I'd like to say that as an American to your north, I think you're right to not come? Things are weird here presently, so I suspect you probably made the right call for a wide variety of reasons.
But also, I tire of the nationalist rhetoric wherever I see it. I'm tired of this idea that countries are anything more than a shared historical hallucination, and that we're all somehow different from one another. Or as my father often put it, "we all bleed red and we all shit brown." I never chose to be born here, and because I am sick (through no fault of my own) so called tolerant countries wouldn't have me. So I am stuck here.
Regardless, I get why you didn't come, I can't say I blame you, but I also am sick of these damn countries ruining things. Perhaps we should abandon the idea entirely and replace it with the spirit of brotherhood and respect for one's fellow human.
Have you spent any serious time with other cultures? Yes, we all have the same colored blood and excrement, and we have a lot of similarities. Yet at the same time, we are very different. England's traditional dignity culture (the virtuous man can overlook slights) is very different than Africa's honor culture (honor is zero-sum, and you must fight to maintain it), for instance. Japanese values and American values are frequently opposite (Japan values group membership, America values individuality; Japan honors someone by setting them apart, America honors someone by engaging with them.)
In an ideal world we could celebrate each other's differences. But trying to get rid of conflict by getting rid of national borders is naive. Why are the borders where they are? Generally because those are ethno-cultural boundaries. Nations that encompass multiple ethno-cultural groups tend to be somewhat unstable: for instance, Yugoslavia broke up violently, and Iraq has conflict between the Kurds and the rest.
This is not a support of nationalism (although I encourage patriotism, which is different), but "countries are [nothing] more than a shared historical hallucination" is just incorrect.
> Nations that encompass multiple ethno-cultural groups tend to be somewhat unstable
The US has been remarkably stable for a nation that encompasses multiple ethno-cultural groups. It may not continue to be so, but historically it has been a counterexample.
> England's traditional dignity culture (the virtuous man can overlook slights)
i’m english and i have no idea what you’re on about there mate.
are you talking about having basic tolerance for other people? that’s a pretty universal skill not exclusive to england.
> but "countries are [nothing] more than a shared historical hallucination" is just incorrect.
countries are mostly lines drawn on a map.
cultures, which i think is what you’re trying to get at in your post generally, differ everywhere to varying degrees.
dundee (where i currently am) has a different culture to glasgow, which has a different culture to edinburgh, which has a different culture to york, which has a different culture to liverpool, which has a different culture to manchester, which has a different culture to leeds leeds leeds, which has a different culture to oxford, which has a different culture to reading, which has …
the lines are imaginary.
(although yes i live on a massive island so there is a non-imaginary physical boundary where you have to get on a boat or a plane or a train to travel to here).
> are you talking about having basic tolerance for other people? that’s a pretty universal skill not exclusive to england.
You'd be surprised how it's not the case in most of the world. Heck, India has a caste system that Indians have now exported to areas where they're in numbers like California. Arabs have a tribal system that makes them suspicious of anyone not from the in-group. Russian Muscovites treat all of their fellow non-Muscovite countrymen like shit.
You're making rather sweeping generalizations. "Arabs" have, for most of the last 1400 years, been part of 3 MASSIVE states, which spanned from the farthest Atlantic coast of Africa to parts of what is now Pakistan. Not alliances. Actual single states.
Thats the very opposite of parochialism, xenophobia, suspicion or inward societal thinking (however one wants to describe it)
Amidst the destruction of all that SHARED history, and the arbitrary Sykes-Picot jigsaw imposed on "the Arab world", falling back to more local structures is an obvious, and in the grand scheme of things, temporary, defensive mechanism.
The very fact that despite 100 years of Western imposed Sykes-Picot madness, West Asia is still an intricate mosaic of multiple groups - that shows that traditionally the Arabs are WELL CAPABLE of working with those not in their, as you put it, "in group".
The Indian caste system, aka apartheid on steroids, is a horrid example which makes your point. You should have stopped there
I'd bet money I have more experience in this than you. Culture shock is very real (I've lived it), but culture's ain't countries and hell, I get culture shock when I go to the south here in America. It's just some old timey 1940s "we gotta keep these different cultures separated" nonsense. It's nationalism and racism (though it purports to be otherwise).
Things don't have to be this way, we choose them to and I'm getting awful tired of people keeping making the same choices over and over again because they think an imaginary line is somehow sacrosanct.
Naive. Countries are collections of different values. I don't, for example, want to enslave non-believers, nor do I want to own my wife, or have a government take everything I own. I don't want to live in a "theocracy" because those people are crazy.
I select where I live based on those values. Thinking, because we all "bleed red" that we're all the same is a recipe for loss.
Probably. As an American, I have to agree with you -- it's been the case for many years (WAY before Trump) that within 50 miles of our border, your rights go to wherever last year's snow went.
It's too bad so few people can say "My country, if right to be supported, if wrong to be corrected."
I think its funny that the top comment on the blog from ConcernedCitizen is a half troll, half serious, in exactly the same way Trump approaches everything.
Do you think they are trying to do a Trump voice as a joke? I can't even tell anymore.