http://www.drownedinsound.com/articles/2643072#r2643964
Is there value in having/attempting to preserve a country's national identity?
sub questions:
Is it inherently xenophobic to want your country to retain certain aspects that are distinctive about it?
Is multiculturalism always a positive thing or does it lead to a watered down/facsimile version of all the contributing cultures in the 'melting pot'? Does it exist at the expense of people's sense of where they belong?
or is the very concept of 'national identity' fallacious to begin with? britain, like everywhere, has changed its racial makeup/language/religion/traditions many times throughout history - is the modern world any different?
is it all political correctness gone mad?
why isnt this
a not gay gueverra thread?
and in response to your question, what the fuck IS national identity?
well perhaps you'd like to
offer your own definition of it before answering the question?
and I don't see what's GG-like about this thread seeing as two of my questions beg answers which would contradict each other.
i think i was just responding
to the title, which looked like a GG springboard for all kind of madness. It introduces more subtlety in the content. sorry if i offended...
anyway, i personnaly find the concept of national identity bollocks. its all about the people that you know and relate to, and to no greater "concept" to unite people. Communities are important, but they should be self picked groups rather than, say, the church or a country where you can have a group of entirely different people all trying to pretend they believe in the same thing, and people who have been here longer, or are richer, telling everyone else what to do.
so, to sum up, i am not defined by where i live or who else lives there, but what i do.
Surely what you do
is defined by where you live, though?
that doesn't exist !
it's not important
to me.
But what about if Canadians got all invaded and stuff
and then weren't proper Canadians like the ones that you like and then you wouldn't be able to like all the Canadians and it'd all have gone wrong.
not even slightly?
there's nothing which you would consider uniquely british which you would miss were it to disappear?
There's nothing, for example, you consider archetypally british in music which you would want to see preserved in the face of american dominance of the market? the british accent in the singer's voice perhaps?
this is just one small example for the sake of argument...
ironically due to the inspiration of this thread
the smiths are pretty much the only british music I like
those sort of things
are all going to change anyway though. "british music" now is incredibly different to "british music" was 40 years ago.
i think it's just an inevitable part of life that things change around us, and i don't like the idea of artificially trying to stop this.
to me, it's more interesting to see what is going to come next than what has already happened.
so if britain were to become
largely indistinguishable from america in every sense - hypothetically - you wouldn't feel anything had been lost?
"lost" is a strong word
but it isn't neccessarily a bad thing. some things get lost, some things are gained.
i think my problem with this entire subject is that it uses blanket terms to describe things that ebb and flow and change.
for example - if you look at a wetherspoons pub, their most popular nights BY FAR are the nights where they do curry and a pint for £notmuch. would that have happened fifty years ago? like fuck. does that make it any less "british"? i don't think so.
and, in your example, it wouldn't be "american" as it currently stands, it would be a mutated and fucked up version of. essentially, it would be what we make of it.
i realise
this is rambling and unfocused enough to be a creaky post, but it's a big subject and articulation has never been my strongpoint.
welcome to my world!
well that's fair enough
but what I'm getting at is that your initial statement that national identity simply isn't important to you probably isn't true.
wetherspoons curry night/britishness is an interesting example. Some people would be genuinely offended to see that. Others aren't.
My point is that, to you personally, there probably are things about this country which you cherish. Would the hypothetical future monoculture where everything is a las vegas/theme park version of a 'real' country not be massively awful?
of course
there would be things i would miss, but that's just a part of a life lived in a dynamic world. it would happen anyway!
and, really, i more see a "las vegas/theme park version of a 'real' country" coming from people who try and stifle this sort of thing.
I don't think there's anything wrong with
wanting to preserve your country's identity to be honest. I'm not that bothered about it personally, but the accusations of 'xenophobia' towards the view really rile me.
Every culture should be proud of itself. Most of them are. In the UK, everyone likes to feel part of their own little culture - be they Pakistani/Indian, Oriental, Black, European, Scotch - everyone apart from the English.
I think a lot of English people feel uncomfortable about celebrating or preserving their national identity, due to the danger of being accused of xenophobia. They also seem (mystifyingly) ashamed at our colonial past, and think that by wanting to keep hold of your national identity is a celebration of slavery and all that stuff.
I do like England though, and I don't give one if some communist thinks I'm a cunt for loving the last night of the proms, or whatever.
