[extropy-chat] Economic consensus on immigration

[Lee Corbin]

Rik writes

> On Sun, 21 May 2006, Lee Corbin wrote:
> 
> > An Egyptologist friend of mine believes that the Egyptians did have
> > a sense of national identity; but if so, they'd be an exception, so
> > I agree basically with what you've written here.
>
> So did the Greek, who united against the Persians despite
> their own infighting.  The Etruskans and several others
> from that era also had a national identity.

I think that there may be two problems with what you are saying.
First, "nationalism" is supposed to mean more than mere allegiance
to a particular tribe (a "people") or a sect (a religion). It
in fact is supposed to be a unifying principle that unites such
disparate groups. Germany for all Germans (19th century), or
Italy for all Italians, the Soviet Union for everyone they could
overrun, etc.  China too is a nation.

So I would agree that possibly with a few exceptions, nationalism
really got going with the French revolution, when the French began
strongly identifying with "La Patrie", which gave them their
tremendous strength (being able to take on all of Europe and win).

Secondly, the Greeks never united. Philip the Second
conquered them all, and Alexander enforced it. When Philip
died, Alexander felt that he had to subdue the Danube area
before heading East. The Greek city states rebelled while
he was away, and so Alexander came back and made an example
of Thebes. He had no further trouble with rebellions in Greece.

So one may say that Greece was united in the same way that Latvia,
Lithuania, the Ukraine, Estonia, and dozens of other entities
were "united" (in the Soviet Union).

Later on, the Greeks became "united" in much the same way under
Rome.

> A common theme appears to be that identity is aligned with
> religion, and/or other common activities.
> 
> I would not be surprised if nowadays people are more
> united by which sports team they belong to or which
> online community they are in, than by their nationality.

Yes, quite right. In the West, nationalism has died. It was a
victim of the world wars and also of leftist influence. So indeed
most Americans feel much stronger loyalty to their own political
party or baseball team than they do to "America". Besides, it isn't
so easy having much loyalty or devotion to such an amorphous
diverse entity.

Lee