Because I can't leave well enough alone...

[oyceter]

Anyhow, a recent post on LJ and associated comments got me to thinking. I'm not posting this as a comment in there because I figure it will be fairly idiosyncratic on my end, very long and rambling, as per usual, and also because I don't feel up to making an argument or being rational or anything. So to keep in mind: these are some gut feelings of mine, some of which I have thought about for some time and some of which I haven't quite puzzled out yet.

I don't quite get the visceral response to the flag that I am getting that some people do. I'm not quite sure if it was because I spent half of my life in Taiwan, because I seem to not glom onto other symbols much or what. I suppose I just never quite wrapped my brain around the thought that flag=country, despite the parade with flags at the Olympics or the encyclopedia article with numerous flags or flag pins and everything, or a childhood spent listening obsessively to "Wee Sing America" and singing very loudly about the red, white and blue.

I can't tell if this is a response-to-America-the-nation thing, which on my end is extremely complicated, or a simple me-no-get-symbols thing. I'm not sure. I've never seen anyone desecrating a cross, so I don't know if I would have a gut reaction to that. I have more of a gut reaction to national anthems, probably because I sing them and that connects me to them emotionally. I feel an extreme gut reaction if I think about someone burning down my house and all my things, or a library, or ripping books apart. I think this may be because those things, while physical, are still things -- they represent something to me, but they don't represent something to everyone. They represent my memories, or the potential of knowledge or something like that.

Also, I find that I am rather wary of symbols. I guess I am ambivalent toward any concept that can be boiled down into a symbol, be it flag or family crest or whatnot. Symbols in fiction I grok; symbols in real life are a bit iffier for me. I think this is because I tend to be hesitant to adopt a symbol, because I feel that so many different people believing so fervently in one symbol probably means that there are many different interpretations for said symbol, so that when two people say that they fight for the flag/cross/keychain/who knows, they may be fighting for completely different things, depending on what they believe on, but they are projecting their different ideologies onto a single item.

I'm still trying to dig around for symbolic objects that I find meaningful that are also meaningful to a large group of people (aka, people who are not just me and my group of friends), but I think the last one I really stood behind was... er... our senior class flag from high school (don't mock me!). And now, thinking back on it, I suspect a large part of that was because my class was so small (17 some people) and that I had known them for so long. It was intensely personal for me, and the fact that 16 other people shared it didn't matter quite so much. When I went to college, the whole college mascot and team and colors thing never quite clicked with me. First off, we had ugly colors. Haha, right, I suppose that's not supposed to matter, but honestly, I didn't want to walk around everywhere with college paraphernelia on. I don't think it's because I don't want to be associated with my college, but that I don't feel all that personally involved with it. Hrm. Come to think of it, I probably wouldn't wear a Taiwan flag or an American flag.

I think I am just tired of politics. I am tired of political parties and how polarizing they are -- in Taiwan my parents and most of their friends are for one political party, and my friends are mostly for another, and each side keeps accusing the other of things, and I know people on both sides, and while I should be more involved, I'm not, so both sides just end up looking silly. In America, well, I do identify more with one party than another, but I'm just so sick of people going around saying "blah blah conservatives do this blah blah liberals do that blah blah." I know, I should practise what I preach. And also, patriotism/nationalism frightens me. I use the term patriotism/nationalism mostly because I have a sneaking suspicion that if you (generalized) do it, it's "patriotism," but if "they" do it, it's "nationalism." And I dislike the grouping of people into left and right, or top and bottom, or any such simple categories, because the cultural studies part of my brain mostly just wants to squiggle about on the floor and yell, "But it's all so complicated!"

I guess my general opinion is that I don't particularly believe in nations.

*waits for everyone to drop dead of horror and start flaming me*

(sorry, I've said stuff like this before to people back in college and gotten some fairly boggled looks and gotten into quite a few arguments)

What do I believe in? I'm not sure. I believe in people. I believe that most people in most places, regardless of nationality or race or gender, get hungry and are tired, enjoy being happy and dislike being sad. I believe that a lot of what we consider to be nationality are actually bits and pieces of historical cause and effect that go way back. I believe that history affects people, and that history is what builds that fragile notion of culture and nationality, and historical aftermath is what keeps much of it in place. And while I believe the notion of nation has a place, especially in uniting people, I am more wary of people united than people being individual people. This is probably because I tend to feel that I can understand people being people, but people acting under a big flag or political party or army begin to frighten me because of how ideals can take over. And yes, often these are good ideals, but I feel that the group mentality can often overtake the notion of the individual person and render the "other side" faceless and impersonal.