So basically: everyone should be proud of their identity and therefore, I think being worried about losing is it is perfectly understandable.
When people bring race into the discussion though, I leave.
mystifyingly ashamed of our colonial past
??
Yes.
I agree that the Empire were cunts. Its very much a fact that any empire that conquers people and takes things off them to feed itself is bad.
But I'm not the Empire. Nor is anyone currently alive in Britain.
Its like the Germans being ashamed for starting the wars. I don't hold what the Nazis did against the current Germany, nor do I feel indebted to the countries the Empire exploited.
I *think*
I agree with most of the things you've said.
Careful!
britain is where it is today because it exploited other countries
I know all history is pretty ugly and we aren't personally responsible for it but it is still something the nation should be ashamed of
Equally,
do you still feel proud of the fact Britain was one of the major allies in the defeat of the Nazis?
Do you think us and the current yanks should be entitled to hold our heads high because we put an end to the most dangerous regime in recent years?
i think
like most things it's not as simple as one example or another. Like most countries and most individuals britain has done good and bad things. We should be proud of the good but take responsibility and show humility and remorse for the bad.
When you do one but not the other then you're crossing the line from patriot to nationalist and then finally into moron.
I'm proud of being british - which is why I get really fucked off by nationalist bigmouths who undermine what is genuinely good about this country. Anyone who says 'my country is the best' is an idiot.
Again I agree,
but only to a certain extent with this - "We should be proud of the good but take responsibility and show humility and remorse for the bad.".
on both aspects. Sort of like: I don't personally feel to myself "all the countries the allies liberated in the war should be grateful me, because I'm English. I feel good about what WE did." and equally I don't think "God, how horrible we were. I feel so awful about what we did."
Its more of a "they" then "we". I don't think one generation should carry previous generations' guilt.
i take your point
but there's a very literal sense in which you and i are both indebted to those countries in that we still live off wealth which we stole from them whilst their economy has yet to recover.
that alone is reason for some shame - or at least to actively make amends even if we don't walk round weeping into our bowler hats at the sheer guilt of it all.
How do we still live of wealth we stole from them?
(Not to be read in a petulant tone - more a curious one)
Neo-colonialism apparently
A doctrine first formulated by Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah to get the heat off his back for mismanaging his economy.
controversial
well
you already said up there 'any empire that conquers people and takes things off them to feed itself is bad' - so following on from that, we effectively built our current healthy economy off riches that, it seems you agree, we wrongly took from other people.
We used our military nous to conquer parts of the world - including some parts which had no concept of what it was to conquer or be conquered, who had no notion of 'owning' the land they lived on and so for them when the british (and other european countries) turned up saying 'we own this land now' would have done little more than shrug. Until we starting telling them how to live/what god to worship etc.
So basically I'm saying that our current wealth is built, in part, on wealth we stole historically from other countries. If we had stayed within our borders and lived off what we could produce for ourselves - played fair if you like - there's a good chance we wouldn't currently be quite as prominent a global power, or have such a wealthy population.
There's no simple conclusion to be drawn from this of course - it doesn't mean we should all feel bad every time we go to a supermarket. But the flipside is that the countries we colonised aren't all now at the same place we are at in terms of their prosperity. Whole countries in Africa had their agriculture ruined because europeans decided to turn them into monocrop economies - i.e they only produced one thing and imported everything else.
Then we handed control of this economy to whichever group looked most like us (this was literally the case in some countries - google 'tutsis and hutus' for an example) and created a power imbalance, civil war, an upper and lower class that didn't exist before we were there. We also created a country that, because of the ruined agriculture, could no longer feed itself. And then, in most cases, we fucked off.
This is a simplified account in fairness but you get my gist.
Yeah
I understand and agree with you.
But I think in regards to your third paragraph, its backtracking a little too much. Like I've said, I acknowledge as much as any ultraliberal about what horrible people we were.
The thing is, I know it sounds harsh and everything, but don't you think its a little bit too far back to still carry shame for? Obviously, our government should still help these countries we screwed up to pick up the pieces as much as they can - but I wouldn't say out of shame, more out of basic obligation. I think its up to all developed countries to help the countries ruined by the greed our ancestors held in the 19th century.
But I still don't think we should feel any shame on a personal level. Acknowledgement, and universal criticism - yes, but not shame or embarrassment.
