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You can be proud of the good things your country has done or is doing. So long as you don’t forget the laundry list of dodgy shit it has also done.
I liken it to being proud of yourself as a person. You can take pride in yourself and your achievements but you should never forget all the times you fucked up.
first off, we need to drop this false dichotomy between arbitrary words like patriotism and nationalism. it’s not as simple as “good vs bad” or “moderate vs excess”. you’re talking about two completely different points of pride.
nationalism is pride in a shared identity between people; patriotism is pride in the state of a country. and you ask for my opinion: both are bullshit.
I like how someone referenced schopenhauer. I prefer Sartre. In “antisemite and jew” he wrote about how the bigot, by putting down another group, instantly promotes himself into a group of the chosen ones, the good guys – all without doing anything.
that’s what pride in a group identity often does. elevates yourself based on the accomplishments of others. it’s a substitute for character.
HOWEVER we cannot dismiss all collective pride this way. when a group we actually belong to and contribute to actually does something good, why not be proud of it? the trouble is, the more people you involve in this collection, the less any single individual needs to actually DO to contribute.
that’s why I honestly believe nationalism is less toxic than patriotism: because there can be many smaller groups (nationalism) within a country (patriotism).
the anarchist perspective is that a nation is a PEOPLE and the state is a parasite. patriotism is pride in the state, not the people. why be proud of tapeworms?
Patriotism is being proud of being born and grown up in a certain random place.
This is what is left for those who never achieved anything worthy of being proud of on their own.
It ain’t worth a damn to me. Maybe if your country doesn’t suck lol. There truly are things about my country I love. In some ways, we’re the best in the world. An American can be white, black, asian, hispanic, arab or anything else really. It’s a very beautiful thing to me. I find it deeply depressing that those in power want to strip this country of what makes it great. Also having no social safety net is not acceptable obviously. There’s far more I can shit on this country of mine for than I can praise it for right now. I sincearly hope that changes. I’d like to be proud to be American. I’ve always wanted that. Sadly, it’s never been a reality for me and millions of other Americans.
Nationalism (and by extension patriotism) was an amazing tool to bring people together in a nation, when coming from a past of small kingdoms, city states and similar smaller communities.
Now it’s done it’s job and it’s time we get past that.
The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which he shares with so many millions of his fellowmen. The man who is endowed with important personal qualities will be only too ready to see clearly in what respects his own nation falls short, since their failings will be constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.
Arthur Schopenhauer
It may a 200 year old quote, but the only thing that has changed is that we have since found even worse things to be proud of.
I am proud of my nation and its progressive, socialist nature, yet I am fully, and painfully so, aware of it’s shortcomings and problems.
But despite the problems, it’s extremely hard for me not to feel pride for the way we handle things within and without, especially in comparison to the rest of the world. We’ve been consistently at the top of the most socially progressive charts of the world, having also been denoted the worlds happiest country for over 5 years in row, and so on.
I do have my own prides, things I’m not ashamed to claim being very good at, and I do have a lot of very loud criticism against my nation too. But I remain overall proud just because we dare to be, against most odds, progressive and socialist.
I would defend my country, even picking up arms, because the chances are, the invader will simply be worse. Lead to worse overall situation here. Anyone surpassing us on either social or progressive counts, would be almost certainly not invading anyone, let alone us.
Maybe I am the fool the quote talks about, the good-at-nothing simpleton falling back to national pride for lack of any of my own. But I do not feel like one and I certainly have a lot more, explicitly outside the concept of a nation and this specific nation too, prides and accomplishments to be proud of.
I don’t think national pride is all that bad. I think it can be reasonable if the nation is best at its class on things most important and dear to you. Of course most national pride around the world is rooted on shitty stuff, and most nationally pride people usually being neo-nazi assholes, yet I still remain steadfast in my opinion that it need not be so.
It can be fine. I am sure of that.
The difference between you and the described “fool” is, that you are not inherently proud of your nation, but more like what you as a nation have accomplished (at least that’s what I interpreted from your words). The patriotic fool on the other hand is proud of much more stupid things he had nothing to do with. He takes pride in his language, the culture, his own town simply because he was born into it. The fool wants to stop all influences from outside, that may change the thing he takes pride in. He sees the world as a constant static structure that evolved and that should not be changed, ignoring that constant change just made things like culture the way they are.
