Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Nationalities

Is nationality really that important? Does it define us? Did it become an inherent part of our lives from which we can't be separated? Why?

Personally I don't think it matters at all. Sure, your cultural surroundings have influenced who you've become and probably also how you behave. But I don't feel like I belong to a country, I don't raise flags and I also don't think there's anything wrong with that. In words of Virginia Woolf:
"As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world."

I think nationality is too often used only to enhance somebodies importance or insignificance. To make a bigger gap between "us" and "them". Here's how:

Sports - I don't really watch sports, I like doing them. But how come that winning a game makes us feel we overruled the country of the other team? Does our educational system suck less because of that? Are we more happy with our government? Of course the true sport spirit says, it's all about participating, not winning. But then again nobody really likes to be a loser, right?

Death - I can't really understandf why is it so important to stress that none of Slovenians (or any other nationalities) have been killed during the plane crash. As if their lives would be more important than lives of other people. What is really the purpose of this information? To calm down potential relatives of people who might be on that plane? Don't you think they would be informed already and probably not by the news? To calm down the others, that there is not any less of us? What?

While we are mourning over death of "our" important citizen which we knew mostly from the newspapers, we forget thousands that are being killed every day on the other side of the globe. Is their death somehow less significant, because they didn't manage to achieve anything "important" while they were dieing over water and territory?

Celebrities - Everytime someone discovers something important or makes an entrance to public sphere, whether a pop star or a scientist, often we hear that their grandparents were e.g. half Polish, or they studied in the capital of this and this country. Like we would want to pin a part of their achievements to our country. To prove we are somehow connected to great minds. Of course we are not so eager to share this joy when it comes to e.g. killers. Nobody wants to brag about "their" socipaths.

So according to my experience, nationalities are mostly about US and THEM. I don't think there is THEM at all. I think it's only us. And we all matter.

4 comments:

Petra said...

Amen.

Dober post. :)

Nick Taylor said...

A sem te mal navdusil za to temo :D jah, ljudje smo vsi, ampak kulturne razlike so tako velike in povzrocijo tako razlicne vidike sveta da jih je po mojem tezko ignorirati!

Karmen said...

pravzaprav sem že neki časa razmišljala o tem...

Se strinjam, kulturne razlike so in verjetno vedno bodo. Nima jih smisla ignorirati, potrebno jih je sprejeti.

Ampak kultura je nekaj drugega kot nacija. In poveličevanje ene je kot manjvrednosti kompleks - zgolj slab nadomestek za pumpanje ega.

Jotaeater said...

bravo, I agree completely!