There have been a few interesting philosophical thoughts passing through my mind lately concerning the whole idea of cultural differences among people. I am not very good at philosophical issues, so I was unable to form a coherent picture of these short thoughts in my mind 🙂 . For this reason I decided to write them down… and yes, my blog seemed to be the perfect target for it.
Initially there was one question bugging me: is it a good thing or bad, that we are so different? Is keeping our national identity a good or a bad thing? Well, there are good and bad sides of it I think: the mere fact that there are different nations and cultures, makes our life so ‘colorful’. On the other hand it also fuels ages of hatred amongst nations (well among some individuals surely).
Nationalism is the main source of all the great things that a nation achieves: buildings, monuments our individual histories are a tribute to a nation’s greatness and represent the main elements that color our world. At least that is what keeps attracting me to see/visit more and more places, and I am always stunned of what I see 😀 . All nations nurture their history and know that it is the source of inspiration for their future, it represents the solid foundation upon which their future can be built upon.
Nationalism, however, can be very dangerous in some cases. Most of our wars were and are based on nationalist views. And yes, I think today also, no matter if the real cause is economical or religious: one side considers the other one someone else, it is only the aftermath and casualties that show that both sides are actually human…
It is very hard to accept another culture or civilization. In my case, all the things that seemed inexplicably stupid for me in the U.S. for example, was actually something natural to them… who am I to judge? They live like that, period.
My newest ‘encounter’ with another nation is Italy. In some cases I get really angry because of their behavior. They can seem to be very annoying and unrealistic sometimes. But this is how they are. This is the same nation that built so many great things and let’s face it, they might be far away from Germany’s precision engineers (who Italians seem to detest, among with most of their neighbors 😛 ) but they sure are a cheerful and happy bunch of people who really know how to live 🙂 .
After all this experience makes me, the Hungarian, born and raised in Romania, really-really open to learn about other nations. All the things that I saw/see living abroad makes me understand how little they know about us, but also how little we know about other cultures. Getting to know a culture and really start to appreciate it takes a lot. Even living amongst one another for ages seems to be a short time period for some.
A great Hungarian king said once to his son: “Appreciate the immigrants as they are the ones that make your country more powerful”… And there is no better example to this than the one single super-power still in existence: the U.S…
Having strong national beliefs in the end I think is a good thing, as long as it is used for good reasons. As soon as that belief crosses the line and becomes abusive to other cultures can become a bad thing. Failure to recognize another culture or nation is in my opinion not only an indication of stupidity but can also block another culture from developing. We know so much about our own culture, but so little about others. This applies for both cultures that rarely get in contact and also to neighboring ones that have lived together for centuries. I think it should be about time to start learning more about each other and start building our future on common cultural heritages rather than trying to step on the other.
Well, another broad subject …
Let me describe a few random ideas to show, how complex this subject it is:
Every nation finds important to keep and harness their own cultural heritage. It’s is so obvious that nobody questions it. However new nations were born by merging existing cultures and exciting new things were created.
I think, the secret of a successful culture lies in how successfully they assimilate other ones. We have, for example, a powerful English culture assimilating everything. I mean, everybody else is just trying to copy them, more ore less successfully.
A person who has lost his roots desperately seeks a community to belong to, a new cause to fight for, and he is highly motivated to do whatever it takes to achieve that. America is successful in providing those people a new hope and it was built by those kind of people.
Nationalism in that kind of context makes no sense, it is substituted by patriotism a kind of solidarity with the others sharing the same dreams. Nationalism, as you described it, it’s specific to Eastern-Europe, where there are lots of nations, which gained their sovereignty only less than a century ago, and know they are still in the process of defining themselves as a nation. The other, more established nations benefit from their cultural and economical heritage, feel safe protected by their institutions and couldn’t care less about their identity as long as they are living in welfare.
As a final thought, in my opinion it is part of nature’s most basic laws to cooperate and also sometimes get separated. It’s for the same reason, survival. This applies to any level from the biological to the global.
The solution would be a right balance between the two.