Anyone with the ability to even marginally gauge the spirit of the times will have noticed the evident escalation in the clash between secular, rationalist philosophy, and faith-based religious world views. The current political climate clearly demonstrates how much the influence of religion has grown, leading to this heated exchange of words between the two camps. Rationalists contend that the decisions, values and beliefs among society should be based on reasonable, critical thinking, and not on unfounded assumptions and superstitions, as has been the case as far back as anyone cares to remember.
Whilst the debate over the controversial role of religion continues to rage on, there exists an equally illogical, harmful, mainstream viewpoint that has yet to be sufficiently challenged: that of patriotism.
Certainly, patriotism has been subject to
criticism in the past, but compared to the vociferous denunciation that religion has received, it has gotten off relatively lightly.
It is intensely dispiriting to think that, all across the globe, generation after generation has been brought up to believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is their country alone that is the best and most righteous; that
their country first and foremost is the one which is worth dying for, and ultimately, killing for -- regardless of the fact that it is sheer coincidence alone that they happen to be born in that particular country at all. It is safe to presume that a woman in the midst of excruciating labour is not going to be worrying about geopolitics, is it not? Yet somehow, this trivial matter of circumstance has been deemed a good enough motive to convince huge numbers of people to devote themselves entirely to the preservation of imaginary boundaries, originally drawn up by pompous rulers, and to the belief that all other countries beyond those fictional borders are inferior to their own.
Now, there are those who would scoff at this definition of patriotism. They might accuse me of misrepresenting what patriotism is ‘truly’ about. They might say that I’ve failed to understand the underlying meaning of patriotism altogether. They might even suggest that being a mongrel half-breed, I have no right to say anything on the subject
(for shame!). Fully expecting such accusations, I’ve decided to offer my own personal critique on both the arguments in support of patriotism, and the methods by which it’s sustained.
The most common, reactional and downright cretinous patriotic sentiment expressed is that same old assertion, “my country stands for freedom and/or justice”. Although it’s easy to see that such proclamations are rooted in knee-jerk egotism and wishful thinking, let us pretend, for argument’s sake (well, what other sake?), that this is some misguided attempt at making a
factual statement.
In order to assess the validity of such a claim, we would have to establish precisely what is meant here by ‘freedom’ and ‘justice’. It would seem, at a passing glance, that these terms are being postulated as moral absolutes. If that is the case (and I daresay that it is), then the claim is quite blatantly false. Not only is absolute freedom unachievable because government governs; it is unachievable because intrinsic conditions simply do not allow for it to be so. Even in the absence of a hierarchical system, we would still be bound by environment, character, physical limitations, causality, natural laws, and so forth. The are all number of impossible things I can think of before breakfast, but I am not free to do them, as I lack the means. With this in mind, it cannot be said that freedom is absolute.
As for justice, I cannot conceive of a mode in which it could be considered to be absolute by any means, because judgements on whether justice has been done are wholly subjective, and the prosecuted would always beg to differ. It would also be worth noting that any absolutist definition of justice, involving as it does elements of castigation, would directly contradict an absolutist take on freedom anyway.
Does the assertion therefore refer more to specific freedoms and judicial standards?
Even in this context, the problem over the definition of justice remains rather awkward. By what criteria do we measure justice’s success? Clearly, there is yet to be a definitive solution to criminal activity, as imprisonment, and even the tougher penalty of the death sentence, have not proved to be adequate deterrents thus far. If we are to break it down to methods of judgement, then what variants of justice do we use to assess its presence? We cannot make the mistake that bitter family members and sensationalist tabloids make and equate justice with mere retribution. Do we then mean justice based on the consequences of a crime? Justice based on the circumstances that led to the crime? One would hope that a truly fair system would incorporate a sense of context in its deliberations in the interests of fairness. Yet again, we come up against the obstacle of there being no fixed definition of what is and isn’t fair. What was judged as fair 50 years ago would differ from today’s judgements of fairness, and the same will apply to our own standards some years from now. What we consider moral or immoral shifts as our understanding of one another develops, and so, for this reason, it cannot be safely said that any one country can own a monopoly on moral concepts which fluctuate over time.
