[eidyia]

well then the question is what "closely associated" means, if by being Indian, Chinese, black, white, orange, etc "closely associates" you with them (that group?) then anything does, the fact that we all wear clothes for example, we belong in a group that shares this idea, which then closely associates us, making the word meaningless

[vesche]

You should learn to admit when you're wrong.

[ninv]

Don't feed the Troll.

[MrScruff]

Your comment has significantly less content than his.

Not that I particularly wanted to mention it until reading your comment, but I also don't particularly understand associating yourself with the activities of strangers who happen to live close to you. It's really not that unusual a viewpoint.

[disputin]

Socialising success. "I'll take some of that, thanks." I've been meaning to give it some proper thought for ages. People celebrating when a sports team wins, as if their own accomplishment. That aside, congrats to ISRO, great stuff.

[gajomi]

It doesn't make the word meaningless at all. There are many orders of granularity in "close association" and the diversity of the usage of the word reflects this. For example a google search for "proud to be human" turns up nearly a million hits. The phrase "proud to be alive" returns yields almost two million. Even "proud to be from the milky way" returns six results.