[eeZah7Ux]

> Nationalism is, for better or worse, part of human nature.

Nonsense. Humans (and other mammals) are born with genetic programming to recognize faces, drink milk and cry when hungry. Nationalism is entirely a cultural artifact.

[nazgul17]

I disagree. Caring for "your" people is very much part of human nature. Where you draw the line can change (examples are blood, race, hometown, city, region, nation, continent, family etc), but "us vs them" it is an overwhelmingly common pattern.

[eeZah7Ux]

As JoeDaDude pointed out tribalism is not nationalism. Most mammals are social creatures and, unsurprisingly, tend to bond with their peers.

The idea that someone that you've never seen or met is "your" people because it has the same letters on a passport is a cultural artifact.

> "us vs them" it is an overwhelmingly common pattern

The fact that is common in various cultures does not imply that it is "human nature", but the opposite.

Prof. Sapolsky research on baboons "group culture" is a good example. There are various lectures from him on youtube.

[JoeDaDude]

I agree in principle as "nations" are a fairly recent development. Perhaps a better term would be "tribalism" as people like to belong and/or identify with a group - call it a tribe for lack of a better term.

Ideally, people would consider supra-national entities (such as the EU) as their tribe, but I wonder how far that will go. Even in a large country such as the USA, it is hard for everyone to identify as belonging to the same USA tribe, what with divisions of North-South, religion, race, etc.