Post Nationalism
*
Over the weekend, I told someone that I was a Post Nationalist.
I may have made that up.
But you probably know what I mean.
Now, I realize that most of you out there are not.
You still love America or the Mother Land or whatever.
Or at least, you think you do.
But I can't help but think we need to grow out of this.
Our true Mother Land is Mother Earth.
And we need to understand
that we are all sailors
on this ocean of space together,
on a very fine craft called Earth.
And it seems a little silly for the engine department
to declare war on the kitchen.
Or for the infirmary to be blockaded by the quartermaster.
We are all sailors on this sea.
Last night, I saw Munich.
It's a well crafted movie.
Here is the plot.
During the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, eleven Israeli athletes are taken hostage and murdered by a Palestinian terrorist group known as Black September. In retaliation, the Israeli government recruits a group of Mossad agents to track down and execute those responsible for the attack.
But the drama comes from watching the agents as they go through the business of executing their targets without a judge or a jury.
Roger Ebert ranks it the third best movie of the year after Crash and Syriana.
According to Ebert,
"The film has deep love for Israel, and contains a heartfelt moment when a mother reminds her son why the state had to be founded: "We had to take it because no one would ever give it to us. Whatever it took, whatever it takes, we have a place on earth at last." With this statement, I believe, Spielberg agrees to the bottom of his soul. Yet his film questions Israel's policy of swift and full retribution for every attack."
Towards the end, Avna, the leader of the execution squad and a former bodyguard to Golda Meir, says
"There is no peace at the end of this."
Then the camera pans to a New York of the 70s and locks in on the World Trade Center towers.The connection of the violence of the 70s in this movie to the violence of today is unmistakeable.
But we must more fully understood the roots of this violence.
And we should understand that our Nationalism has become a disease.
There should not be a two state solution to the problems in the Mideast.
There should be a NO state solution.
For we are all Sailors on this Sea.
And the Seas themselves,
are challenge enough.
We need the whole crew,
and we need the Whole Earth.
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*art courtesy of Mari Giddings
posted by oZ @ 8:08 AM
5 Comments:
Nationalism in the cause of Mother Earth sans nation-state boundaries is a virtue, much greater than the oxymoron it would appear to be...I take it to heart.
FM
we love our tribes too much to give them up.
I think it is an innate part of the human brain (limbic system) to have affiliation to family and tribe. It is something that evolution has programmed into us and cannot be taken out with a snap of the finger.
Politiicans exploit this family/tribe connection by trying to make us believe that "country" is part of our close knit ties. Advertisers tell us we are part of the Sprint [or other company name] "friends and family" group. Sports promoters sell us on the idea that a local team (with imported players) is "our" team. They love us and we love them (yeah right).
Love for Mother Earth and humanity will not happen unless aliens from space, attack us, and then we can start thinking of it as an "us" versus "them" thing.
However, we can have internet families.
Why do you think "earth-family-alpha" is an effective draw? Yes, becuase it exploits the evolutionary-instilled need for tribe & family. Internet blood is thicker than Earth soil. Mothers need to teach their li'll ones to hang out with the right kind of internet friends --green colored ones.
Our Whole Earth is surrounded by a thin, magical halo of air, life and water. Inside that ominously restive wisp, lives the human beings, a people desperately in need of a respectful society. We need to understand every barrier to a respectful society, whether it be the mammalian wiring of the limbic system, "the lizard brain", the human tendencies re-inforcing fundamentalism and nationalism, or the predictable recurrence of personality-disordered leadership, and then we need to develop schematics for wiring respect through or around those barriers in the same way the founders of this country framed an idealistic Constitution on a skeleton of human nature.
As far as invading aliens go...we have already arrived, and we are about to kill ourselves, unless we band together not against ourselves, but with ourselves to right the mess that we have created. No police state, no corporate state and no disintegrating state of international, inter-tribal warfare can possibly save us from our weapons or our waste. God knows. Only a respectful society can save us, and a respectful society is only going to happen, if there is a massive, universal emphasis on respect for self, place and others by individuals, institutions and countries. Like an AK-47, our credo of respect must be simple, ubiquitous, indestructible and easily operable by children.
Human beings are wired to feel fear, and to be easily motivated, when afraid. We should take advantage of that natural tendency and ask the citizens of this planet to be very afraid of what will happen next, if we do not quickly and urgently learn to get along and work together to avoid unimaginable catastrophe. Like an alcoholic taking the famous first step, we need to admit that we are the one with the problem.
Good night, Oz.
We are definitely in this together. Whether we are talking about the Gaia or Humanity, there is an interconnection that is unmistakable. We need to expand our idea of what our tribe is and have our actions reflect that.
Good post.
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