Why Patriotism Is A Disease That Has Plagued Humanity
“Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.”
– Albert Einstein
What is Patriotism: devoted love, support, and defense of one’s country. From birth we are instilled to pledge allegiance to a flag. A flag that represents the sliver of land that we call a country. That in some cases at one time was conquered through genocide and bloodshed.
A sliver of land confining us by arbitrary borders as we have become nothing but domesticated cattle. Just flocks among flocks. To devote ourselves to this piece of land, to die for this land. We go on thinking that based on where we were born, we are more superior than any other people born elsewhere.
“Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot consider themselves nobler, better, grander, more intelligent than those living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.”
– Emma Goldman
I strongly feel Patriotism is a disease. With that said we can also include Nationalism, which is patriotism on a wider scale. Both are a disease that for centuries has plagued humanity with endless wars and violence. A disease that continues to keep us all divided and keeps us confined from the rest of the world. We have a society where they have this undying love for the country that they were born in. But what about the rest of the world? Where is the love for that? How can we love one country more above all other countries.
To me patriotism is like saying, “I live in the best country in the world and screw every other country around me”. That is the mentality we now hold.
“Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense to grab slices of other people’s countries, and keep them from grabbing slices of his. And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood of his hands and works for ‘the universal brotherhood of man’ — with his mouth.”
– Mark Twain
Gustave Hervé, justly calls patriotism a superstition–one far more injurious, brutal, and inhumane than religion. The superstition of religion originated in man’s inability to explain natural phenomena. That is, when primitive man heard thunder or saw the lightning, he could not account for either, and therefore concluded that back of them must be a force greater than himself. Similarly he saw a supernatural force in the rain, and in the various other changes in nature. Patriotism, on the other hand, is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.
We live in this vast world, but we choose to make it so small. Little do we realize that the Earth is the same wherever we go. The only thing that makes a country different is the exploitation’s of governments. Ultimately, they determine how much freedom we are allowed to have. It’s all a perceived freedom as we are enslaved and oppressed nonetheless.
We live in a world where people now want to escape their countries because of the oppression of their governments. So we go on seeking a better life for their families. They would still go around with their devoted love of their country in another country, meanwhile hating the country they now reside in.
“There was something horrifying in the realization that, in this twenty-first century of what we call ‘civilization,’ we have carved up what we claim is one world into 200 artificially created entities we call ‘nations’ and armed to apprehend or kill anyone who crosses a boundary.
“Is not nationalism — that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder — one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred? These ways of thinking — cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on — have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.
“…Surely, we must renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.
“…We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.”
– Howard Zinn
Patriotism is a disease and tool to control the masses. It is also brainwashing. In order tocontrol the domesticated herd that we have become. We grow hated for one another based on where we come from. A hatred that was instilled in us since birth. To grow hated for the neighboring countries. As in the case of United States and Mexico, Haiti and Dominican Republic, North and South Korea and the list goes on and on.
Governments are the ones who benefit from our division as they capitalize in our blind allegiance. They keep us divided from each other. Divide and conquer! We are so naive to understand that concept as we stay enslaved. We just go on and send our children to fight their endless wars based on profits. As we continue to kill each other for the love of our countries. When the world needs to unify and learn from each other.
We have been conditioned this way as we are easily manipulated into thinking this way. Conditioned to live in a fear. We feel safe in the confines of our borders. As we keep ourselves in our box that has become our country.
The borders that confine us are like a bird’s nest where we feel safe inside the cozy nest. If you mention that you are against borders, “Oh my, the illegals are going to come in or terrorist will come in and invade us”. Little do we realize, the true terrorist are the governments. If you mention that you are anti-patriotism, “oh my, you must be a terrorist” or if you don’t love your country, then why don’t you leave.
I was born and raised in NYC. Where we have the whole world in one place. Yet we have this concrete mentality and won’t talk to each other or learn from each other. Every place is divided, Italians here, Irish over there. That is something conditioned and passed on from parents to child. Here we are, Nothing but clones passing the same regurgitated thing over to the next generation.
I used to be into my American flag. All patriotic because that was what they plugged into us like religion from birth. I would wave my flag and feel that blind patriotic duty instilled in us. Starting school until the sixth grade, we had to blindly pledge allegiance to the flag.
Now I would happily burn that flag. As I strongly feel flags are nothing but rectangular prisons that keeps us from the rest of the world. We worship flags and worship the countries that continue to keep us enslaved and oppressed.
I don’t love the country I was born in, I love OUR world. The whole earth that is around us. Be it wherever I am. I don’t want to visit another country to escape, but rather to learn from our brothers and sisters and to explore this whole beautiful world. I wrote another blog entitled, “What is race” which elaborates further on race.
Currently where I am now residing, many people tell me they have the best beaches or the best rivers in the world or the best people, or the most friendliest and it goes on and on. Obviously they never seen the rest of the world. Every place has it’s own charm and every place has it’s own beauty.
To say you have the best of whatever is a diluted point of view. People would actually convince themselves into believing. Why would they see the rest of the world, when they have (in their own mind) the best of everything.
