I can’t object to the article. I object about the videos, which was the first sources you used. I maintain those are biased. I am not implying that they refer to “alternative facts”, though I have some doubts, but that is neither information, nor analysis.
You are right about the fact that the absence of looting doesn’t change much the overall impact of the riots. I would even say that it allows to more easily compare Black Blocks to Nazi’s Brownshirts (I mean the SA). But that’s my point too, it’s not hooliganism, it’s politics. (Like on many other points, here I find myself exposed to objections. One could quip something like “and is not hooliganism politics too” and I would not really disagree. But let’s say that, in a more primary sense, Black Blocks are exclusively about politics, while hooligans are not).
I guess you want to mark this point because you want to say that ‘tolerance’ is becoming something like being erased the hands down. On the contrary ‘we’ have to react. Then the question becomes: ‘we’ who? react to what? and how?
If I have interpreted you correctly, please answer. (I presume I know the ‘who’ and ‘what’, but I would like to read the way you put it).
I don’t think that most people are tolerant - and I think they have never been, it’s always been conformism. Yet something has changed lately and tolerance is now publicly criticized. The rise of the so-called populists shows that your thoughts have a much larger echo than you seemingly think. Yet, does that make them “corageous”?
That cowardice is just that, or possibly the outcome of a long conditioning as you suggest, but not the side effect of a moral dilemma. We should also consider that in Europe the state has a constitutional monopoly of violence, all other forms (except self-defence, and not even exactly that) are illegitimate. Nevertheless, at least for some, the psychological dynamics that you describe might well take place. Honestly, to me it looks more like “ideology” than “genealogy”, but, anyway, who are the “courageous people [who] choose their actual instinct over artificial-socially constructed fear and sycophantism”?
I can’t tell you what it will look like, I am not a prophet. Nor I am an optimist. I can understand it’s a scary idea, it may well lead to the ‘sacrifice’ of “their societies, their culture”, and possibly of the rest too. I guess that people in besieged Numantia had similar thoughts. I refer to this historical fact because it helps to explain why I consider that it is an upside.
What is remarkable about Numantia, or Numancia, is that its inhabitants committed collective suicide not to yield to Romans. That commands respect, of course, and no surprise if literature has made Numantians heroes. Cervantes wrote a tragedy where he established XVI century Spain as the descendant of Numantians.
Numantians have many ‘cousins’, e. g. Boudica in Britain and Vercingetorix in France (together with the glorified historical forgery of the Gallo-Roman nation). Those are examples of a mythological past that, I guess you would say, “gives the present meaning, and […] provides the grounding for future expectation”. I would not really challenge this view, I can understand the value of a founding myth, but I do discuss how this is employed “toward the more strictly objective, rational-factual”. Because if we appeal to this layer, to critical thinking, what is this past?
Numantians had apparently all reasons to oppose an invander that claimed a cut on their resources, even more so as they managed to defeat Romans several times. But these victories together with a naive understanding of economy (and the latter could not really be different) were probably what doomed then. Emboldened by their successful resistance, they failed to appreciate correctly their actual situation. Romans were never going to quit, they would keep coming at them with more forces and determination. We may call this hubris, but, whatever that was, one fact should have become clear if they could see the context as we now can: Rome’s expansion was unstoppable. And it’s not that they cherished their ‘values’ to the point of sacrificing their lives. Besieged, they did ask for peace, even for a less than honourable one. In the end they were willing to compromise their ‘values’ (obviously: this is ironic). But it was too late. Like Michael Corleone, Scipio answered: “My offer is this: nothing”. And that is what they got. There was no perpetuation of anything: no lives, no families, no friends, no culture. Nothing. It was their total anihilation. The memory of Numantia has remained only because of Roman historians and archeological excavations. In fact there has been no past giving meaning to the present, quite the contrary. The present assigned a pre-established meaning to a fictional past, based on actual historical events, but wrapped by an ideology that constitutes a falsification of them.
But having said that, your question “Why you consider that an ‘upside’” remains still unanswered.
It’s useful to forewarn that the concept of nation has remained undefined, so you may legitimately infer that I equate nations and peoples. Not necessarily.