And I am still debating how to live nationless, because while I love America, I know that I am a creature who is more local than national. I love my city and my downtown street and my apartment, and I love the multiethnicity of the area I live in, but I know that my city and my street and my area are not America-the-nation, only a part. I don't know America-the-nation. I haven't gone everywhere there. I deeply love some things about it that I have experienced, but I find other parts problematic. Same with Taiwan. I feel this is not a contradiction, although I suppose a great deal of people must. I feel like I can live in different countries and love it there all the same, to enjoy the good things about a country while wanting the bad things to be made better, and I feel that I can do this for anywhere I choose to live. Also, it is fairly difficult to identify myself solely with one country and one nationality when I have lived in two, and that's just the two I have lived in. I want to live in more. I personally do not feel like this is a bad thing that brings down the nation I currently choose to live in, but as I said, I probably feel like this because it's me I'm talking about.

Anyhow, I am not quite sure what I mean to express in this post, except possibly a deep sense of ambivalence in symbols and in nations that I am still trying to understand.

ETA: Addendum

Comments

[minim_calibre]

Slap my hand, now!

It feels so good to read this. I was nodding my head the whole time.

[oyceter]

Oh, thank you.

I am rather afraid of being flamed to death for this, or something, given the rather touchy subject and because it seems to strike a chord with my friends from college.

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

Actually, judging from my experience at SFS, your sentiments and their directions are not at all uncommon among third-culture kids. Ms. Born-and-Bred-in-the-US AP US History teacher (who was also incompetent, but that's orthogonal) was absolutely flabbergasted when a number of people in the class expressed a distrust of nations and a general frustration with nationalism--because almost all of us had lived in more than one country, we had ties to people from all sorts of places (my class included people from Greece, the Netherlands, South Korea, Taiwan, Kenya, Singapore, France, Canada, Australia, Denmark...) and when we thought of other nations it wasn't so much as Other, as Another--another place of people we knew, or might know someday.

There are circumstances in which a flag or other national symbol will hit me emotionally, but otherwise I'm pretty blase about the things. You can always re-instantiate the thing physically, which is a useful property of many symbols.

[oyceter]

I find it interesting because some of my high school friends are very pro-Taiwan, which I understand, and some are more into American politics, which I also understand, but it's just interesting seeing how different people grow up and start identifying with different nations (or not, in my case). I think on a whole, the people I know from my high school (generally raised partially somewhere else and then moved to Taiwan) tend to get irritated by the entire feeling that the US seems to have some sort of cultural hegemony. I can't say if it does or not, since I doubt anyone actually collects stats on that type of thing, but it seemed to be a commonly shared perception.

The funny thing was that whenever I brought up the whole "not feeling wholly American" thing up, I got into lots of arguments. Some prior to 9/11, some post. But to me, it seemed like several of the people I talked to were very personally offended by the thought that I didn't really identify myself as American, which I found to be an interesting response. On the more trivial side, I got really sick of people asking me pop culture questions.

[minim_calibre]

Nationalism flat out confuses me, perhaps because I know that I'm a US citizen through a twist of fate or two. Had I been born a few years earlier, I'd have been born in Canada. Had my uncle not lost the brakes on his truck and croaked, leading my parents to cancel their plans to move there next, I'd have been born in Australia. I'm made uneasy by the way it seems to grip people I consider otherwise rational, and am kind of scared of the symbolic power that a piece of cloth has over them.

It could have something to do with my parents not being American, and having come to the country for job-related reasons rather than for any actual ideal. Nationalism/Patriotism was not something I was raised with.

[oyceter]

I sort of get nationalism/patriotism and where it comes from -- this constant state of national identity confusion is not the most pleasant of feelings ;). Plus, I figure if you grow up with something like Wee Sing America, with all these songs praising America and talking about American history and stuff, it's probably hard not to feel it at some level. I dunno. It's hard to say. It's not quite something that I feel, probably because there is waaay too much conflict involved when it comes to picking sides in the whole game of nations thing.

[poisonapple73.livejournal.com]

*nods*

I spent most of my life moving around and at this point, can't seem to grasp patriotism. I can see it as an abstract concept, but feel it, no. It's a constant source of frustration to my parents- they took government jobs out of a desire to travel and a sense of patriotic duty, and as a result they ended up with three children who either can't understand or deliberately defy national ties.

I'm actually glad that I can't understand it.As you mentioned above, large groups tend to scare the crap out of me. Mass displays of devotion, be it to a country or a religion freak me out- there's such power in that submission to a cause. I can't imagine ever really wanting that...I'd feel trapped.

[oyceter]

I suspect that the lack of identification with a specific country is very much related to how many different countries one has lived in?

I can definitely see the good in patriotism or religion or the like, and certainly I won't argue against something that gets people to care about the state a country is in, but it's not particularly something that I tend to feel on a very personal level.

