Many cosmopolitans pine for a world beyond nationalism, but the nation-state remains the best way to organize disparate humans into a purposeful political unit.
First of all, this is a very well-written essay. Chapeau for writing with such clarity.
I would however argue against this case for nationalism, not because I am liberal, progressive, or any other labels that belie the infinite dimensions of a person, but because the empirical reality exposes the illusion of national unity. While I'm writing my own essay about this, I try to be brief here.
Our nations are imagined communities (to use Benedict Anderson’s term), some more, some less, nevertheless imagined. The sense of unity and identity that nationalism promotes is an illusion, and polarisation is our evidence, because what instils this notion of unity and commonality is an out-group or enemies more than internal unity and common values and beliefs. In other words, the secret to a group’s unity has been to define itself against other nations and groups, because once it begins to define itself for something, competing and contradicting interests emerge and clash with one another (as we can clearly see in increasingly more divided nations).
The second point I would make is against attaching a sense of purpose and meaning to collective identity or group. This is not only a bad idea, it’s lethal. It’s this deep sense of purpose attached to one’s group and identity that can give people the license to kill other people (seen as "sacrificing" oneself). Almost all atrocities in human history has been about conflicting identities (whether national, religious, ethnic, or racial), and some sort of "us" versus "them."
What we instead need to do is to cultivate a sense of purpose attached to doing (as in creative work) rather than being (ie group identity, which is merely an accident of birth). There is absolutely not reason to be, for example, proud of something which one had nothing to do with. To cite Margaret Mead, you can be proud of your child of you didn’t ruin her, but nobody has any right to be proud of their ancestors, because after all they didn’t do a thing about it.
Purpose attached to work doesn’t have to be about ”greatness," writing a bestselling book or becoming the next Picasso; it’s about realising one’s own potentials. It’s about discovering and nurturing one’s true abilities, to actualise those abilities, and to become more of what one is. This meaning-making can never be a collective endeavour because all individuals are different. You may be a writer, but someone else might be a baker who want to explore the culinary arts of pastries. Purpose attached to one's growth and development is about self-actualisation. And that’s when one can also reach transcendence, which is my last point. This is where one can finally transcend the usual limits that tribalism/nationalism instills, because purpose is attached to oneself and one’s creation. And it is this sense of purpose that gives us the reason to, not die, but to live for something.
Humans were built and have always been ensconced in communities - family, village, guild, company, region, nation. The rejection of this truth is something that makes us naturally recoil because it is inhuman and unnatural to us, unless sold via the potential benefits.
The progressive drive is ideology, not fact, grown through the inhumanity of the steamroller of progress manifesting through progressive apostles.
Adam Smith’s “natural sympathy” is a useful concept here. The most trenchant counter argument to globalisation enthusiasts - from a liberal capitalist perspecive - is that 'natural sympathy' can only really be sustained at a societal scale where some collective sense of community exists. This can also be sustained (to some extent at least) at nationhood scale but at a global scale it becomes hopelessly attenuated to the point of non-existence.
As I went thru the crucible of living my life in the social/physical environment in which I found myself, I migrated from college idealism of the 60s, to reactionary conservatism, to what I hope is a more objective quest for an understanding of reality. In a human society, human nature is therefore very import to get right, as best you can.
So anecdotally, I basically bough the Lennon idea that "all you need is love" was man's natural state, and the preceding generations somehow missed this and persisted in unnatural pursuits of self (and group) advancement.
Then, after seeing that holding that assumption consistently required reciprocal trust in every instance, or you'd be at a distinct and almost immediate disadvantage vis-a-vis the non-reciprocal individuals, I went 180 degrees in the opposite direction: trust no one.
This was the cynical phase of the boy transitioning to man, and it's a lot like the realization that after all those happy, carefree childhood Christmases, your parent, not Santa, gave you all those gifts, and it cost them dearly. There was no beneficent free lunch.
Now finally to the point!
At that time I rejected the possibility of socialism. To me it was laughably naive. But as I continued to examine the nature of socialism, and check history for indications of its possible success, I began to see that the attributes of socialism were very widespread across both diverse cultures, and across time. Simply put, the nuclear family is the smallest granular unit of socialistic behaviors, and this extends to extended families, clans, and tribes. Socialism was *routine* among human groups at that scope of social organization.
