ilikeacid said:
Anyone who has the time, and enjoy's a good rant on the nature of partisan politics in the western world, please read, Essays by Orwell, especially the one called Notes on Nationalism. It's scary how Howard and Rudd still conform to uninspired notions of politics, pulling on the average citizen's own interpretations of nationalism (i.e. Nationalism = bad, patriotism = good) to win this election.
Nice post, and exactly right. I commonly cite Notes on Nationalism, and paraphrase Orwell's suggestion as to the lunacy of applying personal characteristics or individual classifications, to whole groups of people.
By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’(1). But secondly — and this is much more important — I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests.
Notes on Nationalism
You can read the essay at the above link.
I got my hands on the Penguin version of the Essays at about 14 and have read them over and over since that time, referring back to them every six months when I need an injection of common sense into my thought process.
I also reccomend, if you enjoy reading Orwell's non fiction, that you try and find his collecton of columns, mostly taken from 'As I Please' but interspersed with letters and pesonal communications. Very good stuff.
There's a great deal to be said about Orwell's 'Notes on Nationalism', but I say a great deal all the time, and I honestly don't think anyone's actually read a good 50% of my posts, because alot of them turn out to be 4,000 word monsters completely inappropriate for a message board. Ah well.
What I will say, though, is that 'Nationalism', as Orwell uses it, and himself states for want of a better word, is an exceedingly powerful concept, and as far as I've been able to tell, there is no word that is accurately correlative to Orwell's definition. I used to use 'bigotry' and sometimes I use 'generalisation', but I don't think they accurately convey the second of the two-part definition, that is, the habit of identifying oneself with a cause and then attempting to secure prestige for that cause rather than the individual, by any means necessary - and not to mention, taking offense against comments made against the group to which the individual self-describes himself as being a part.
I think it's just as rampant as a concept now as it was then, only I think it has become even more prevalent, insidious a method of thinking as it is.
When I use the word 'generalisation' or add the caveat 'negative', I mean it in a similar sense as Orwell describes 'Nationalism'. However, the concept, as I see it in existence today, may or may not have a definite group association element. It certainly can, but it does not need to.
I see generalisation, as I use the word, occurring everywhere and in just about every person. It transcends political affliation, religious identification, moral code or conduct, or any other means by which you can objectively classify a person.
For example, there's a blog called littlegreenfootballs.com - and in fact Orwell's 'Nationalism' may more accurately describe these people - in which the predominant activity is to wait for Charles, the admin, to post some piece of anti-Muslim bigotry, and then slobber over that piece in the comments section, using 3/4 of the time to wish death upon all Muslims and praying, though I can't imagine praying while typing, for the destruction of Mecca and all Muslim holy cities. The other quarter of a visitor's time is spent praising Charles, as the almighty, infallible and omnipotent lord of the blog. Charles is never wrong. Even when he's wrong, everyone shifts their opinion so that his opinion has, in their microcosm of a sick society, become right.
Now they consistently deny charges of racism, but are proud to cite themselves as anti-Muslim bigots. However, they are not just anti-Muslim but virulently racist, as well.
I often thought of 'Notes on Nationalism' when going to that site. It's quite depressing seeing people act in this way.
By the same token, as I posted amidst about ten thousand other words on the 'Afterlife' thread, I have seen the same patterns of thought exhibited by people who define themselves as 'enlightened' or 'open-minded' - that is, enlightened in direct opposition to religion, which is seen as the absolute and all-encompassing evil. So a person is enlightened because he is not religious, and religious people are so supremely unenlightened that a person can be confident and derive self-esteem from the 'fact' that they do not think in the same way. But of course, by judging a faith on the exhibitions of someone belonging to that faith, they exhibit the same tendency towards this kind of thinking as religious people have done, and as scientists have done - in fact, as all humans have done.
I only see that there are less vicious or savage forms of this kind of thinking, and then more vicious and savage forms.
I have always examined myself for these tendencies, and have without much trouble, found them in my interactions with others and my considerations of others. I have tried to eliminate them and still do. It's my belief that this kind of doctrine has at least part of it's basis in lazy thinking, or ignorance. That is to say, it is easier to label group A as evil, and group B as good, because I belong to group B, and I now have justified my antagonism towards them.
It is more challenging, as Shakespeare alluded to in Romeo and Juliet, when I meet a group A person and find out that he or she is a reasonable sort of a person, and not too different from myself. Once I see commonality or similarity, any antagonism is gone, and replaced by an empathy - that most base and at the same time most important emotion - empathy. That is, attempting not just to see the world through the Group A person's eyes, but being able to feel the world as that person does. Essentially, I see it coming back to universal experience - that person has a parent, and so do I. I know how my parent feels about me, perhaps they have a parent who feels about them the same way. Or, I kicked my toe on the corner of the bookshelf, and feel pain. I know that person is human and can feel pain too. Or that person can be sad, disappointed, elated, ignorant, arrogant, just as I can - and therefore, a connection is established, no more able to be articulated than that.
And it's relation to Notes on Nationalism, the suppression of empathy among these people, and the emergence (if it indeed has ever retreated) of this kind of thought in today's society, in more subtle forms, in more violent forms, and more importantly, it's emergence and exhibition in people who deny that they feel or think in such a way. Orwell comments on this hypocrisy in his essay 'Antisemitism in Britain', when he cites a woman as saying, 'I don't hate the Jews, I'm not some anti-semite, I just don't like the way they act', and describes the strangely sickening human duality, being able to espouse a view and in the same sentence, deny to another person and to the self, that you hold such a view.
Interesting stuff, thanks for reminding me about that essay ilikeacid, I haven't read it in a long time and I guess I should pick it up again somewhere along the line.
Let me ask you something, I've been thinking about this for a while: since Orwell's real name was Eric Blair, do you think it's possible his nom de plume is derived from Orsen Welles - whose real name was 'George Orsen Welles'. Because as far as I know, Orsen Welles was very young at the time Eric Blair was writing, but he nonetheless was a prodigy and was a celebrity before he turned 20. I just don't know when Eric Blair took that name up. Anyway a bit of speculation nonetheless. And vaguely on topic. Well most of the post was.
Pete
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