And when I say 'our ancestors'
I don't just mean the British Empire.
well that's fine
and the fact that you acknowledge it is to your credit.
However there's a certain kind of nationalist/patriot for whom the fact that 'britain used to rule the world' and now doesn't is a source of remorse. They're proud of what we did with the empire. They see it as the 'glory days'. I think expressions of remorse by tony blair and such are important because they get people such as that to think about the debt we owe - which you and I have just agreed on.
I think it's important to understand that that's people's intention when they taught about inherited cultural guilt. They don't want people to collectively forget what happened. Just like remembrance day isn't all about saying 'war is great, soldiers are brilliant' it's a double edged thing.
Yeah.
I'm down with that.
"They also seem (mystifyingly) ashamed at our colonial past"
to be fair, there's a fair whack of stuff to be ashamed of.
Bullshit.
Sorry, but I'm not in on 'being sorry' for what my great great great great grandad did.
Its like saying the Aussies should live in a permanent state of shame, since lots of their ancestors were sent there for prison.
wow. really not the same.
well
ultimately I don't think you can avoid bringing race into it. 'british' is a race just as much as 'pakistani' is. but that's not really relevant. 'national identity' and 'race' can be the same thing in some ways, utterly different in others. I agree with you that it's wrong when people start saying that being proud of the country you were born in is racist - sadly the two are often found side by side but that doesn't make them the same thing.
I'm interested why you're mystified that people express shame at britain's colonial past? Didn't we steal wealth, by force, from a lot of other countries to feed our own economy? Do you see nothing wrong with that?
isn't it a fairly recent thing anyway
that was used to get people to fight in wars, before that people identified with more local areas
fairly recent meaning last couple of hundread years
I don't feel particularly 'british'
I prefer to make my own mind up. Although I do prefer places to be different - if everywhere becomes one homogenised mess, it'll be a bit more boring imho. I think community is the most important thing, and for whatever reasons, we're losing this big time, on a world scale too.
Good idea for a thread :D
I'll have to think about this one.
it shouldn't be something
that you are proud of or are purposefully preserving. It should be something that just is. People worry about it because we are far less uniquely British than we were say thirty years ago, thanks to globalisation, multiculturalism, the internet and American influence. I reckon that once the oil runs out we will become more sharply defined so I don't worry about it that much to be honest.
I was at a debate on this with all the europeans guys about my age
surprisingly, other EU countries are just as worried about this as us. I thought theyd be more receptive to new cultures but apparently not. They kept saying about "losing" their cuture
Point: you dont "lose" culture. If people bring parts of their culture over, and those parts are accepted and become part of the "national culture", it's because "the nation" (who are presumably still "native" in the majority) prefers them to fox hunting, drinking tea and dogging.
I agree to a certain extent,
but I still think that every culture relishes its own particular exclusiveness, which is something I think should happen.
my tribal identity is most important to me right now
its mostly fragmented but Im reconstructing it.
Its ben shattered and thrown to the winds, but like in twilight princess im reassembling the shards
isnt it healthier to be a member of a cult?
Has anyone got a 'DIS' tattoo?
or zonino?
or a giant isopod?
yet?
people are so afraid of losing 'national identity'
that they're creating 'regional identities' !
It's so stupid.
Cultures have perpetually changed by mixing with each others. Our language is the proof of that.
So true.
National identities are constructed, just like any other identity. Anyone remember John Major's attempt at it - all about village greens, warm beer and the sound of wood on willow, apparently.
National identity is only really important to the establishment - liking something or somewhere doesn't mean that you have to create an identity around it.
My own 'national identity' is a bit messed up
because I've never lived in the country I'm from, but it;s still fairly important to me.
Actually, no it isn't.
Hmm. Although it isn't that important to me, I can understand why to other people it might be... and I don't really like the way countries are becoming more and more similar due to globalisation and SHIZZ.
Anyway, I still think people who get all het up about it are pretty stupid. British culture is the way it is because of hundreds of years of emigration and immigration. Okay, maybe not on such a large scale as previously, but it's not as though it was inexistant.
I mean, just look at the English language; French words here, Germanic words there...
And yeah, over the top nationalism: pretty scary.
And I don't really know why, but displays of English patriotism make me about 100000000000x more uncomfortable than any other European country.
luxembourg?
no, luxembourgish patriotism is alrgiht.
alese, schpeutz?