Formally I had looked only at modern nations who had socialistic policies. These policies were invariably forced by external authority; in no case, over a longer period, were the individuals self-motivated to voluntarily contribute to the socialistic national system. You had to *make* them contribute.
So I wonder: why is this? And I came to the conclusion that voluntary socialism, as successfully practiced in social scopes up to a tribe, required mutual trust between those who contributed more than they received, and those who received more than they contributed. The "contributors" had to trust that those receiving actually and truly *needed* the assistance simply to survive. Those recieving needed to trust that the contributors really were contributing mostly from surpluses and that they were not holding out; they also needed to feel that their situation was honestly appreciated and respected. And of course both parties had to *see* their opposites to be assured that all was as each party portrayed: the poor actually requiring assistance, and the better-off freely contributing without strings. So the social grouping had to be relatively small.
Barring this trust, all contributions had to be forced from about by a stronger authority. And if coerced, the chances of upheaval are almost present.
So the bottom line is that trust has to exist to make socialism work over the long haul. And humans being humans, they tend to NOT trust those outside their own tribes.
There are two instances where socialism at the national level might work: in what you term an ethnonation, where it is close to one big tribe, historically; and in a progressive-minded multicultural society that has a large and consistent surplus and believes in a drift toward global world order. And in that latter case socialism will last only so long as the surplus exists and mutual trust--always fragile in inter-tribal transactions-- remains intact.
We *ARE* basically tribal in the blood; were this not so, we'd not be seeing worldwide separatist movements within established nations.
Bo introduces a description of hell and discards it as non-viable only to suggest his own maximally viable nightmare.
John Lennon is actually quite clear on how you get your brotherhood of man. Just eliminate religion, possessions, and all the sources of disparate meanings that people find so valuable they'd be willing to kill or die for. Then finally we can all be one.
Bo's only objection to this seems to be that it wouldn't work. I guess it'd involve too much initial strife.
Culturalism in one nation, according to Bo that is... might. Even though the racial groups of people in that nation behave in ways more different from one another than many in entirely different nations, and almost the entire point of this publication is that these behaviors are heavily innate... we're supposed to try to form a cultural unit with them anyway.
"Cosmopolitan nationalism is the view that nationalism is just a stage on the path toward a larger global unit. It thus sees the nation as a chrysalis that will eventually be burst apart by the butterfly of the global tribe."
- What is this even supposed to be? Who invented this framing? It strikes me like a Christian saying, 'your God is evolution, so we both believe in God and are both religious.' Has anyone ever self-identified as cosmopolitan 'nationalist'?
Tribalism is an instinctive human survival skill (remember when "discriminate" meant "discerning" in useful - sometimes vital - ways?). Western Civilization has uniquely transcended the limitations of the tribe through individualism, though many continue to need to be dragged forward, kicking and screaming, and regression is common.
Nationalism is usually tribalism, but it doesn't have to be. The United States of America was founded on principles, not tribes, which makes American "nationalism" an allegiance to principle.
Ask a Chinese man or a black to define an American and it won’t be anything like “cultural nationalism”. I have a Polish great-grandfather but I have a much stronger tie to America since 80% of my roots go back to before the Revolution in NY. The American ethnicity was born in the fire of the Indian wars since the Jamestown Massacre of 1622, where the survival requires everyone to give up on their Germaness or Quakerness in favor of America dominated by the Virginian culture, with the Anglo core making up 80% of whites today after centuries of intermarriage. It’s the English culture and English values that made America possible.
It's obvious that race-mixing is the essence of cosmopolitan nationalism. As such, your classification doesn't have four nationalisms, but two. What you call 'ethnonationalism' and cosmopolitan Nationalism. All over the world, Whites are rejecting cosmopolitan nationalism because they are recognizing that 'the free movement of people, goods and money' has destroyed their homeland. No version of liberalism is acceptable as a solution, so I suggest you figure out how to make your peace with ethnic separation.
A terrific essay, as usual. I followed the link to David Berreby's book 'Us and Them', which looks really interesting but is now almost 20 years old. Is there an equally good but more up-to-date book on this subject or, even better, an online essay rather than a 300 page tome? Nowadays I find it almost impossible to get beyond the first 30 pages of non-fiction books.
First of all, this is a very well-written essay. Chapeau for writing with such clarity.