We need to realize that patriotism is too narrow and limited a conception to meet the necessities of our time. Here we are, living in this overpopulated planet hating each other based on where we were born. Like NYC, the United States is populated by people from many countries and is comprised by “Immigrants”, in which our ancestors came to settle.
Then here we have our current generation calling others who now come to the country just like our ancestors did, “illegal”. Just imagine if that concept applied when your ancestors traveled across the globe and the true natives of the land did not allow anyone in. Your ancestors would have been sent back. You would now have to conform into living in that country. Chances are you would be waving that flag, loving that land you were now born in.
Let’s take it a step further. Colonialism and imperialism has shaped our world. Just like California was once part of New Spain, just like Mexico and other parts. If this remained true today, people who were born there would be waving a different flag. Instilled with that patriotism for the love of that land, declaring that their flag and country is the best in the world. If we go back generations after generations, we will find out that our ancestors migrated from all over this world.
People would say without patriotism, what would happen to culture . I think culture is something that I believe should evolve. We should learn from other cultures, take what is beneficial from cultures. Add-on and create our own culture and stop living in the past, build a better future. But I will elaborate on culture further in another post.
“I am a citizen of the world.”
Diogenes, Greek philosopher, circa 360 BC
These quotes sum up my philosophy on how I view our world . Many are awakening to this way of thinking. We are just living on a giant living organism floating through the vastness of space. Bodies of water do no separate us, nor do those invisible borders that we somehow view as being put there by nature.
I always wonder if birds would fly around with a flag under their wings. State that their tree is the best tree. I wonder if their hatching are proud of being born on one tree over another. Every species including our very own are all EARTHLINGS. But we rather deny the fact that our home is earth and rather destroy our home and each other.
Here is a quote that sums up everything I said.
“To destroy governmental violence, only one thing is needed: It is that people should understand that the feeling of patriotism, which alone supports that instrument of violence, is a rude, harmful, disgraceful, and bad feeling, and, above all, is immoral.
“It is a rude feeling, because it is natural only to people standing on the lowest level of morality, and expecting from other nations such outrages as they themselves are ready to inflict.
“A harmful feeling, because it disturbs advantageous and joyous, peaceful relations with other peoples, and above all produces that governmental organization under which power may fall, and does fall, into the, hands of the worst men.
“It is a disgraceful feeling, because it turns man not merely into a slave, but into a fighting cock, a bull, or a gladiator, who wastes his strength and his life for objects which are not his own but his Government’s.
“And it is an immoral feeling, because, instead of confessing one’s self a son of God (as Christianity teaches us) or even a free man guided by his own reason, each man under the influence of patriotism confesses himself the son of his fatherland and the slave of his Government, and commits actions contrary to his reason and his conscience.”
Patriotism is “a very definite feeling of preference for one’s own people or State above all other peoples and States, and a consequent wish to get for that people or State the greatest advantages and power that can be got — things which are obtainable only at the expense of the advantages and power of other peoples or States.
“It would, therefore, seem obvious that patriotism as a feeling is bad and harmful, and as a doctrine is stupid. For it is clear that if each people and each State considers itself the best of peoples and States, they all live in a gross and harmful delusion.”
“In our day the feeling of patriotism is an unnatural, irrational, and harmful feeling, and a cause of a great part of the ills from which mankind is suffering, and that, consequently, this feeling — should not be cultivated, as is now being done, but should, on the contrary, be suppressed and eradicated by all means available to rational men.”
– Lee Tolstoy
In the end, we all become nothing but bones returning back to the Earth where we came from. It would not matter where you were buried on this earth because you will be nothing but the very dirt that surrounds you where ever you go. Eye color, skin color, none of it matters when you are just bones.
Imagine if we had no skin and we were just skeletons walking around, I am sure they would condition us to be separate by saying well this one has a bigger femur than this one so therefore, we are the better race. Just like how we hold those flags and think that our flags are the best in the world and that the country we were born in is superior to all. That is a very destructive way of thinking and we must destroy everything that destroys us.
We need to unify, be one, only then can we change the world and that happens when we work together. When we have undermined the patriotic lie, we shall have cleared the path for that great structure wherein all nationalities shall be united into a universal brotherhood, –a truly FREE SOCIETY.
“The love for the land of our birth is foolish, absurd, and the enemy of progress if it remains exclusive. If it were to become a means of intelligence I would praise it in the same way that the man who rests in the shade of a tree praises the seed. From my love for the land of my childhood and for the language that, I might say, first smiled on our ears should, comes love for the beauties of all of nature and the pensive music of all human languages.
May my pride in my mountain teach me to admire other summits; may the gentleness of my river teach me to commune with the dream of all waters; from the charm of my forest, may I learn to find it in the measured grace of all woods; may the love of a known idea never turn me from a new idea or an enrichment that comes from afar. In the same way that a man grows beyond the size of a child, the first beauties met serve to have us ideally understand, taste, and conquer all beauties.
What poverty to hear in these naive memories a poor and moving language that prevents our hearing other languages! Let us love, in our childhood memories the alphabet that allows us to read all the texts offered by the successive or simultaneous riches of our life.”
– Han Ryner
What do you think of patriotism?
Do you think we should evolve from patriotism. How do you see your world? as slivers of land ? Do you feel as patriotism is a disease that as continues to plague humanity.
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