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WeAreAllKin 27 - 03 Mar 2010 - Main.DevinMcDougall
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="EbenSalon" |
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-- NonaFarahnik - 25 Feb 2010
Since I started this Talk page and I get to edit everyone's stuff pretty soon, I have some sort of power over what goes on here. As such, I am going to pretend that whoever else comments will listen to what I say. I find it offensive and counter-productive to our conversation when we malign another person's comments by acting so incredulous as to be demeaning. There is a fine line between when criticism stops being constructive and we should try our best to be mindful of it. Eben is the benevolent monarch and he knows what he is doing, even though I question the effectiveness of some of the language he uses with his scary red text. If we are bemoaning the lack of empathy in the way we treat other living things, we should at least be mindful of the fact that those other living things have feelings. We undermine the very purpose of this class when we scare people into silence, which is why some people never take a stab at joining the conversation. I Will edit your mean comments away. I AM THE MONARCH OF MY TALK PAGES AND MY TALK PAGES ARE FRIENDLY TALK PAGES :). | | | But nationalism - the concept that the boundaries of our familial affection is somehow naturally limited to those within the territories of the same nation-state as us - is to my mind quite implausible as an ethical theory. The nation-state has its origins as a deliberate project by European states to establish more culturally cohesive populations amenable to centralized governing and winning wars. There is nothing natural about it, and certainly there is no inherent link between biological kinship and nationalism. | |
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< | However, we might be able to make constructive use of nationalism nonetheless, now that we have it. Benedict ArnoldAnderson's Imagined Communities made the argument, that, inter alia, nationalism can serve to expand one's boundary of concern beyond immediate kin. He worked on Indonesia, and Indonesia is an example of a case where a bunch of essentially separate island communities developed a common national identification in their struggle against their colonial occupiers and cooperated to throw them out. | >
> | However, we might be able to make constructive use of nationalism nonetheless, now that we have it. Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities made the argument, that, inter alia, nationalism can serve to expand one's boundary of concern beyond immediate kin. He worked on Indonesia, and Indonesia is an example of a case where a bunch of essentially separate island communities developed a common national identification in their struggle against their colonial occupiers and cooperated to throw them out. | | | | |
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< | Elsewhere, and if someone else knows the source for this, I'd be grateful, I read an interesting attempt to explain why the Scandinavian social democracies are so generous with foreign aid. The argument was that the tradition of social democracy there had caused people to expand their circle of concern outside themselves and their family, and that this expansion had continued to encompass people in other countries. Now, I know it's somewhat bad form to cite an argument without knowing the source, but I'm really hoping someone might recognize it and point me to it, and I think it's a thought-provoking hypothesis. | >
> | Elsewhere, and if someone else knows the source for this, I'd be grateful, I read an interesting attempt to explain why the Scandinavian social democracies give more foreign aid than other developed countries. The argument was that the tradition of social democracy there had caused people to expand their circle of concern outside themselves and their family, and that this expansion had continued to encompass people in other countries. Now, I know it's somewhat bad form to cite an argument without knowing the source, but I'm really hoping someone might recognize it and point me to it, and I think it's a thought-provoking hypothesis. | | |
-- DevinMcDougall - 01 Mar 2010 | | | -- JessicaHallett - 02 Mar 2010 | |
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> | Jessica - thanks so much for your efforts! The empirical research about Scandinavia is actually something that came up in a class discussion in undergrad - I probably should have made that more clear.
-- DevinMcDougall - 03 Mar 2010 | | |
About nationalism: Humans derived evolutionary benefit from developing cohesive group structures that guarded resources, supported their members out of reciprocal self-interest, and allowed for specialization. Those tribes that developed very intense concern for other members were more effective at this. This same degree of empathy couldn't extend to all humans, as they were members of competing tribes. I always thought Dunbar’s number was interesting- organizations are most optimal at 150-300 persons or less, anything above that and people begin to lose track of relationships and require increasingly complex systems of laws and rules to keep them in control. |
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