[extropy-chat] Romans (was Economic consensus on immigration)

[KAZ]

----- Original Message ----
From: Lee Corbin lcorbin at tsoft.com
 

> Joseph asks
>
> > How about the Romans?
> The Romans achieved an historically unparalleled degree of faith in
> themselves, their culture, and their people as a whole.
 
I believe that the Greeks, Romans, and perhaps even Egyptians are examples of something more culturism than nationalism.
 
This is definitely true of the Greeks. The Romans weren't being nationalists, whether it's culturalism or not...they were an empire, a collection of many nations, with no illusions of being a single nation at all. 
 
Another candidate, though, would be Charlemagne's France. Charlemagne specifically attempted to exploit something you could either call nationalism or culturism, regarding the former Roman province of Gaul. He announced Latin to be dead and France to have its own national language, culture, et cetera.
 
But I think that the point of "nationalism" being a new thing is that the very idea of a clear-cut, segregated nation is a new thing. Previously borders were very volatile, really being collections of smaller states held together temporarily, and in changing order, by strong rulers. As I keep implying, people could have cultural identity, but that's not really the same thing.
 
Another aspect may be that class warfare is a new thing, one of the many generous contributions of socialism, and "nationalism" could be narrowly defined as a way of unifying people by pitting them in an "us vs them" sort of way which wasn't even /necessary/ during times of belief in Divine Right, or under authoritarian conquerers.  The fascists, for example, were simply socialists who didn't stop with workers vs management and rich vs poor, but added nationalism and racism. Jews/Gypsies vs Aryans, the Third Reich versus everyone who deserved to be conquered. 
 
Charlemagne's the best I can come up with of anyone previously having used the us vs them thing, and in his case is was purely positive, unlike how it worked after the socialists got finished effing humanity.
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