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A day in patriotic space

July 4, 2010

I’ve spent most of the day relaxing and reading Inside The Outbreaks, the story of the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service.  And over the years they did a fantastic lot of good, though not as much as they could have.  And while the contributing writers are justly proud of one, they are painfully conscious of the other.

Right now there are fireworks going off outside, which is neat and everything but I’m probably headed off to bed soon.  As tired as I am, they won’t keep me awake.

But I did spend some time today on the question: is patriotism even really a virtue?  I mean, it’s obvious why everyone thinks it is.  Basically it’s distilled in-group identity with a dash of xenophobia.  We are “Us” and they are “Them”, right?

OK, I am patriotic, in this way: I want my country to prosper and to live honorably in the human family.  The second part is a limiting factor on the first. 

Put it in logical perspective: would you want your family to prosper by selling drugs to school children?  I hope not.  But the US exports drugs it won’t sell within its borders.  For that matter, US tobacco companies market directly to third-world children.  That’s human suffering for profit, plain and simple.

Would you want your state to prosper by polluting the state next door?  Because that’s pretty much what happens when you fill up on cheap gas from Nigeria.  Oil pollution only makes headlines in this country when our own waters are involved. 

Yes, I recognize our country has done many things that are unequivocally good.  EIS investigators taking a major role in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh to help eliminate smallpox from the earth, for one shining, but not at all uncommon, example.  There’s just no downside to it.

But it’s also patriotic to recognize when our country has done some things that are of mixed value or unequivocally bad.  Failure to see our faults is actually harmful to our country in the long run.  It’s analogous to not being able to feel pain; sooner or longer it will cause disaster.  A nation needs a conscience just like we need nerves that sense pain.

The news found timely release this week that when Thomas Jefferson was working on the Declaration Of Independence, he first wrote “subjects”, but scratched it out and wrote in “citizens”.  It’s as if he got to thinking about he implications of each word.

A citizen takes part freely and gladly in the common good.  But lately we’ve gotten into the mental habit of thinking of ourselves as “consumers” instead of “citizens”.  Consumers are not really responsible to anyone.  Consumers make decisions on the cost to them, not the cost to others.  Consumers are, today,  loyal subjects to corporate brands, which discourage questions about the greater good.

As consumers only, we cannot live honorably in the human family.  It cannot be patriotic to accept prosperity on such terms. 

Of course, I’ve had enough of these discussions to know the next question is; “Well who decides the common good, smarty-pants?”  I’m gonna suggest that question is not nearly as damning or as difficult as it is always imagined to be.  But the answer does require imagination.  It requires imagining, for a moment, not being afraid of the Other, and thinking of Us and Them as sharing human identity as well as terrestrial space.

NOTES:

  • Wikipedia: Citizenship status, under social contract theory, carries with it both rights and responsibilities. “Active citizenship” is the philosophy that citizens should work towards the betterment of their community through economic participation, public , volunteer work, and other such efforts to improve life for all citizens. In this vein, schools in some countries provide citizenship education…”
Categories: Uncategorized
  1. July 6, 2010 at 17:17 | #1

    “The second part is a limiting factor on the first. ”

    Oooooh … no, not absolutely.  We need to define “prosper”.  In my mind, anything that diminishes the human family only produces an illusion of prosperity for me/my group.  The reality is that there IS no differention/discrimination between humans.  Institutionalized national groups are artifice, doomed to eventual failure.  If this were not so, at least one national group would have survived in perpetuity. 

    Culture, on the other hand, is the expression of locality and language, which allows groups to experience the vibrance of how others have evolved.  When a cultural group is insecure, it defines itself as superior or “real”, thus giving rise to hitlers of one variety or another.

  2. July 6, 2010 at 17:20 | #2

    And yo DO know you’re getting dangerously close to Buddhism/Zen/Chan, right?  ;)

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