Identity is aquired naturally. National Identity isn’t.
In other systems our core identity might be city, or village, or lake, or mountain range, or tribe, or class, or job, or beliefs, or culture, or relgion, or clan, or langauge, or dialect etc.
National Identity (Nationalism) is a rather new thing to be mainstream. Only a couple centuries.
Nationalism as an ideology is relatively new, identity and sentiment tied to a state and shared cultural grouping is very old and it’s actually quite debated when you could really say it evolved.
Maybe this is too idealistic, but I strongly believe that instead of identifying with one arbitrary group or another, perhaps we should aim to identify as human or even as part of the nature itself.
Identity is aquired naturally. National Identity isn’t.
In other systems our core identity might be city, or village, or lake, or mountain range, or tribe, or class, or job, or beliefs, or culture, or relgion, or clan, or langauge, or dialect etc.
National Identity (Nationalism) is a rather new thing to be mainstream. Only a couple centuries.
Nationalism as an ideology is relatively new, identity and sentiment tied to a state and shared cultural grouping is very old and it’s actually quite debated when you could really say it evolved.
For example:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism_in_the_Middle_Ages
And if you ever want to fluster a classical studies professor, ask them whether they consider Roman identity to be nationalism in front of a peer.
Maybe this is too idealistic, but I strongly believe that instead of identifying with one arbitrary group or another, perhaps we should aim to identify as human or even as part of the nature itself.