The most prominent indicator of liberty in modern society is that of freedom of expression; including freedom of speech, freedom to protest, lifestyle freedoms, artistic freedoms, et cetera. These are undoubtedly positive values to uphold, but can any country in all honesty be declared the
epitome of these? Even in the most liberal nations, there are checks and balances in place when it comes to freedom of speech and expression to prevent discrimination and the spread of dangerous ideas; and many western governments today have been responsible for passing new anti-terror legislation suspending long-standing civil rights, apparently in the interest of security. Although this is something to be aware of, there is another direction for this counter-argument to follow which I wish to pursue.
The aspects of freedom of expression and the like belong to the interpretation of liberty as something which allows for the freedom of the individual, freedom for their personality to grow, freedom for people to share ideas, and improve themselves on this altogether more spiritual dimension. In such cases, these freedoms are not, as is assumed, actually
granted by governments. Rather, these are
inherent freedoms which a government may refrain from regulating to any extreme degree. The distinction is an important one: the governing powers do not
create such freedoms, they merely allow them to exist by choosing not to interfere with them; at least not extensively. Thus, what we think of as freedoms here are actually a kind of negative space within the rulebook. The freedoms we perceive are defined primarily by the ‘gaps’ between regulations.
The other variation on what constitutes freedom is a little more capitalist-centric. This goes back to the aforementioned issue of not having a certain freedom because you lack the means for it to come about. This vision revolves around the idea that the government is in place to provide such means. The freedom to buy a nice house, a fast car, a good education for your kids, a vibrator that glows in the dark while playing
“Camptown Races”, amongst other things. If this is all we mean, then the statement is inaccurate. Instead of “my country stands for freedom”, how about, “my country stands for the provision of goods and services”? Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, somehow. The fact that the provision of such good and services also does much to shape people’s consequent behaviours would also seem to cast this practice’s liberating value into doubt.
Oh, but
wait! I’m misrepresenting things again, aren’t I? It’s the values
themselves that the country stands for, even if it doesn’t always necessarily put them into practice!
Well, frankly, this renders the whole thing rather pointless. If it’s the values that one wishes to praise, why not just praise them on their own merits? Why invoke the name of any nation at all? If you want to champion principles of freedom or justice, then you should be doing so on the basis that those are
positive principles to uphold, and only on that basis. Bringing nationality into the mix only confuses the matter further. Not only that, but it implies that those are values that should belong
exclusively to one particular country, and that therefore other countries do not have the same rights to those values.
Much the same goes for those who equate patriotism with celebrating “the people that make this nation great”. Again, there is no need to mention nations here: the interest is in people themselves. It takes a whole variety of human characteristics to make a person great-- characteristics which many people in other parts also possess. Nationality doesn’t even enter into it.
Freedom! Justice! These are terribly vague notions. Democracy, however, isn’t. Might those in the West be well-placed to congratulate our nations on our democratic system? Perhaps. I, personally, would not be too eager to boast. Aside from the various curbs on basic civil rights that the ‘war on terror’ has inspired, democracy even at its most straightforward is
not people power, but the rule of the majority over other minorities. Democracy is, as the saying goes,
“two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner”. Capitalist democracy, the most common democratic set-up in the Western world, theoretically allows anyone with the right kind of mettle and go-getting spirit to make it to the higher ranks of society. The problem with this is that once an elite arises, then that elite is given the opportunity to shape the rest of society according to their own views and preferences, keeping citizens outside of that group reliant on their output to construct their own views on the current reality at hand. Therefore, a capitalist democracy very quickly devolves to the status of an oligarchy. Nowhere is this more evident
than in today’s media. Whilst democracy means that every citizens gets to vote according to their own judgements and opinions, those opinions themselves are based by-and-large on what information is put out by media outlets; outlets which are increasingly coming into the ownership of fewer and fewer individuals. Are there not deep reservations to be had about a system which claims that the public choose freely how to be ruled, when there are other such elites who have the power to sway them on what they
ought to choose? In order for wise choices to be made in a democratic fashion, each and every member of that democracy needs to be fully informed on what it is they are voting on. So long as there are powerful elites with vested interests controlling the output of information, this cannot conceivably come to pass.
