Nationalism
If you’ll excuse this guy’s French, he’s making an excellent point, one that had an attraction for me even as a small child.
We boys of the William Penn Charter School in Philadelphia were part of the so-called “Interacademic League,” consisting of six similar private schools in the area, and, of course, we had a main rival (Germantown Academy). There was a certain understanding that we really didn’t like “GA” and its student body which, even as a lower schooler, I found ridiculous. I once asked a teacher, “Are we to suppose the kids who go to GA are somehow inferior to us? That’s they’re not as fine people, or that they’re less intelligent? Doesn’t that strike you as an incredibly juvenile and unkind belief?” (I’m sure these were not the actual words I used at the time.)
This type of loyalty at the school level is a terribly stupid idea, as it teaches children that life is about superiority over, exclusion from, and competition against others. Having said that, it’s quite benign indeed compared to what happens in the adult world, with its guns, bombs, policing, and the economic forces that separate great wealth from entire populations that are starving and diseased.
Perhaps if we all got out on a better start, we wouldn’t wind up with our racism, our religious bigotry and our indifference to others’ suffering.
A sustainable civilization, if we are to get there, will be rooted in the notion that everyone is born with equal rights to the pursuit of ends of our own choosing, and that small, arbitrary differences between us are of no consequence.
Craig,
Spoken like a true internationalist!
Did you know back in the 1960’s a young William Shatner made a movie filmed entirely in Esperanto?
Hey, that’s a great idea for a guy like you. ‘Esperanto’ has been around since 1887 and was invented and touted as an international language to eliminate the dominance of English and eliminate war, poverty, racism, inequality, nationalism etc through language.
Despite being adopted by the UN, Esperanto hasn’t really taken on with only about 63,000 speakers.
I remember when, as a young school boy, I tried to impress an older blond folk singer who performed a local ‘espresso’ cafe, by learning a couple of phrases of Esperanto.
I eagerly awaited until she had finished singing “Kumbaya” and “Micheal row the boat ashore” and regaled her with my two Esperanto phrases, in the hope this would impress her with my sophistication and hip credentials.
Sadly, my command of Esperanto failed as the singer had a larger and much older boyfriend who smoked funny smelling cigarettes.
Alas, that night I became a cynic,forgot my hopes of internationalism, universal brotherhood traded in my desert boots and Duffle coat and folk record collection (‘cept for Bob Dylan and Phil Orchs) and the following week saw me enjoying a Friday night performance of The Animals, Who and and Aussie band called ” Easybeats” up London’s West End.
Less idealism, but females were more attuned to my social and linguistic aspirations!
Still, somewhere I probable have a old copy of ” Teach yourself Esperanto” if you’d like to borrow it?