I would however argue against this case for nationalism, not because I am liberal, progressive, or any other labels that belie the infinite dimensions of a person, but because the empirical reality exposes the illusion of national unity. While I'm writing my own essay about this, I try to be brief here.
Our nations are imagined communities (to use Benedict Anderson’s term), some more, some less, nevertheless imagined. The sense of unity and identity that nationalism promotes is an illusion, and polarisation is our evidence, because what instils this notion of unity and commonality is an out-group or enemies more than internal unity and common values and beliefs. In other words, the secret to a group’s unity has been to define itself against other nations and groups, because once it begins to define itself for something, competing and contradicting interests emerge and clash with one another (as we can clearly see in increasingly more divided nations).
The second point I would make is against attaching a sense of purpose and meaning to collective identity or group. This is not only a bad idea, it’s lethal. It’s this deep sense of purpose attached to one’s group and identity that can give people the license to kill other people (seen as "sacrificing" oneself). Almost all atrocities in human history has been about conflicting identities (whether national, religious, ethnic, or racial), and some sort of "us" versus "them."
What we instead need to do is to cultivate a sense of purpose attached to doing (as in creative work) rather than being (ie group identity, which is merely an accident of birth). There is absolutely not reason to be, for example, proud of something which one had nothing to do with. To cite Margaret Mead, you can be proud of your child of you didn’t ruin her, but nobody has any right to be proud of their ancestors, because after all they didn’t do a thing about it.
Purpose attached to work doesn’t have to be about ”greatness," writing a bestselling book or becoming the next Picasso; it’s about realising one’s own potentials. It’s about discovering and nurturing one’s true abilities, to actualise those abilities, and to become more of what one is. This meaning-making can never be a collective endeavour because all individuals are different. You may be a writer, but someone else might be a baker who want to explore the culinary arts of pastries. Purpose attached to one's growth and development is about self-actualisation. And that’s when one can also reach transcendence, which is my last point. This is where one can finally transcend the usual limits that tribalism/nationalism instills, because purpose is attached to oneself and one’s creation. And it is this sense of purpose that gives us the reason to, not die, but to live for something.
Humans were built and have always been ensconced in communities - family, village, guild, company, region, nation. The rejection of this truth is something that makes us naturally recoil because it is inhuman and unnatural to us, unless sold via the potential benefits.
The progressive drive is ideology, not fact, grown through the inhumanity of the steamroller of progress manifesting through progressive apostles.
https://argomend.substack.com/p/the-drug-that-is-humanity?r=2q4k35
Adam Smith’s “natural sympathy” is a useful concept here. The most trenchant counter argument to globalisation enthusiasts - from a liberal capitalist perspecive - is that 'natural sympathy' can only really be sustained at a societal scale where some collective sense of community exists. This can also be sustained (to some extent at least) at nationhood scale but at a global scale it becomes hopelessly attenuated to the point of non-existence.
As I went thru the crucible of living my life in the social/physical environment in which I found myself, I migrated from college idealism of the 60s, to reactionary conservatism, to what I hope is a more objective quest for an understanding of reality. In a human society, human nature is therefore very import to get right, as best you can.
So anecdotally, I basically bough the Lennon idea that "all you need is love" was man's natural state, and the preceding generations somehow missed this and persisted in unnatural pursuits of self (and group) advancement.
Then, after seeing that holding that assumption consistently required reciprocal trust in every instance, or you'd be at a distinct and almost immediate disadvantage vis-a-vis the non-reciprocal individuals, I went 180 degrees in the opposite direction: trust no one.
This was the cynical phase of the boy transitioning to man, and it's a lot like the realization that after all those happy, carefree childhood Christmases, your parent, not Santa, gave you all those gifts, and it cost them dearly. There was no beneficent free lunch.
Now finally to the point!
At that time I rejected the possibility of socialism. To me it was laughably naive. But as I continued to examine the nature of socialism, and check history for indications of its possible success, I began to see that the attributes of socialism were very widespread across both diverse cultures, and across time. Simply put, the nuclear family is the smallest granular unit of socialistic behaviors, and this extends to extended families, clans, and tribes. Socialism was *routine* among human groups at that scope of social organization.
Formally I had looked only at modern nations who had socialistic policies. These policies were invariably forced by external authority; in no case, over a longer period, were the individuals self-motivated to voluntarily contribute to the socialistic national system. You had to *make* them contribute.