[annafdd.livejournal.com]

Being European, I am downright spooked by the whole flag thing. I try to rationalize it, tell myself that it means something different in the US, but flags and other things associated with it keep sending me very bad messages. It's not so much a question of identity as it is of collective memory. Lotsa flags are associated with people puffing up, getting all boisterous about frankly ridicolosu concepts when not infuriatingly offensive ones, and beating up or eventually killing other people for me.

[oyceter]

It's very interesting, how national symbols mean different things to different nations. I think there was even quite a bit of controversy over the Japanese national flag after WWII, because it had become so associated with imperialism and all that jazz.

To generalize horribly, I wonder if there isn't quite that negative tinge to nationalism in the US because there isn't as great of a history with imperialism and colonialism (not that it doesn't exist, obviously), or that ... I have no idea. And not that one can take a national history and generalize it to individuals anyway.

[minnow1212.livejournal.com]

>because the cultural studies part of my brain mostly just wants to squiggle about on the floor and yell, "But it's all so complicated!"<

I just think you're awesome. For many reasons, but right now, for this line.

[oyceter]

Aw, thank you. I suspect my brain squiggles about on the floor quite often, actually ;).

Btw, I'm so sorry for linking to your post! I completely didn't realize it was flocked! Will take down link.

[minnow1212.livejournal.com]

No worries. :)

[katie-m.livejournal.com]

How about this: You love your family, right? I love America like I love my family; on a deep and completely unconscious gut level, and in a way that makes me perfectly capable of saying "oh my God they are driving me nuts right now and that thing they do sucks."

So on some level, I react to "I don't feel any sense of patriotism" in pretty much the same way that I react to "oh, I have a family of choice, I don't talk to my blood relatives." It's not a bad thing, I don't disapprove, I assume that people feel that way for perfectly good reasons, but... it's very alien.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

For what it may be worth, my family of choice includes some of my blood relatives, but particularly not the ones who drive me nuts and do sucky things past a certain scale; the two categories don't have to be mutually exclusive.

[katie-m.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, I know--sorry, I know I was being overly simplistic.

[oyceter]

I think that makes sense, esp. the alienness bit, given that's probably how I feel about patriotism/nationalism ;).

To take your very nice metaphor and completely mangle it -- I suspect I would be something like an adoptee who looked and acted rather differently from her adopted family, and then went to live with her birth family for a good deal of time, and then went back to live with the adopted family. And as such is rather confused about notions of family and where she fits in with the generally accepted notion of family and goes on to study the historical background of family and how it has evolved through the centuries to become the concept of the nuclear family that we have now.

Errr... hee, I suspect that was rendering your metaphor completely unintelligible and then beating it to a bloody pulp, apologies!

[katie-m.livejournal.com]

Ha! No, no, the funny thing is that after I posted that comment I started thinking about adoption too. And I think it works very well. I mean, I grew up with my genetic parents, who were married to each other, in the country where they and their parents were born. So the question of who my family is, like the question of what my country is, is just not something that's complicated for me.

So of course my instinctive reaction to "it's complicated!" is "no it isn't." But I can see how it could be, for someone who'd had different experiences.

[oyceter]

Yeah, I suspect it's not so much an "It's complicated!" so much as an "It has the potential to be complicated!" which ends up making it even more complicated because then one must factor in the non-complicatedness with the complicatedness. And now, I have obviously stopped making sense having used the word "complicated" about four times too many ;).

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I guess my general opinion is that I don't particularly believe in nations.

"Believe in them ? Why, sir, I have seen them with my own eyes !"

The only way I can bear the manifest stupidities that have at one time or another been associated with the concept of nationalism is to think of it as an awkward transitional step between city-states [ which do have solid economic reasons for being a sensible level at which to organise humabn beings ] and figuring out a sensible form of government for the whole species.

[oyceter]

Heh, I am rather interested in nationalism specifically because of all the historical background stuff. And I suspect that it is a fairly natural tendency to develop this sort of group pride whenever there is a group, be it city-state or college or anything. I dunno. I still wonder if there's any way to get that goodness of community and group and belonging-feeling without the exclusion and feeling of superiority that can often come along with it.

[avrelia.livejournal.com]

I was thinking a lot about nationalism and patriotism and the national identity, and even though I don’t have definitive answers that explain everything, I came up with some ideas that help me.

Generally I think about patriotism as love and respect for your country. That, in turn poses a question which country is yours? For me it is easy – it is Russia, and no matter where I live or what other citizenship I have (if any) won’t change it. But for others it may be two or more countries or none.

Nationalism, basically, has no respect for any country; but it states that one nation – whatever it means - is better than all others. And that I hate passionately.

(I want to say more, but I have to run…)


I believe that a lot of what we consider to be nationality are actually bits and pieces of historical cause and effect that go way back. I believe that history affects people, and that history is what builds that fragile notion of culture and nationality, and historical aftermath is what keeps much of it in place. And while I believe the notion of nation has a place, especially in uniting people, I am more wary of people united than people being individual people.

