What do you think is the essence of nationality?

What do you think nationality is, in terms of its essence? I mean this could differ for many people, as the essence can be boiled down into many things..

What do you think it is?

A shared history?
A shared biology? (speaking technically, e.g. DNA)
A shared goal/principle? (the American Dream; trying to live the best for their children)

Taking an example of a simple Chinese person, this man living in China would have all these three things combined, so the essence for him would be all these, though perhaps biology might take precedent.

For an American this could be different, since there are domestic natives, natives, migrants, immigrants and so on, which might put a shared goal or principle at the forefront.

But for a someone in a Nordic country or someone in Europe, biology might take precedence. Like, I think most Italians would say they are Italians not because they have an Italian citizenship, but because of the both rich contemporary culture and cultural heritage they all share.

So what is nationality, really?

The essence of nationality is the feeling of belonging to a given group, the ties with its members and the sense of dissimilarity with others - strangers.

This feeling is triggered by sharing the same set of characteristic features that are considered typical, preferable and integrated within a given group.

The most general categories:
- Culture systems - language, nation as a character, values and their formalization, history, reality understandings, lifestyle and its organization, appearance, class division, technology, entertainment, styles of everyday objects, cuisine, etc.
- Territory - understood as the property of a group (homeland) and personified as Mother, Father, this England, these China.

I think that biology in the sense of race distinguishes more civilizational circles than nations. And people rarely think in terms of haplogroups.

I guess you can see 'culture systems' as 'ethnicity' but it seems rather unclear as a category (sometimes nationality is its sub and sometimes parent category)

The nation-state is a modern invention. A few centuries ago French was not one language but over 100. The closest you will come to an organic nation is ethnicity which is somewhat larger than a city-state. Today it's just ingroup-outgroup. In Subsaharan Africa, they have tribes and are not so much nationalistic. That is why its hard to get some of the benefits of capitalism down there. Tribe comes first not best workers. Israel was considered a nation ever without land/territory because it was an ethnic group. Anyone born in the US is a US citizen. The nation-state is based on the type of government and borders you have. Nothing more.

Shared set of values and traditions, and a shared language. Also the agreement that as long as you live in that society you protect and respect its values.

In school I was forced to study a lot of fucking shakespeare. He always threw in awful nationalistic jokes to feed the proles and they all still apply.

So, culture. People take pride in being collectively a little defective in some way

Britons are oddly anti-nationalistic, except for in times of novelty or crisis, when they suddenly love their country and everyone who expresses the same love for it.

I'm picturing a bunch of brits who normally hate brit but it's someone's birthday so they think it's k.

war, football, politics

it is an emotionally manipulative tool of capitalism and state control

*displays patriotic merchandise*

*volunteers to die*

An excuse to take credit of other people's works simply because they happen to be born in a similar patch of land as you.

tribe and racism, collective culture and language.


racial and national identity
(1) born in the same land
(2) have same common ancestors/genetics from that land
(3) fluent in the said language
(4) values and culture
(5) social experience in society and growing up there

just like you move to an alien planet and be a foreigner.

Pyropyro said:

An excuse to take credit of other people's works simply because they happen to be born in a similar patch of land as you.

Click to expand...

True. And to condone the exploitation of people in other patches. Animals don't have nationalities.

I've noticed that animals only gain nationalities when they're dead and ready to eat.

Ick, nationality.

I am def, not loyal to the US.

Nationality is just the extension of community and a sense of loyalty to that community. It is similar to how a family structure should work in that you look out and are dutifully responsible for the needs of your family first and others second.

The conditions of what defines this 'family unit' differ based on the kind of nationalism you speak of. Civic Nationalism or Ethnic Nationalism.

America is mainly Civic Nationalist short of the globalists (World Citizens) who are large supporters of world governments and things like the UN and such. Globalists are still tribal in that they define their groups they just don't use national borders, citizenship or heritage to do so.

Ethnic Nationalism is more common to places like China and Japan these days. There are some ethnic nationalists in America but unlike China and Japan, Ethno-nationalists are despised by the larger whole. The middle east I think is dominated by religious-nationalism more so than ethnic.

Also as the USA continues to age and develop its own culture, traditions, and history and if its mix of people and cultures eventually result in an American Culture as people homogenize where instead of a mix of cultures existing in separate groups in the USA each person becomes mixed person having blood and heritage from so many places that the only heritage they really adhere to is their American Heritage. In some way I suppose this would be considered the start of a Cultural/Ethnonationism in the USA.

There is a point where the "Nation" gets too big and considering yourself a Nationalist is kinda like proclaiming you are loyal to the company who is behind the scenes providing cotton to your favorite underwear company - it just doesn't make sense.

Bleh. I'm a second generation immigrant who is thinking of migrating somewhere else. I don't pledge allegiance to any nation whatsoever.

I used to detest the concept of nationality but these days I think the better approach is to just ignore it. I view nationality as a pragmatic thing. My nationality at the moment allows me to do a lot of stuff I wouldn't be able to do if I didn't have one. Is there a price to pay? Yes but the pros weigh out the cons in the end.

I do have an affinity for culture though. I love listening to music and poetry from the country(ies) of my ancestry. I love listening to the poetry of someone who writes about Singapore, expressing a genuine love for the people here and their culture and the dynamic entity/pattern that can be recognized as Singapore.

In essence, you develop some affinity for a place, for the people there, for its culture and food and the dynamic entity/pattern that can be associated with all that if you stay there long enough. Your own set of patterns evolve to incorporate the patterns associated with the place so you can communicate with someone from that place in a way that someone else from somewhere else is unable to.

But what I detest about the concept of nationality and nationalism as an idea is that it turns this affinity that you feel for a place and the people there and their culture and history and tradition into a kind of political entity meant to further the interests of those at the helm of that place. And I don't want that. I don't want my feelings for a place to become bastardized into something like that.

Pyropyro said:

An excuse to take credit of other people's works simply because they happen to be born in a similar patch of land as you.

Click to expand...

+1. Singapore does this ALL THE TIME.