath.

I think the problem that you are going to run in to is that culture and nations as a proxy for principles works pretty well since those things are highly correlated. Unless you have a strong civic identity that aggressively assimilates and ensures respect of those civic norms, you have an inevitable clash that just becomes a question of scale.

>If my country decides that Islamic Law or autocratic dictatorship is a better form of government than democracy, I'd rather drop my country than abandon my principles.

In your hypothetical, how exactly would this situation come about? You should be able to venture a guess.

> Unless you have a strong civic identity that aggressively assimilates and ensures respect of those civic norms, you have an inevitable clash that just becomes a question of scale.

I'd like to suggest multicultural cities such as Toronto as an example that preserving cultural backgrounds and integrating with the rest of society aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. You have a broad mix of people from (among others) European, East Asian, South Asian and Middle Eastern backgrounds here and while all of the usual discussions are alive and well (left vs. right, urban vs. suburban, immigration vs. bubbling), people's cultures are just not the main issue dividing people. You'd think that with a lot of Muslim immigrants, Canada would have larger problems with value differences, but guess what, most people are just people and want a good life for themselves and their families. Nothing new here, move along.

The point is that full-on assimilation isn't necessary. Celebrate shared values. Celebrate diverse backgrounds and differences, too. I don't have to tell a Muslim woman that she can't wear religious clothing, just like I don't like it if her husband tells her the opposite. I can just grab food with the two of them and discuss tech, ethics, religion and whatever, just like with regular people, because they are regular people. The kids just see a lot of different ways of people living their lives and learn that it's okay to be different.

> In your hypothetical, how exactly would this situation [Islamic Law / autocratic dictatorship] come about?

Recent history suggests that there is a template: a politician gets voted into office, gets drunk on power, finds a common enemy and sells it to the people, changes elections and eventually the constitution to remain in power, kills the independent press, persecutes opposition leaders and intellectuals with dangerous ideas.

Turkey and Hungary are well on their way. Russia has arrived. Iran and China went the revolution route, that works too, although probably requires more of a flawed system to begin with.

> I would like people who share my culture to govern me, and I would not like people of my culture governing people of a different culture.

When did this ever happen in history? People diverge all the time, that's how we have so many cultures.

>People diverge all the time, that's how we have so many cultures.

Lightly categorized in so called country's?

Globalism is inevitable, you cannot stop it. You should rather get used to it. The fact that you get anxious by ideas penetrating your culture means that globalisation works. It is like my Romanian grandfather telling me how bankers should have been punished in 2008. Which would have never and it will never happen because that's how the world works. The alternatives are far too costly and our global capitalism does not allow it. Get used to it, neighbor.

>Globalism is inevitable, you cannot stop it.

If corona told us anything, then this is probably not true anymore.

Only death is inevitable and even that is not that certain.

I am saying this as a person, who likes the science fiction level of species level organization ( vs geographical nation-state ), where we pay with universal credits and basically have few of the issues inherited from the olden days of 2021.

But I dream.

Yeah just hope your not a belter ;)

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