Nationalism

I must admit I am a little sensitive to this: nationalism. Also, to the sister of this metaphor: patriotism. I have been playing with this idea for a while. And it came to a head at a Rotary Conference in Spokane this June, where someone was playing to an audience and being somewhat a touch too American for my taste. Not that there is anything wrong with being American. Two thoughts came across my brain (or at least what crosses as being my brain) at more or less the same time:

• Of the people in the room, who were American, how many thought they were lucky to be American? This would work for many of the other nationalities in the room too, primarily Canadian.
• How many of the people in the room were proud of their nationality?

If, as I suspect, many people in the room would have answered “yes” to both questions, how many of them would have been aware of the fact that they were proud of their luck? OK, I get it, this is a little bit of a semantic play.

The reason I am sensitive to this is because, I was born in Canada (nothing to do with me), I grew up in England and could pass as an English person (nothing to do with me); my first language was Latvian, (well I don’t think I could pass as Latvian, but have been known to do a reasonable imitation), again nothing to do with me. My surname is Russian, again nothing to do with me. And of course, my ancestors came from somewhere, probably Africa, some sixty thousand years ago or more. Prior to that my ancestry gets a little bit fishy. All this is, and was, beyond my control. I wrote this awhile ago:

Imagine that you are a man; this is relatively easy for about fifty percent of the adult population. Now imagine that you are also stark naked and that a similarly robed man is asking you “the most important thing is to consider oneself a Latvian?” Don’t worry about the nationality for the moment. Now we can also take into account in our imaginations, that you are relatively drunk and that the inquisitor’s drunkenness has no relativity only an absolute scale. And finally, add one more layer to our imagination, that around the corner there about twenty other men, Latvian, who are in various states of undress, varying between nakedness and a towel, who can hold their consummate liquor way better than the relative and the absolute. How would you answer this question, especially, if you did not think considering oneself a Latvian was the most important thing?

The quote above is a reflection of a true story that happened to me. So, when people ask me who am I in the context where I am from, I struggle to answer this; … pasuales pilsonis or world citizen come to mind.

A human being first.