Nationalism

Warning: this is going to get political.

There’s no denying that there’s been a huge surge in nationalistic attitudes around the world lately. It’s happening in France, in the UK, in Germany, and of course, in the United States. The orange cheeto in the White House is no doubt enabling this with his “America First” campaign promise and encouraging citizens to shield themselves further into the massive, misinformed bubble that America already is.

Nationalism as a concept to me is completely and utterly stupid. All international boundaries are man-made. “Countries” didn’t exist until empires started colonizing distant lands and had to establish governments to handle and take care of them. Nearly every major country today was formed through conquest by an invading army. Internal differences forced the invaders out and some borders were established, thus creating countries. The entire identity of many nations is simply based on not wanting the invaders present there, and the whole idea of a “country” is very very modern given the timeline of human history.

When I say nationalism, I don’t mean patriotism. Patriotism is fine and encourages friendly competition. It’s the whole reason international sporting events are fun to watch. Pride and support for your own countrymen is a beautiful thing. When I say nationalism in this sense, I’m talking about the kind of extreme patriotic misalignment of ideals and attributed values which involves a fierce devotion to one’s country to the point that they associate their own identity and being to the lifestyle and cultures that they were brought up with in the small sliver of the nation’s ever-changing fabric. These people take an extremist approach to all foreign notions and will defend their own upbringing and traditionalist attitudes over everything else, even if it was wrong. These are the white supremacists marching with Confederate flags on Charlotesville that the aforementioned orange cheeto failed to condemn in 2017.

America’s identity is a troubled one. It’s constantly been evolving for the entirety of its existence, and it’s hard to see that when you only look at the time that has passed so far in your own lifetime. It was a little over just 150 years ago now that slavery was abolished. It was almost exactly 100 years ago that women got the right to vote. And it was just 50 years ago that we landed on the moon. It’s constantly been changing and shifting according to the times, but it feels static over the course of one lifetime. And it’s hard for people to accept that things are changing, especially when they’re changing so fast and so transparently.

The internet has no doubt enabled many incredible things to happen. It has allowed us to not only communicate with each other in the far corners of the world nearly instantaneously, but also for us to see what’s happening on the other side of the globe immediately as soon as it happens. It made the world more transparent and made the problems plaguing our global society more visible. And what was our reaction to that? Clearly, band together as the human race because we’re all in this together, right? I wish.

Instead of bringing people closer together, we’re seeing firsthand the negative impacts of instant information. Countries seem to be insulating themselves from the rest of the problems in the world with a “not my problem” attitude because it’s not happening to them. Most of the western world turns a blind eye to the crisis in the Middle East or the atrocities being committed in Myanmar, because why should they care? They didn’t have to care when they didn’t know about similar things happening hundreds of years ago, so why care now? Instead of “wasting” time and resources trying to solve someone else’s problems, nations are starting to shield themselves from world that exists outside their borders.

Sometimes, they have seemingly good reasons to do so. They’ve got to reform their own country’s education system, revamp their economy, focus on job creation, invest in research and innovation, foster the renewable energy industry, and keep citizens engaged in their communities. They don’t have time to solve the rest of the world’s problems. This is especially apparent in the wealthy, affluent Western nations like the UK, the United States, France, and Germany.

But here’s what boils my blood and what nobody seems to be getting. Our problems today are not isolated to one country or landmass. They affect the entire world. Pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord was such a dumb move with an even dumber rationale: to focus on “America” and not the rest of the world. Even stable geniuses should know that the United States exists on Earth. Limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees will only happen if everyone on Earth agrees that it’s in everyone’s best interest to do so.

Our oceans are acidifying at an alarming rate. Marine life is dying off faster than ever before and entire ecosystems are being wiped from the face of the planet due to this. Overfishing of endangered species and dumping toxic waste into the oceans while this is happening isn’t helping anyone either. Again, this is a global issue because all the water on Earth is connected. It won’t help if South Africa agrees to stop polluting while Japan keeps going on a whale killing-spree.

Topsoil is degrading around the world rapidly due to a combination of deforestation, erosion, and more frequent extreme weather events. Soil is the basis of all life and based on our current estimates, all the soil in the world could run out in as little as 60 years if we keep up the current rate of aggressive chemical-based farming and deforestation. It’s true that this also naturally happens over time, but as with everything, humans are greatly accelerating the pace at which it happens. We’re literally disrupting the entire cycle of soil generation and growth.

What’s more infuriating than countries not willing to work together on all these issues is that these topics somehow become heavily politicized whenever they come up. When did caring about the climate become a liberal issue? Why are liberals associated with the ones who want to deal with and fix these problems? This affects EVERYONE. Turning a blind eye to these issues and focusing on your own country is like shutting yourself in the cabin room to tidy it up as the entire ship is sinking. The vast majority of policymakers in power obviously don’t seem to care about anything but short-term profits for their investments, so who will? With this kind of rising tide of nationalism, it doesn’t seem like the people will either.

Long story short, the whole idea of nationalism is a big step backward in solving the biggest crises of our time. It’s not helping anyone to proclaim with pride that their country is doing amazing when the entire world is headed for disaster. Adaptability is of homo sapiens’ most important trait when it comes to surviving and sustaining its own species on this planet, and we’re really not doing a great job of it today. The warning signs are all right here and yet we fiercely wave our flags in our own little pockets of land while everything crumbles as a whole from the inside. R.I.P humanity.