Posted: Jul 26, 2008, 3:36 PM CST
Galwayman2008 wrote:This is a very sophisticated Thread, but in the end of it the desire to being a a member of a small "tribe" will always be in conflict to being part of something bigger. Every country has faced that challenge (it wasn't until 1000 AD that there was a King of Ireland accepted by all the tribes). Go watch an inter-county football game and you'll see that tribalism hasn't gone very far away.
The forum may have changed (ie being part of a European Union) but human behaviour hasn't.
GM
Yes, human behaviour is to seek to be part of something - a couple, a family, a group, a clan, a society, etc. Already here we can see different layers. Then add bigger entities: a village, a town, a city, a region, a country, a state, a group of countries with close co-operation, a continent...
Being part of these bigger entities does not necessarily cause conflict with the smaller, closer ones. I think humans identify with different groups in different ways, and often some of the groups are encapsulated in the bigger ones.
For example, an Englishman would most likely not have a conflict with the fact that he is also a Brit (someone try to tell him that he's Welsh - that's another story!...).
In this part of the world we have called ourselves Europeans for a very long time (well - the Brits have tended to forget that they are part of Europe, but that's another story too
) - and it probably has not had that much meaning to us, until the EU came along.
Over the past years, as the EU has expanded, the borders practically taken away within, more and more things becoming easier to do between countries of the EU, a new sense of belonging is shaping - and this is what will be very interesting to see how far it can go. Being European now means a different thing than 50 years ago.
From what I've seen it has not taken away anything from the national identities within the EU - on the contrary, it has often raised the national identity to the forefront.
The fascinating thing is that all these different feelings of and views on identity and belonging can exist side by side - and even flourish because of it.
Can fervent nationalism coexist with a European meta-identity? : click here to read the entire thread »