I'm not sure how far
I believe in the whole "British culture is the way it is because of hundreds of years of emigration and immigration" thing.
I think that's a fabricated statement people use to argue against immigration worries. Yeah we've taken influence from lots of countries over the years, but to say our entire culture is based on foreigners coming in and changing everything is a little bit strong.
Certain words in our language come from others', but that's universal in latin-based languages, innit?
As for English patriotism, if you're referring to things like the proms, then I have to disagree by a million times. It makes me feel proud that we've got such a strong historical culture, in terms of music. There isn't another country in the world with a song half as brilliant as Jerusalem or Land of Hope and Glory.
Surely if theyre that good
then "EVEN" immigrants would like them, thus retaining them as part of the culture.
Unless you're worried someones gonna do a ragga version that will become more popular.
No. Not 'even' immigrants would like them,
because they're attuned to our lifestyle and culture. Its like the stuff you hear on Channel U. You see why it appeals to a certain culture, but you don't expect it to transcend boundaries. Same with every kind of music.
I agree that
English culture isn't made up entirely of components of French/Irish/whatever influences, and that yeah, English culture is completely distinctive and separate.
But then again, I don't think English culture, as it stands today, has been all that heavily influenced by immigrant populations bringing in new cultures either.
My point was that England/English people can absorb aspects of other cultures without becoming completely swamped by them.
As it stands, English culture has, up until now, been influenced pretty majorly in lots of ways by different cultures, and yet you've maintained a distinctive identity. I don't see why this new wave of immigrants will change that.
It seems like people are blaming "THE FORINNERS!!!!" rather than globalisation for changing English culture.
It's not like European cultures are being hijacked by da arabz, or anything. They're all beginning to resemble each other.
And yeah, last night of the proms makes me feel really uncomfortable. Ladies dressed in Union Jack dresses? People waving mini Union Jacks? An audience made of entirely white faces, pretty much? Ew, yes, that does make me feel a bit queasy.
"I don't see why this new wave of immigrants will change that."
Its because, as all the stats show, we're currently having more than ever in such a little space of time. Through the years, people have gradually been integrated into the country, and taken their place.
There's clearly a BIG attraction to coming to the UK. Although all the worst jobs are now done by Poles, we're apparently already taking in more people than we can handle. People are taking more out than they're putting in.
But your final paragraph. I don't understand you at all. "Ladies dressed in Union Jacks? People waving mini Union Jacks?". What's your point? The fact we're celebrating ourselves is wrong? Its basically an excuse for everyone to feel really proud of being British and show it by singing and having flags.
As for the fact it doesn't appeal to ethnic minorities - so what!? Its about subcultures isn't it? You don't expect to see white people at Bhangra gigs, do you?
I think last night of the proms is the best thing ever. Its like one of the highlights of the summer.
An audience made of entirely white faces, pretty much?
But you could say that about most indie/rock gigs.
The problem with that
argument is the use of the word 'our'. When the Normans arrived they took control of the top tiers of society, but they didn't impose Norman French on the Britons - instead it was integrated until it became English (our language). Likewise there have been massive waves of immigration in the millennium since then, all incorporated into British culture.
Personally, I don't give diddly squat for national identity - if Land of Hope and Glory means something to you, all well and good. But it has no meaning at all for my identity.
Good for you.
I don't think everyone should agree with me in my love of our old songs.
That's what so great about the British
We're so tolerant!!
srsly to some people it is very important
it means more to those who have not been aboe to develop a more personal sense of identity. Some might say that the more imaginative do not need to attach themselves so much to national identities.
I used to be very proud of Britain for its position on maintaining the balance of power in europe.......marlborough, wellington and churchill (forgetting WWI)
I then came to realise that 'being the world policeman' meant you had to use your truncheon and bash innocents sometimes.
colonial stuff can look unpleasent
I reasoned that if britain hadnt then france or another european power would have and britain colonialism did not look particularly ugly alongside these (and britain was treating some of its own people nastily too)
I felt quite guilty for a while about a lot of stuff, because Im male white reasonably intelligent.
Then I realised
If I stopped feeling proud about the countries past, events I had no control over (I didnt defeat the nazis)
then I could also stop feeling guilty about stuff I hadn't done like slavery.
I share not in false nationalism nor false shame
when I said used to I meant as a kid
i said that!
well, the first bit. but everyone ignored me : ( but yeah, personal identity FTW!