Memorial Day Blues

Memorial Day is a spectacularly sad day in my opinion.

Here is part of a new story from the Times that tells you why.

....Until last year, no permission was required to publish photographs of the wounded, but families had to be notified of the soldier’s injury first. Now, not only is permission required, but any image of casualties that shows a recognizable name or unit is off-limits. And memorials for the fallen in Iraq can no longer be shown, even when the unit in question invites coverage. NYT

And here is an old one that puts it all over the edge.


Often, OK maybe not often, but often enough, I speak of being a transnationalist. The word, which is really a meme, is a fairly new one in the lexicon of human development, and I wasn't even sure it officially existed as such. So, I googled it today, and low and behold, I found that it is now in Wikipedia.

Transnationalism

"The concept of transnationalism is focused on the heightened interconnectivity between people all around the world and the loosening of boundaries between countries. The nature of transnationalism has social, political and economic impacts that affect people all around the globe.

The concept of transnationalism has facilitated the flow of people, ideas and goods between regions. It has been greatly affected by the internet, telecommunications, immigration and most importantly globalization.

Concepts like citizenship, nationalism and communitarianism are being changed and reexamined with this phenomenon of the modern age.

Transnationalism is often linked to internationalism but differs in the sense that internationalism proper refers to global co-operation between nation states, while transnationalism aims to global co-operation between peoples, and the obliteration of nation states.

Transnationalism is closely related to cosmopolitanism. If transnationalism describes the individual experience, cosmopolitanism is the philosophy behind it. Transnational life styles could be precursor to a cosmopolitan world government.

(snip)

Facilitated by increased global transportation and telecommunication technologies more and more migrants have developed strong transnational ties to their home countries, blurring the congruence of social space and geographic space."

Now, my definition of transnationalism does not contemplate the obliteration of nation states any more than nationalism requires the obliteration of other lesser political organizations like states, counties, cities, or school districts. It only requires that the basic ideology which defines our primary allegiance be tweeked a bit.

You can track a meme by googling it.

And today, there are 17,700 hits for transnationalist. And there are about 537,000 for Transnationalism. There are 16 million hits for Nationalism. The first one listed is from Wikipedia.

Nationalism is an ideology [1] that holds that a nation is the fundamental unit for human social life, and takes precedence over any other social and political principles. Nationalism makes certain political claims based upon this belief: above all, the claim that the nation is the only legitimate basis for the state, that each nation is entitled to its own state, and that the borders of the state should be congruent with the borders of the nation.

[2] Nationalism refers to both a political doctrine[3] and any collective action[4] by political and social movements on behalf of specific nations.

Nationalism has had an enormous influence upon world history, since the nation-state has become the dominant form of state organization." more

Nationalism therefore is an ideology.

And, at this point in time in human development, it is a very powerful ideology. But, once an ideology or meme becomes a barrier to human development, it becomes a less powerful ideology and its power to control our minds and thinking processes begins to wane.

And another meme, such as Transnationalism , will spring up and begin to wax in the free independent minds of thinkers all over the planet.

And the meme of global cooperation will replace the meme of global competition.

And the idiology of capital will succumb to a new ideology of sustainability

and of Peace.

We will have to give up our worn out memes which would lead us down the paths that will result in the ends that we do not want to visit, and instead collectively begin to spread a new meme of transcendent transnationism.

We will certainly have to replace our worn out nationalistic memes of standard progressive left wing politics. (sorry guys)

Transcendental Transnationalism requires that we understand that

We are all sailors on this craft.

And we can't afford to shoot the cooks,

or the guys who climb the mast,

or the guys who mend the ship.

We will even need to forgive the Blighs.

That's where the transcendence comes in.



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