Let’s remain in Spain. Pre-Roman Spain was home to several populations, they probably did not entertain the concept of ‘nation’, but be it as it might, it’s fair to say that their ‘identities’ were erased. When the Visigoths invaded Spain, they found just a Roman province, not oppressed nations. Even the very name of Spain comes from the Roman invader. How bad was it? Well, sure the Roman conquest broght suffering and destruction, loss of lives, families, etc. Yet Spain did not become a desert. The overall conditions of Spain improved so much, that many parts of Spain found again a comparaple affluence only a thousand years after the fall of the Roman Empire. It is indeed that Dominion that cast the foundation of what Spain became, not the Numantians. Cervantes did not write his tragedy in Celtiberian, he used a language derived from Latin. It’s fair to object that we can’t discern what the alternatives could have become. Yet there are 2 supporting points in my view: a) without this massive erasure of ‘identities’ operated by the Roman Empire (which, by the way, it’s better understood as absorption) we would have never had a Europe; b) as much as this sounds politically incorrect, and possibly methodologically unfeasible, we should question the value of these erased cultures. My take is that those identities were doomed to exctintion anyway, they thrived (if they ever did) only because of a relative isolation.
I am not going to develop (b) here, but consider anyway that oblivion was not the only possible outcome. There are examples where subjected people grew with a greater identity. Greeks perceived them not exactly as a nation, but surely as a people. Their political autonomy was over by the IV century B.C. Yet that resulted in a huge enabler for their ‘culture’, which became hegemonic in the the Balkans and the Middle East until the X century AD, and even beyond, in time and space, because there would be no Europe if there were no Greeks. They are so incredibly resilient (which, frankly, one would hardly guess), that, while Latin is dead, Greek is alive and kicking after 25 centuries. Then there would be the case of Jews, that would be even more significant, yet… enough said on this.
The ontology of the nation and state? Please, tell me more about it.
I would expect that Hegel exhausted the case as he used to exhaust his readers, but the reference was made because the Ethical State, à la Hegel, cannot longer afford its task, in my view, as long as it remains on the scale of one nation. Then maybe you should develop the rest, because I fail to see how this saving god is a “direct repudiation of the implication that the nation state ought to disappear”. Besides, I would not say that Hegel developed his doctrine about the nation state, but about the state only, that which was sufficiently convenient for Prussia. As for Jung, sorry, I can’t factor in something I don’t know. I confess I remain a bit perplex seeing psychoanalisis and “really” in the same statement. And who are the other people like Jung?
I maybe should clarify my thought, if that is what you are asking. I just declare a few things to prevent misunderstandings.
Fear not, I am neither utopian, nor dystopian. John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ is by no means my favourite lyrics.
I am not an atheist because God is not sufficiently moral, like one could (and should) say of Hitchens. So I don’t think the nation state “ought” to disappear in any moral sense. Instead, the nation state is no longer zukunftsfähig, it can’t do what it promises (just like Christianity). As for “the cold monster” in itself, viz. the state, that may be well supranational, and in fact there are some, typically in the form of (con-)federations and unions. I believe that the end of the Ethical State is in order too, but I might be deadly wrong, in fact I guess that as of now I don’t see many signs pointing to that.
Does that make me one of the “mindless proponents of globalism”? I might be mindless, but I am definitely not a proponent. There is a couple of awful truths that it would be mindless to ignore: globalism has already happened and it’s inevitable unless major catastrophes having the impact of a nuclear war. Globalism in economy has started with the Seven Years’ War, if not earlier, and it was a European invention. Second: demographically Europe is dying. It is no longer the land of the white.
That’s beautiful, but I do not see most of it to the point. You establish a correlation between Jung and nation-states that I fail to grasp.
On the other side, this sentence
could be applied to nation-states. As you acknowledge in a way:
As for the rest, I believe you may find my point of view in my exposition of the Numantia case. It is opportune to add that the case portrayed is not a perfect match for ‘our’ situation. There is this idea of siege, yet it is not comparable to the Roman army. That which makes it even more unstoppable in a way, also because Europeans partake in that dynamics. So maybe ‘resistance is not futile’, I might correct myself in this after your objections (as a mere possibility, it depends heavily on how this resistance factually takes place), but I still believe it’s hypocrite.
I can’t tell what I lack, or lack not. I don’t think dissecting the semantics of ‘spirit’, wisdom and depth, personality and gravitas is conducive to to a proficuous debate.
I think that forms of mindless, ‘Numantian’ conservativism will take to delusional “grounding for future expectation”. It will result in self-inflicted mutilation, downward spiralling, not empowerment. I can detect only adrenaline, not analysis “toward the more strictly objective, rational-factual”. If I check on it closely, I do not even find it consistent.
May I know your thoughts on Brexit?