Agree completely.

[oyceter]

I wonder if one can be patriotic to two countries.

I mean, I guess I love and respect several countries, but the whole national identity is so confused for me already that there is no country that I can quite call "my" country, so it is difficult for me to define that love and respect as patriotism, particularly when I figure that other people who feel patriotism are most likely dedicating it to a specific country? Not sure.

[avrelia.livejournal.com]

I don’t see anything wrong of being a patriot of two or more countries. Or not consider having a special attachment to any countries at all.

It is not the case with me, but my attachment and care for Canada has grown over the years, and even though I don’t suppose it will grow up the passionate love I have for Russia, it is still a warm feeling. Who knows what would happen next?

I guess it is easier for me because I can define “my country” - but I don’t see why it should be limited to one country or to one place a person can be attached to.

I was thinking a lot on the topic recently, and it probably warrants a post, not a comment, and I hope I get to writing it.

Here in Canada, I spent some time thinking what, for example, being Russian means to me – and I came up with a strange category of “affiliation of heart”, which I like a lot more than citizenship or nationality.

[oyceter]

I think "affiliation of the heart" works ;). For me, it's rather odd because there's that combination of affection and foreign-ness, if that makes any sense... so even though I feel like I want to belong sometimes, there's always the sense that I am rather out of place no matter what. Ah well.

Looking forward to a separate post, if you decide to write it!

[leadensky.livejournal.com]

Very interesting and thought-provoking stuff here.

I guess my general opinion is that I don't particularly believe in nations.

Errrm. You know, this is a stance I am much more familiar with when the non-believed thing is, say, microbes. Or evolution. So I'm going to be a bit working my head around that notion.

But you're not saying "Nations don't exist", are you? You're saying (am I right?) that "national identification and distinction is not the ideal method of human political organization".

Which is very interesting, and something I'd like to hear more about - especially as to what you see as the (current) practical/ideal alternatives, as well as what you'd like to see eventually in place for the world.

For me, for right now and the foreseeable future, so long as there are large chunks of the world that don't practice "government by the people" and the kind of self-reliant individual liberty that I associate with my nation, I'm going to keep on being an American patriot. "The world" does not promise me the kinds of liberties and rights the Constitution does, the kind I think are vital.

(And, for the record, while I have lived the majority of my life in the USA, I have lived in other countries for extended periods of time.)

But thank you so much for putting your thoughts out there.

- hossgal

[oyceter]

But you're not saying "Nations don't exist", are you? You're saying (am I right?) that "national identification and distinction is not the ideal method of human political organization".

Yes ;). Given that it is rather difficult to ignore the fact that nations do exist! Well, I'm not sure if it's not the ideal method of human political organization so much as a vehicle for personal identification, if that makes any sense? I'm also not quite sure how to separate the two.

Hrm. (sorry, pausing to think) That's very interesting! I didn't quite realize that I partially look at nationality and the notion of nation as a sort of identity issue and not necessary as a political one! I mean, obviously I do think it is a political issue, but I suppose what seems to make me nidgy feeling is the personal identification with nation and how that personal identification can sometimes lead to nationalism and etc.

I think this must be highly influenced by Imagined Communities and my one class on imperialism and colonialism in college, even though I completely don't remember anything from the book -_-;;.

Anyhow, sorry, I stray from your question.

I don't have any real practical or ideal alternatives, although I suppose I am rather idealistically attracted to the internet, where you don't have to reveal race or ethnicity or nationality or gender if you don't want to. Of course, this is me being naive and ignoring other economic factors, as well as fluency in English (on this side of the internet at least). I'm unfortunately not well-versed enough in government and political science and the like to even begin to know what something better may be. I suppose I approach this more as a historian? Not sure.

Anyhow, I guess for me it is hard to separate out the idea of nation as something completely mutable, transforming through the times into what a certain people need, if that makes sense. And while I do very much like a government by the people and civil rights, I'm not sure if I can say that America is the best nation out there. I think it is a very good nation, to be sure, and I think one could say that it is the best nation in terms of (insert condition here). But since I am the queen of qualifiers (heh), I don't know how to measure if something is the best nation overall. When people say that, I keep wanting to insert questions after: To who? In what way? In what time? For what economic level? etc.

Ooo, where else have you lived? What was it like? Was there much culture shock?

Apologies if the questions sound pointed or probing; I don't mean them to insinuate anything about who has more credentials to talk about nationality or whatnot, because I think that's rather silly. Er. Wah, now I worry that that sounded too pointed. Anyhow, I ask because I am really curious and because I enjoy hearing about other people's experiences in other countries, because obviously this is a topic that interests me a great deal ;).

And thank you for commenting ^_^.