> >Jon Louis Mann wrote:
> >nationalism is an aberration
> >found in many countries, and to be
> >abhorred. it is especially repugnant
> >in nations where their citizens actually
> >believe they are better than other nations...
> Nationalism is not an aberration -- it is one of the human
> constants. Almost every tribal group ever examined had a
> word for themselves that basically meant "People"
> or "true people" and some equivalent to the Greek
> word "barbarian" which meant "not us".
> If you think about it in evolutionary terms, it makes
> perfect sense. 99% of our evolutionary history was spent in
> small, isloated bands, as hunter-gatherers, in a world where
> humans were not the dominant species. Danger was
> everywhere. Survival of the individual depended on
> suvirival of the group. Anything from outside the groups
> was suspect, dangerous, to be feared. Chimpanzees show a
> lot of the same behaviors, even patrolling the boundaries of
> their terriortories, attacking the members of other groups,
> and, as Jane Goodall pointed out, having all out wars
> between groups. So when you point to one country, or one
> group, or one nationality, or whatever, and say
> "They're the nationalistic ones",
> "they're the evil ones",
> "they're the aberration", you're
> really just engaging in the same behavior you claim to be
> derriding: "Us-and-them". Even more importantly,
> you are avoiding responsibility for something that is
> a common trait we all share by projecting it on
> "them". We all have these tendencies, and the
> only answer to them is reason, not emotion, name calling
> and the generation of more fear and hate. As Dr. Brin
> points out, the kinds of open, responsive systems that we
> have developed in the past few centuries, are the only
> antidote we know to the universal condition of tyrrany,
> exploitation, war and tribalism. And we have to use our
> reason to set up these systems despire the fact that it goes
> against millions of years of evolutionary history (just like
> I have to use my reason not to gorge myself on high-fat
> foods at every possibility, even though my genes tell me it
> has survivial value -- for my distant ancestors it did, and
> the ones who stocked up on fat and calories when
> they could surivived and passed the craving on to me -- it
> today's world, though, it will kill me) ...
> Judging from some of the recent discussion on this list,
> maybe we should all go back and read some of the stuff Dr.
> Brin has written about the addictive qualities of
> self-righteous indignation?
> Olin
aren't you being self righteous about not being self righteous, olin? if
intolerance of intolerance is being self righteous, then i pleasd guilty, too.
jon
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