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Continuing to live in the country you were born in is not much of an active statement. Very few people leave their home countries. Currently 140 million people reside outside their country of birth, less than 2.25% of the world population. Do we conclude that more than 97% of the world is proud of the nation of their birth? If so, what does that mean? The proud outnumber the doubters by about 44 to 1. It rather devalues the concept of pride. Being proud of something that you have not chosen is quite normal, it is human. There have been many psychological experiments done on groups of young people which involve arbitrarily separating them into groups and seeing what happens. Group pride happens, even when it is made crystal clear that the groups are defined on a purely abstract basis. Group hatred follows, and violence. Some of these experiments had to be stopped before children were killed. We have a capacity to take irrational pride in group membership and to go on to use that to justify extreme actions. Without that instinct all the wonders of the world and all the wars would be impossible. What I am suggesting is that we get a grip on that instinct and try to ensure that it works for us, and it is not used as a handle so that other people can operate us for their own agendas. |
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