So I wonder: why is this? And I came to the conclusion that voluntary socialism, as successfully practiced in social scopes up to a tribe, required mutual trust between those who contributed more than they received, and those who received more than they contributed. The "contributors" had to trust that those receiving actually and truly *needed* the assistance simply to survive. Those recieving needed to trust that the contributors really were contributing mostly from surpluses and that they were not holding out; they also needed to feel that their situation was honestly appreciated and respected. And of course both parties had to *see* their opposites to be assured that all was as each party portrayed: the poor actually requiring assistance, and the better-off freely contributing without strings. So the social grouping had to be relatively small.
Barring this trust, all contributions had to be forced from about by a stronger authority. And if coerced, the chances of upheaval are almost present.
So the bottom line is that trust has to exist to make socialism work over the long haul. And humans being humans, they tend to NOT trust those outside their own tribes.
There are two instances where socialism at the national level might work: in what you term an ethnonation, where it is close to one big tribe, historically; and in a progressive-minded multicultural society that has a large and consistent surplus and believes in a drift toward global world order. And in that latter case socialism will last only so long as the surplus exists and mutual trust--always fragile in inter-tribal transactions-- remains intact.
We *ARE* basically tribal in the blood; were this not so, we'd not be seeing worldwide separatist movements within established nations.
Anyway, that's how it looks to me.
Trust is the only real currency.
BO WINEGARD's Lennonism in one country
Bo introduces a description of hell and discards it as non-viable only to suggest his own maximally viable nightmare.
John Lennon is actually quite clear on how you get your brotherhood of man. Just eliminate religion, possessions, and all the sources of disparate meanings that people find so valuable they'd be willing to kill or die for. Then finally we can all be one.
Bo's only objection to this seems to be that it wouldn't work. I guess it'd involve too much initial strife.
Culturalism in one nation, according to Bo that is... might. Even though the racial groups of people in that nation behave in ways more different from one another than many in entirely different nations, and almost the entire point of this publication is that these behaviors are heavily innate... we're supposed to try to form a cultural unit with them anyway.
"Cosmopolitan nationalism is the view that nationalism is just a stage on the path toward a larger global unit. It thus sees the nation as a chrysalis that will eventually be burst apart by the butterfly of the global tribe."
- What is this even supposed to be? Who invented this framing? It strikes me like a Christian saying, 'your God is evolution, so we both believe in God and are both religious.' Has anyone ever self-identified as cosmopolitan 'nationalist'?
Tribalism is an instinctive human survival skill (remember when "discriminate" meant "discerning" in useful - sometimes vital - ways?). Western Civilization has uniquely transcended the limitations of the tribe through individualism, though many continue to need to be dragged forward, kicking and screaming, and regression is common.
Nationalism is usually tribalism, but it doesn't have to be. The United States of America was founded on principles, not tribes, which makes American "nationalism" an allegiance to principle.
https://principlesvstribes.substack.com/p/principles-vs-tribes
Ask a Chinese man or a black to define an American and it won’t be anything like “cultural nationalism”. I have a Polish great-grandfather but I have a much stronger tie to America since 80% of my roots go back to before the Revolution in NY. The American ethnicity was born in the fire of the Indian wars since the Jamestown Massacre of 1622, where the survival requires everyone to give up on their Germaness or Quakerness in favor of America dominated by the Virginian culture, with the Anglo core making up 80% of whites today after centuries of intermarriage. It’s the English culture and English values that made America possible.
I would argue that this is really an article about the virtues of *patriotism*, not nationalism.
Patriotism is loving your country. Nationalism is hating other countries.
It's obvious that race-mixing is the essence of cosmopolitan nationalism. As such, your classification doesn't have four nationalisms, but two. What you call 'ethnonationalism' and cosmopolitan Nationalism. All over the world, Whites are rejecting cosmopolitan nationalism because they are recognizing that 'the free movement of people, goods and money' has destroyed their homeland. No version of liberalism is acceptable as a solution, so I suggest you figure out how to make your peace with ethnic separation.
A terrific essay, as usual. I followed the link to David Berreby's book 'Us and Them', which looks really interesting but is now almost 20 years old. Is there an equally good but more up-to-date book on this subject or, even better, an online essay rather than a 300 page tome? Nowadays I find it almost impossible to get beyond the first 30 pages of non-fiction books.
It must be a real nation based on common culture, history, ethnicity, not based on abstract ‘creeds and propositions.’