You on the other hand said, that you take pride for your nation having a high standard of living, a good social system and such stuff. All of these have been earned through constant fight and you can be proud of winning this fight. You are also able to see flaws in the current system and want stuff to change.
It’ll fuck your country up real bad.
Patriotism is the little sibling of nationalism, and the boundaries are fluid. I will never understand why people are proud of other people’s accomplishments and make them their own. Or is it because people were shat on somewhere else in the world than everyone else? Makes absolutely no sense.
Have you ever played a team sport?
I have. And yet I never had the feeling that my club’s achievements were mine, unless I had contributed to them. And even then, I was just proud to have been part of the team with which I achieved the performance. I can differentiate very well.
And even then, I was just proud to have been part of the team with which I achieved the performance.
Isn’t that what the patriotic people experience as well?
They vote, they pay taxes, they’re sometimes politically active. From their point of view, they’ve contributed to the success of their country, and they’re proud of it?
They vote, they pay taxes, they’re sometimes politically active. From their point of view, they’ve contributed to the success of their country, and they’re proud of it?
Does that work the same way when the country performs its atrocities? Everyone becomes implicit in those crimes because they voted and paid taxes that is used to kill civilians abroad? Or it just applies for “feel good” reasons?
Just because you do what most people do, doesn’t validate being proud of other peoples hard work that actually bring change.
Absolutely correct.
I think most people who are sensible but claim pride for some collective achievement or team or whatever, do so outwardly mostly because it’d be tiring to always include a philosophy lecture about distinction and differentiating between one’s own and others’ achievements. When we think about it actively, we can realize the faults and the details and could put them in words, but who the fuck has the patience to go in depth about all that each time they state they are proud of their team, their friends, etc.?
It’s just easier to say I’m proud of team xyz and hope the other party has the mental facilities to understand that it’s not a simple matter when you break it to pieces and start philosophing about it, but it’s just convenient and more prudent not to go into details or full analysis mode on all that every time…
Only the gullible are proud of their country. The real patriots are critical of the mistakes of the country.
One can be proud despite its shortcomings. Nothing is perfect in this world. But there are things worth being proud of, despite understanding its flaws and being consistently critical of it as a whole.
I agree with you on this but with some nuance. This thinking is correct and should be used on individual level. However, time has shown us that most humans are stupid and will resort to herd mentality. So, the pride quickly turns into nationalism.
What does it even mean in this context? Pride? You didn’t do it, you were just born there and it was already done. I feel people mistake “pleased” or “happy” with “proud”.
Believe it or not, I’ve been a part of it since I was born. I didn’t just come to be in a vacuum. I’ve influenced the society as much as anyone, we work together to make it better, we are a team, we protest. We sign petitions. We vote. We talk and talk and talk and have kids that will, too, become a part of what we’ve worked hard for and against and with.
Being proud of the team, of yourself, or the fact that you with your team are actively succeeding in not becoming a fascist shithole like the US or Russia for example. It’s not nothing. It’s worth being proud of. And takes effort, work, input every single day of every single month of every single year.
Yeah. I’m proud of myself and everyone around me. But I’m also proud of what we’ve worked together to build. This country did not stay this way by itself. It’d be ruined by capitalism and fascism the second we, the people of this country, stopped fighting against it and making this nation something to feel proud belonging to.
Hey, fair enough, that seems pretty reasonable. If it’s an extension of the pride you feel in being a decent human being who makes his environment better for everyone and it doesn’t veer into jingoistic exceptionalism, I understand and condone it. 👍
Much of the time, patriotism leads to nationalism, and therefore xenophobia and racism. How could it not? If you think your country is great, you need to find ways to justify that beloef, and when facts don’t get the job done, the next steps are lying and stereotyping.
For decades, most of my life, the streets to avoid walking down, or pubs to visit, are those that year round, hang outlarge Union Jacks (UK flag) and especially those that exhibit the St Georges flag (England flag]. To many here the St Georges flag is sadly synonymous with Right wing thugs.
Dangerous.
This is a good commentary on it:
It’s good to want to improve the world around you, which can be given a label of patriotism. Going too far down that road leads to lots of unhappiness, though.
arbitrary bullshit, we’re just picking which words to like and dislike now. neither of those words mean what that comic says
In the long run it’s dumb and cringe.
Source: I’m American and old.
