Redefining Identity: Why Nationalism is Not the Answer
When asked about their identity, people often respond with their national label, such as “I am an American,” “I am a German,” or “I am a Russian.” However, this concept is relatively new, having emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries to refer to a group of people who share (more or less) the same language, culture, and history. Leonardo Da Vinci, for example, would be surprised to learn that he is classified as an “Italian” thinker, since he would have defined himself as a Florentine. Italy as a country did not exist in his time, and the concept of national identity would not have made sense to him.
I find the identification of personal identity with national identity problematic for several reasons. First, being born into a particular region and culture is not something we consciously choose; it just happens. We wake up one day as babies in a certain culture and learn to speak a certain language. It’s like being born with a certain hair color. I may have been born with “blond” hair, but I am not my hair. Similarly, I may have an “American” style of speech and expression, but I am not that style.
Second, nationality is a simplification and standardization of a very complex world into a very simple and straightforward one. In France, it has been part of French national policy since the 18th century to discourage the use of regional dialects and languages. If you came to school and spoke Occitan, your French teacher would punish you, sometimes verbally, sometimes physically. You must speak what we think you should speak, not what you learned at home!
The promotion of national language or identity is basically a process of “straightening” a very complex social world with a lot of diversity into a uniform, simple and “square” world where differences are flattened. I think this is a problem. The real world is always more complex than our thoughts about it. We can acknowledge the fact that there is indeed a degree of linguistic and cultural similarity in a given region, and celebrate that similarity while recognizing that it’s always changing, evolving, moving, and most importantly, interacting and merging with other linguistic and cultural groups around it.
I am not saying that we should do away with the concept and delineation of “nationality” altogether. Indeed, the concept of nationality can be useful in certain legal or political systems, or in the regulation of large groups of people. But it should be used primarily for what it is: a mental construct that reduces the reality and complexity of who we really are. Reduction can be useful because reality is sometimes too overwhelming to navigate. A map of a territory is basically a reduction of that territory in a way that allows us to travel. It is good and useful. But as Alfred Korzybski used to say: “A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.” I would add that the same is true of a nation: it’s a simplified representation of a given people, it isn’t the people.
Finally, it is important to keep in mind that the demarcation of the nation is a very arbitrary process. Let’s trace one’s culture back. For example, let’s say I am French. French comes from Latin, which was influenced by Greek, which came from Indo-European, which is a family of most European languages. So national history is a conscious choice where I cut off the rest of history and say “this part of history is uniquely mine, the rest isn’t.” But isn’t all history connected? Aren’t we all part of one historical process, each of us placed in a different place within it? Then how can we say “this is my story” and “this is your story” when these two stories are the two ends of the same stick? We can’t separate them.
Global warming and impending global catastrophe remind us of the importance of seeing the oneness of the world and acting in accordance with that fact. If we don’t see the underlying unity of the process, we will fracture and fall apart. Unity doesn’t mean that we don’t celebrate diversity; it just means that we don’t get too caught up in our simplifications of complex life into simple terms, boxes, and symbols. To the extent that we can recognize the limitations of our labels and concepts, we can become more humane and caring, not only toward other cultures, but also toward nature and animals. The world is much richer than we can imagine.
In summary, I believe that national identity may have practical uses in certain contexts, but it is far more important to recognize its limitations and the potential harm it can cause if taken too seriously. We must strive to see ourselves and others as complex individuals with unique experiences and perspectives that cannot be pigeonholed (unless we want to become caricatures of ourselves). In the end, if someone asks us the question, “Who are you?” and we want to be honest, we will say: “I am one end of this process called life, and you are the other.”
