Pride And The Destruction of Everything
On Friday we had a guest lecturer, Professor Barker, come and talk to us about the culture of the British Isles and her individual story about her sense of nationality and culture. She made some excellent points, and it really made me start thinking about how important pride is. If you think about it, much of the wars and problems in the world come down to pride.
You can also have pride for multiple things. Pride for your country. Your state. Your sports teams. Religion. Ethnicity. Nationality. Naturally, people want to be to proud of being a part of something. Unfortunately, this pride can lead to violence. With the Red Sox and Yankees (or maybe Liverpool and Manchester United), it’s usually just a lot of trash talking that may lead to some brawls. With Christianity and Islam, it’s led to years and years of bloody wars.
One of the main themes in the additional readings professor Barker gave us was that of Scottish pride and the potential of breaking off to form their own, independent country. Of course this makes sense, especially with the uprisings in African and Middle Eastern countries of late, but people should take a step back for a second and see what they’re doing.
I’ve always thought that the only way war would stop between citizens of Earth is that if people from an alien planet showed up on our planet. Regardless of whether they attacked us or not, people would have to start banding together as citizens of Earth, something for which pride doesn’t really exist for right now. At the end of the day, we’re all humans, and people should have pride in that.
So, i think this raises the issue you leave implicit here, of the “common enemy” foundation of group identity. And that’s what the Colley reading was all about really – well, Protestant middle class radicals may hate Upper class wealthy ritual-bound high church Anglicans but they BOTH hate catholics more. It is a divide that has left (and continues to leave) really deep scars on the UK, hence the big deal with the Queen’s visit to ireland (of course there religion was, as you point out freuqently happens) tied in with territorial and economic aims. SO anyway, yeah interesting. What do your media references have to offer here though
I liked the Love Actually! Got most of the others too.
PS don’t know how to comment to twitter but did you find any Banksy?