On the long way to Guayaquil my wife and I got talking about a plethora of topics as we usually do. One of them, however, is still lingering in my head as I'm sitting at the gate waiting for the flight attendants to begin calling people in: Nationalism.
I remember as a kid learning the actual lyrics to the national anthems I was supposed to sing. Being of dual nationality, I had a way to compare, if you will, how morally distorted the songs were.
As a matter of fact I remember vividly asking my mother about a part of the Ecuadorian anthem that truly rubbed me the wrong way. Keep in mind, I'm a little kid, but even then intuitively I felt there was something off about these lines.
"Dios miro y acepto el holocausto, y esa sangre fue germen fecundo"
The translation would make any person tilt their head like confused dog:
"God observed and accepted the holocaust, and the blood served as fertilizer"
At some point in time a teacher of mine tried to use the whole "You need to analyze in context" defense, but as you might guess, the answer was never enough for me. If you put sand in my sandwich, I don't care how much mayonnaise you slather on it later.
All that said, I do see why Nationalism is a thing. I even see why it's important, even if I don't like to admit such a thing.
We are, above most things, tribal creatures, and as such we require ways, mechanisms to identify members of our own tribe. We may belong to many tribes, but that complexity of conversation is probably better left for another day.
On the other hand, however, this mental mechanism that makes us like tribes, need tribes, and tribe chiefs. A mechanism that surely evolved from a primitive human figuring out how to not die so easily through trial and error. This "refined" mechanism is, for all intents and purposes, easy to hack.
My point:
Our political appointees guided with a playbook taught to them by those who came before them, know all too well how to use our tribalistic tendencies and turn us into blind nationalists.
They use this "trick" if you will, to push us into wars, and I'm using the word war very broadly here. Since there are battles fought these days using solely information.
So maybe, these ideas should be revised by all of us to the point of them becoming historic relics for us to observe from a distance. Meaning our national identities cannot, and I argue should not, override critical thinking and nuance.
Of course, there is no way for me to find out what this man in this now historical picture was thinking, but I can guarantee you he wasn't buying any of it.
I sincerely believe that if more and more people would wake up to this reality, this psychological weapon, because that's the best descriptor at this point, more of us would be willing to stay still as other lift their arms in blind obedience.
Think about how many times we've been dragged into conflicts for the sake of the elites. Think about how many times they sold us lies disguised as "love for our country" to get us to agree to things of absolutely no benefit to us and the ones that we love.
My conclusion is simple:
Fuck nationalism!
