We are in a period in history when there is a worldwide move toward nationalism. This is vastly different from patriotism. Nations, peoples, do have different characteristics, different interests, different resources, and different strengths.
You know what they say. Heaven is where the police are British, the chefs Italian, the mechanics German, the lovers French, and it is all organized by the Swiss. Hell is where the police are German, the chefs British, the mechanics French, the lovers Swiss, and its all organized by the Italians.
Patriotism invites a realistic appraisal of a nation’s genetic strengths, environmental assets, and cultural heritage. It calls upon a nation to capitalize on its strengths and contribute them to the world community. There is a healthy using of each other.
Nationalism, on the other hand, treats the world like our playground, as one nation uses another poorly in an attempt to prop up a non-yet-solid sense of themselves.
Nationalism isn’t rooted in our wonderful qualities, strength, and true greatness judged by what we are able to contribute to our fellow humans. Instead, it’s dependent on an image of ourselves, a mask we wear, an idealistic sense of ourselves or our group, which we conjure up almost as a mass hysteria.
With nationalism, we have to prove ourselves better than others. You see it in the mythology of the chosen people, in the English soccer fans singing “Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves,” in Germany’s “Deutschland, Deutschland, uber alles,” and in its most demonic form in the Nazis concept of the master race, ethnic cleansing in nations such as Rwanda and Serbia—and, sadly, in the attack on the U.S. Congress.
We witness nationalism as Vladimir Putin amasses forces on the border of Ukraine. The words of Nicole Daedone are a timely warning about the waging of yet another war. She writes, “Force always acts against. Force does not supply, does not feed, cannot generate, and cannot integrate. It is based in the laws of a zero-sum game. Nothing new can come from the application of force. The use of force is consumptive, in that it only spends energy and cannot create it.”
You would think that with the human race only 100 years beyond Great War, which spent the lives of 16 million in battle with a total expenditure of 37 million human lives, we would have learned that force is nothing but destructive.
Obviously nothing was learned, because only 21 years later the world was plunged into World War II, with a loss this time of 60 million people. Does anyone even begin to comprehend the staggering numbers involved in these two wars?
So here we are again, with nations unable to find a way to dwell together without murdering each other. Because that’s what war is—mass murder. And at the root of it all is the desire of one set of people to dominate the lives of those around them. Instead, they could seek a way to dwell together by learning to value and cherish their differences. It’s all based on the notion that “I am right, and you are wrong.”
The difficulty human beings have in accepting each other, and indeed embracing each other with all their differences, is highlighted by William and Harry, the two sons of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, whom the queen had to separate with Peter Philips, son of her daughter Princess Anne, as they walked behind the casket of their grandfather, the Duke of Edinburgh. If two people who have all the resources of the world at their fingertips cannot find a way to accept each other, what chance does the rest of the world have of living peaceably?
Why cannot human beings learn to cherish one another for their differences? Why must we always impose our faith, politics, and way of life on others?
There is nothing powerful about force. As Daedone writes, “We are subject to a cultural misunderstanding that force is power. We have mislabeled it. Unlike force, power needs no object. It is what it is and doesn’t need a counterpart. It is the fabric of the field of what moves us.”
She adds that power “uses force when force is what is called for, but from the perspective of having and creating power.” Such was the case in resolving the two world wars. In the present moment, there is nothing “powerful” about Russia amassing forces on the border of Ukraine. On the contrary, the need for force shows how truly powerless a nation really is.
Daedone continues, “Power is not a response, but an allowance that is called forth in the relationship of life. To the extent that anything is received, integrated, and released, power is generated.” This is a lesson the two British princes could exemplify for the world right now, were they in their talks this week to discover their true power to accept and embrace one another. They could model how we don’t have to agree before we can be friendly with each other.
We do not have to be the same as each other in order to value each other. Harmony doesn’t come from controlling the other, but from embracing and cherishing our differences.
Even if we choose a different path from another, it can be done in a spirit of valuing each other. Hostility is not a prerequisite for taking our own path. What is needed at such a time is the ability to act in a differentiated manner.
Differentiation is different from individualism. Differentiation means we can define who we are, while accepting others with their different way of defining themselves. Nothing about this causes us to pull apart.
How do we become differentiated? As infants, we depend on someone else to awaken in us a sense of worth. We need someone to take note of us. We are, as it were, either smiled or scowled into existence. Being able to function as one among many comes about when we are encouraged to grow up with an excitement about being who we are.
When our inborn longing to delight in ourselves is frustrated, it triggers egotism—and on a wider scale, nationalism. Not feeling as if we are anybody, we have to try to prove that we are somebody. Nations conquer other nations and build empires in an attempt to bolster a flagging sense of themselves. Their country has to be Number One, the greatest.
Growing up is a process of moving from dependence on the other for our sense of ourselves to our own inner sense of ourselves. The more solid our inner being becomes, the less threatened we are and the more true power we exercise instead of needing to force issues.
On an individual and a national basis, this means learning to stand powerfully on our own two feet, not so that we can walk away and exist as hermits, but so that we can commit ourselves to walk side by side and hand in hand. We neither lean on the other, nor flee the other. We can be true to ourselves among others, not losing ourselves in them. This is differentiation.
Nationalism utilizes power over others. We use others poorly, in a manner that stifles, controls, or deprives others. We seek to subjugate, to dominate.
When individuals and nations are truly differentiated, power isn’t seen as the exercising of power over the other. Rather, it takes the form of empowerment of the other. To use others well facilitates their functioning as well as our own. Being fully ourselves, we encourage the other in coming into their own.
Instead of acting like the one and only, expecting other people and other nations to revolve around us, we see ourselves as one among many. We delight in who we are, and we delight in who they are.
This is patriotism––a love of our heritage, a delighting in all that has gone into making us into the kind of people we are. In America, this is symbolized by the inclusivity represented in the Statue of Liberty.
In asserting how great we are, we have a realistic appreciation of our dependence on our fellow human beings on a global scale. We value all that they contribute to the world, as well as all we can contribute to them.